She stares at me, chest heaving, then lets out a sharp, breathless laugh that skids sideways almost immediately, wobbling into something brittle and hysterical. “I’m so going to jail. I couldn’t even make it past the first objective without getting caught.”
Lowering the flashlight a few inches, I angle the beam away from her face. “Nah, you’re good. If I were here to arrest you, we wouldn’t be chatting.”
That gets her thinking. Her brown-eyed gaze flicks past me for only a second, suspicion bleeding through the panic. “Who are you?”
“The name’s Crew. Your dad sent me.”
That lands.Hard.Her shoulders sag like someone finally cut the tension holding her upright as she presses a hand to her chest, eyes glassy. “He…he did?”
“Yeah. Told me where you’d be, more or less.”
“So you’re not a cop.”
I shake my head. “Nope.”
“And you’re not here to,” she gestures vaguely at the woods behind me, “kill me or whatever?”
“Also no, so let’s try to take a breath, yeah?”
She looks at me as if breathing might be negotiable, but tries anyway, inhaling shakily through her nose and releasing it between her lips.
“Everything’s going to be okay.” My voice comes evenly and confidently. “But you’re done touching things. From here on out, you let me handle it. Got it?”
She glances at the body. “That’s…probably for the best.”
“Definitely.” I’m already mapping what comes next, mentally problem solving by urgency as I track the near area around us. “For now, I just need you to stay right here. Don’t move, don’t wander, don’t try to be helpful.”
“That last one feels personal,” she carps.
“It is,” I deadpan. “You’ve done more than enough for one night.”
Alma nods silently and folds her arms around herself like she’s trying to keep from falling apart.
“I’m going to walk back the way you came, okay? I just need to look at a few things. You’re not going to follow me, and you’re not gonna look behind me.”
Those brown eyes shoot traitorously in the exact direction I just warned her away from. I say nothing, just raise an eyebrow, and she instantly winces in realization. “Right, no looking, got it. Eyes forward like when you’re in a haunted house.”
“Exactly, except if you scream, it’s going to complicate things.”
“No pressure,” she grumbles.
I hesitate for half a second, then pull off my hoodie and hold it out to her. “Here, put this on.”
She looks down at it in confusion. “I’m not cold.”
“That’s not why I’m giving it to you.” I tip my chin in her direction, motioning toward her shirt.
Her lips part, clearly on the verge of arguing, but then she takes in what she’s wearing and seems to think better of it. A quietthank youleaves her as she takes the garment and pulls it on over her head.
I take that as my cue. As I turn away and follow the path, I force myself not to immediately look back. Giving her space matters, so does not hovering. Still, I keep her in my peripheral long enough to ensure she stays put. When another minute passes and she keeps her stare firmly trained on a patch of grass, only then do I let myself focus on the task at hand.
The forest feels different now, charged, like it knows it’s been dragged into something it didn’t ask for. I move carefully, following the disturbed ground with an eye trained more on patterns than details. Where she slipped a little, where she hesitated, where fear overrode logic and momentum died.
Cleanup isn’t about erasing evidence. That’s a fantasy people have because it makes them feel better. Real cleanup is about containment, control, and knowing when to stop touching things.
I catalogue what I see and, just as importantly, what I don’t. When I circle back, she’s exactly where I left her. She looks up the second she hears me approach.
“Am I…okay?” she asks.
