Chapter 14
Saoirse
We should’ve heard birds.
Even in the most remote parts of Ardinmuir, the woods were never truly still.
Wind whispering through pine boughs. The peep of small birds.
The distant rush of water. Even the low rustle of some unseen creature in the underbrush.
This place, though—Isla’s second camp—felt muffled.
Heavy. Like the forest itself was holding its breath.
My stomach twisted the moment we stepped into the clearing.
Isla had been here. Recently. That much was obvious.
Her tarp shelter still clung to the trees at a crooked angle, the anchor lines tangled like they’d been yanked rather than unknotted.
The fire ring was scorched dark, half-ringed with charred stones, and the pot she’d used for boiling water sat tipped on its side in the ash, as though it had been knocked over in a hurry.
I crouched beside it, brushing my fingers against the cold metal. The underside was blackened, but the soot looked fresh. Rain hadn’t had time to wash it away.
“She didn’t pack out properly,” I said quietly.
Finn didn’t answer right away. I looked up to find him already moving in a slow, deliberate circuit of the camp’s perimeter, Ajax ghosting behind him like a silent second shadow.
“She’s methodical,” I said. “She’d never leave a camp like this. Not on purpose. She’s a huge proponent of leaving things as good as or better than you find them.”
Finn’s voice came low, steady. “Any chance something spooked her? Animal activity?”
I shook my head. “Not unless it was human. She’s not scared of wildlife.” I glanced at the surrounding trees. “She’s slept in the open in bear country, for God’s sake.” Not that we had that sort of predator here. There were no large predators in Scotland anymore except the two-legged variety.
I was already moving toward the edge of the tarp when I spotted her backup boots. Mud-caked and unlaced, sitting off to one side like they’d been stepped out of and forgotten. But Isla didn’t forget. And she would never abandon gear unless?—
I stopped that thought dead. Couldn’t follow it.
I moved on instinct, scanning the mess for something—anything—that would explain why she’d leave without breaking camp. My breath caught when I saw the corner of a familiar weathered notebook tucked beneath the collapsed edge of her sleeping pad.
Her field journal.
I dropped to my knees and slid it out, brushing off bits of leaf and pine needles. The leather cover was scratched, the edges damp, but it was intact. I flipped through quickly, fingers trembling.
The early pages were classic Isla. Everything recorded in her tiny, neat hand—notes about tree species, scat samples, paw prints near the river.
Sketches of a nesting site she’d been excited about.
Observations of small shifts in ecosystem behavior, the kind of thing most people would miss, but she lived for.
And then, halfway through, something changed. The tidy entries became clipped. Less detail and fewer drawings. One page was no more than a single line, jagged and rushed:
Unidentified prints near western perimeter. Not feline. Not deer. Not sure.
And then the rest of the journal went blank.
Nothing after that.
No closing entry or summary. Only pages of silence.
The clearing tilted around me. I sat down hard on the nearest log, the journal open on my lap, air clogging in my lungs.
This was wrong.
Isla didn’t stop writing. Not unless something forced her to.
Ajax padded over and rested his chin against my thigh. I didn’t even realize I was shaking until the weight of his head pressed me back into my body. I tangled my fingers in the thick ruff of his fur and held on.
I didn’t hear Finn’s approach, but I felt his presence settling beside me like a counterweight. He didn’t touch me or offer pointless platitudes, but his nearness reminded me that I wasn’t alone.
“I can’t lose her.” It came out hoarse, barely a whisper. “Not her, too.”
Silence.
With someone else, it might’ve felt awkward or uncomfortable. But somehow Finn’s quiet offered space. And I felt compelled to fill it.
“I was eighteen when my father died.” The words pulled loose like threads from a frayed seam, one that had been stretched to the breaking point.
“It was right at the start of my first year at uni. Isla and I were assigned as roommates, total strangers. She was loud, and weird, and had about a dozen different tea tins she kept offering me like they were a personality quiz.”
A breathless, bitter laugh escaped me.
“But when I came back from the funeral, she’d cleared out half her wardrobe to make space for my things.
Bought my favorite biscuits, even though I’d never told her what they were.
And then she just… sat. No pressure. No questions.
She let me not talk. She let me fall apart and didn’t try to tape the pieces back together. ”
Finn was quiet, but I felt him shift enough that his shoulder brushed mine. A gentle lean. I didn’t move away.
“My mother…” I swallowed. “She didn’t handle the grief well. She turned it into a performance. All clipped tones and proper mourning attire. When I started crying at the service, she handed me a tissue and told me to pull myself together. Stiff upper lip, and all that.”
I was aware of the sound of my own breathing. Of Ajax’s slow, patient exhale.
“I’ve had people I cared about disappear on me,” I murmured. “Some by choice. Some not. But Isla’s the one who’s always stayed. The one who knows the difference between who I am and who my family wants me to be.”
“She’s not gone.” Finn’s voice wasn’t soft—it was steel. Quiet, but unyielding. “She left us a trail.”
I looked down at the journal again, flipping to the last filled page. There was something about the way the pen lifted halfway through a sentence. Like she’d been interrupted. Like she’d meant to come back.
I stood, suddenly desperate for something to do. “She was running motion-detection trail cams near here. Tracking wildcat movement and deer population clusters. She might’ve left memory cards behind.”
Finn was already moving. “You check the east edge. I’ll take the south tree line.”
We split the clearing in silence, scanning bark and branches. He spotted the first camera near a thick birch, its casing half-obscured by lichen. The second I found behind a cluster of ferns, mounted to a pine.
Then I saw it. Tucked into the base of a tree, under a camouflaged flap of moss and bark, was a small waterproof case. I snatched it up and flipped it open with shaking fingers.
Three SD cards, each labeled in Isla’s precise hand. Locations, dates—last week. Which meant they were likely the final pieces of her data collection before whatever had happened… happened.
I stared at them, the weight of those tiny plastic rectangles suddenly enormous.
“We’ll have to wait until we’re back in Glenlaig,” I said quietly. “I don’t have anything out here that can read them.”
Finn didn’t answer right away. When I looked up, he was already crouching by his pack, unzipping a side pocket and pulling out a small device.
Stunned, I could only stare. “You brought a card reader?”
“Card reader, rugged tablet, and about three thousand spare battery packs.” He didn’t look up as he kept digging in his pack. “Didn’t think we’d need it for cam footage, but I never leave on a backcountry op without it. Learned that lesson the hard way.”
I blinked. “You carried a tablet into the Highlands?”
“It’s military grade. Shockproof, waterproof, and lighter than my coffee press.”
“Wait. You brought a coffee press too?” Of course, he’d handed me coffee this morning, but I hadn’t seen him make it. I’d assumed it was instant.
He glanced over his shoulder, deadpan. “What kind of monster do you think I am?”
I huffed a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. “I don’t even have a response to that.”
Dropping the teasing, he held out a steady hand for the cards. “We’ll check them tonight, after camp’s up. It’s too late to go anywhere else.”
And that was it.
His quiet competence and foresight were starting to make me rethink everything I thought I knew about Finley Patterson.
I passed him the cards, one by one. “Okay.”
Because maybe we wouldn’t have to wait for answers after all.