Page 167 of Sugar & Shadows

Every nerve ending in my body lit up and adrenaline surged into my veins.

“Someone was there,” I whispered.

“There hasn’t been a ping on the power for as far back as I can see right now. Hold on, I have to manually scroll through the municipal electrical data.”

While I waited, my knee bounced. More from anticipation than the cold.

“Looks like that was the first time it’s pulled power since—” She sucked in a sharp breath. “Since April twelfth of last year.”

My heart seized in my chest. April twelfth was the day Will McManus was murdered.

My vision tunneled. This was not a coincidence. This was not nothing.

Will had known something. He’d discovered important information. He had been disappearing and keeping secrets, and he’d been distant with friends and family. He loved his family legacy and the land they’d lost to Sugar Moon. He was smart, resourceful, and worked hard.

And he’d made some kind of discovery.

Files, data, or records, maybe. We still didn’t know what.

But he’d downloaded them. Saved them. Moved them. Or at least attempted to. And his employer had gone out of its way to make sure they no longer existed.

“Fuck,” Meg hissed. “Before that, it looks like small amounts of power were used every couple of weeks. Consistent with someone visiting once a month or so. But the last time⁠—”

“Shit.” A calm settled over me. “Will wasn’t killed at the Sugar Moon plant,” I said.

After all, his body had been moved and manipulated.

“Did the police ever search it?” I asked.

“Never found evidence of that in the records I reviewed, but I’ll run another search.”

I reversed out of my parking spot and pulled out onto the road. If there was evidence there, odds were it hadn’t been touched. Unless someone else had already been there.

The snow was really coming down, blurring the windshield each time my wipers swished.

“I’ve got something else,” she added. “Sugar Moon trucks have GPS. GPS data I downloaded the other day for fun.”

“Sounds like you,” I deadpanned.

“I was pissed off after their elite cybersecurity ruined my weekend. But I found some interesting data points.”

“Talk to me.” My headlights barely shone through the heavy falling snow. Heart in my throat, I hunched forward and clutched the steering wheel.

“The truck Will drove was pinged on that road several times before he died.”

My grip tightened and my pulse sped up.

McManus land. The tattoo. His troubled childhood. Utility spikes. GPS patterns. This was not a coincidence.

I was already headed north. If I could beat the worst of the storm, maybe I could find something.

“Shit.” More typing as I turned away from town. “We’ve had a couple of recent pings. Sugar Moon registered vehicles. One the day after the murder. And another yesterday.”

I swallowed thickly. So that area wasn’t completely abandoned. Someone was watching. And if they had gone back yesterday, that was a tell. They were getting nervous. Which usually led to sloppy mistakes. And we could exploit those.

“Good to know,” I said. “Keep tracking. See if you can connect the dots on vehicles, power, and visits to the site.”

“It’s a huge property,” she hedged. “Could be anything. Should I anonymously tip off law enforcement?”