Sabrina
Coat pulled tight to keep the icy wind out, I walked back toward the library where I’d left my car. The snow was falling harder now, and I’d promised Gabe I’d meet him at his house, so I needed to get moving.
I had a lot to say to him. It was time. To be honest. With him and with myself. It was time I stopped just reacting. And I would start with Gabe. For once, I would choose instead of enduring whatever the universe threw at me.
But as I shuffled down the icy sidewalk, my brain spun through people, places, and things. Why had that M caught my eye? The scrolls, the loops, the no beginning or end; just an infinite connection.
As I was brushing the snow off the windshield, it hit me.
Closing my eyes, I recalled files. Then autopsy photos.
Will McManus had a tattoo on his back. It was that symbol. It was the only ink he had, and it was centered and large. Special. Which is why it had stood out to me.
Scrambling for my phone, I hopped into the driver’s seat and called Meg.
“McManus Ridge,” I said in way of greeting. “Run it, search it. I want to know everything.”
My mind raced as I turned the car on, letting it heat up. Then I sat back and waited for the residual snow to melt.
“I saw Will’s tattoo—that symbol—carved above the door on the McManuses’ sugar shack.”
Meg typed at a nearly impossible speed. “Big property. Chopped up and sold for parts. One segment in 2001, another in 2007. More later.”
“What about the co-op. Reserve syrup?” I asked.
“There is an address. Route 411. Registered to the Windsor County Maple Growers Association,” she said. “But it expired over a decade ago.”
Nodding, I rubbed my hands together to warm them. Old. Abandoned. A relic of time and people long gone. Barely accessible and a place no one would bother looking.
“What if that’s the spot?” I asked her. “The place Will would go when he disappeared. Frankie mentioned his dream was to buy back his family’s property.”
“Sugar Moon owns the largest portion of that land,” Meg said.
“Confirmed the sales and the tax records. But it’s listed as inactive.
Route 411 was downgraded by the town in 2009.
It’s an unpaved logging road that receives no regular maintenance.
It may not even be drivable anymore. According to satellite data, there are a few remaining structures, but they are listed as condemned on the property tax filings. ”
She tapped away again, swearing here and there.
I tuned her out, considering what I’d learned. If Will had found evidence, and if he had an emotional connection to that place. Could that be it? If he’d panicked and had taken or hidden something?
“Fuck,” Meg muttered. “The property still has a registered utility meter. But it’s technically inactive.”
I held my breath. It could be nothing. Just another abandoned building filled with faded memories.
“Sabrina.” Her voice wavered. “It pulled power yesterday.”
Every nerve ending in my body lit up and adrenaline surged into my veins.
“Someone was there,” I whispered.
“There hasn’t been a ping on the power for as far back as I can see right now. Hold on, I have to manually scroll through the municipal electrical data.”
While I waited, my knee bounced. More from anticipation than the cold.
“Looks like that was the first time it’s pulled power since—” She sucked in a sharp breath. “Since April twelfth of last year.”
My heart seized in my chest. April twelfth was the day Will McManus was murdered.
My vision tunneled. This was not a coincidence. This was not nothing.
Will had known something. He’d discovered important information. He had been disappearing and keeping secrets, and he’d been distant with friends and family. He loved his family legacy and the land they’d lost to Sugar Moon. He was smart, resourceful, and worked hard.
And he’d made some kind of discovery.
Files, data, or records, maybe. We still didn’t know what.
But he’d downloaded them. Saved them. Moved them. Or at least attempted to. And his employer had gone out of its way to make sure they no longer existed.
“Fuck,” Meg hissed. “Before that, it looks like small amounts of power were used every couple of weeks. Consistent with someone visiting once a month or so. But the last time—”
“Shit.” A calm settled over me. “Will wasn’t killed at the Sugar Moon plant,” I said.
After all, his body had been moved and manipulated.
“Did the police ever search it?” I asked.
“Never found evidence of that in the records I reviewed, but I’ll run another search.”
I reversed out of my parking spot and pulled out onto the road. If there was evidence there, odds were it hadn’t been touched. Unless someone else had already been there.
The snow was really coming down, blurring the windshield each time my wipers swished.
“I’ve got something else,” she added. “Sugar Moon trucks have GPS. GPS data I downloaded the other day for fun.”
“Sounds like you,” I deadpanned.
“I was pissed off after their elite cybersecurity ruined my weekend. But I found some interesting data points.”
“Talk to me.” My headlights barely shone through the heavy falling snow. Heart in my throat, I hunched forward and clutched the steering wheel.
“The truck Will drove was pinged on that road several times before he died.”
My grip tightened and my pulse sped up.
McManus land. The tattoo. His troubled childhood. Utility spikes. GPS patterns. This was not a coincidence.
