Page 47

I crouched beside a pile of rocks someone had stacked at the ridge’s edge and frowned. The fist-sized stones had been arranged in a rough spiral, three rings tightening toward a center filled with ash and something that had melted and hardened again. I picked up a pebble and tapped it lightly against the nearest stone.

“That looks familiar,” Jett said quietly.

“Yeah,” I said.

I knew we were both thinking the same thing. Three years ago, another drifter had built an almost identical spiral. He’d used the same tightening rings, same scorched center, like something had burned too hot for the materials it touched. Back then, we’d chalked it up to a deranged mind playing with rocks.

But this one had to be almost identical. Down to the placement of the outer stones. Patterns like that didn’t just repeat by accident.

My phone buzzed again, and I let it go unanswered, listening hard. All I caught was the usual wind moving through the trees, horses shifting in the pasture…nothing out of place.

I exhaled, shook my head, and finally pulled the phone from my pocket.

Ryder: ur girl just walked past me smelling like a morgue.

I didn’t understand what that meant, but a small knot of tension loosened in my chest just thinking about Sienna.

The smart move would have been to shove the phone back in my pocket and focus on what we were doing out here. Instead, I stayed exactly where I was and typed out a reply before my better judgment had a chance to weigh in.

Me: Where is she?

He responded almost instantly and I could just picture him smirking at my eagerness.

Asshole.

Ryder: headed back 2 the inn. bloom & gloom incident. she invented new scent profile: eau de dead aunt

My mouth twitched. Every time Ryder sent a text, an English teacher somewhere spontaneously wept. He intentionally bypassed autocorrect to annoy people.

Jett watched me from where he’d stood up, dusting dirt off his hands. “Judging by that strange little smile you’re giving your phone, I’m guessing we’re done here?”

“We’re done,” I said.

We weren’t even close to being finished. Not with the strange tracks, the half-burned camp, and the spiral of rocks waiting like a signal we still hadn’t managed to decipher.

But I had something more immediate to deal with.

Like Sienna Blake, wandering around my town with a concussion, no car, no instincts for survival, and apparently, a…smell.

We headed back toward the horses. Steinbeck, my sorrel Quarter Horse gelding, pinned his ears back and flared his nostrils as a gust of wind blew by.

I caught it, too, when I breathed in, a faint tang that settled low in my throat and scratched like something wanting to wake up.

Jett slid his boot into the stirrup and swung up. “It’s not a full pulse,” he said, almost to himself. “Just a burp.”

“I always think we’ll have more time,” I said, pretending I didn’t feel the monster in me shifting and stretching as it tasted the air. I didn’t know how I was supposed to hold it back when the pulse finally let it loose again.

“We always think that,” he replied.

We rode in silence for a while, the hooves thudding in a steady rhythm over the packed dirt trail.

By the time we reached the lower pasture, the sun had dipped into that late-afternoon gold, softening the edges of the hills and burning away what was left of the day’s earlier gloom. From here, the road into town stretched out in a thin brown line, cutting past the ranch fence before winding its way toward Main.

We split at the fork.

Jett reined his horse toward my house. “I’ll swing by the Bloom and Gloom later and ask Morton if anyone’s been asking about arrangements,” he said. “I think it’s clear that guy wasn’t stacking rocks for fun.”

“Let me know what Morton says,” I replied.