Page 8 of One-Track Pride

There's a war behind his eyes, a whole sentence he starts and swallows. He doesn't reach for the true answer. He reaches for a smaller one, and I can tell it costs him even so.

"Because I like you a great deal more than I planned to," he says. "I keep telling myself it was about the investigation, and I've stopped being able to sell it to myself."

The crew room feels suddenly too small and too warm. I've built a career on staying cool while everyone else comes apart, and right now my pulse is doing something undignified.

"Well," I manage. "That makes two people bad at selling it."

His head lifts. "Yeah?"

"Don't look pleased. It's inconvenient and it's mutual, and those two things are at war in me." I hold his eyes. "Last night I caught myself thinking about that diner sidewalk instead of my case notes. Draw your own conclusions."

The space between us goes taut and electric, the same current from the parking lot, only closer, with no snow to blame it on. He leans in a fraction, but I don't lean back.

My phone buzzes against the table, splitting the moment in half. A depot alert: afternoon departure confirmed, 2:14 p.m., boarding one hour prior. I read it out loud, and the words drop the temperature back to something survivable, the excuse we both needed and neither wanted.

"I have to pack," I say, standing before I can second-guess it. "And you have to decide what you actually want to do about this, because a stolen moment in a crew room isn't a plan."

"Camille."

I sling my bag over my shoulder. "I'll see you before the train. Try not to invent a new reason to stop me between now and then."

I walk out before he can answer without looking back, because if I see his face it'll undo me, and I still have a train to catch, and right now that's the only part being sensible.

6

EVANDER

Gideon's text pings while I'm still in the crew room Camille walked out of, and it drags my head out of everything soft and stupid. Tire tracks, maintenance road nine, see this before you do anything else.

Road nine is chained off for the season. Nobody has business up there until thaw, so I take the emergency truck instead of asking questions over a line half the county can listen to. The chain's still up when I arrive, looped through its post exactly as we left it. The snow underneath tells a different story than the padlock does, two sets of tire tracks running past the barrier and up the grade, pressed deep, too recent for the fresh fall to have buried them.

Gideon's already out of his truck, crouched at treads, breath fogging. He doesn't waste time on hello.

"Somebody drove around the chain," he says, nodding to where the tracks veer into the trees and back onto the road past the post. "Then straight up toward the restricted access. Two vehicles, heavy. In last night, out before dawn."

"Not hunters, or kids?"

"Hunters don't go around a chain. They cut it or turn around." He looks up. "These wanted inside without a record of being inside."

"You're sure about the timing?"

"Snow doesn't lie about timing. You drilled that into me." He straightens, joints popping. "Didn't want to go further without you. Figured you'd want your own nose on it."

He's right, and we both know it. I glance up and down the empty road, listening past the wind for engines or voices, for anything human. Nothing but the creak of loaded branches. Certain we're alone, I let the change ripple up under my skin, just far enough to sharpen everything. The world goes loud and bright with scent, diesel, cold rubber, the sour tang of men awake too long. Under it, threaded fine and unmistakable, is something that lifts the hair along my arms.

"Explosive residue," my voice comes out rougher than usual, the lion right behind it. "The refined kind. Not blasting caps for clearing rock."

"You're certain."

"I've smelled it before. Avalanche control uses a cousin of it, but this isn't ours." I follow the scent up the grade with my eyes, toward where the access route feeds into the pass. "Somebody hauled military-grade material up a closed road in the dark, then walked a stretch on foot from here. Toward the tracks."

"Ours don't do that." Gideon says it half to himself. "Ours log every gram."

"These didn't log anything."

"Then we call Owen." Gideon's already reaching for his radio. "This is past us now. Sabotage is one thing. Explosives near a live line is a federal problem, and Beckett needs…"

"Try it."