I was already headed north. If I could beat the worst of the storm, maybe I could find something.
“Shit.” More typing as I turned away from town. “We’ve had a couple of recent pings. Sugar Moon registered vehicles. One the day after the murder. And another yesterday.”
I swallowed thickly. So that area wasn’t completely abandoned. Someone was watching. And if they had gone back yesterday, that was a tell. They were getting nervous. Which usually led to sloppy mistakes. And we could exploit those.
“Good to know,” I said. “Keep tracking. See if you can connect the dots on vehicles, power, and visits to the site.”
“It’s a huge property,” she hedged. “Could be anything. Should I anonymously tip off law enforcement?”
My mind flashed to warrants, caution tape, more sealed evidence, and a complete loss of this lead.
“Not yet. Give me a little time to think.” If this got into the wrong hands, if people were compromised, we’d lose this chance forever.
“Where are you? Isn’t there a blizzard coming?”
“Just headed home,” I lied, my mind spinning. I had a flashlight in my glove box and pepper spray on my key chain. If someone had been there yesterday, there was no time to lose.
Adrenaline was taking over. My heart pounded as my brain pushed all reason and logic out of the way.
“Track down every McManus family member. Going way back,” I said. “Who’s left. Who might go up there. Who would have claim to that land. Anything.”
“Got it. Drive safe.”
Meg hung up, and I accelerated. The time we had to figure this out was limited. I couldn’t wait for a warrant or daylight or a plan. Not if the evidence had been left there and had survived for almost a year.
My mind drifted to Gabe. He was expecting me.
But it was still early and it wasn’t far.
Probably another couple of miles. I could go, take a quick peek, and head out.
I wouldn’t do anything reckless. I just needed to see the ridge so I could shift all the pieces into place in my mind.
Just one look. And then I’d go straight to his house.
But I needed more information first. I couldn’t drag him into this murder coverup rabbit hole with me. It was bad enough that he was going to ask his constituents to raise their taxes for the new events at the same time he was being recalled.
I slowed, watching the map on my GPS. The logging road had to be close. Eventually, I found a break in the tree line, so I pulled over, shifted into four-wheel drive, and turned onto it.
It was like teleporting to the middle of nowhere. There was no pavement. No signs. No highway sounds. Just the crunch of snow under my tires.
My high beams barely gave me a few feet of illumination, but I made my way. The road was bumpy and narrow, though it widened at random intervals. As I drove around fallen tree limbs and rocks, I wished I’d had Meg send me a map. But I couldn’t turn back now.
Minutes felt like hours as I crawled along, scanning my surroundings. Eventually, I came upon another break in the tree line. This one was much smaller. I’d have missed it if I hadn’t been driving slowly. But there was something up there.
My adrenaline surged. Had Will been up here? Had he seen something? Hidden something?
A dim glow in my rearview mirror caught my attention, and my muscles locked up. It quickly intensified, growing brighter with every second. It was a vehicle. Between the glare of the lights and the falling snow, I couldn’t make out what kind, but it was rapidly approaching.
Slowing further, I adjusted my rearview mirror, straining to see. It could be nothing. Maybe a plow.
But it was coming closer, and it was moving quickly. The knot in my stomach tightened.
I accelerated a bit to maintain distance between myself and it. The road narrowed again, and the ditch on either side was deep, so as the vehicle caught up and followed to closely, I couldn’t pull over to get out of its way.
It was driving too close, too fast.
My SUV lost traction, and my body shook with panic. Ahead, the road curved sharply, the embankment piled high with snow where the mountain road dropped away into darkness.
My heart thundered and my trembling was nearly violent now, so I almost didn’t notice the bump. The vehicle hadn’t so much hit me as it had pushed. The move was deliberate.
My breath caught. Oh no.
I gripped the steering wheel, pain surging through my wrists, only to realize I had no control of the car.
It slid and crunched, and as metal met ice and rock, a strange scraping sound made me wince.
I turned the wheel, frantic to change direction, but the vehicle continued on its trajectory, and I careened off the icy embankment into the deep snow.
As my SUV lurched and slammed, all I could think about was the baby.
I was desperate to protect her, but my body was jostled, and my right elbow came down hard, banging against the center console.
Pain shot up my arm as a sharp ache radiated through my temple.
My ears rang as I peered outside the windows.
The G-Wagon sat at an angle, half buried in deep snow between skeletal trees.
Blindly, I reached for my phone, but there was no signal. My vision blurred and my fingers went numb. I needed help. I needed to call Gabe. Or Meg. Or my mom.
Gabe would be worried soon if he didn’t hear from me. He was probably already checking his phone, wondering where I was. But I hadn’t told him, or told anyone, where I was going. I was stuck, scared, and freezing.
And alone now that the other vehicle’s lights were fading in the distance.