Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
River
The rain picked up in earnest the second we stepped out of Finn’s cruiser.
Not a polite spring shower. A full-on mountain tantrum—wind whipping the pines sideways, fat drops striking hard enough to sting, thunder punching holes in the night.
The kind of storm Maple Ridge only got when the mountains had spent a whole day holding their breath and finally decided to exhale everything at once.
It was the kind of storm that made the town feel like it was trying to wash itself clean.
And failing.
Finn killed the headlights a quarter mile from the trailhead and let the cruiser roll to a stop on the muddy shoulder. The engine ticked as he shut it off, the rain hammering the roof loud enough to drown out breath and heartbeat.
“So, the trail cam caught the movement at dusk yesterday,” he said, voice barely audible over the storm.
“It’s the same ridgeline where Eleanor’s stuff turned up.
If there’s a drop box or a Watcher stash there, the pickup will probably be tonight.
” His jaw flexed, the muscle tight with something that wasn’t quite anger and wasn’t quite dread.
“The weather’s gonna be shit. It’s perfect. ”
Lightning flared, carving cracks in the misty gray sky. The woods looked skeletal in the flash—bare-limbed and hungry.
I nodded, even though my throat was too tight for words. I thought of us tossing ideas around after Rand’s text, both of us trying not to look too long at the couch that still held the ghost of what had almost happened.
What would have happened if the vandals hadn’t interrupted? Whatever that was wasn’t finished. Not remotely.
Finn handed me a compact flashlight to combat the gloom, a canister of bear spray, and a baseball hat with the Maple Ridge Sheriff’s Department logo. “Stay on my six. You see anything that isn’t rain or a tree, you yell.” He pulled his own hat on.
“Copy that, Sheriff Grumpy Pants.”
The corner of his mouth twitched into almost a smile, another almost real one. The kind I hadn’t seen in years but had lived in my memory anyway.
Then he was moving, a dark silhouette swallowed by rain and shadow.
We hiked fast. The trail was a treacherous ribbon of mud and pine needles, the ground slick underfoot.
My boots slid more than once, the incline steeper than it looked under normal circumstances.
Water sluiced down Finn’s hat, poured off the back of his jacket, dripped from the brim of mine into my collar like ice.
I focused on the steady sweep of his flashlight beam ahead of me, a narrow cylinder of safety cutting through the dark.
“You good?” he called back once.
“No,” I said honestly.
He huffed something that might have been a laugh if it wasn’t soaked in tension. “Stay close.”
“I am,” I murmured. If I were honest, my heart had been closer than either of us had been willing to admit for years.
Ten minutes in, Finn stopped so abruptly I stumbled into his back. His hand shot out, catching my elbow, his fingers warm even through the rain and adrenaline.
“There,” he breathed.
Ahead of us, half-buried under a fallen log, a glint of reflective tape flashed, and a crude set of two red eyes painted on a flat rock peeked out.
It was the same symbol we’d seen all over the place lately.
Only this time, like my car, the color was fresh.
Too fresh. Even the rain hadn’t dulled it yet.
Someone had been here recently.
Finn crouched, sweeping his flashlight over the ground. I saw fresh boot prints, two sets, one deeper than the other, as if the person were carrying weight.
My stomach dropped.
He looked up at me, his eyes unreadable in the gloom and under the brim of his hat. “Stay here.”
“Like hell.”
He didn’t waste breath arguing. Just drew his sidearm and moved forward, slow and lethal, shoulders squared like he was ready to put himself between me and anything that moved.
I followed, quieter than I felt.
We found the drop twenty yards later.
There it was, the rusted army surplus ammo box wedged between some roots. The lid was cracked open a little, and mud splattered the metal.
He approached it carefully and nudged the cover up with his gun. Inside were three items:
A burner phone.
A flash drive.
And a Polaroid of my office door with a date scrawled in red Sharpie.
My breath stuttered. The picture was angled, taken from the mini hallway inside. My placard was visible and had a sunflower next to it, meaning it had been taken recently. Libby had just given me that.
Someone had been watching. Was still watching? Waiting.
Finn’s jaw hardened. “They’re not even pretending anymore.”
I opened my mouth to agree—
A twig snapped behind us. Not wind. Not an animal. A footstep.
We spun together, and three figures melted out of the trees. Just like in the video, their faces were hidden behind cheap plastic masks—white with red eyes painted in streaky strokes. Not Halloween masks. More like symbols. Or uniforms.
Their rain gear was dark and heavy, the hoods pulled low. Water sheeted off them as they stepped into our meager circle of light. The one in the middle held a knife—long and serrated, catching the lightning when it flashed, as if begging to be used.
Finn stepped in front of me instantly and raised his gun in a steady two-handed grip, a single motion that was instinct more than thought.
“Maple Ridge Sheriff’s Department,” he barked. “Drop the weapon.”
They didn’t. The middle one cocked his head, voice distorted through the mask. “I don’t think so.”
Then, they charged.
Everything happened at once.
Finn fired a shot to incapacitate, but just as he did, one of them threw a fistful of dirt at him. The shot went wild, and they scattered—fast and trained, not the panicked flailing of amateurs.
The knife man lunged left, straight for Finn, while another came at him from the other side. He fired another shot, and I heard a scream of pain, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Finn and the guy with the hunting blade.
“Finn!” I shouted.
He pivoted, blocking with his right arm. The blade caught him high on the forearm and his gun fell and skittered off. I heard him grunt in pain and saw a wet, red line instantly blossom on his jacket sleeve, the rain turning it pink before washing it down his hand.
