Shadow
MORGAN
Morgan went from deep sleep to instant alertness.
Her eyes popped open. The room was dark and silent except for one thing—the heavy breathing that wasn’t her own.
She lay completely still and ran through her options. Her bag was across the room, which meant nothing useful was within reach. The door was partially open—she was certain she'd closed it. She turned her head slowly toward the sound.
Massive jowls materialized out of the dark approximately six inches from her face. A cold, wet nose burrowed under the quilt and sniffed at her neck.
Morgan held very still. “Hi,” she said carefully.
The dog huffed. Made several slow circles. Dropped heavily onto the mattress beside her, the heavy weight creating a dip in the mattress that hadn’t been there before.
Morgan stared at the ceiling as it adjusted and readjusted until it budged solidly up against the length of her body.
Within thirty seconds, it was snoring.
She lay there for another few minutes, listening to it snore, then carefully extracted herself from the bed. The dog didn't seem to notice, or more likely, didn’t care.
The house was dim and cool, the heat not yet kicked up for the day. Morgan moved through it quietly, unwilling to disturb the silence. She had no idea if Frank was an early riser, but there was no sign of him.
The kitchen was the same as she'd left it the night before. Clean, tidy, with nothing on the counters that didn't belong. She found the coffee without difficulty and got the old percolator running. Then she pulled on one of Frank's heavy flannels hanging by the back door and stepped outside.
The back property was grey and still in the pre-dawn hour, with a low mist hovering just above the ground. The clearing beyond was barely visible through the tree line, just a suggestion of open space in the semi-darkness. Somewhere in the woods, something small moved through the underbrush.
It was calm. Peaceful. Silent, except for the birds and whatever was making those chirruping noises. She stood there for longer than she'd intended, taking deep breaths of fresh, autumn-scented air and drinking it all in.
She was used to being up before sunrise. Less used to having nothing to do and nowhere to be. Back in Philly, there was always a case, a scene, a report, or a question that needed following up.
There was a certain appeal to the quiet stillness of the morning in the mountains, but for a girl who’d been raised in the city, it would take some getting used to.
When she figured enough time had passed for the brewing to complete, she went back inside.
She poured her coffee, added two teaspoons of sugar and a healthy dose of the heavy cream she'd found in the fridge, and moved to the bookshelves she’d seen on the way in.
The shelves ran floor to ceiling along the full length of the living room wall, built-in, functional, and stuffed without any concession to aesthetics.
Books on military history occupied the top two shelves: Congressional investigations.
Declassified programs. Documented records of things that had been denied for decades and then quietly confirmed when the evidence became impossible to ignore.
She recognized some of the titles, having read a few of them herself.
The middle shelves held more practical material.
Almanacs that went back fifteen years, each one more worn than the last. Field guides for the region, documenting wildlife, edible plants, and tracking.
Survivalist guides that predated the current trends, written by real survivalists, not influencers.
She wondered vaguely if Frank even knew what an influencer was. Probably not. He didn’t seem like the type to have a social media presence. And, judging by his reading material, wasn’t keen to leave a digital footprint anywhere.
She continued her perusal of the shelves, finding a half-dozen suspense novels with government agency plots too procedurally detailed to be entirely fictional.
Several histories of Irish immigrant labor organizers, specifically the Molly Maguires.
Biographies—both authorized and unauthorized—of political figures, whistleblowers, and people who'd gone on record about things their governments would have preferred they didn't.
Tucked into nearly every volume were receipts, envelopes, and newspaper clippings acting as bookmarks.
Curious, she eased one free from between the pages of one particularly well-worn volume.
It was a newspaper clipping from the Ridge Courier, dated five years back, about a zoning decision near a local campground.
She didn't know why it was there, but she didn’t doubt it was there for a reason.
She replaced the clipping exactly as she'd found it and returned the book to the shelf.
Then, as it had several times over the last twelve hours, her mind went back to the day before for no logical reason whatsoever. Black hair. Amused blue eyes. A crooked smile. A fitted Henley doused in coffee, and a man who hadn’t seemed to mind.
She picked up her coffee and took a long sip.
There was no reason he should keep popping up in her thoughts, other than the fact that she had nothing else to focus on.
She heard Frank moving upstairs and was grateful for the interruption.
Within minutes, he descended the stairs, dressed appropriately in jeans and flannel.
The bed-hogging dog followed, walking past Morgan without even a cursory glance, and went to the back door, which Frank opened without preamble.
“What’s his name?”
“Shadow.”
Seemed appropriate for something that big, dark, and quiet.
After pouring himself a cup of coffee, Frank stood at the counter for a moment with the mug in his hand, looking at her in that level way he had. Not warm, not cold. Just Frank.
“He crawled into bed with me this morning.”
