Page 27 of Silent Grave (Sheila Stone #12)

Sheila felt the adrenaline hitting her veins as she and Finn studied the Whitman house, which crouched against the mountainside like a wounded animal, its windows dark and clouded with decades of neglect. The driveway was rutted, but there were no signs of recent vehicles or recent foot traffic.

Still, that didn't mean Peter Whitman wasn't here. It might serve his purposes to come and go through a separate entrance, allowing the building to maintain its air of abandonment.

"Stay behind me," Finn said quietly, drawing his weapon.

Sheila, who already had her gun out, considered reminding him that he'd only just recovered from a bullet wound. She suspected it would do no good, however.

They approached the house carefully, then took positions on either side of the door. Finn tried the door and found it unlocked. It swung inward with a faint groan, revealing a musty darkness.

Their flashlight beams cut through years of dust motes, illuminating a living room frozen in time. Faded religious paintings hung on wood-paneled walls. A heavy Bible lay open on a side table, its pages warped with age and damp.

Without a word, they spread out, picking their way through the house.

"Clear," Finn called from the kitchen.

Sheila moved deeper into the living room, studying the space where Peter Whitman had spent his childhood. Everything was exactly as it must have been when Frank disappeared—dishes still in the drain rack, coffee cups on the counter, a newspaper from 1977 yellowing on the kitchen table.

But something else caught her attention. Crosses. They were everywhere—hanging on walls, sitting on shelves, carved into doorframes. Not just decorative pieces, but heavy wooden crucifixes that seemed to loom in the beam of her flashlight.

"Sheila." Finn's voice drew her to a narrow hallway. "You need to see this."

She followed him to a small bedroom that could only have been Peter's.

Here too, crosses dominated the decor, but these were different.

Darker. Many appeared to have been carved by hand, the cuts deep and aggressive.

They covered the walls in overlapping patterns, some etched directly into the wood paneling.

"Look at this," Finn said, gesturing to a patch of wall near the bed. The crosses there were smaller, closer together, like hash marks counting days. Beneath them, carved in a child's uncertain hand, I will learn what darkness teaches.

"How old was he?" Sheila wondered aloud. "When his father started..."

She didn't finish the thought. She didn't care to put into words what Peter's father had done to him.

They continued through the house, documenting everything.

In Frank's study, they found more evidence of religious obsession.

Bible verses had been written directly on the walls, the handwriting growing more frantic as it climbed toward the ceiling: verses about light and darkness, their meaning twisted to serve a father's cruel purposes.

A photo album lay on Frank's desk, its leather cover cracked with age.

Sheila opened it carefully, playing her flashlight over faded photographs.

Frank Whitman stared out from many of them—a tall man with hard eyes and a preacher's stern bearing.

In most photos, young Peter stood slightly behind his father, his expression carefully blank.

"Wait," Sheila said, stopping at one photo. It showed Frank and Peter at a mine entrance, but something about it caught her attention. She pulled out her phone, comparing it to the crime scene photos from Tyler Matthews' murder. "The cross. Look at the cross around Frank's neck."

Finn leaned closer. "Same one we saw in the video from Marcus Reed's glasses."

"Peter kept it. Took it from his father's body, maybe.

" She turned another page and drew in a sharp breath.

This photo showed Peter alone, perhaps twelve years old, standing in a mine tunnel.

He wore what looked like prison chains, their links gleaming in the camera flash.

His father's cross hung too large around his thin neck.

"He's smiling," Finn said quietly.

He was right. Unlike the blank expression in other photos, young Peter beamed at the camera, eyes bright with something that might have been joy.

Or madness.

They found more photos, more evidence of Frank's obsession with darkness and redemption. But nothing to suggest Peter had returned here recently. The house was exactly as it had been left decades ago, layers of dust undisturbed except for the occasional curious teenager or urban explorer.

In Frank's study, Sheila found a Bible with hundreds of handwritten notes in the margins.

But these weren't typical religious annotations—they were twisted interpretations, paranoid ramblings about punishment and darkness that had nothing to do with actual Christian teachings.

Frank had created his own religion, using fragments of scripture to justify his cruelty.

"Look at this," she said, showing Finn a passage where Frank had written: The darkness shall be his teacher, as it was mine. Through suffering comes understanding. Next to it, in different handwriting—perhaps Peter's—someone had added: The darkness speaks its own gospel.

"He wasn't following any real faith," Finn said, examining more of Frank's writings. "This was his own creation, his way of justifying what he did to his son."

"And Peter adopted it," Sheila added. "But he made it his own.

Where Frank used Christian imagery to hide his cruelty, Peter embraced darkness itself as his religion.

" She gestured at the crosses scattered throughout the house.

"These weren't symbols of faith for them—they were markers of control, of power. "

They found more evidence of this perversion in Frank's journals.

While he quoted scripture and claimed divine guidance, his actual beliefs had nothing to do with traditional Christian teachings of love, forgiveness, and redemption.

This was a cult of one, passed from father to son, transformed through years of abuse into something even darker.

The entries also traced his descent into madness, which seemed to have begun in 1958, during Frank's early days as mine foreman.

His military engineering background had made him confident—perhaps too confident—about the mines' stability.

