She slowed the Jeep, then stopped. She’d been driving for three hours across the high desert, chasing a story about abandoned mines, and her mind was as empty as the landscape. But this—this was something else.

She started the engine. The spider’s legs twitched, then stilled.

She found it on the inside of the windshield.

The sun had just begun to bake the two-lane blacktop when Lena saw it: a single, silver thread stretched between the cracked asphalt and a dry weed. A spider’s web, glinting.