Page 165 of The Case of the Missing Love Stone

Scarlet slows. I feel the change through her fingers before I see it in her face. “Two days until the Month of Heart and they’ve somehow made the theft part of the attraction,” she says.

The volunteer hands the pack a printed copy of the Everlasting Pack legend.

“They need the story to keep working,” I say.

I think of the letter folded inside the cedar box upstairs at the cottage, the one none of us have spoken of since the night Scarlet found it. Legends survive because someone keeps choosing them over the truth. I wonder, not for the first time, who chose this one for her family and what it cost them.

Scarlet watches the omega lean back into her alphas.

Her thumb brushes my knuckles. “The town keeps confusing truth and legend.”

Wes moves closer on her other side. “And ignoring the consequences.”

Tom waits near the former dining room, now labeled Preservation and Collections in polished brass. The museum director stands beside him with a ring of keys and an annoyed expression.

“We have written consent for the preservation office and rear shed,” Tom says. “The board refused to close the public galleries.”

Wes looks toward the tourists. “There is an active threat.”

“The board believes closure would cause panic.”

Scarlet’s mouth presses thin. “People are already panicking. They’re just buying souvenirs while they do it.”

The museum director clears his throat. “We have obligations to the festival.”

Wes’s cedar sharpens.

Scarlet rests her palm against his chest before he answers. The gesture is small, but it works.

Tom unlocks the staff door. The preservation office occupies what was once the boarding house kitchen. Cloudy windows hang above painted cabinets, and the old fireplace was converted into a nest of cables feeding a battered computer. Festival schedules, invoices, ribbon samples, and volunteer sheets cover the corkboard.

A county technician sits at the terminal while another photographs the printer.

Scarlet stops near the doorway.

Wes notices the fatigue crossing her face and moves a chair without asking. He places it close enough that she remains inside our reach but outside the work area.

She sits without protest. I drape the folded blanket over her lap, and her fingers close around the edge. “We won’t mention this.”

“Never,” I assure her. I study the corkboard while we wait for the technician. “Every work session has overlapping staff. No clean separation anywhere on this list.”

I already know the names on the list from the file Tom sent earlier: Myrtle, the director, and volunteers whose families have run festival booths since before any of us were born, people with thirty years of reasons to be standing in this exact room on any given Tuesday night.

“It’s the same names we’ve already seen,” I explain. “All of them with a reason to be here.”

The technician glances toward Tom. “The browser history was cleared. The hard drive shows recent deletion activity, but the printer maintains a separate queue.”

“How recent?” Wes asks.

“Within the last forty-eight hours.”

The technician returns to the screen.

Waiting has its own pressure. I keep my voice level for Scarlet’s sake, though something in my chest paces like an animal in a cage too small. Wes’s stillness reads as control. Mine has always had to look like calm instead, a thing I built rather than a thing I have.

Wes stands behind Scarlet with both hands resting on her shoulders. I take the chair beside her and keep our knees touching. Her scent remains tired but steady, sage and rain wrapped inside cedar and spice. The pack has begun to carry its own weather.

A progress bar crawls across the monitor.