Page 35 of Where the Fields Don’t Reach

No other lights.

Nothing.

Except there were mornings Donovan came up out of a deep sleep, soaked through, the sheet stuck to his back, dead sure he hadn’t been out there alone. That something had stood at the black lip of the field while he’d stammered into the phone. The shape of it, though, had never held past waking.

“No,” Donovan replied, a little too fast for his liking. “No. Didn’t see a thing.”

Lori studied him, as if she’d caught his slip. Then she nodded and, fortunately, dropped the subject.

“Well.” Lori held up her keys, as if to say she’d need them to open her boutique. “I’ll leave you to it, then. I’ll keep my phone close at hand. I just hope it’s nothing serious, because the boutique always slows down this time of year.”

“We’ll work something out if it’s more than a sensor, alright?”

Lori smiled at him with appreciation before her heels began to click down the sidewalk. He raised his empty mug in acknowledgment and let her go.

The stillness of the bay settled around him as he set his mug down on one of the tool carts nearby. He pulled out a rag from his pocket and blew his nose. It was of no use. He repeated the effort three times before giving up.

That night had gotten into all of him, every sense, and it had never fully left. The fire first, the orange churn of it, embers lifting off the truck and drifting up into the black like something set loose by the devil himself. The roar of it, too, the way the flames ate the air, and the metal ticked and groaned as it warped. The smell had lined his nostrils and never came out. He even tasted it in the back of his throat, oily and thick, and he somehow managed to swallow it down with every breath. The heat had pressed against his face and hands as his boots had carried him toward the chaos, against everything in him that screamed to stay back.

And there…

At the edge of the clearing behind him, where the field was dark, something blacker than the shadows loomed. Or maybe it had been nothing at all. Maybe it had merely been a trick of the fire playing on the emotions of a scared man on the worst night of his life.

For the past eleven months, he’d been telling himself it was nothing.

And he prayed every night that he was right.

14

Hadley Dawkins

September 2026

Wednesday – 7:39 am

Hadley had her keys in her hand and her blazer half on when the front door of the station opened. She’d meant to get an early start. Nora Oliver worked another twelve-hour shift starting at nine o’clock this morning. Hadley wanted to catch her beforehand, to ask the questions Garber had pointed her toward the night before.

The Stiles cousin, who’d married into the Mercer family, could provide Hadley with inside information. Whether Roland was as harmless as everyone kept insisting, or whether there was something more to his obsession.

But it was Mason who’d made an appearance, and Hadley’s morning was rocked off its axis. This was the first time in eleven months that he’d taken it upon himself to pay her a visit. She let the blazer slip off her arm and back onto her chair before subtly setting the keys down on her desk.

“Mason,” Hadley greeted, not tearing her gaze from him. He seemed fine. No different than Monday night. “Is everything okay?”

“Morning.” Mason pulled the door shut behind him and stood a moment on the mat. He studied the main area of the police station, almost as if he were counting the exits. Most likely, a force of habit he would never be able to shake. He ran a hand over his beard as his attention finally came to rest on her. “I didn’t mean to catch you on your way out.”

“It’s fine.” Hadley hadn’t meant for him to notice, and now she wasn’t quite sure what else to say. “Coffee?”

“I’m good.” Mason touched the tape measure clipped to his belt. “I thought I’d get some measurements for the table you want between the chairs. I won’t be long.”

Hadley came around her desk, because standing behind it came across as if she were using the piece of furniture as some kind of shield. She came to a stop in front of Reed’s desk, which was completely cleared out, but she’d yet to move it. As for the two chairs she’d mentioned, they were still in the other room.

“I haven’t moved everything around yet.” Hadley flicked her gaze toward Reed’s desk. She would eventually store it downstairs in the basement, but it would be fine pushed aside temporarily. “If you’ll give me a minute, I can⁠—”

“Where do you want it?” Mason advanced toward the empty desk. “You mentioned living on the upstairs level, so I take it everything else is in the basement?”

“That’s right.” Hadley didn’t have much of a choice but to follow his lead. He’d already moved to the far end of the desk, and she didn’t want him to take the brunt of it. She set herself at the other side, bent at the knees, and got a good grip under the lip. “Basement door is through the kitchen. I emptied the drawers, so it’s lighter than it looks.”

“On three, then.” Mason counted it down, and the desk came up off the floorboards with a low groan of old wood. Beneath it, the squares of the legs had caused the stain to lighten, leaving four noticeable marks. “You’ll need to re-stain the floor eventually.”