Page 23 of Silent Shadows

I laugh. “Whose bunk is under Miles’s?”

“Owen’s. He’s Miles’s older brother. He left us to work at Area 51, but my intuition tells me he’ll come back around.”

“Got it,” I nod and look at the last bunk, which is clearly Jax’s. Disheveled blankets spill out alongside a few protein bar wrappers. “And that’s Jax?” I ask.

“Yeah, he had to be on a ground-level bunk. He kept rolling around and falling out of the top one,” Taylor laughs.

I glance around the narrow aisle again, at the curtains and blankets and tiny pieces of personality carved into each space. It doesn’t feel temporary.

That’s what catches me off guard.

This isn’t a gimmick or some thrown-together road trip setup. These people have built a life inside this thing. Messy and cramped and strange, but real.

“You guys sleep in here all the time?” I ask.

“Most of the time,” Taylor says, leaning against the ladder. “Shower here, too. It’s tiny, I know. If we’re out for a while, we’ll spring for cheap hotels or truck-stop showers from time to time so nobody murders each other. We’ll also take time off between cases, but we’ve been busy. Before we started on Bigfoot, we were helping with a cold missing-person case in the Midwest—the police had given up on it years ago. We did find them, by the way. Cult.” She shrugs, as if this is all normal ‘getting to know you’ chatter. “Then there were those Bigfoot sightings, also in Ohio, so that’s why we prioritized this next. So anyway, this is our home base, no matter what state we’re in or what case we’re on.” She pauses. “Do you like camping?”

“Camping?” I repeat weakly.

“You’ll survive, babe.” She winks.

“That confidence feels unfounded.”

Taylor grins. “You’re softer than I expected.”

“I’m from LA.”

“Well, now you’re here.” She spreads her arms dramatically toward the desert outside. “Embrace it!”

I laugh despite myself and look back at the bunks one more time. At the softness tucked into the middle of all this roughness. At the evidence of people making space for themselves out here. It feels… comfortable.

Taylor takes her seat at the wheel and we’re off. I freeze, unsure of where to sit, like the new kid on the first day of school. I go for the seat closest to me, and Maya sits next to me soon after. Jax and Miles are at the desks opposite us, headphones on.

“I know you’ve given me the basics over the phone, but now that I’m here, can you just take me through things again?” I ask Maya, looking to get my bearings.

She smiles. Maya is beautiful in an untouched way that’s rare in LA. Soft, rounded cheeks and a warm bronze complexion, sprinkled with a few freckles from time spent outside. Her dark brown-black hair is short but still pulls back into a ponytail—a thick one. I know women who would kill for hair like hers. She looks at me with the kind of eyes that miss nothing and make people feel seen. “Sure. Big picture first?”

“Please.”

“Okay. Well, we work one case or topic at a time. And you should know that we don't go places randomly.”

That surprises me. “You don't?”

She snorts. “No. We follow patterns. The internet thinks Bigfoot hunters just wander around the woods yelling.”

“Which we do sometimes,” Jax says, his eyes fixed on his editing.

Maya throws a pretzel at him.

“We start with reports. Historical sightings, indigenous stories, wildlife databases, game camera activity, migration patterns.”

“Migration patterns?”

She nods.

“Water and food sources move. Deer move. Elk move. Bears move. If something large and intelligent existed, we'd expect it to move seasonally too. Water access, temperatures, vegetation, prey.”

“So… you build maps?”