epilogue
Into the Mist
The woodland felt different without the noise.
A few weeks ago, Harrison couldn’t have walked more than twenty yards without passing an officer, hearing a radio crackle somewhere between the trees, or seeing another section of undergrowth marked for searching.
Now there was only the steady patter of rain through the canopy and the occasional shift of branches overhead.
He moved carefully, boots sinking into the mud as he followed the familiar curve of the path.
Familiar.
He hadn’t expected that.
The first time he’d set foot here, it’d been unknown. Hostile. Heavy with everything they hadn’t known about Emily Fisher and everything Hartswick still didn’t know about Robyn Whitton.
Now Emily was home.
Robyn wasn’t.
Harrison slowed.
That hadn’t changed. Neither had the feeling that there were still pieces of this place he didn’t understand. Questions that hadn’t been answered simply because one investigation had ended.
He wasn’t sure why he’d come back tonight.
Closure, perhaps.
Or maybe because some part of him needed to walk the path without a missing seventeen-year-old at the end of it.
Spring wasn’t far off, though the air still held a winter chill. Drizzle pattered against the leaves, and branches shifted somewhere overhead.
Then he heard footsteps.
Harrison stopped and lowered the beam of his torch as a figure took shape through the mist. Broad shoulders. Familiar movement. Dark curls damp with rain.
Jake.
Harrison stayed where he was as Jake approached and stopped a few feet away, the narrow path holding them there with rain falling quietly between them.
Stood in front of him, Harrison took him in.
The damp curls clinging to his collar. The jacket darkened across the shoulders.
Those work-roughened hands shoved into his pockets against the cold.
Christ, he was beautiful.
Jake glanced beyond him, towards where the path disappeared into the mist. “Couldn’t sleep either?”
Harrison huffed softly. “Something like that.”
Jake nodded.
He didn’t ask why Harrison was here. Didn’t demand to know whether they’d found something else. Perhaps Jake understood better than anyone what it was to be drawn back to a place that refused to give up its answers.
Then Jake stepped closer and pulled one hand from his pocket. It hovered between them for a moment before he reached across and took Harrison’s.
His grip was warm despite the cold, firm but loose enough that Harrison could pull away if he wanted.
He didn’t.
Instead, he turned his hand and threaded their fingers together and Jake’s mouth tipped into a small smile.
Harrison let himself look at him. Properly.
At the man he’d had absolutely no intention of finding when he came to Yorkshire.
Whatever this was between them, Harrison still didn’t know where it was going. Didn’t know what he could give Jake, or whether any of it would be easy.
But Jake’s hand was in his.
For now, Harrison would take that.
He stepped forward, and Jake fell into step beside him.
So together, they followed the path into the mist.
There were still questions somewhere beyond it. Robyn Whitton was still missing. Thirteen years of assumptions and half-truths didn’t disappear simply because another girl had been brought home, and Harrison knew enough now not to mistake the end of one investigation for the end of the story.
The way ahead remained unclear. Unfinished.
But at least he wasn’t doing it alone.
In Too Deep (Whitton and Black Mystery Book 2)