Chapter 13
I turn onto the quarry road, my tires thumping over the uneven dirt track as pines and bare-limbed trees crowd both sides.
Dead, skeletal branches claw at the thinning midday sun.
Beams of light slice through in sharp, angled stripes, flashing across my windshield every few seconds like warning signals.
By the time the forest breaks and the clearing opens ahead, my pulse has already started that slow, steady climb reserved for places you don’t want to admit scare you.
I pull into a broad, gray expanse of stone—the only break in the trees along the quarry’s edge. The clearing stretches out about the size of a football field, exposed and barren, before the forest swallows everything again on the opposite side.
I park, what I think is about thirty feet from where Zoe’s car went over by the missing guardrail.
I kill the engine, but I don’t get out right away. I’m a furnace these days, and my window is still cracked from the drive. The air up here is sharper and colder with the elevation shift. Crisp air slips under my jacket, reminding me this place is empty, isolated, and haunted by what happened here.
Callum was right: daylight here is better in the afternoon because the trees are shorter to the west lip. But suddenly, I don’t want the daylight for visibility.
I want it for safety.
This place is creepy.
Abandoned. Soulless.
I step out, and my car door slams louder than it should.
The sound ricochets off rock and open air with nowhere to land.
There’s nothing soft to absorb the noise.
I wasn’t here that night, but imagining Zoe’s car bursting through the barrier, the echo rolling across this crater… God. It must’ve sounded apocalyptic.
The haunting echoes of my car door disappear, leaving nothing but eerie silence and the whistling wind full of warning.
Pine needles and ashy stones crunch under my feet as I walk toward the spot marked in the report. I follow a guardrail that runs along most of the expanse of the parking lot area and look down into the abyss. The quarry is a dead pit. A jagged wound carved into the earth.
A giant grave for anything unfortunate enough to reach the bottom.
I can’t imagine anyone coming here because it’s scenic. No one would come here for the view. There’s no romance to it, no adventure. Just isolation. And if someone wanted solitude, Echo Valley has a thousand safer places nearby to be alone.
I arrive at the spot where Zoe went over, where the guardrail is still gone, and I step inland a few feet, immediately queasy from the steep drop.
I sweep the area to see if there are even faint tire tracks left.
More than five months have passed since the accident, and the weather has done its work.
The dirt has settled, the wind has brushed away whatever faint tire impressions might’ve survived.
I crouch near the approximate area anyway, hoping for anything—a groove, a pattern, a sign I’m not imagining things.
I blow out a breath.
The poor photo quality makes more sense now; this packed stone and earth was never going to hold clear impressions for long.
But something about it still isn’t right. It’s five months later now, but Ingram dismissed the possibility of a second set of tires from the get go? When the photos showed them, even faintly? Why ignore even the hint of it?
There were definitely two types of tires in that photo. I swear there were. And by the doubt on Callum’s face when he examined more closely, he thought so, too.
I push up to stand, something that’s a little harder these days.
I brush off my palms, and walk a little farther toward the edge.
The quarry yawns open below. Steep, jagged rock walls drop into a hole as deep as the ocean.
Imagining Zoe alone in her car, the impact of the guardrail on her body, the plunge…
I glance over at the section where the guardrail is missing. Zoe drove a tiny one-liter coupe. Lightweight. Low horsepower. A car like that shouldn’t have been able to plow through a guardrail like this unless she’d been flying. I glance around the open area.
Could she pick up speed like that here? And why were her tire tracks so faint if she was doing a hundred? She would have had to have been accelerating and that means her tracks would have gotten deeper as she drove toward the edge. Right?
I’m cold all over. Even the pregnancy heat that usually radiates off me can’t touch this place. There’s a sickening dull ache in the air. My intuition tells me to keep looking… I steady myself by gripping the guardrail.
And it moves.
It shifts like it’s barely tethered.
I grip the metal, deep in thought, and to my surprise, the rail jiggles in my palms, loose enough that a child could have shaken it. I follow the metal to the nearest bolt. It’s thick, silver, industrial grade.
And it’s loose.
My heartbeat ticks up.
My throat dries. I walk farther, sliding my hand along the metal.
