Page 246 of Rangers Last Promise

The photograph.

Two unopened envelopes.

Nothing else.

I finish the last line.

Don’t let him find it.

Grant

Mara looks at me.

“What did Grant take?”

“I don’t know.”

Lieutenant Ross carefully removes the folded cloth.

Something hard is wrapped inside.

She unfolds one corner.

Then another.

A small metal object falls onto the table.

A key.

Not the silver key Vance stole from Mara’s house.

This one is black.

Short.

Stamped with two numbers.

2–3.

Twenty-three.

Sheriff Tate leans over it.

“What does it open?”

“I’ve never seen it before,” I say.

Mara reaches for her envelope.

Inside is another letter and a hand-drawn map.

She unfolds the map.

A circle marks her mother’s old house.

A line runs from the house, across McKinley pasture, and ends beneath Site Seventeen.

“That’s impossible,” Tate says. “I thought Site Seventeen was in Afghanistan.”