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Elin

Parque Nacional, Portugal, October 2021

It’s just after dawn the next morning when Elin leaves for the clearing. A pang of guilt strikes her as she closes the door, thinking about Isaac waking up, finding her note, his worry.

But as she walks across the decking, she pushes the thought aside, knowing she needs to do this alone. Give it her full concentration.

Elin follows the route she and Isaac took the day before. Easier work, navigation-wise, having already done it, but not in terms of effort. By the time she gets to the top, walking out and onto the grass, she’s breathing heavily, sweat sticking to her T-shirt.

Stripping off her fleece and tying it around her waist, she looks around her. A seed of doubt creeps in as the clearing stares back at her blankly, the blackened trees a lifeless backdrop behind. Has her mind conjured something from nothing? The shock of what she’d discovered about Steed?

But when she moves a little further in, she catches sight of it again: a pattern .

Walking to the centre of the clearing, she slowly turns in a circle. A breeze peels over the ground, picking up a cloud of dirt and ash. Elin closes her eyes against it, but as she opens them again, a fuller pattern is revealed.

Something only hinted at yesterday with the dense cloud cover.

Her skin prickles: patches in the grass.

It looks as if it’s been worn away from repeated use – someone following the same path over and over again – similar to what you’d see on sports fields and tennis courts by the end of the season.

But this … it’s a pattern she hasn’t seen before.

A rough figure of eight, with smaller circles in between.

What could have created it?

Playing out scenarios in her mind, Elin traces the pattern with her footsteps, trying to find the link to the image Kier painted of the clearing on her map, but nothing pulls clear.

It’s possible it doesn’t link to the map, but either way, she thinks, it puts someone here, in the clearing, for significant amounts of time. Given the proximity to the camp, there’s a good chance it’s one of them.

Elin takes some photos and after flicking through them, she slips her phone back in her pocket.

She’s about to head back when she feels a hand clamp heavily on her shoulder. Fingers pinching the fabric of her shirt.