“I don’t see any new damage here. Honestly, I don’t know why someone would bother with this. Or how someone intent on vandalizing a memorial in the woods could be caught.”

“Maybe I should camp out.” Alex laughed.

“For months at a time?”

Mackenzie wandered over to Alex’s father’s plaque. “I have an idea.”

Alex moved to stand next to her, and Terra followed.

“I’m listening,” he said.

“Why not hold a special ceremony to rededicate the memorial? That could draw out this unstable person. Around that time, someone could be out here hiding and watching.”

Terra blew out a breath. “I appreciate the memorial commemorating my mother, your father, and Erin’s stepfather, as well as others, but that seems like a lot of effort on our part. I can’t speak for the county, but my guess is they don’t have the resources.”

Mackenzie moved around the plaques. “Wait a minute. Only two plaques have been destroyed.” She looked from the plaque for Terra’s mother to the one for Alex’s father. “That could mean something.”

Alex looked at Terra. “I agree. We talked about this. It seems I’m not the only one to see the obvious. You could ask your father about that time. He left after your mother died. Maybe there’s more to it than we already know.”

Like him, maybe Terra wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Stirring up the past was never good for anyone. But perhaps that’s what the vandalism was all about.

“I’ll see what I can find out,” she said. “In the meantime, I’m heading home.”

“We should go too.” He dreaded unearthing secrets best left buried.

He glanced at Mackenzie. In her case, he was pretty sure someone had already stirred up the past, and he and Mackenzie had to walk the path through the valley that held more than shadows of death.

TWENTY-FOUR

While Alex steered away from the trailhead, Mackenzie couldn’t ignore the sense of urgency that weighed on her.

“Take me to Hanstech.”

He slammed on the brakes, and the car slid across the gravel of the parking lot. “What? Why?”

“I need to see what’s on that lower level.”

“You already know. Servers. Another system that requires security clearance.”

“My sister’s in trouble. I’m in trouble. I need to get into the servers. Maybe I shouldn’t have shared this with you. You could get into a lot of trouble, assisting a known criminal as she hacks into sensitive data.” He didn’t respond. What does that mean? “Alex, I need to know what you’re thinking. Please . . . If you need out, want out, then tell me.”

Glancing around at the darkness surrounding them, he accelerated, steering onto the paved road and in the opposite direction of Stone Wolf Ranch. So he was taking her to Hanstech, after all, and that was answer enough.