The path to the quarry began in familiar forest and ended somewhere older.
Firs crowded the slope, their lower branches webbed with ice. The ground turned from soft leaf mold to stone and brittle scrub. At the ridge top, the wind came through hard enough to sting your ears. Far below, the temporary bridge was a narrow brown stroke across the creek.
Ash walked ahead, quick and sure-footed. Micah brought up the rear. He had spent the morning making jokes about paperwork and hostile alphas, but now he watched the tree line with a beta's focused calm.
"Here," Ash said.
The marker stood waist-high beneath a fallen spruce. It was old granite, speckled black and white, with two survey lines cut across its crown. The lines were weathered. The V on its face was not. Fresh pale stone showed through the groove.
You ran a gloved fingertip near it, careful not to disturb the dust collected at its base.
"Someone wanted this found," you said.
"Vale?" Ash asked.
"Maybe. Or someone wanted us to think of him."
Micah crouched on the far side. "Why mark an old stone?"
"A boundary dispute," you said. "The marker establishes which side of the quarry road belongs to whom. But this V doesn't alter the survey lines. It's a message."
"His initial," Ash said.
"Possibly."
You took photographs and measured the cut. Then you studied the ground.
One set of boots had reached the stone from the north, where the road ran toward Vale's territory. Another set, smaller, had come from the east and doubled back. You found a strip of gray cloth snagged on a broken branch. It was heavy fabric, the kind used for medic's satchels or work coats.
"Could be weeks old," Micah said.
"Not the footprints. It rained two nights ago."
You looked beyond the marker. The old quarry opened into a bowl of exposed rock. Rusting machinery lay half-buried in brush. Water gathered in the deepest cut, still and dark as a pupil.
Ash went rigid.
"What?" you asked.
He pointed at the far wall.
For an instant, you saw a person between the pines—a flash of gray coat, a pale face. Then the figure vanished.
Micah keyed the radio. "Possible watcher at the quarry. Three of us. Moving back to the ridge trail."
"No," Ash said. "That was Orren."
"You couldn't see his face," Micah replied.
"I know how he moves. He limps on the left."
You looked at the far wall. The figure had kept one hand against the stone while crossing the slope. A person with an injured leg might move that way. So might a person trying not to slip.
"We don't follow," you said. "Not without a plan."
Ash spun toward you. "He's our proof."
"Maybe. And if Vale knows he's here, he's bait."
The words struck harder than you intended. Ash's face closed.
"You think I'm going to run after him like an idiot."
"I think you love your family and you are scared. I would be tempted too."
"I'm not scared."
Micah glanced at you over Ash's shoulder, wisely saying nothing.
You crouched and placed your notebook on the stone between you. "Then help me work out why Orren would show himself and leave."
Ash's anger had somewhere to go. He knelt.
You drew the quarry, the road, and the two trails. Ash corrected the width of the eastern cut. Micah added a line where he had seen the figure disappear.
"He could be hiding from Vale," Ash said.
"Or waiting for a safe way to approach us," you said.
"Or hurt," Micah added.
You circled the sheltered ledge beyond the water. "If he knows this place, he'll use that before nightfall. We can leave food, a radio, and a note. No one has to follow him into an unknown blind corner."
Ash looked at the small circle you had drawn. "And if Vale finds it first?"
"Then the radio tells us someone else is here. Either way, we learn something."
Ash nodded at last.
Micah set a spare radio and wrapped food beneath an overhang. You wrote a short note: You can speak to us without coming to the lodge. Channel three. No one here will give you to Vale.
On the hike back, snow began to fall in earnest.
The flakes caught in Ash's hair. He did not brush them away.
"I'm scared," he said after a long silence.
"I know."
"I hate that he can still do that."
You watched your breath bloom white before you. "Fear doesn't mean he still owns you."
Ash took that in without answering.