Page 83 of In the Dark of the Past

The district attorney.

My throat closed.

Finn didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. He didn’t do anything except go so absolutely, completely still that the air around him seemed to stop, too. Like the world had paused out of respect for what he was being asked to absorb.

Below us, Sean said something to Jordyn. His tone was smooth. Clipped. That of a man accustomed to managing people who were less competent than he was.

Finn exhaled once.

It was the worst sound I’d heard in years.

Not rage. Not surprise. Something that had no clean name. The grief of recognizing a stranger inside someone you built your whole life alongside.

I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say.

I kept the phone steady and kept recording.

Below us, the three of them talked. Jordyn’s voice cracked at the edges while Grant’s was smooth and patient, and Sean’s was a controlled murmur that cut through both. Their words drifted up in pieces, enough to understand the shape of it. Enough for the phone to catch what mattered.

Enough.

Atlas’s hand appeared at Finn’s shoulder. It was barely a touch, just contact, and Finn shook it off without looking. His eyes were locked on the basin below. On his brother standing in the ruins of an abandoned quarry at a bit after ten in the morning, explaining to a compromised deputy why the Watchers’ work was still necessary.

I watched his face. Watched him make a choice I couldn’t make for him. Then he straightened, slow and certain, and looked at Atlas.

Atlas looked back.

Neither of them said a word.

Atlas was already moving, but they let them go.

That was the part I hadn’t expected—the tactical restraint of it. Atlas stepped back into shadow before any of the three below even registered his presence. Finn pulled me back from the ridge’s edge by slow degrees, and we held position while Grant straightened his coat and spoke in low tones to Sean, and Jordyn stood with her arms still crossed and her eyes anywhere but on either man’s face.

Then they dispersed. The SUV reversed and disappeared through the broken gate, and Jordyn followed in her sedan two minutes later.

We stayed where we were until the sound of both engines faded into the distance.

Then the three of us stood up.

Atlas said nothing. He had the expression of a man who had seen enough of the world to understand that some moments needed to breathe before anyone spoke into them.

I looked at Finn.

He was staring at the empty lot below and the space where his brother had been standing thirty seconds ago, like he’d been there a thousand times before. He looked at the gravel and the crane and the stagnant water and all the ordinary ruin of it all.

“Finn,” I said.

He turned. His face was composed, the composure of someone who had put a thing somewhere it couldn’t be dealt with yet and locked the door.

“We have the recording?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Grant. Sean. Jordyn. All three of them, on tape, at a quarry at ten in the morning.” His voice was even. Professional. Completely controlled. “That’s enough for a referral to the Attorney General.”

“It’s enough for a lot more than that,” Atlas said quietly.

Finn nodded once, then turned and started walking back up the ridge toward the truck.