Chapter 85

Harper

For a while, we walked in an unsettling kind of silence—the kind that made you too aware of every sound that wasn’t there. No crickets. No rustling. Not even the whisper of wind through leaves. Just the crunch of our footsteps and the faint beam of Gavin’s flashlight cutting through the mist.

I kept glancing around, half-expecting something to move just out of sight. My nerves were stretche