He didn’t flinch. At all. Instead, he grabbed the attacker, turned his weight, and slammed him into the ground so hard the man’s mask skittered off into the mud.
A scream tore through the storm, but I couldn’t tell whose it was. It could have been mine for all I knew. I was too shocked to fully be in the moment.
The second masked figure lunged at me. I didn’t think. I didn’t freeze. I acted.
Bear spray hissed as I unloaded it directly into his face. The man shrieked, clawing at his burning eyes, stumbling backward into a tree trunk. I swung my flashlight at his head, but my boot slipped in the mud, and I missed.
The third person bolted into the brush, crashing through branches like a frightened animal. It had to be the wounded one. The half-blind one followed close after and I let him go.
Finn was already on his feet, blood pouring down his arm, turning rainwater into a pink stream running off his fingertips.
“River, go!” he shouted.
“Not without you!”
He whipped toward me, his expression fierce and desperate. Rain streaked down his cheeks, mixing with mud and blood from another injury somewhere. His eyes were the only bright thing in the dark.
“Damn it, River—”
The knife attacker groaned and tried to crawl away, but Finn dropped onto him, knee in his spine, quickly zip-tying his wrists with one hand with the speed of someone who had done it a thousand times.
One hand.
The guy on the ground struggled.
“Stop resisting arrest, you piece of shit,” Finn growled.
The guy didn’t listen. He redoubled his efforts, bucking and kicking.
Finn finally just clocked the guy a good one until his head bounced off the ground and he went limp.
I heard him sigh, before he repositioned his head and checked his pulse.
Lightning cracked overhead, close enough that the thunder hit almost simultaneously. The storm screamed around us. So did my heart.
Finn stood, swaying slightly, then grabbed the walkie from his bag and called it in to the station, giving his location and a quick rundown of events before rattling off some cop-speech numbers I didn’t understand.
He holstered his Glock and grabbed my wrist. “We need to go after them. Now.”
I didn’t hesitate. We ran. Not away, but after the two masked individuals.
Branches whipped at our clothes, and mud sucked at our boots.
The rain blinded more than it illuminated, even with the lightning.
The woods were gloomy, the shadows thickening all around us, and the flashlight beam bounced wildly as Finn ran ahead of me, favoring his injured arm but refusing to slow down.
“Finn!” I called once. “You’re really bleeding—”
“Later!” he shouted back.
We chased the injured, fleeing men down a narrow deer path, then across a rocky incline. They were still fast, but panicked and hurt, their footfalls loud as they crashed through brush instead of cutting through it.
Another flash of lightning illuminated one silhouette as the other broke off in the opposite direction, a dark figure limp-sprinting through the rain, mask glowing faintly as he darted between two boulders.
Finn cursed under his breath and pushed harder after the one with the limp.
I followed, lungs burning, legs shaking.
The Watcher vanished over a rise.
When we crested it seconds later—
Nothing.
Just darkness and rain and the faint echo of footfalls swallowed by the storm.
He was gone.
Finn stopped, his chest heaving, blood dripping steadily from his sleeve now despite the rain trying to wash it away. I stumbled up beside him, my breaths ragged.
“Shit,” he rasped.
“More like fuck,” I said, doubling over, hands on my thighs.
He barked out something that might’ve been a laugh if it hadn’t been soaked in fear and adrenaline. Then he swayed a little.
“Sit,” I said instantly.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not, you stubborn asshole. You’re bleeding like a decorative fountain.”
Thunder growled overhead in irritated agreement as we made it down to the gravel service road ten minutes later, soaked and shaking, Finn’s blood painted alarming streaks across not only his arm but also mine.
He leaned against a pine, jaw clenched, breathing hard.
I ripped off my hoodie—already soaked—and took off the long-sleeve tee I had underneath it, leaving me in just a camisole. I wrapped the tee around his arm, tying the sleeves together as tightly as I could to apply pressure. Rain kept trying to undo my work, but I tightened the knot anyway.
From what I could see, the cut was deep and ugly, but it wasn’t arterial. He’d live. Though he’d definitely scar.
His eyes were on me the whole time I worked, his expression unreadable in the storm-dark. When I finished tying the makeshift bandage, I realized my hands were shaking.
I tugged on my sodden hoodie again and then just stared at the ground. He reached out with his good hand and cupped my face, his thumb brushing rain from my cheek.
“You okay?” he asked, his voice rough.
“Define okay,” I said as I looked into his eyes.
He laughed, the sound short and ragged, then, because the world wasn’t absurd enough, he pulled me in by the back of my neck and kissed me.
It was hungry. Wet. Desperate.
Rain plastered his hair to his forehead, and blood streaked his cheek, but his mouth was hot and angry against mine, years of pain and guilt and want pouring into the space between us.
I kissed him back like I was drowning and he was air.
My hands fisted in his shirt, the cold fabric sliding under my fingers. His grip tightened as he pulled me closer, heat and strength and stubbornness pressing against me in the middle of a storm that felt like the end of the world.
Lightning flashed. Thunder cracked. And still—
I didn’t pull away.
Neither did he.
When we finally broke apart, our foreheads pressed together, both of us panting, he whispered against my lips, “I don’t think I can let you go again.”
Something inside me flipped, making me feel like I was on an amusement ride. “We have a whole helluva lot to talk about, Finn, but I think I’m done running.”
His eyes burned, even in the dark, the look in them fierce, wild, and alive. Sirens wailed faintly in the distance. Backup. Finally.
But for one last heartbeat, it was just us and the storm and the realization that whatever came next—
We were in it together.
Even if the Watchers were still out there.
Maybe especially then.