Elena Vale's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Elena drove straight from the cabin to town. Miriam Finch had buried Raven's report. Elena wanted the case file, and she wanted to watch Finch's face when she asked for it. She found the office above a shuttered bookshop, the door unlocked. Miriam Finch sat at a desk stacked with color-coded notebooks. She looked up through oversized glasses, pen still moving. A tall woman, sharp-featured, too composed for someone caught. "You're her daughter," she said. "The eyes. Sit down. I've been expecting you for six years." Elena stayed standing. "Raven filed a report about a creature. You made it disappear. I want to know why." Miriam capped her pen. She pulled a locked drawer open with a small key. Inside sat a thin folder and a pressed flower, pale petals flattened between wax paper. "They ordered me to bury it," she said. "A gray man, hook fingers, wearing a woman's face. It reads like madness on paper. My captain said file it as a wandering hiker. I did. Then I kept my own copy." Elena took the folder. Photos of the treeline. Witness pages in Raven's shaking hand. Everything the police had erased. "Why keep the flower?" Elena asked. "Your mother left it in her pack." Miriam touched the wax paper. "It only grows deep in Blackwood, past where trails end. She'd been going in far before she vanished. Farther than a scared woman should." Elena's throat tightened. "So she wasn't just running from the thing. She was hunting it." Miriam nodded once. "That's what I could never prove. And someone didn't want me to." She glanced at the window. "I've had visitors. A car parked outside three nights this week. Your questions woke something. The people who buried this are still here." Glass shattered downstairs. Elena spun. Boots on the stairs, fast, two sets. Miriam moved. She swept the folder and flower into a battered hiking pack under her desk, frayed straps, patched and scuffed. She shoved it into Elena's hands. "Take this. Go out the back. They want it gone, not read." "Come with me," Elena said. "I'll slow them." Miriam pushed her toward the rear door. "I've hidden longer than you've been asking. Run." Elena ran. She hit the alley, pack against her chest, and didn't look back. A hand caught her sleeve. She wrenched free, hearing cloth tear. She reached her car, threw the pack across the seat, and drove. Miles out, she stopped and opened it. The file was there. The flower was there. A phone buzzed in the side pocket, not hers. A text glowed on the screen from an unknown number. We know you have it. The forest already knows your face. Elena set the phone down. She had the truth now, printed and photographed. But someone had marked her the way they'd once marked her mother. And they knew exactly where she was going.