Page 47 of In the Dark of the Past

And for the first time, I understood—viscerally—that this wasn’t just about Eleanor, or my mother, or the Fund.

We’d rattled something deep and old in Maple Ridge.

And now, whatever it was, it had our names.

Chapter Seventeen

River

Rain hammered the porch roof as Finn stepped outside, gun low but ready. The red eye stared back from my SUV’s window. Up close, it was worse than in the text.

Thick paint. Glossy. Still wet enough that it dragged in slow crimson threads down the glass.

“Not spray paint,” Finn muttered.

I hovered behind him under the streetlight. “Great. What is it then?”

“Oil marker, I think.” He tugged on a latex glove and wiped a finger across the edge. It smeared slowly. “Takes longer to dry, but it’s harder to wash off.”

“So, they wanted it to last. At least for a while,” I said.

“They wanted you to see it every time you walked to your car.” Finn shook his head.

My jaw tightened.

Finn’s phone buzzed, and he pulled it from his pocket.

“It’s Rand,” he said, shooing me back to the covered porch as he put it on speaker and answered. “Yeah?”

“Tell me you’re awake,” Rand said without preamble.

Finn glanced at me. “Define awake. I’m something. We have news, but you go first. Oh, and River’s here with me. You’re on speaker.”

Rand grunted a bit on the other end of the line. “You know how you asked me to keep an eye on the ridge cams near Eleanor’s site?”

Finn straightened. “Yeah. And?”

Rand exhaled. “You’re not gonna like this.”

“I haven’t liked anything since we started looking into this case,” Finn said, running a hand through his damp hair.

Rand filled us in and told Finn he should head over to the trail. He said he couldn’t go because he had to open the store, but said he’d check in later.

A second later, Finn’s phone chimed. “Video incoming,” he muttered, thumbing the screen.

Rain drummed harder on the porch roof while the file loaded. For a second, the only light came from the bluish glow of his phone screen. Then the attachment resolved. It was a video clip of some grainy night footage. The timestamp in the corner was from yesterday evening, just after dusk. The camera angle was low and crooked, likely strapped to a tree. Raindrops streaked across the lens like scratches.

Three figures stood in the clearing wearing dark rain jackets, the hoods pulled low. But there was just enough illumination to see something else in the voids of those hoods. Masks.

Even pixelated and washed out in infrared, the design was unmistakable—white faces with crude eyes slashed across them.

A chill crawled up my spine. I stepped closer to Finn, my shoulder brushing his as I leaned in.

“That’s the same symbol,” I said quietly.

“Yeah,” Finn murmured. His voice had gone flat in the way it did when his brain shifted into full detective mode.

The video flickered to the next frame. It wasn’t continuous video, but captures timed a bit apart. This image was of one of the figures crouched beside a fallen log. Something metallic glinted in his hand.