Chapter 14
Echoes in the Dark
Austin
The morning after Founders Day felt too calm. Sunlight spilled through the blinds like nothing had shifted, like the night hadn’t ended with that low, crawling sound that didn’t belong.
Milly was still asleep when I eased out of bed. Inspector blinked at me from the end of the quilt, stretched, and followed as I padded through the quiet house. The smell of last night’s fair still clung to the air—smoke, fried food, a trace of her honey. It should’ve felt like peace. It didn’t.
Old habits die hard. My head still ran recon even in the stillness—mental checklist, situational review, environmental scan. Where the vehicles had been parked, where the fair’s perimeter fencing thinned out by the ridge line, which direction the sound had come from.
Southwest, low revs, heavy tires.
I could’ve convinced myself it was a rancher heading home, except the hairs on my neck had gone up before the engine even hit my ears. The body keeps its own kind of intel.
The coffeemaker gurgled to life. While it brewed, I sat at the table, phone in hand, scrolling through the local sheriff’s dispatch log.
Caleb Dunn’s team had flagged three noise complaints from the festival, one suspicious-vehicle report near Ridge Road.
That one sat like a nail in the back of my head.
The call came in at 11:47 p.m.—a farmer on County 9 saying a black pickup had idled by his pasture gate, lights off. Patrol drove through, found nothing.
I texted Dunn: Saw the same type near the fairgrounds. Call me when you’re up.
He responded five minutes later. Coffee’s on. You know where to find me.
Milly stirred when I opened her bedroom door.
“You’re up early,” she murmured, voice soft with sleep.
“Couldn’t turn my brain off.”
“About last night?”
“About the ribs,” I said, aiming for a smile. It almost stuck.
She watched me from the pillow, eyes half-open but sharp in that way she probably didn’t realize. “Don’t go playing hero before breakfast, okay?”
I nodded, kissed her temple, and left before I could promise something I wasn’t built to keep. The kiss was quick, but it left a mark under my skin anyway.
Sheriff Dunn’s office sat across from the feed store, wedged between the post office and the old hardware building. A bell jingled when I stepped in. Dunn was behind his desk, coffee in one hand, radio in the other.
He gestured at the chair opposite him. “You look like you didn’t sleep.”
“I did,” I said. “Just not well.”
“Festival adrenaline crash.” He took a sip, studying me over the rim of his mug. “Or something else?”
“Ridge Road complaint.”
He grunted. “You’d make a lousy retiree.”
“Never claimed otherwise.” I pulled up the map on my phone and pointed. “The sound came from this direction—southwest of the fairgrounds. The call you got came in less than ten minutes later from here.”
“That’s a straight shot along County 9,” he said, tracing the distance. “Maybe your mystery truck’s the same one.”
“Maybe.”
He slid a folder across the desk. “Patrol didn’t get a plate. But old man Cavanaugh out that way said he saw a decal on the tailgate. White square, maybe a logo.”
“Company truck?”
“Could be.” He leaned back, sighing through his nose.
“Could also be nothing. But folks in two counties over—Elm Creek and Red Hollow—they’ve had break-ins lately.
Equipment theft. A few strange trucks lingering near barns before dark.
Sheriff Hayes over there says one was a dark pickup with a cracked taillight. ”
“Same as ours?”
“Fits the rumor.”
Rumor. In small towns, rumor was intel wearing overalls.
“Hayes owes me a favor,” Dunn went on. “I can ask if they’ve got plate fragments. You want me to loop you in?”
“Please.”
He nodded, thumb tapping against the mug. “Off the record, Peterson’s been jumpy lately.”
“Harold?”
“Yeah. Came by asking if we could limit patrols near his construction sites. Said they were spooking his contractors.”
“That’s strange timing.”
Dunn’s look was cautious. “That’s all I’m saying for now. You start tugging on that thread, it’s gonna pull hard.”
Which could mean one of two things—Harold Peterson knew something and wanted to keep it quiet, or Dunn suspected it but wasn’t ready to say it out loud.
I filed the thought away and stood. “Appreciate it.”
“You want advice?” Dunn asked.
“Always.”
He nodded toward the window. “Whatever this is—it’s not a fairground prank. You dig, dig careful. You and I both know what happens when folks start turning over rocks in Everwood.”
I smiled without humor. “They find snakes.”
“Or bones.”
Outside, the wind had picked up. I walked toward my truck, brain turning over old training protocols like cards in a deck.
Assess. Confirm. Report.
Except this wasn’t the field, and I wasn’t a soldier anymore. There was no command line—just instincts, memory, and the uneasy feeling that Everwood’s peace was more fragile than anyone wanted to admit.
As I started the engine, I sent two messages: one to Mason—Meet at the feed store in an hour. Bring Levi. And one to an old contact, Jake Rainer, a recon tech I’d served with years back who now worked private intel out of Junction City.
