Nate Cole was on his off-rotation.
For most firemen, that meant sleep. It meant time at home with family or a long afternoon at the Lost Coast Brewery. For Nate, it meant the garage.
He was leaning over the engine bay of his father’s '67 Mustang. The car was a ghost. It was a beautiful, candy-apple red ghost that smelled of gasoline and old leather. He was working on the carburetor. It was a delicate, rhythmic job. It was supposed to be quiet.
He wiped a smear of grease across his forehead. He picked up a wrench. He tried to focus on the turn of the bolt.
Then his phone buzzed on the workbench. It rattled against a bottle of Castrol.
It was Big Mike.
Nate answered. He propped the phone between his shoulder and his ear. "Hey, Tank."
"Chief! The Tank is rolling," Mike’s voice boomed. It was full of the easy, uncomplicated energy of a man who did not worry about strange shadows. "Me and Frankie were talking. We are heading up to a spot on the Mad River. Cold beer. Sharp hooks. No sirens for forty-eight hours. You in?"
Nate looked at the Mustang. He looked at the door leading to the mudroom.
"I can't, Tank," Nate said.
"Can't? It is your off-shift, Cap. The Mustang isn't going anywhere."
"I already have plans," Nate said.
It was a lie. He did not have plans. Not the kind you could talk about over a beer. He had a curiosity that was turning into a fever.
"Plans?" Mike grunted. "Since when do you have plans that do not involve a wrench or a fire hose?"
"Since now," Nate said. His voice was flat. Final. "Catch a big one for me, Tank."
"Your loss, Cap. We will be back Tuesday."
The line went dead. Nate set the phone back on the bench. He did not pick up the wrench again. He stood in the dim light of the garage. The Mustang sat silent.
He stepped out of the garage and into the mudroom. The transition from the smell of motor oil to the smell of woodsmoke and old turnouts was instantaneous. On his way to the kitchen, he stopped in the hallway.
There, mounted on a plaque of polished oak, sat his father’s retirement gift. It was a chrome-plated fire axe. It had been presented to the old man after thirty years on the job. The brass plate beneath it was engraved with the dates of his service.
1988 TO 2018. HELL OF A RUN, CHIEF.
Nate stared at it. The chrome caught the dim afternoon light. It looked bright. It looked clean. It looked like a relic from a more honest time.
He reached out and touched the wood of the plaque. The grain was smooth and cool under his calloused palm.
"What do I do with him, Dad?" Nate whispered.
He stared at the chrome head of the axe. He waited. He stood there in the absolute stillness of the hallway as if he were actually expecting an answer to vibrate through the floorboards or echo from the rafters. He waited for the old man’s voice—that low, gravelly rumble that usually smelled of peppermint and sawdust—to tell him to pull his brother back into the fold. Or to cut him loose for good.
The house didn't answer. A floorboard creaked in the kitchen, settling under the weight of the afternoon.
Nate leaned closer to the shadow box. He looked at the reflection of his own eyes in the polished metal. The house remained silent. The old man was not talking today.
Nate let out a long breath and turned away. He walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. The hum of the motor was the only sound in the room. He grabbed a cold bottle of Coors and popped the cap. He did not want to think about the clearing. He did not want to think about the look on Frankie’s face or the lies Cody was telling.
He headed back out to the garage. The smell of oil and old leather greeted him like an old friend. He set the beer on the workbench and leaned back over the Mustang’s engine bay. He picked up the wrench. He focused on the mechanical. The steel. The parts he could fix with his own two hands.
At the Sheriff’s Office, Cody Cole stood in the doorway of Gantry’s office. The air in here smelled like stale coffee and cheap cigars. Gantry was behind his desk, leaning back in a leather chair that squeaked with every movement.
"I made the call to the University," Cody said.
Gantry looked up. His eyes were hard. "And?"
"I spoke with Dr. Evelyn Reed. She is the department head. I informed her of the bear attack." Cody shifted his weight. "She is not satisfied, Sheriff. She told me she is flying in. She will be here sometime tomorrow morning to pick up Finch’s belongings personally."
Gantry slammed a hand onto his desk. The force made the pens in his cup rattle. "I told you to handle the logistics, Cole! I do not want academics poking around my station while we are trying to manage a crime scene."
"I tried to tell her," Cody said. "She didn't listen. She is coming."
Gantry’s face turned a mottled shade of red. He opened his mouth to bark another order, but the phone on his desk began to ring. It was a sharp, piercing sound. Gantry looked at the caller ID and his expression shifted from anger to a grim, calculated stillness.
"Out," Gantry commanded. He pointed toward the door. "Go get some lunch, Cody. And shut the door behind you."
Cody stepped out into the hallway, pulling the heavy door completely shut until the latch clicked into the frame. He didn't linger. He turned and walked down the quiet corridor back toward the main squad room.
The bullpen was mostly empty, the fluorescent lights humming a low, irritating vibration against the linoleum. Cody reached his desk and sank into his chair. His hands were shaking, so he shoved them deep into his pockets to steady himself.
He looked across the room toward Gantry’s closed door. He couldn't hear what the Sheriff was saying on the phone, but he could hear the muffled, frantic cadence of Gantry pacing—the heavy,rhythmic thud of boots on old carpet moving back and forth, back and forth without stopping.
Inside the closed office, Gantry finally stopped pacing. He ripped the receiver off its cradle before the third ring could finish, his large hand gripping the plastic so tightly his knuckles turned a chalky white.
"Saul," Gantry said, his voice dropping into a raspy, defensive whisper that barely carried across the desk. "Listen to me. I do not care what you think you saw on that table. I do not care what the bite marks look like."
There was a long pause. On the other end of the line, the coroner’s voice crackled through the cheap speaker, rapid and strained with panic. Gantry’s jaw clenched, a thick muscle jumping under the weathered skin of his cheek.
"I said listen!" Gantry growled, cutting him off. He leaned over his desk, his heavy frame casting a massive, jagged shadow against the wood-paneled wall. "We file it as a bear attack. You got that? We can't have this get out of hand. Do you understand me? You sign that death certificate and you bury the rest of those details deep in the file."
The coroner spoke one last, desperate sentence. Gantry didn't reply. He slammed the phone back into its cradle with a violent, echoing crack that sounded like a gunshot in the cramped room.
For a long minute, the Sheriff stood perfectly still over his desk. The harsh, overhead fluorescent light caught the deep, canyon-like creases around his eyes and mouth, exaggerating the sudden paleness of his skin. The usual iron-jawed authority he wore like a shield was completely gone, replaced by a raw, frantic mix of volatile anger and hollow worry. His eyes darted toward the window, wide and bloodshot, staring out at the distant, misty line of the redwoods. He stood trapped between what his rational mind told him was true and the cold, suffocating terror of what he saw waiting in the dark, dense woods long ago. His chest heaved beneath his uniform shirt, his gaze fixed on the shifting fog as the weight of an old, buried secret pulled heavily at his shoulders.