Page 8 of Silent Shadows

She laughs, jumping to her feet. “Oh, thank God!” She gets serious again as she says, “We need this to work, Daisy. I need you all in, bringing the charm. I think this could be really entertaining.”

“I’m all in,” I assure her, though a pang of guilt already settles in my stomach for making fun of people who take this so seriously.

“Content gold,” she counters.

“Embarrassing. Humiliating. Potentially mosquito-infested content gold.”

She claps her hands together. “I’m emailing them right now.”

“Wait,” I say, holding up a hand. “If I get murdered by Bigfoot⁠—”

“Not likely.”

“—you have to make sure my legacy is handled appropriately.”

She nods, straight-faced, and places a hand over her heart. “I’ll make sure each host on the network has a whole episode dedicated to you. And pays tribute to your infamous blow job episode.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re the worst.”

“And you love me,” she sings, already pulling out her phone.

I watch her for a second, shaking my head.

Then I glance back up at the screen.

At the picture of the Strange Terrain Division.

At the blurry photos.

At the world I don’t understand at all but have always been curious about.

“This is ridiculous,” I murmur to myself, nervous excitement bubbling up.

At the very least, I won’t be bored.

chapter

two

MILES

I know it’s a bust before anyone says it out loud.

You get a feel for it after a while—not instinct exactly, not some mystical sixth sense like Taylor would claim—but pattern recognition. Data. Environmental cues. The absence of things that should be there. The presence of things that shouldn’t be. You log enough nights out here, enough hours tracking, listening, and cataloging, and eventually your brain starts doing the math without you asking it to.

And right now?

The math is not mathing.

“Hold up,” I murmur, lifting a hand.

Behind me, the crew slows. Boots crunch softer. Gear settles. Even Jax, who moves like chaos with a camera, goes still.

I tilt my head, listening again.

No rustling. No distant movement. No low-frequency vocalizations. No… anything.

Just this thick, unnatural stillness pressing in from all sides.