Need a run on local contractor permits and any shell-company vehicles registered in the last six months within 30 miles of Everwood. Will pay in beer or barbecue.
He replied almost instantly. Beer’s fine. Give me a day. The man hadn’t changed.
I turned toward home, the road dust trailing behind me like a thought I couldn’t shake. Milly would still be asleep, wrapped in quilts and sunlight. Part of me wanted to crawl back in beside her, pretend the world was simple.
But a soldier learns to trust the gut before the comfort. And my gut said the night hadn’t ended with fireworks.
It was just beginning.
Carl Hendrix keeps the feed store like a man who trusts gravity: sacks stacked chest-high, aisles tight as trenches, everything where the hand expects it to be.
Mason’s already waiting near the register, a to-go coffee sweating in his grip.
Levi leans on a pallet of mineral blocks, chewing a toothpick like it contains answers.
“Sheriff call you?” Mason asks.
“He did,” I say. “County 9. Black pickup. Lights off.”
Levi grimaces. “Same ghost I keep chasing in my rearview.”
Carl lifts the counter flap and waves us through. “You boys want the office. Computer’s in there with the exit cam. Don’t mind the smell; the cat sleeps on the router.”
The office is the size of a walk-in closet, hot and paper-crowded.
A corkboard holds a decade of receipts and lost-dog flyers.
The monitor’s old enough to be nostalgic but dependable.
I drop into the chair, plug in my thumb drive, and breathe the way I used to before patrol—slow, deliberate, brain shifting into the quiet lane where patterns show up.
“Cam’s pointed at the west gate,” Carl says. “Catches folks leaving the fairgrounds road.”
I scrub through last night: trucks, minivans, teenagers showing off mufflers that sound like angry lawnmowers. The timestamp ripples toward 11:40. I slow it.
“There.” I pause on a wide shape drifting into frame at the edge of the floodlight. “Headlights off.”
Levi sucks a breath. “That’s our guy.”
I frame-by-frame it forward. The pickup noses into the spill of light just long enough to gift us a few pixels: late-model, dark paint, grille like a jawline. The passenger taillight blooms white for a blink—then stutters with a hairline fracture.
“Cracked right reverse lens,” I say. “Matches Dunn’s scuttlebutt from Red Hollow.”
Mason leans over my shoulder. “Can you sharpen it?”
“Not into a miracle,” I say, but I nudge contrast, raise gain, and let the noise settle into slightly cleaner grain. The tailgate catches a sliver of white on black—square, low, right of center.
“Decal,” Levi says.
“Looks magnetic,” I add. “No sun-fade around it, so it’s not permanent. Contractors use those when they don’t want the truck married to the job.”
I rock another two frames. A shadow along the bed rail shivers into a hard line before it vanishes.
“Ladder rack,” Mason says.
“Or pipe carrier,” I counter. “Either way, this isn’t a ranch kid cruising for mischief.”
Levi taps the screen. “Can you get the plate?”
“Not clean.” I drag a little box over the plate area, punch a quick filter. The characters don’t resolve, but the shape of the county sticker does—blue band, small white star. “Elm Creek tag. Or someone pretending to be from Elm Creek.”
“Elm Creek’s where Hayes is dealing with those equipment thefts,” Mason says.
“Yep.” I sit back, fingers steepled. “Sounded like diesel last night. Old Cummins or a tuned Power Stroke—low idle, straight pipe or a cheap muffler. The engine note had a hitch at idle—maybe a worn mount. It’ll chatter a bit at stoplights.”
Levi glances at me. “You listening with bat ears now?”
“Training sticks,” I say. “Engines are like voices. You learn the accents.”
We ran it twice more. The pickup slid out of frame and didn’t come back. No plate, no driver face, just enough to keep the itch alive. Carl poked his head in with a mason jar of bolts.
“Y’all catch Bigfoot yet?”
“Just his truck,” Levi said.
Carl snorted. “Figures.”
My phone buzzed on the desk. Dunn: Hayes confirms two sightings, both a dark pickup with a cracked right taillight. One had a removable white square on the tailgate—logo unknown. No full plates yet. Watch your corners.
Another buzz. Jake Rainer: Pulled a list of new contractor permits in a 30-mile radius. Three companies spun up in the last 6 months. One’s “North Fork Aggregate.” Paper trail smells like a shell. Mailing address forwards through a UPS box in Cedar Bend. Want the packet?
I texted back: Send summaries now; I’ll grab the full packet later.
Jake replied with bullet points like he’s still on active duty:
· North Fork Aggregate, LLC – registered 4 months ago. UPS box. Bank in Red Hollow.
· Pioneer Facilities Group – registered 6 months ago. Shares a phone exchange with Peterson Properties’ legal firm.