Page 37 of Where the Fields Don’t Reach

She had no right to an opinion about anything he did with the life she’d cost him.

She glanced up to find Mason still staring at her intently. When she still offered nothing, he nodded slowly, like he wasn’t expecting any different. How was it that she could still disappoint him?

“I’ll let you get to your day.”

Mason moved toward the front of the station. He had his hand on the door before she found her voice. Before she had the courage to say what she should have said the day he’d walked out of that prison.

“Take the money, Mason.” Hadley’s words came out rough, scraped up from somewhere inside the acid in her chest. He stopped, though he kept his back to her. “Take it and leave Whistlerun. Start somewhere else where the residents don’t know a thing about you, because nobody here is ever going to let you just live. I’d understand it, too. I wouldn’t blame you for every mile you managed to put between yourself and this place.”

15

Hadley Dawkins

September 2026

Wednesday – 9:17 am

The community college parking lot had filled in around Hadley, a slow tide of hatchbacks and dented sedans nosing into the slots closest to the buildings. Students spilled out of their vehicles with backpacks slung over one shoulder and earbuds already in. She had taken a spot at the far end of the lot, well back from the rest, and she’d left a slot open on either side of the Equinox on purpose.

She’d been leaning against the front of her SUV the better part of five minutes now, her own coffee going lukewarm in one hand while Nick’s sat on the hood beside her. His cardboard sleeve, which had slid down the cup, had sweated a faint ring onto the paint. The slight imperfection kept her mind busy after her conversation with Mason this morning. It was easier to weigh the pros and cons of getting a new vehicle than it was to think about her life in general. Maybe she’d trade in both the police chief’s cruiser and her personal vehicle for a model that could handle the local terrain. She made a mental note to bring it up to Warren, though that thought didn’t appeal to her, either.

Hadley pulled her phone from the pocket of her blazer and checked the time.

The morning had that thin, transitional quality September wore in Cane County every now and then. The sun was bright enough to put a glare off the windshields, but there was no real warmth behind it. A breeze came across the lot from the direction of the fields that hemmed the campus on its eastern side. She slid her phone back into her pocket, shifted her weight off her heels, and rolled her shoulders to alleviate some of the tension.

She relaxed slightly when she finally spotted Nick’s cruiser turning into the lot. She didn’t bother to raise a hand. As she’d suspected, he noticed her immediately, since she’d parked so far back. Before too long, he swung wide into the open slot on her left and cut the engine.

He took his time climbing out, unfolding from the driver’s seat before settling his hat just so against the glare. His attention landed instantly on the second cup waiting on the hood.

“You, Hadley Dawkins, are pure salvation.” Nick slammed the door shut and crossed the few feet of asphalt between them, his attention staying on the coffee. He leaned in for the cup, and a subtle fragrance came with it. Warm, clean, and just a hint of cedar. “Any time you want company for an interview, you call me. I mean that.”

“I figured another cup of coffee was the surest way to pry you out of that cushy desk chair of yours.” Hadley gave him a small shrug. “It’s not that hot anymore, but it’s better than what you’ve got at the station.”

“You won’t get an argument from me.” Nick lifted the cup off the hood, turned, and settled his back against the front of her Equinox so the two of them faced the same long stretch of parked cars. He brought the rim to his lips and took a slow first swallow. “All right. Talk to me. What did you find out?”

Hadley wrapped both hands around her own cup now that she’d gathered her thoughts. This was going to be a cut-and-dried second interview, but she ought to be completely truthful with him before they went inside. She’d laid out most of the details for him two days back, so she had no intention of rehashing anything that would hold them up any longer.

“I got more than I thought I would when I interviewed Mercer on Tuesday,” Hadley said. “His office walls were covered in county maps. There were banker’s boxes dating back decades, and it was easy to tell they were source material on our local folklore. The man’s given his whole life to the Threshing Man, Nick. And he doesn’t talk about it the way the rest of the county does, either. I think he’s convinced himself the Threshing Man isn’t some monster out in the fields taking what’s owed. He’s got it in his head that it’s a guardian. A protector, of sorts.”

Nick’s right brow arched in skepticism. He’d made his views on their local legend perfectly clear last year, though he was careful about who he shared his opinions with when it came to protecting the county. He didn’t believe in any of the folklore that had been handed down over the generations, and he made no apologies about it.

“There’s a county map pinned over his filing cabinet.” Hadley turned the cup slowly in her hands as the image came back to her. “An old one. It has Whistlerun’s back roads on it, the dirt tracks that never made it onto anything official. Mercer has dotted the whole thing with pushpins, clusters of them out by the fields where I assume folks have claimed to have seen something over the years. I expected that much. What I didn’t expect was the one red pin sitting off on its own.”

Another breeze came through, this one stronger, and the tall cornstalks whispered from across the way. Nick’s gaze slid from her to the swaying field, and she figured his frown was directed toward Mother Nature’s attempt at joining their conversation.

“And what did this red pin mark, Hadley?”

“A specific dirt road at the back of the county. One that doesn’t show on a map, and one you only know about if you were born and raised here.” Hadley met his stare. “The road where Donovan Huber found Reed and his truck.”

Nick went still with the cup halfway to his mouth.

He grimaced and lowered it without drinking.

“There’s more.” Hadley had saved the knot that tied it together for last, because she still hadn’t decided what to make of it herself. “I did some digging when I got back to town. Word is Nora Oliver’s mother is a Stiles, and the Stileses run thick out toward Holloway. One of those cousins, a Wade Stiles, married Roland Mercer’s sister about four years back. Quiet little wedding, from what I gather.”

“I’ll save the jokes about family ties in this neck of the woods,” Nick muttered, and motioned for her to continue.

“The bottom line is that Reed’s fiancée and the man Reed buried a citation for are family.” Hadley had put it as simply as she could for the sake of time. “Folded into the same tree, whether the two of them ever shared a word or not before their run-in last year. I had wanted to speak with Nora before her shift at the hospital, but I was running late this morning. I’ll try again tomorrow.”