“I’ve got a full schedule today,” I ramble on, not really paying attention. “Camera traps, sensors, visual checks… but maybe we can coordinate later in the week? I’d love to get your input on trail erosion patterns. You spent more time out here over winter.”
I mean it. He probably has useful insights.
Sam’s shoulders sag a little. “Sure thing, Doc—Elias,” he corrects quickly. “You know where to find me.”
Gladys taps his arm. “Flirt on your own time, Hargrove. Move.”
Jonah hides a smile in his collar while my brows shoot high.Flirt?I mean, was Sam flirting?
Sam gives me one last look, somewhere between hopeful and resigned, and I shake away the discomfort that someone so young would have any level of interest in a guy like me. Honestly, if he heard how I groan and my knees crack these days when simply standing from a chair, any attraction would go flying out the window.
“Good to have you back,” he says, then turns to follow Gladys.
“Good tobeback,” I reply genuinely.
They walk away down the trail, boots crunching over the thawing ground. Gladys is already lecturing them about snowmelt, runoff, and why “giant raccoons” are not a category on the wildlife reporting form. Their voices fade, leaving me once more with the drip of water, the soft click of my cooling mug, the faint hum of the generator behind the cabin.
I stare at the map on the clipboard for a moment longer, taking it all in. The park feels like a living thing exhaling around me, all this miles-wide organism waking up cell by cell. I set the clipboard down on the little table, grab my gear bag from inside—GPS, spare batteries, notebook, flagging tape, emergency chocolate—and sling it over my shoulder.
When I step off the porch, the ground gives slightly under my boots, spongey with thaw. The air is colder in the shade of the trees, the mist thicker where the sun hasn’t yet reached.
Something moves at the very edge of my vision. A shape in the tree line. Tall. Still. Not tree, not rock, not quite nothing.
I stop.
My breath fogs in front of me. The forest holds its own breath, just for a second. My heartbeat ticks louder in my ears.
The shape shifts—subtle, like a shadow deciding to be somewhere else—and then it’s gone. If it was ever really there.
I squint into the trees, hands resting on the straps of my pack.
Nothing. Just trunks. Moss. A raven hopping along a branch, tilting its head at me likewhat?
“For the love of brain cells,” I sigh under my breath. “You’re already seeing things, Hart. Day one. Impressive.”
It’s not scary. That’s the strange part. My instincts, honed over years of working in the wilderness, are quiet. No adrenaline spike, no prickling at the base of my skull screamingdanger. Just this… awareness. This weird sense of being part of an equation I don’t fully understand yet.
It’s the same as last year.
And the year before.
I roll my eyes at myself, shake it off, and tap my GPS until it beeps awake.
“Right,” I tell the trees. “I’ve got camera traps to check, soil sensors to rescue, and exactly zero time to start narrating cryptid documentaries in my head.”
A chickadee flits to a nearby branch and cheeps like it disagrees, and I smile despite myself. “Fine,” I concede. “Maybe half a cryptid documentary.”
I step forward, letting the trail draw me into the embrace of the forest. Ahead, Cedar Ridge waits, along with the last marker I placed in September—a little box of data and possibility tucked into the wild.
Whatever that shadow was—or wasn’t—the forest is waking up. And I’m here to watch.
CHAPTER THREE
BOONE
I am not stalking him.
I’m performing a routine environmental observation of a known human variable that happens to be walking through my forest.
