The planks gave under her boots with the particular hollow sound of old wood over moving water, each step announcing itself and then swallowed.
She had fourteen hours to kill before Twisted Lanes even opened. She’d told herself she was just driving, and the road had let her believe it for a while.
Overhead, rough-cut beams rose in silver-gray arcs, the roof of the covered bridge sagging faintly in the middle, moss furring the north side of every board that never saw sun. Light came through the gaps in long, dust-thick bars. The air inside the walls was cooler than the road had been, and it smelled like creek water and old timber going soft with rot.
A plaque was bolted low on the wall near the entrance, gone green with age. Seven names, one year, and beneath them, Taken by the water. Never forgotten. She read each name once, the way you’d read a stranger’s headstone.
She started along the wall, one palm trailing the boards, looking for Mark’s carving.
A hundred years of pocketknives had left their history in the wood. Names, mostly. Initials paired off inside hearts, some of them layered over older initials, some scratched through by whoever came after. Class of ’78. Class of ’91. JESUS SAVES, and under it, added later, MOSES INVESTS. Her fingers moved over the grooves as she went, the wood rough and split-grained.
She’d expected it sooner. She was past the middle of the bridge before she found it.
Block letters, carved deep and careless.
SARAH: DESTROYER OF DIRT.
“You said you were carving something sweet.”
I did.
She laughed, one short breath through her nose. She put her fingers in the grooves and traced each letter, feeling where the wood had healed rough around the cuts. Then she sat down beneath it, back against the wall, boots stretched out over the worn planks.
“I have to finish this.” Quiet, almost to herself. “I have to.”
Finish what.
“I have to make this right, Mark. I can’t let them keep breathing when you’re not.”
You think finishing this gets you somewhere I am.
Her thumb found the paracord bracelet at her wrist, turned it once. Then again.
Beneath her, the stream kept moving.
“I just... I miss you so much.”
I know.
Her stomach growled. She’d been ignoring it for an hour.
She looked up. She wasn’t alone.
An old man stood at the far end of the bridge, leaning on the railing past the roofline, looking out over the water.
She got to her feet. “Hello?”
He turned his head, gave her a warm smile. Then he looked back to the water.
She glanced around, then walked toward him.
“Good spot to stand and think a while,” he said, still facing the creek.
She tilted her head.
He lifted his chin toward the far side of the bridge. “Go on. Tell me if you can see it.”
Her brows drew together. She crossed to the other railing and looked down.
The creek ran shallow here, sliding over stones worn smooth and pale, the current breaking around them and closing again. Her own face sat on the surface, coming apart and reassembling, coming apart and reassembling.
“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be look—“
He wasn’t there.
She turned all the way around. The bridge stretched back the way she’d come, dim and striped with light. The dirt road beyond ran out through the trees.
She blinked.
Then she walked back to the carving. She found the letters again, one by one, lingering on each.
She worked the paracord bracelet loose from her wrist and set it on the rail beneath his letters.
She drove east until the county line was behind her and the towns started getting smaller.
This one was barely a town — a blinking yellow light, a shuttered feed store, a diner squatting low at the corner of two county roads like it had grown there instead of being built. A hand-lettered sign in the window read HOME COOKING, the paint gone thin in patches. She parked at the far edge of the lot, backed in, engine off, and scanned the windows for anything that read wrong.
Nothing did. That was the whole point of coming out this far.
She left Ghost wrapped under the blanket on the back seat. Pulled her hood up, cinched it low, and went in with her head down and the door chime rattling behind her.
The place smelled like coffee gone slightly bitter and bacon grease that had seen better decades. She slid into a booth at the back, away from the window, the vinyl cracked and patched with tape gone gray at the edges. A waitress — sixties, hair pulled back tight, name tag reading BLUE — filled a cup without asking and moved on before Sarah had said a word.
She ordered eggs, toast, coffee black. Kept her eyes down.
Three tables occupied. An old man at the counter working a crossword with a chewed pencil. A thin woman across from a ragamuffin little girl, more ketchup on her plate than fries, phone propped against the mustard bottle. And in the corner, half turned toward the window — a man, alone, salt-and-pepper hair, a mug in front of him he wasn’t in any hurry to finish.
The bell over the door jangled hard enough to make Blue sigh before she even turned around.
Four of them came in loud — work vests, tar-blackened boots, sweat and hot asphalt riding in with them. They took the counter like they owned it, stools scraping the floor, one of them roasting another for backing the roller into a ditch last week.
Blue came around with the coffee pot, headed for crossword’s cup, and one of them tracked her with a slow, up-and-down look. She caught it, shot him a faint sneer, and kept pouring.
