“That answer is evasive,” I reply.
“It is accurate,” he says.
I pull my tablet closer and open the GPS overlay. The screen glows against the dim cabin light, and the map fills with ridgelines, creek beds, and the thick green mass of Blackmoore property. Ciaran stands near the window, posture rigid, as if he expects something to appear out of the trees at any second.
“Start with the outer loop,” I say, more to myself than him.
Ciaran’s gaze flicks up. “You are mapping our routes again.”
“I am mapping the pattern,” I correct, tapping in the first set of coordinates. “Your routes are the variable.”
He makes a quiet sound that could be agreement or irritation.
I work through the logs, entering time stamps and route names, translating them into movement lines across the terrain. East Ridge Loop. Lower Creek Line. North Switchback. Quarry Pass. The naming is consistent, which means the system has been in place long enough to feel routine.
That routine has holes.
At first the gaps look like human error. A delayed shift handoff. A patrol pausing at a creek crossing. A ten-minute lag that could be explained by terrain. Then the same lag appears again, in the same zone, on a different day.
I lean closer to the screen and zoom in until the contour lines blur.
“Hold on,” I say.
Ciaran straightens slightly. “What.”
“This gap repeats,” I reply, circling the area with my stylus. “Every third rotation, the coverage opens.”
He pushes off the wall and steps closer, his boots quiet on the cabin floorboards. The air shifts with his presence, but my focus stays on the screen.
“How wide,” he asks.
“Not wide,” I say. “Long enough.”
I pull up the last week and overlay the routes again, stacking them like transparent sheets. The corridor appears like a seam in fabric, a narrow lane where two patrol lines should overlap but consistently do not.
Ten to twelve minutes.
A fast animal could clear that distance easily.
A smart one could do it without being seen.
Ciaran’s jaw tightens. “Alden locked the schedules.”
“You told me he did,” I say, glancing up at him. “These logs say there is still an escape lane.”
He stares at the screen for a beat, then reaches for the binder and flips to the corresponding page. His finger moves along the time stamps with practiced speed.
“This is shift handoff timing,” he says. “Team three meets team five at the creek.”
“And they should overlap at the ridge,” I reply. “But they do not.”
Ciaran closes the binder with a controlled snap. “You think someone left it.”
“I think someone is using it,” I say.
I pull up the town attack locations and drop them onto the same map layer. The markers cluster along the boundary line, then thread directly toward the gap I circled. The alignment is clean enough to make my stomach tighten.
“This is an escape corridor,” I say.
