"No," Mara agrees quietly. "It can't."
A pickup truck rumbles down the street, slowing as the driver stares at the damaged pavement. I recognize him—Pete from thehardware store. He parks, gets out, walks over to run his fingers along the cracks.
"What the hell happened here?" He looks between us, confusion and fear warring in his expression.
Thomas opens his mouth, probably to deflect or minimize, but I speak first.
"The truth happened. Finally."
Pete's gaze sharpens. "What truth?"
"The kind that's been buried under decades of missing files and convenient accidents." I shift the laptop to my other arm. "The kind that explains why people disappear in these woods and why the official reports never quite add up."
"Ellie." Mara's voice carries a warning.
"No more warnings." I turn to Pete directly. "You want answers? Read tomorrow's story. All of it."
Pete nods slowly, still staring at the damaged street. "About damn time someone told us what's really going on in this town."
As he walks away, Mara shakes her head. "You're forcing a reckoning."
"Moonhaven was always going to face this choice—accountability or amnesia." I watch more residents emerge from their homes, drawn by the visible damage they can't ignore. "I'm just making sure accountability wins."
The truth is irreversible now. Written, witnessed, spreading through conversations that can't be unspoken.
30
CALEB
The morning after brings visitors to my office in steady streams—not the usual trickle of parking tickets and noise complaints, but something entirely different. Real questions. Direct confrontations. The kind of accountability I've spent years avoiding.
"Sheriff Hart." Margaret Hanson plants herself in front of my desk, arms crossed. "My nephew disappeared three years ago. Hiking accident, you said. But after what we all saw last night..."
I set down the incident report I've been rewriting for the fourth time. No version sounds remotely believable when stripped of euphemisms.
"What exactly are you asking, Margaret?"
"Was it really an accident?" Her voice carries decades of suppressed suspicion. "Or did something hunt him down like it tried to do to that journalist?"
The old me would deflect. Redirect. Offer careful non-answers wrapped in official concern. But Ellie's laptop sits on the corner of my desk—a reminder that silence is no longer an option.
"Your nephew encountered something that shouldn't exist in any official capacity." I sink deeper in my chair. "Something that's been using these woods as hunting grounds for longer than either of us has been alive."
Margaret's face crumples, then hardens. "You knew. All this time, you knew."
"Yes."
"And you said nothing."
"I said nothing." I don't excuse it. Don't explain the pack laws or the protection protocols. Just acknowledge the harm. "I'm sorry, Margaret."
She stares at me silently, anger and grief warring in her expression. Then she turns and walks out without another word.
The door clicks shut behind her, and the sound lands heavier than shouting would have.
I stay seated for a moment, staring at the empty space she occupied, letting the weight of what I didn’t say settle fully. There’s no version of this conversation where I come out clean. There shouldn’t be.
Another knock sounds almost immediately. Then another.