6. Doc #2
Mara and I go right.
We find Trigger near the center of the building.
He’s sitting against a support post with one hand pressed to the side of his head. Blood runs down his temple.
Wolf drops beside him.
“What happened?”
Trigger blinks up at us.
“He hit me with the case.”
“Where is he?” Tate asks.
“Gone. Back exit.”
A deputy checks the far door.
“It opens behind the abandoned church. He could’ve reached the county road.”
“Did you see his face?” Mara asks.
“No. Mask stayed on.”
“What about the case?”
Trigger looks toward the floor.
The black metal box lies open ten feet away.
I cross the room and pick it up.
The mission reports remain inside, along with old maps and photographs.
Only one item is missing.
The bloodstained paper Grant placed in my vest before we entered the valley.
The coordinates.
“What did he take?” Mara asks.
“The location Grant wanted us to find.”
Wolf helps Trigger to his feet.
“Do you remember the numbers?”
“I remember the first two.”
“That isn’t enough.”
“What were they?”
I recite them.
“Thirty-four point six one. Negative sixty-eight point?—”
The rest disappears into fifteen years of memories.
I saw those coordinates almost every day after Grant died. I traced them on maps. I entered them into searches. I even traveled to the nearest military installation before discovering the location had been wiped from the official mission records.
But eventually, I forced myself to stop looking.
I believed the man responsible was dead.
Now the final numbers are gone.
Mara takes the case from me and examines the bottom.
“Someone scratched something into the metal.”
She turns it toward the light.
Three words cut across the black surface.
MILLER GAVE THE ORDER.
Wolf swears.
Trigger lifts his head despite the blood running down his face.
“Captain Miller sent us into that valley.”
“Grant wrote not to trust the man in command,” Mara says.
Sheriff Tate studies the message.
“That seems like an answer.”
“No.”
Everyone looks at me.
“The shooter risked walking into a tavern surrounded by deputies. He let us find the journal clue, painted the numbers on the SUV, and stole only the coordinates from my box.”
“You think he wants us focused on Miller,” