Page 125 of In the Dark of the Past

We barreled through the bar to the narrow exit by the gaming machines. Atlas yanked it open, and cold rain knifed in.

“Go!”

Evan was out first, Atlas driving him forward. Myra and Nivea followed. Then Andra and Libby. Autumn. Cade held the line inside.

River went through with me behind her.

Our feet hit slick pavement just as a masked figure stepped from the shadows at the end of the alley.

Red eyes. Black hood. Something in their right hand.

River inhaled sharply.

I drew my Glock in one clean motion and stepped between her and the figure.

“Sheriff’s department! Hands where I can see them!”

The figure went still. Then, slowly, with the particular deliberateness of someone who wanted to be understood, they raised both hands. When I looked closer, I saw there actually wasn’t anything in the hand. They were both empty.

And then they reached up, gripped the mask, and pulled it off.

Rain hammered the asphalt, and River made a sound I’d never heard from her before.

Cade said, low and certain, “That’s Mark Vale.”

The man in front of us didn’t run. Didn’t even flinch. He just stood there in the rain with the mask hanging from his hand, looking at me with the expression of someone who knew it was over.

“Jordyn’s brother,” River whispered.

“He’s the one who killed Eleanor,” Evan said from somewhere behind me, his voice barely audible. “He wanted you to see him. He wants you to know.”

Thunder cracked overhead.

Mark Vale didn’t move.

In the next flash of lightning, I saw that he still wasn’t reaching for a weapon, and he wasn’t fighting. He was just holding out his hands, palms forward, wrists up. It was the gesture of a man who had decided to surrender.

“Atlas,” I said.

“Already moving,” Atlas said. The cuffs clicked in the rain.

For the first time since Eleanor Jenkins had disappeared, we had people who were there that night in police custody.

River’s hand found my arm in the dark.

I didn’t look away from Mark Vale.

“We’re going to need a very secure room,” I said.

Cade walked up. “I’ve got a place.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

River

Cade’s cabin was forty minutes outside town on a logging road that didn’t appear on county maps. He’d built it himself over three summers in his late twenties because he needed somewhere the world couldn’t follow him. Low and cedar-dark, set back from a creek that ran fast in spring and slowed to a murmur by October. No landline. No Wi-Fi. A wood stove that heated the main room in under twenty minutes if you knew what you were doing.

Cade knew what he was doing.