Frank sipped his coffee. “Did he now?”
“Should I be honored?”
Frank made a sound that was neither confirmation nor denial and took his seat at the table.
Morgan refilled her mug and sat across from him. The silence between them was easy, one of preference, not because there was nothing to say. He’d told her he wouldn’t ask, and so far, he hadn’t. But he deserved some explanation.
“I was put on administrative leave because I refused to sign off on a case that I didn’t feel was complete.”
Frank turned his mug in his hands, unimpressed. “Figured it was something like that.”
“They didn't see it that way.”
“They usually don't.” He took a sip. “Doesn't mean they’re right.”
“They’re not.”
She thought of the books on the shelves. The clippings. The stories of people who'd been right and ignored and eventually, sometimes, vindicated. But not always. Sometimes, the truth remained buried, and the people who tried to bring it to life got buried with it.
The front door opened, and a woman appeared in the doorway carrying a reusable grocery bag, a folded copy of the Ridge Courier, and an air of absolute competence about her.
This had to be Donna. Morgan placed her somewhere in her sixties, with a short, practical hairstyle and a lean, athletic build.
Donna set the paper in front of Frank, who grunted an acknowledgement that Morgan assumed was also a greeting, and immediately began unpacking the groceries with the efficiency of someone who knew exactly where everything went, because she'd put it there.
While she did, her gaze moved across the kitchen in assessing sweeps.
Morgan wondered if she’d read some of the books on Frank’s shelf too.
“You must be Morgan,” she said, not pausing in her unpacking. “I'm Donna. Frank mentioned you were coming.” She glanced accusingly at Frank. “Yesterday.”
“I told you in time,” Frank said, behind the paper.
“Barely.” She moved past Morgan to put something in the cabinet overhead. “Sit down. I'll make breakfast.”
“Would you like help?”
“No, I would not,” Donna said firmly, almost offended that Morgan had offered.
The kitchen seemed to grow smaller, and Morgan opted to head back out to the porch.
She sat on the back step, watching Shadow do a thorough perimeter check.
Inside, she could hear Donna moving about, and before long, the delicious aromas of fried potatoes and bacon reached her.
If Donna and Frank talked to each other at all, Morgan didn’t hear it.
It was a strange dynamic, but she supposed it worked for them.
“Breakfast is ready,” Donna called out after a short while, and Shadow came barreling out of the bushes, getting to the door before Morgan.
She took a seat at the table, noting that Donna hadn’t set a place for herself. In fact, Donna wasn’t even in the kitchen.
Despite the gruffness, Morgan liked her. There was something in her directness and in the way she assumed control unapologetically that made her seem trustworthy. The fact that Frank allowed it without question or comment only made her seem even more so.
“You trust her,” Morgan said, biting into a piece of crispy bacon.
Frank made a slight grunting sound of agreement.
“Have you known each other long?”
“Long enough.”
Message received: Further discussion of the subject was not welcome.
They ate in relative silence, the click of forks and the hum of the vacuum in another room providing background noise. When they finished, Morgan cleared the table, earning a censuring look from Frank.
Morgan ignored it. Donna had been kind enough to make her breakfast. The least Morgan could do was clean up after. Still, Morgan did the dishes quickly and then made herself scarce before Donna returned.
She opted to go for a walk.
The air was cold and clear and smelled like turned earth and fallen leaves, the kind of smell that had no city equivalent.
The clearing behind the tree line was larger than it had looked from the window.
Sixty yards across, maybe more, ringed by ash and oak and birch, the grass long and going yellow.
The trees were full color. Amber and copper and deep reds that looked as if they’d been painted in.
It was the kind of October scene that appeared in touristy brochures on peak fall foliage tours.
She walked the perimeter, following much the same path as Shadow had earlier, noting things like layout, entry and exit points, and the paw prints that had been left behind in the soft ground. Not because she had to, but because that was what she had been trained to do. Details mattered.
Some people called it strange. She called it a useful skill for a medicolegal death investigator.
Standing in the middle of the clearing, she looked up at a sky that was shockingly blue between the branches. Almost the exact shade of the eyes of the guy she’d spilled coffee on, in fact.
Nope. She wasn’t going to think about him or the shade of his eyes. Wasn’t going to think about him at all.
Her supervisor had called it a problem, this inability to let things go until she had answers.
She walked back to the house.
Frank was in the living room, the paper set aside, reading one of the books from the shelf. He didn't look up. She hung the flannel back on the peg and took her book to the chair and they sat in companionable silence.
Outside, the light was already beginning to shift, turning golden a little earlier each day at this time of year.
Her phone buzzed on the side table. She looked at the screen. Her mother. Again. She ignored it. She’d done her due diligence by texting that she was alive and fine. That was all her mother needed to know.