The Investigator's Code of Silence

Prologue

Lila Moreno ran scared.

She wasn’t scared of the dark. She'd run this trail a hundred times.

She knew where the gravel went soft before the second bend and where the root from the big cottonwood crossed at shin height.

She also knew where the park lights stopped reaching and you were on your own with the moon.

The only artificial light was the glow from the city bleeding through the pines.

The dark was fine.

What she was afraid of was her little sister Sofia. She dug deeper and ran harder because

she was specifically afraid of seeing Sofia's face at the finish line waiting for her …

again. Eleven years of that face burned into her memory.

The one that said I'm so proud of you AND I'm faster than you, and we both know it, simultaneously, without any apparent irony. Her little sister ran a sub-eight-minute mile before breakfast. Without training. And she wasn’t a complete jerk about it.

Still, there was a goal this year. This year, Lila would do it.

The half-marathon was in eleven weeks.

She still couldn't hit a nine-minute uphill without wanting to lie down on the trail and become a pile of dirt.

Which was why she was here at 6:42 a.m. on a trail that was technically closed before sunrise. The sign said so. She’d chosen to read it as a suggestion made with deep affection rather than any actual authority.

She stretched and adjusted her earbud. One kept slipping, so she ran with only one.

What she needed were new ones, the good kind.

The kind that didn't give up under pressure …

unlike three of her students this week. Maya had cried again, this time about fractions.

Lila had successfully convinced her that fractions were just tiny puzzles, which they were not.

She firmly believed they were tiny monsters designed to break children.

But her lie was kind, so it really didn't count. She had a pile of quizzes to grade when she got home, and she was finally going to that dentist appointment she'd been canceling since last October. Maybe after all of that, she’d call Sofia if it weren’t too late.

She had the whole day fully planned out.

Where the path curved and dropped between the pines, she would pick up her pace.

Three miles today. She had to be back by 7:15 a.m. And coffee …

Lord, she wanted a big mug, with real cream and sugar.

But before that, the uphill stretch. No excuses today.

She would hit it hard this time, no easing up, no letting her brain talk her into—

The truck was here again.

She'd seen it as she was finishing her stretches.

Dark pickup. Lights off. Parked at a strange angle near the access road.

She'd seen it three times this week. Maybe four.

Hadn't thought much of it. People parked weird and sat in their cars at crazy hours.

Guess that was just a thing now. Whatever …

She was a woman who ran alone at dawn, and she'd made her peace with the precautions that required. She had her phone if anything happened.

She started her run. The trail turned, and she turned with it. The trees pressed close on both sides. The city sounds dropped away. Something shifted behind her.

She caught it at the edge of her hearing. Gravel under a foot placed carefully. Not a jogger catching up. Not an animal. She pulled the earbud free and slowed down to turn her head.

The trail was empty.

Okay. Fine. She was tired, and her brain was inventing things because that was what brains did on insufficient sleep. She was a thirty-year-old woman on a trail she knew like the back of her hand, and everything was fine. She started running again.

The sound came from behind her again.

Closer.

Her body knew before her brain finished catching up.

The hair on her arms lifted. Her legs wanted to go fast without being asked.

She let them. She wasn’t sprinting, just moving, eyes forward, phone in her pocket, the path skirted the parking lot, which was maybe four hundred yards ahead.

She could see the faint bleed of light through the trees.

Get there.

The footsteps behind her stopped pretending to be quiet.

She ran.

He was faster.

The branch connected with the back of her skull with a sound she felt more than heard.

The world white-flashed, and her knees went with absolutely no discussion.

As the gravel came up at her face, she had one clear second of pure recognition—oh.

Oh, God, no—and then the hand came over her mouth, and the dark dropped fast.

Her last thought wasn't of her students or the half-marathon or her sister.

It was the smell.

She didn't know what it was.

She didn't get the chance to find out.