“Shit, Blue, you really need to get laid.” A couple of them snickered. “Hey, you’re in luck — Billy here just got divorced.”
The whole counter cracked up, too loud for the hour. The old man’s pencil stopped moving over his crossword.
Blue’s mouth went flat and tired. She counted out change and banged the register drawer shut harder than she needed to.
One of them turned his head and saw her — hood up, alone in the back booth.
Something shifted in the noise at the counter — lower, quicker, someone snickering. She kept her head down, eyes cutting sideways under the hood. Motion at the edge of it: a shove, one of them stumbling off his stool.
“Go on, Denny.” Another shove. “Nah — go on.”
Denny stood up.
He slid into the booth across from her uninvited, forearms on the table, grin already spread wide. “What’s your name?”
Sarah didn’t look up from her coffee.
He leaned in. “Hey. I’m talking to you.”
“I’d rather eat alone. Thank you.”
His grin only widened. He settled his forearms in on the table, in no hurry now.
“You got a boyfriend? Too pretty to be sittin’ back here all by yourself.”
Then he leaned closer, trying to find her face under the hood.
“Hey.” Slower now. “I think I know you.”
Her left hand tightened around the coffee cup. Her right hand, low, found the edge of her hoodie and broke the pistol free an inch inside its holster.
“Didn’t you go to Chalk Ridge?”
She brought the coffee to her lips. “No.” She sipped, easing the pistol back down.
“How’s that job out on 29 coming?”
Denny turned. “What?”
“The repaving. Couple miles down.” The salt-and-pepper man stood easy, hands loose at his sides. “Figured you boys would’ve had it wrapped by now.”
“Uh — yeah. Well.” Denny’s grin flickered back on, thinner. “Shit happens, right?”
The man didn’t answer. Just kept looking at him.
Over at the counter, the crew were taking their bagged orders off the top, drifting toward the door, glancing back at Denny on the way.
Denny turned back to Sarah, patted the table once. “Good talk.”
He slid to the edge of the booth and stood — and the man was still right there, close enough that standing put them almost chest to chest. The man didn’t move. Denny huffed out through his nose, stepped around him, and went out after the others.
Sarah let out a breath. “Thanks.”
“Don’t you worry about those boys.” The man’s mouth creased, friendly. “They’re rough around the edges, but they don’t mean any harm.”
She started to smile. Brought the coffee up.
He sat down across from her. Uninvited.
“Sarah, right?”
Her eyes went wide.
He smiled.
“My nephew showed me your picture this morning. On his phone.” He said it easy, pleased. “He’s already on his way. We’re going to make this real simple.”
Her hand shifted off her lap, toward her waist.
“Don’t.”
He glanced back over his shoulder, toward the front windows, then to her again. “Where’s your friend? Figured you two’d be together.”
She said nothing. Held his eyes, brows low.
Her gaze cut to the front door. He drew his jacket aside, just enough to show the checkered grip riding his hip. “That’d be a mistake.”
Blue came by with the pot and topped off Sarah’s cup. “Anything else, hon?”
Out past the man’s shoulder, a van swung into the lot and rolled down toward the side. His phone buzzed in his pocket.
“No thank you, sweetheart. We’re just heading out.” He smiled at Dot, set a twenty on the table. His voice dropped. “Start for the door. Hands where I can see them.”
She didn’t move.
He raised an eyebrow, tipped his head toward the door.
She slid out of the booth and stood, eyes on him. Let out a breath. Started walking.
He fell in behind her.
The bell jangled.
“Left,” he said, close at her back.
The van sat at the far end of the side lot, pulled in tight beside the dumpster, sliding door open. A young man stood by the driver’s door — twenty, maybe less.
She stopped.
He stepped up flush against her, his mouth at her ear. “Keep walking.”
She walked.
A few feet from the open door he said, “Stop. Face me.”
She turned.
He looked past her to the younger man. “Take her gun. Right hip.”
The kid came forward, lifted the right side of her hoodie, and exposed her gun—
She drew. Two into the older man’s chest, tight, and a third below his left eye.
She pivoted. The kid had staggered back into the driver’s door, hand scrabbling for the gun at his hip. She aimed. Put a round through his forehead. He slid down the door to the pavement and stayed there.
She stared forward, gun still raised, breath trapped in her throat. The lot had gone silent except for the ring in her ears.
“What the fucking fuck?!” Two ragged breaths. She was already moving, the pistol back in its holster, boots loud on blacktop.
Her keys missed the lock twice before they caught.
She got in, cranked it, swung down the service road behind the diner and buried the pedal.