Page 203 of Silent Shadows

“Sorry, girl,” Taylor apologizes, giving her a hip bump. “What do you think?”

“Mostly, I think they mean something’s changing whether you’re ready or not.” Maya smirks.

Silence settles for half a second. Then Jax squints toward the sky. “So… that’s really spooky, right?”

Taylor smiles and elbows him. “Or it’s just a bird.”

Owen laughs, looking at her in a way that catches me off guard.

Miles comes to stand beside me. His pack is on. Radio clipped to his shoulder. Glasses clean. Jaw shadowed. Hair already wind-tossed.

He looks like the man I met. And also nothing like him.

This Miles is less frantic around the edges. Still intense. Still fucking brilliant. Still full of strange, impossible faith. But steadier now. Like the desperate need to believe has stopped swallowing him whole and started standing beside him instead.

He reaches for my pack strap and tightens it slightly.

“You ready?”

I could make a joke. A dozen spring to mind. It’s tempting.

Instead, I look past him at the high desert brush. The ridge waiting beyond camp. Somewhere out there, Ridgefield is chasing our ghosts. Somewhere closer, something real may be moving through rock and shadow, leaving almost-tracks and almost-sounds and the kind of proof that refuses to be clean.

I used to think uncertainty was something to overcome. Now I think it’s something you make peace with.

“I’m ready,” I say.

Miles nods. Believes me.

The crew gathers at the trailhead in a loose, silent line.

Taylor in front and Owen beside her.

Maya checking radios one last time.

Jax with his camera rig, holding it and muttering to it like it’s a small child.

Miles at my side.

The Mystery Machine is behind us, warm lights glowing in the windows, ready to welcome us home.

Then Miles’s hand finds mine. It’s only for a second, but it’s more than a squeeze. It’s a promise.

We step into the brush as the sun’s last light slips behind the ridge.

chapter

twenty-eight

MILES

We’ve always had the best luck at night. Something about darkness makes the world feel older. Quieter. Less interested in performing for us. Shapes soften. Certainty slips a little. The things hiding in plain sight stop competing with noise.

As the sun sets, the red cliffs lose their sharpness, softening into charcoal shapes against a bruised sky, streaked violet and silver. Wind moves low through rabbitbrush, carrying dust and something colder rising from underground.

The kind of cold caves keep for themselves.

We move mostly in silence.