Nora flips the courier’s discarded envelope over in Hunter McCready’s barn, right where the earlier routing marks had been bothering her. She peels back a seam of heavy paper, and something thin glints inside.
A tiny tracking insert drops into her palm. Not a stamp, not a fold mistake, a deliberate component. The barn goes still around it.
Nora
This was inside the envelope. They have not just been sending notices, they have been mapping the inside of the homestead.
Hunter McCready
The route on the notice was never random.
Mrs. Gable’s face tightens at the proof, then settles into something grimly certain. Her earlier help no longer looks accidental, it looks timed.
Mrs. Gable
I gave them enough to calm them down, not enough to give you away. If they were tracing the barn, they were tracing all of us.
Hunter stays by the door while Nora turns the insert under the light, measuring the threat with her eyes. Joy is quiet behind them, listening without moving.
The office’s pressure is not a single letter anymore. It is a long look through the walls, and the homestead suddenly feels watched from the inside.
✓ Quest Accepted
Destroy the tracking insert
“Didn't Gable keave already?”
YES (VeryUnlikely, rolled 5)
Hunter glances toward the barn entrance, realizing the space behind the crates where Mrs. Gable stood is now empty. The heavy wooden door she exited through is still swinging slightly on its hinges, the latch clicking rhythmically against the frame.
Hunter McCready
She slipped out while we were focused on the device.
Nora
She is gone, Hunter. She must have left the moment the courier arrived, leaving us to find this alone.
“I take the device and crush it to dust in my grip”
SUCCESS (Legendary Strength, rolled -2)
Hunter closes his hand around the little insert. Plastic gives with a dry crack, then crumbles under his grip.
Fine shards and a fleck of metal spill into his palm, useless now. The motion costs him a sharp sting across his knuckles.
Nora flinches at the sound, then looks from the dust to Hunter with widened eyes.
Nora
Well, that answers that. If they were listening through this, they are not anymore.
Joy shifts beside the crates, the wooden wedge still tucked near her hand, watching the adults without speaking.
Nora
But now they know we found it. If we want to say anything back, it has to be careful.
Outside, the distant engine sound rolls past the lane again, slow and lingering, as Hunter keeps the dust clenched in his fist.
Quest Complete
Destroy the tracking insert