Next bolt.
Loose.
Next.
Loose.
All of them. The entire length I find bolts, uniformly loosened, like someone had gone along the length with a wrench.
I spin one bolt out—it was only hanging on by a few threads—and my mind runs calculations I wish weren’t true.
Did someone weaken the rail? On purpose?
“Shit…” The word barely escapes.
Before the implication can fully form, a sharp sound cracks through the quiet—a twig snapping in the tree line. I turn in a sharp, breathless motion, the world blurring around me.
My hand flies to my holster and I whip out my firearm. My heart slams itself against my ribs like it wants out.
“Hello?” My voice is steady, but my mouth is dry. “Echo Valley Police. Identify yourself.”
Silence. Not peaceful. Listening.
I take a slow step back toward my car. I scan the trees on the other side of the quarry; every shadow is too long, every stillness too deliberate.
Then a coyote yips, high and sharp. Another joins in. Then another. A chorus of howls erupts, startling a flock of birds from the trees beyond into the sky, their wings beating like a hundred frantic alarms.
I exhale shakily. Coyotes. Great. I have a firearm, but LA training did not cover “pregnant cop vs. wild dog pack.”
But the twig snapping? The prickling at the base of my skull? Was that an animal?
“Identify yourself,” I call again, half-terrified, half hating how I sound like I am.
My hands shake. Hell, my whole body does. I’m here alone. I’m pregnant.
I should leave.
My breath fogs in the cold air as I back up another step, gun still raised. A coyote yips again, this time, closer. Too close. Then a low growl threads through the quiet. The coyotes are near something just inside the trees at the other side of this lot.
The coyotes must find what they’re looking for because suddenly, there is a furious growling. Another bark explodes from the edge of the woods, followed by a frantic runaway rustling.
And then, a sharp metallic clang ripples through the quarry all around me. I flinch, gun jerking before I steady it again.
Every instinct screams: Get out. Get in the car. Leave.
Another voice barks an order: Evidence. A clue. Don’t walk away.
I freeze, caught between terror and training, and a thought hits me so hard, it nearly buckles my knees.
I wish Anton was here.
The image is instant and vivid—his solid body beside mine, his hand steady on my back, his bass voice grounding me. He’d put himself between me and whatever is out there without hesitation.
I should be thinking of Callum. Of radios. Of backup. Of protocol. But the first name that hit my tongue was his.
What does that say about me? About who I trust instinctively? Who makes me feel…safe?
The coyotes’ barks drag me back. They’re fading, heading deeper into the forest—probably chasing whatever ran off. My breathing slows enough to think. If I walk away now, whatever’s lying out there stays buried.
I inch toward where the sound came from, gun raised, every step a battle between fear, duty, and the fierce need to survive—not just for me but for the tiny life inside me. By the time I reach the forest’s edge, my breath is loud in my ears.
The undergrowth is disturbed, branches bent, leaves crushed in a clear path. Whatever ran…did it fast.
Just deeper, something glints. A wrench on a flat stone. This is what made the noise?
I crouch, gun angled toward the trees, and pull an evidence bag from my jacket pocket. I pick up the wrench through the plastic, praying there might be prints. I stand, heart hammering, evidence in one hand, gun in the other. I need to know who was out here. Who ran…
I back toward my car, never turning fully away from the woods. The coyotes are gone. The forest is still again, but it isn’t peaceful. It’s watchful.
I eventually slide into the driver’s seat and lock the doors fast. The evidence bag with the wrench hits the passenger seat with a soft thud.
I rest both hands on the wheel, trying to breathe logic through the pounding in my chest.
This might be nothing. A random tool. A hiker. A worker cutting through the woods.
But the timing… The loose bolts… The way someone was definitely there but didn’t answer when I called out.
My gut doesn’t believe in coincidences. Not after everything I just saw.
Something’s off here. Someone didn’t want to be seen.
I’ll log the evidence. I’ll follow procedure, and I’ll keep following my gut.
But even as I try to breathe myself back into logic, I can’t ignore the instinct that hit me hardest. When fear closed in, my instinct didn’t reach for my chief or my training.
It reached for Anton Easton.