The third day in Blackpine Ridge began with a visit from the sheriff.
Cole stood in the open doorway of her motel room, holding a paper cup of coffee and wearing the expression of a man who had drawn the short straw.
Allison was already dressed, packing her day bag for another trail.
“Heard you were out on the north ridge yesterday,” he said without preamble.
“I was.
Public land.”
“Public land with an active investigation.
I’d appreciate it if you stayed off the marked sites.”
Allison zipped the bag.
“I’d appreciate it if the official reports matched the evidence.
Those claw marks aren’t from a bear.”
Cole’s jaw tightened.
“You a tracker now?”
“I’m someone who can read a photograph.
The gouges are too high, too clean, and the spacing doesn’t match any North American predator I can find in the literature.”
He stepped into the room far enough to set the coffee on the dresser, then leaned against the doorframe.
“Miss Reyes, I’m going to give you some advice free of charge.
This town has survived a long time by knowing what questions not to ask out loud.
You keep pushing, and you’re going to find answers you can’t put in a newspaper.”
“That’s the idea.”
Cole shook his head.
“Derek Hale already warned you.
I’m warning you again.
Pack up and leave before the moon gets fuller.”
Allison tilted her head.
“What does the moon have to do with it?”
The sheriff’s face closed like a door.
“Just weather.
Trails get dangerous after dark this time of year.” He straightened.
“Stay off the north ridge.
That’s not a request.”
He left.
Allison watched him climb into his cruiser and drive away.
Then she picked up the coffee he had left, still hot, and drank it while she finished packing.
She spent the morning in the tiny public library two streets over from the motel.
The building was barely larger than a double-wide, staffed by a single librarian in her sixties who looked surprised to have a visitor.
Allison requested every local history volume they had, along with any newspaper archives covering the last twenty years.
What she found was a pattern.
Disappearances were not new.
Every ten to fifteen years, the ridge produced a cluster of missing persons, always adults, always after dark, always in the weeks leading up to a full moon in autumn.
The official explanations varied: hunting accidents, exposure, animal attacks.
The bodies, when they were found at all, were never found intact.
And every cycle ended the same way: the disappearances simply stopped after the full moon, as if whatever was taking people had eaten its fill and gone back to sleep.
Allison photographed the relevant pages.
The librarian watched her with worried eyes but said nothing.
By afternoon the sky had cleared to a hard, cold blue.
Allison drove to Hale’s Auto Repair.
The bay door was open.
Music played low from a radio somewhere inside, something with a heavy bass line.
She stepped into the relative warmth of the garage and found Derek under the raised hood of a dark pickup, hands black with grease, concentration absolute.
He didn’t look up when she entered, but she knew he had heard her.
“You ignored me again,” he said.
“I did.” She leaned against a workbench.
“I found the pattern.
Every decade or so, something in these woods starts taking people.
Always near the full moon in fall.
Always stops afterward.
The sheriff knows.
The older people in town know.
And you know.”
Derek wiped his hands on a rag and finally turned.
In the harsh fluorescent light, his eyes were a clear, dark brown.
No gold.
Just tired.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” he said quietly.
“Then help me understand so I don’t.”
He studied her for a long time.
The radio played on.
Outside, a logging truck rumbled past on the main road.
“There’s a place,” he said at last.
“Up past the old fire road.
Not on any of the tourist maps.
If you’re determined to see what you’re dealing with, I’ll take you there.
Tomorrow.
Daylight only.
You do exactly what I say, or I leave you on the side of the trail.
Clear?”
Allison felt something tight in her chest loosen a fraction.
“Clear.”
“Be here at seven.
Wear boots you can run in.”
She nodded and turned to go.
His voice stopped her at the open bay door.
“Allison.”
She looked back.
“Whatever you think you’re chasing,” he said, “it’s been chasing things longer than you’ve been alive.
Don’t mistake curiosity for armor.”
She held his gaze for a moment longer, then stepped out into the cold sunlight.
That night the note under her door was different.
He’s not what you think.
Neither is the thing in the woods.
Leave before the moon rises.
Allison sat on the bed with the paper in her hands and felt the first real thread of fear slide under her skin.
Not of Derek.
Of the fact that someone else was watching her closely enough to leave messages, and that someone knew more about the man in the auto shop than she did.
She slept with the desk chair wedged under the doorknob and her phone charged on the nightstand even though there was still no signal.