“Locals wouldn’t need the brochure at all.” Which meant we could be after a tourist.
They’d written on the back,Young luminooks can leave their mothers at fourteen weeks old. Not sooner or they could die.
“Someone who planned to take luminooks would want to know this,” I said.
As I shifted position, something metallic caught the morning light. Reaching carefully through the grass, I found a small pin designed like a luminook, its spines made of tiny blue crystals that caught the sunlight.
“We stock these in the gift shop,” Dungar said. “Allie designed them specifically for Lonesome Creek.”
I bagged the pin, turning it over in my fingers through the plastic. “If this belongs to our suspect, they may be engaging with the luminook experience.”
“Enough to study them carefully. But they also know enough about security to disable some of ours.”
We returned to the sheriff’s office with our new evidence, spreading it out on Dungar’s desk beside our security maps.
“They’ve been watching our surveillance patterns and adapting,” I said, pacing the length of the small office. “Every time we change our approach, they find a wayaround it.”
Dungar tapped his pen on the desk exactly three times before setting it down perfectly aligned with his notebook. “We need to change our strategy completely.”
“How?”
His dark eyes met mine. “We set a trap.”
I nodded, understanding what he wasn’t saying. “We let them think they know our patterns.”
“While creating new ones they won’t expect.”
“We make them come to us.”
Dungar smiled. “Exactly.”
We began sketching out our plan.
Chapter 27
Dungar
Ihad never seen my office so completely transformed. Papers, files, and color-coded index cards covered every surface, even the spare table we’d dragged in from the storage room. A timeline stretched across the east wall, each incident marked with red pins, while the west wall held a map of Lonesome Creek with blue and yellow markers indicating security breach locations.
A comprehensive matrix documenting every person who had been in Lonesome Creek during each luminook disturbance lay in the middle. Names filled the vertical axis while dates ran horizontally, creating a grid.
“This is impressive,” Riley said, standing beside me, leaning over my shoulder. Her scent, something floral with hints of honey, wrapped around me like a caress. “How many people are we tracking?”
“One hundred and seventy-three.” I ran my finger down the column of names. “Every tourist, staffmember, and delivery person who’s been in town during at least one incident.”
She whistled, straightening to stretch her back. “And you’re cross-referencing all of them?”
“It’s the only way to find the pattern.” I carefully aligned my pen with the edge of the paper before turning to face her. “Someone has been here during every incident. We just need to identify who.”
Riley’s fingers lay on my shoulder, absently stroking the muscle where it met my neck.
“If anyone can find the pattern, it’s you.”
The confidence in her voice warmed me from the inside out.
Ruugar opened the door and stepped inside, Jessi with him. “We’ve got the visitor logs from the past month.” He held up a thick binder. “Becken brought the trail ride records too.”
“Perfect timing.” I cleared a space on my desk, arranging the previous documents in neat stacks to make room for the new information. “Are the others coming?”
