Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Finn
The quiet didn’t sit right. By the time I got home, learning that all that was buried there were the clothes Eleanor was last seen in, her jewelry, and her purse, the sun had dipped behind the ridge, casting long, distorted shadows across my porch.
The air still carried the scent of wood and upturned earth.
I hadn’t spoken much after we left the trail, not even to River.
Not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t trust what would come out if I did.
Inside, the house felt colder than usual.
I dropped my keys in the ceramic bowl by the door and headed straight for the den.
Something itched at the back of my neck.
I initially told myself it was just exhaustion.
Until I opened the cabinet where I kept my archived personal case files.
Notes and things from cases I’d worked, and all the copies of stuff I brought home when my mind wouldn’t let me leave it at the office.
I froze.
The folders weren’t right. I organized them by year and then alphabetically—decades of habit. But the 2016 folder was out of place, wedged behind 2018. And when I pulled it free, it felt too light.
I opened it.
Half the contents were gone. Removed. Cleanly. Purposefully.
My stomach dropped.
I checked three more files. Eleanor Jenkins. Kara Malloy. Even the Monroe trespassing case. Each one had something missing or out of place. The Jenkins file had been pulled from the back entirely and left loose on the desk—as if someone wanted me to know it had been touched.
I had seen no forced entry. No signs of a break-in. Whoever had done this had access or knew exactly what they were doing.
I swore under my breath and grabbed my phone. But before I could dial, a notification lit up the screen.
RIVER: Can you come over? Now.
I didn’t hesitate. The weirdness here could wait for a little bit.
Her porch light was on when I arrived, and the windows glowed like they always had when her parents were alive—a false sense of comfort. The moment she opened the door, I saw it in her eyes. It was the same unease twisting in my gut.
“What happened?” I asked.
She held up a leather-bound journal. Old. And oddly familiar.
“It was on the porch when I got home. No envelope. No note. Just this.”
It was then that I noticed her latex gloves. I motioned to her hand with an eyebrow raise.
“Hair color gloves. And when you’re as interested in true crime as I am, you know better than to touch evidence without protection.”
A strange surge of pride rose within me.
We sat at her kitchen table while she flipped it open. Most of the pages were covered in her father’s tight, slanted handwriting. Notes, formulas that many cops used, scribbled timelines. But then we reached the center.
The pages had been torn out, and in their place was a single folded, loose sheet of paper.
Some ghosts should stay buried.
The words were written in thick black ink, the script jagged and rushed but deliberate.
I leaned back and ran a hand over my mouth. “Jesus, River.”
“It gets worse,” she said, flipping to the inside back cover. A small note had been penciled there, likely by her father. A list of names.
Eleanor Jenkins. Marta Bloom. Josephine Graves. And one that hadn’t come up before.
Alexine Reed. And beside that one, a quickly drawn red eye.
“You recognize that last one?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No. But I’ll know more in a minute.”
After some online searches and one quick call to the county clerk, we called in the others. Within the hour, Autumn, Myra, Cade, Nivea, and Andra were crowded into River’s living room. Someone brought coffee. Someone else brought tequila. No one touched either.
The room buzzed with a tension just under the surface. Controlled, but ready to break.
Autumn held the journal like it might bite. “All of this stuff is connected.”
“It feels like a warning,” Myra said and ran a hand through her hair.
Cade rubbed a hand over his face. “So, who the hell benefits from digging up this old shit now?”
“Maybe someone who was involved and wants to tie up loose ends,” Nivea offered.
“Or someone who wants us to look in the wrong direction,” River murmured.
Everyone turned to her.
She sat straight, but her hands twisted the corner of her top. “My mother was on the Civic Committee. I saw her name in one of the meeting minutes. With Eleanor. And Lucas Grant.”
A beat passed. Then Autumn added, “Alexine Reed was their secretary.”
The room went still.
The Civic Committee had been more than just a planning board. From what little I remembered, they were tied to multiple redevelopment projects, education grants, and private fundraising efforts—half of which never made it to public record.
River’s eyes narrowed, her voice softer now.
“I keep seeing this flyer in my head. Something from my mom’s files.
An initiative logo...a stylized tree with twelve leaves.
Eleanor had it pinned to her wall in the photo from her last interview with the paper.
I think it had something to do with the committee. ”
We all exchanged glances.
“That seems weirdly familiar to me.” Cade pulled out his phone and started tapping away and scrolling.
Myra grabbed a notepad.
“That’s the logo for the town’s Benevolence Fund,” Cade said. “From the Google results, it looks like it’s at the heart of a ton of shit in Maple Ridge.”
Everybody dove into their phones with renewed vigor, likely looking for anything that seemed relevant.
It was clear now. We were done standing on the sidelines.
I looked around at the faces that had become my strange little second family.
An odd group of people who weren’t really supposed to be involved in something like this.
Who had their own lives, their own pasts.
Yet they kept showing up. As did the others in the MotMC.
And now I feared they might have a target painted on them, too. Just like River. Just like me.
But why?
River looked at me. A flicker of something passed between us. Fear, trust, maybe both.
“Something happened at my place tonight, too,” I said, and proceeded to tell everyone what I had found at home.
“This wasn’t just about Eleanor,” Cade said. “It never was.”