Page 208 of Silent Shadows

twenty-nine

MILES

Daisy and I are walking away from the cave, at peace with how the evening has gone when Maya crackles through the radio.

“Guys, the drone picked up movement.”

“Well, yeah, it’s probably us.” I reply.

“No. It’s not you.” She says, an edge to her voice.

Everything in me stills.

Jax’s voice comes quieter over Maya’s walkie. “It’s a large heat signature.”

Silence. The kind that rearranges your breathing.

Taylor chimes in, “How large?”

“Uh… large. It’s at the bottom of the wash.”

No one speaks.

The wind moves once through dry brush. Then stops. Like the desert itself is listening. My pulse climbs, hope rising toward desperation.

Or I thought it would. But it doesn’t. It stays grounded in hope. Not desperate—not anymore.

Daisy’s hand finds mine, her fingers intertwining with mine. I look over, her face warm in the moonlight. Like she feels the shape of this moment too, that sense that something important is happening. Not just potential proof. Beyond that.

“Miles,” Owen’s voice breaks softly through static. “You copy?”

I know he’s asking more than that. Because he knows what this means to me. To him. To our family. What it has always meant.

I think about road trips. About my dad’s hand drumming against the steering wheel. Mom laughing under constellations. Wondering together. Searching together.

Over the past twenty years, grief wrapped itself around possibility until the two became impossible to separate. An ache rises suddenly, hard enough to steal breath. But it isn’t pain, and it isn’t grief.

Love. God. Love.

“Yeah,” I say, my voice rough. “I think…” I stop, releasing the radio button to drop the line. Language feels inadequate right now. Daisy squeezes my hand once.

Owen radios back. “Miles.” Whispering now. “You need to look down in the wash. Now.”

I do.

And the world stops.

chapter

thirty

DAISY

There’s no dramatic swell. None of the usual voiceover narration in my head. Just silence. The kind so complete it feels placed there. As if something invisible reached across the desert and pressed mute.

Beside me, Miles goes motionless. The muscles in his arm tense under my fingers. His breathing disappears.

Somewhere below us, the wash stretches silver-blue in the moonlight, winding between sandstone and brush like a scar carved into the earth.