EPILOGUE
The coffee was still too hot to drink.
Drake Johnson balanced the travel mug against his steering wheel as he turned onto the access road, the liquid sloshing dangerously close to the rim with every pothole his pickup found.
Six-fifteen in the morning, the sun barely cresting the horizon, and he was already running late.
His boss had called twice yesterday about the police search—something about giving them full access, making sure they had what they needed, staying out of their way until they finished whatever they were looking for.
Drake didn't ask questions. Twenty-two years working at Hendrickson's Salvage & Scrap had taught him that questions led to complications, and complications led to overtime he didn't get paid for.
He just showed up, did his job, and went home to his wife and his dogs and his recliner that had molded itself perfectly to his body over the past decade.
The gates came into view as he rounded the final curve, and Drake frowned.
There was a car parked outside. Not a police cruiser he'd seen enough of those over the past few days to recognize them on sight but a dark sedan, the kind that screamed "government" even without the usual markings.
It sat at an angle near the entrance, as if the driver had been in a hurry, its windows fogged with the kind of condensation that came from sitting in the cold for hours.
Drake pulled his pickup alongside the sedan and killed the engine.
The coffee had finally cooled enough to drink, but he left it in the cup holder, a prickle of unease working its way up his spine.
The police had been thorough yesterday he'd watched them from a distance, teams of officers and federal agents working their way through the maze of scrap metal with the methodical precision of people who expected to find something.
They'd told him they might be back today to finish up, but this early? And without backup?
He climbed out of the truck, his work boots crunching on frozen gravel.
The morning air bit at his exposed face, sharp and clean, carrying the particular silence that came before the world fully woke up.
In the distance, he could hear the faint rumble of traffic on the highway, but here, surrounded by towers of crushed cars and rusted machinery, it felt like the edge of civilization.
"Hello?" His voice echoed off the metal walls, swallowed by the vast emptiness of the yard. "Anyone here?"
No response.
Drake ducked under the crime scene tape that still marked the perimeter—his boss had told him to leave it up until the police gave the all-clear—and started walking.
The search teams had left flags scattered throughout the yard, little orange markers that showed where they'd already looked.
He followed the main path, his eyes scanning the familiar landscape for anything out of place.
The scrapyard had been his domain for over two decades.
He knew every pile, every container, every hidden corner where teenagers sometimes snuck in to drink or get high.
He knew the way the light fell at different times of day, the sounds that belonged and the sounds that didn't. And right now, something felt wrong in a way he couldn't quite articulate.
He found the flashlight first.
It lay on the ground near a stack of compressed cars, its lens cracked, and its beam still weakly illuminating a patch of frozen dirt. Drake picked it up, turning it over in his gloved hands. Standard-issue, the kind cops carried. Heavy. Expensive. Not something you'd leave behind unless.
That was when he saw the blood.
It started as a smear on the ground, a dark stain that had frozen into the ice overnight.
Drake followed it with his eyes, his heart beginning to hammer against his ribs, his breath coming faster despite the cold.
The trail led around the corner of a shipping container, disappearing into a space between the metal walls that he'd walked past a thousand times without ever looking twice.
He should call someone. Should turn around, go back to his truck, and let the professionals handle whatever was waiting around that corner. But his feet kept moving, carrying him forward with the horrible inevitability of a nightmare he couldn't wake up from.
The man lay face down in a pool of blood that had spread across the frozen ground like a dark mirror.
He was big broad-shouldered, wearing a heavy navy parka that had seen better days and he wasn't moving.
Wasn't breathing, as far as Drake could tell.
Just lying there, motionless, one arm stretched out toward something that glinted in the early morning light.
A phone. Shattered, its screen spider-webbed with cracks, lying just beyond the reach of fingers that would never close around it.