Page 89 of Silent Bones
Then he saw it.
A small square of white, caught beneath the wiper blade.
He frowned, glancing back at the station windows. Empty. The glass reflected only the weak lamplight and his own figure, hunched and blurred.
Noah stepped to the windshield and plucked the paper free. It was thick, heavier than copy stock. Folded once. It was crisp. The kind of fold someone made when they didn’t want it crumpled, and didn’t want it mistaken for trash. He turned it over.
Six words were centered. Each one was in block print, sharp and evenly spaced.
Some things are better left alone.
Noah stared at it for a long moment.
Not handwritten. Not personal. No sign of smudging, no pressure indentation. No signature. The phrasing, didn’t read like a threat. It read like... advice. A warning, maybe. Like a sign posted just before a cliff edge.
He turned slowly, scanning the edge of the lot. The woods beyond swayed gently under moonlight. Nothing moved. No headlights coming up the gravel. No engines ticking. Just the wind, and the faint rustle of brittle branches overhead.
Noah folded the note and slid it into his coat pocket.
He didn’t get in the vehicle right away. Instead, he stood beside it, fingers hooked in the belt of his coat, staring out past the parking lot’s perimeter. He listened, not just with his ears, but with the alertness that lived behind his ribs. That creeping instinct, honed over years, that told him when something had shifted beneath the surface.
Not an overt move. Not a knock at his door. Just... something stirring.
He got in the Bronco and shut the door. He didn’t turn the key. Just sat with the paper still pressing against his chest. He kept his eyes on the lot entrance. His mind flashing back.
Earlier that day, Sheriff Rivera had said it casually, almost offhand, while they were reviewing the arrest report. “You’re making a lot of noise upstairs, Sutherland. I’m hearing things. Just rumors. But they’re moving.”
She hadn’t saidwhothey were. But she hadn’t needed to.
Noah took out the note. He looked at it again, then tapped it once against the steering wheel, then set it on the dashboard. The interior lights flicked off. Darkness enclosed the cabin.
He looked up again at the woods beyond the fence.
Some things are better left alone.
Not just a poetic turn. But a commandment, a gate nailed shut with a smile. He started the engine. The headlights pushed back the dark a few dozen feet, but only a few.
The hallwayoutside Rivera’s office was unnervingly quiet for a Thursday morning. Dispatch was murmuring behind glass. A fresh pot of coffee steamed on the break room counter, untouched. The morning briefing had been skipped. No one hadsaid it was canceled, just… skipped. Like everyone was waiting to see who’d blink first.
Noah stood in front of Rivera’s closed door with a notepad in one hand and the folded windshield note in his coat pocket. He could still feel its weight, light, but deliberate. He knocked once.
“Come in.”
Her voice was clipped.
He pushed the door open. Rivera was seated behind her desk, back straight, one hand over a printed memo, the other holding a half-drained mug of coffee. She didn’t look up right away.
Noah stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
“You wanted to see me.”
She nodded, eyes still on the paper in front of her. Then finally she met his gaze.
“You made an arrest yesterday,” she said.
“Mack Hawkins. Found with enough meth to file federal charges. Unlicensed traps, too.”
Rivera leaned back in her chair. “Good work.”