Then came the collapse that killed three workers under his command—and trapped him in total darkness for six days.

The early passages of one of the journals showed a man grappling with trauma—nightmares about the weight of earth above him, panic attacks at the sight of dark spaces.

But as the weeks turned to months, something shifted.

The darkness that had terrified him became an obsession.

He began writing about its "purifying" qualities, how it stripped away pretense and weakness.

His fear was overcome by a sense of power—the realization that he could control who lived and died in the darkness.

Later entries suggested he'd started deliberately spending nights in the mines, claiming the darkness "spoke" to him.

His religious references grew more twisted, mixing scripture with ravings about tests of faith in the depths.

By the time Peter was born, Frank had fully embraced his delusion that darkness was God's chosen instrument of revelation—a belief he would eventually inflict on his son in the most horrific ways.

They were interrupted by the buzzing of Finn's phone. He answered, listening for a moment. His expression changed. "We'll be right there."

"What is it?" Sheila asked as he ended the call.

"Another missing person," he said grimly. "One of the protesters."

***

Sheila stood in Sarah Riggs' crowded office at Save Our Mountains headquarters, watching the protest leader pace between filing cabinets and stacks of signed petitions.

The space smelled of coffee and printer ink, and a wall of monitors showed live feeds from the mine entrances—the protest group's own surveillance system.

"Michelle was covering the mountain residences," Riggs said, shuffling through papers on her cluttered desk.

"We have strict protocols—check in every two hours, never enter homes, stay on marked roads.

" She found what she was looking for—a clipboard with a list of addresses.

"But we're missing her route sheet. She took it with her. "

"When was her last check-in?" Finn asked. He'd positioned himself near the door, trying not to disturb the organized chaos of the small office.

"Nine-thirty." Riggs checked her watch. "Almost three hours ago.

She was supposed to call at eleven." She ran a hand through her steel-gray hair.

"I should never have sent her up there alone.

But with the media coverage of Diana Martinez's disappearance, we needed those signatures.

Needed to show the mining company that people want these death traps sealed now, not after some endless safety review. "

Sheila studied the wall of monitors. "Your people really watch the mines twenty-four seven?"

"We track everything—vehicles entering the area, unusual activity, any sign the mining company is trying to destroy evidence of their negligence." Riggs gestured to a young man monitoring the feeds. "Show her the footage from this morning."

He pulled up a recording. The time stamp read 9:15 AM. Michelle Waring appeared, clipboard in hand, walking toward a cluster of mountain homes. She was young—early twenties maybe—with long dark hair and the earnest expression of someone who believed she could change the world.

"That's the last visual we have," Riggs said. "The cameras don't cover the private residences. Too many complaints about privacy."

"We need a list of every house on her route," Sheila said. "And any information about who lives there."

"Already compiled." Riggs handed her a folder. "Most are longtime residents—retirees, artists, people who like their solitude. But there are some rental properties, some vacation homes. And a few..." She hesitated. "A few where we're not sure who lives there."

Sheila opened the folder, scanning the list. Twenty-three addresses. Twenty-three possibilities.

"Any of these residents ever give you trouble?" she asked Riggs. "Complaints, threats, unusual behavior?"

"A few don't appreciate our work," Riggs admitted.

"Old-timers who think we're outsiders causing trouble.

But nothing violent." She leaned over Sheila's shoulder, pointing to several addresses.

"These ones worry me though. Properties that keep changing hands, or where we're not sure who lives there. "

Finn joined them, studying the list. "We'll need teams to check each location. But we have to be careful—if Whitman sees us coming..."

He didn't finish the thought. They all knew what could happen if Peter felt cornered.

"I can help," Riggs said. "My people know these roads, these houses. We've been documenting everything up here for months."

Sheila considered this. Having the protesters' local knowledge could be valuable, but involving civilians in a potential manhunt was risky.

"What about utility records?" Finn asked. "Any of these houses showing unusual power consumption? Water usage?"

Riggs shook her head. "Most are off the grid. Solar panels, well water. It's why people choose to live up here—independence from the system."

Independence. Isolation. Perfect conditions for someone who'd learned to use darkness as a weapon.

Sheila pulled out her phone, calling dispatch. "I need every available deputy. And get Doc Sullivan up here—he might be able to help us narrow down which of these properties could connect to the old mine system."

As she coordinated the response, her mind kept returning to the Whitman house. To those photos of a young boy in chains, smiling at the camera. To the cross that had been passed from father to son, transformed from a symbol of faith into something darker.

Somewhere on this mountain, in one of these twenty-three houses, he was continuing his father's work.

But something about this didn't align with what they knew about him.

Sheila's hands tightened on the steering wheel as her mind raced through the possibilities.

The killer had always used the mines themselves as his classroom, his sanctuary.

He chose his victims at the entrances, letting the darkness do most of his work.

Taking Michelle directly from the surface felt wrong.

A cold realization settled over her. "He's adapting," she said quietly. "He knows we've been monitoring the mine entrances."

"Which makes him even more unpredictable," Finn said.

"And more likely to make a mistake. Hopefully, one that will lead to his arrest."

But which house was his? And how many hours did they have before Michelle Waring became another lesson in his twisted gospel of darkness?