Chapter 9 Cassidy
CASSIDY
Ciaran drops the patrol binder onto the kitchen table like he wants it to bruise the wood.
“Everything you asked for,” he says, then folds his arms. “Routes, rotations, time stamps.”
The binder smells like cedar and smoke, same as the estate, and the pages inside are marked with crisp ink and tight handwriting. I slide it closer, ignoring the way my shoulder tugs under the gauze as I sit.
“You keep these logs daily,” I say, flipping to the first tab.
Ciaran watches my hands instead of my face. “We keep them when we have to.”
“That answer is evasive,” I reply.
“It is accurate,” he says.
I pull my tablet closer and open the GPS overlay.
The screen glows against the dim cabin light, and the map fills with ridgelines, creek beds, and the thick green mass of Blackmoore property.
Ciaran stands near the window, posture rigid, as if he expects something to appear out of the trees at any second.
“Start with the outer loop,” I say, more to myself than him.
Ciaran’s gaze flicks up. “You are mapping our routes again.”
“I am mapping the pattern,” I correct, tapping in the first set of coordinates. “Your routes are the variable.”
He makes a quiet sound that could be agreement or irritation.
I work through the logs, entering time stamps and route names, translating them into movement lines across the terrain. East Ridge Loop. Lower Creek Line. North Switchback. Quarry Pass. The naming is consistent, which means the system has been in place long enough to feel routine.
That routine has holes.
At first the gaps look like human error. A delayed shift handoff. A patrol pausing at a creek crossing. A ten-minute lag that could be explained by terrain. Then the same lag appears again, in the same zone, on a different day.
I lean closer to the screen and zoom in until the contour lines blur.
“Hold on,” I say.
Ciaran straightens slightly. “What.”
“This gap repeats,” I reply, circling the area with my stylus. “Every third rotation, the coverage opens.”
He pushes off the wall and steps closer, his boots quiet on the cabin floorboards. The air shifts with his presence, but my focus stays on the screen.
“How wide,” he asks.
“Not wide,” I say. “Long enough.”
I pull up the last week and overlay the routes again, stacking them like transparent sheets. The corridor appears like a seam in fabric, a narrow lane where two patrol lines should overlap but consistently do not.
Ten to twelve minutes.
A fast animal could clear that distance easily.
A smart one could do it without being seen.
Ciaran’s jaw tightens. “Alden locked the schedules.”
“You told me he did,” I say, glancing up at him. “These logs say there is still an escape lane.”
He stares at the screen for a beat, then reaches for the binder and flips to the corresponding page. His finger moves along the time stamps with practiced speed.
“This is shift handoff timing,” he says. “Team three meets team five at the creek.”
“And they should overlap at the ridge,” I reply. “But they do not.”
Ciaran closes the binder with a controlled snap. “You think someone left it.”
“I think someone is using it,” I say.
I pull up the town attack locations and drop them onto the same map layer. The markers cluster along the boundary line, then thread directly toward the gap I circled. The alignment is clean enough to make my stomach tighten.
“This is an escape corridor,” I say.
Ciaran exhales slowly, eyes narrowing as he studies the line. “That matches.”
“It matches too well,” I reply.
He looks at me now, and his expression is different than before. Less skepticism, more discomfort.
“Only certain people know these routes,” he says.
“Then only certain people can exploit them,” I answer.
The cabin feels smaller with that implication hanging between us. The air smells like coffee gone cold and pine sap bleeding from the trees outside.
Ciaran picks up the binder again. “Bring it to Alden.”
I slide my tablet into my bag, then tuck the binder under my arm. My shoulder protests, but I keep my face neutral. Ciaran notices anyway, because he has the kind of attention that does not miss details.
“You should have slept,” he says.
“I will sleep when the thing trying to kill me stops,” I reply.
He looks like he wants to argue, then decides it will waste time.
We drive to the estate in tense quiet, the road winding uphill through dense timber.
The trees crowd close, dark trunks and sharp shadows, and the sun barely reaches the ground beneath the canopy.
Ciaran keeps his hands steady on the steering wheel, eyes scanning the road as if a deer might step out again.
When we reach the front doors, two men in dark clothing watch us approach. Their posture is straight, their attention sharp, and their eyes flick to the binder I’m carrying.
Ciaran does not acknowledge them. He leads me through the foyer and down the corridor to Alden’s office without slowing. The estate smells like cedar, smoke, and something metallic beneath it, like old iron embedded in stone.
Ciaran knocks once.
“Come in,” Alden’s voice calls.
Ciaran opens the door, and I step inside.
Alden is behind his desk, sleeves rolled to his forearms, dark hair slightly disheveled like he has been running his hands through it. He looks up as I enter, and his gaze lands on my shoulder before it returns to my face.
The moment lasts barely a second, but it is still enough to heat my skin.
“What is it,” he asks, voice calm.
I set the binder on his desk and place my tablet beside it. My fingers brush the desk wood, then steady, because my pulse is doing something irritating.
“I found patrol gaps,” I say. “Deliberate ones.”
Alden’s eyes flick to Ciaran.
Ciaran nods once. “She mapped the logs.”
Alden gestures with two fingers. “Show me.”
I turn the tablet toward him and pull up the overlay. Patrol routes crisscross the map in tight lines, except for the narrow lane I circled in red.
“This section opens every third rotation,” I say. “Ten to twelve minutes, consistently.”
Alden leans forward slightly, bracing a hand on the desk. The motion brings him closer to the screen, and the faint scent of pine and smoke follows him. My attention catches on the line of his forearm and the controlled tension in his posture before I drag it back to the map.
“It should not open,” he says quietly.
“It does,” I reply.
Ciaran steps closer and flips open the binder to the relevant pages. He checks the time stamps against the overlay, his eyes moving fast.
“She is right,” he says. “The gap matches shift handoffs.”
Alden’s gaze lifts. “How.”
Ciaran taps the page. “Creek meet point delays the ridge overlap.”
“And nobody corrected it,” I add. “Which means nobody noticed, or nobody wanted it corrected.”
Alden’s expression tightens, but he does not speak.
The silence stretches long enough to feel deliberate.
I keep my voice steady. “If this is a locked schedule, then the lock has a key.”
Ciaran’s shoulders stiffen slightly.
Alden’s eyes return to the map, tracking the corridor line. His jaw tightens once as if he is biting back a response.
“This aligns with the kill corridor,” I say, pulling up the attack markers. “The rogue stays near town, then cuts back through your boundary using this lane.”
Ciaran drags the markers into position, then stops moving. “It is the same line.”
Alden’s gaze stays fixed on the screen. “That means he knows our timing.”
“He knows it too well to guess,” I reply.
Ciaran closes the binder slowly, then looks at Alden. “Our routes are not public.”
“Then the knowledge is internal,” I say.
Alden’s eyes lift to mine again, and something flickers in the steel-gray. Not softness, not approval, but attention sharpened to a point. “You are suggesting an inside breach,” he says.
“I am suggesting someone with intimate access,” I answer. “That could be the rogue, if he used to patrol, or it could be someone feeding him information.”
Ciaran’s mouth tightens. “Careful with that.”
“I am being careful,” I reply. “I am also staring at a corridor that keeps getting people killed.”
Alden’s hand shifts on the desk, knuckles whitening slightly. He is close enough now, and the scar through his brow is all too clear, and the faint shadow under his eyes that suggests he has not slept either.
“You did this quickly,” he says.
“I did not waste time,” I answer.
For a beat, his gaze drops again to my shoulder, then returns to my eyes. The look is brief and controlled, but my body reacts anyway, heat rising in a way that has no business being present in a murder investigation.
I hate that my brain notices him at all. I hate that it notices him like this.
Ciaran clears his throat, breaking the moment.
Alden straightens slightly, pulling back from the desk as if he is forcing distance. “If this corridor exists, we close it today.”
“And whoever is using it will notice,” I say. “Which means the next move will change.”
Ciaran nods once. “We can adjust overlap timing.”
Alden’s gaze stays on the map. “We will adjust it quietly.”
I hold his eyes. “The rogue is not acting like an animal. Whoever is doing this knows your schedules intimately.”
Alden’s expression goes still, and the stillness feels like a decision being made. “We will treat it as an internal breach,” he says.
Ciaran’s jaw tightens, but he nods. “Understood.”
I let out a slow breath I did not realize I was holding. The room smells like ink and cedar and the faint warmth of Alden’s body, close enough to register without effort.
“Good,” I say. “Because that means we stop reacting and start anticipating.”
Alden’s gaze remains on me for a beat longer than necessary. “Do not say that outside this room.”
“I was not planning to,” I reply. “I want this stopped as much as you do.”
Ciaran picks up the binder again and tucks it under his arm. “We will restructure the east rotations.”
Alden nods once. “And we will find who benefits.”
The words settle heavy between us.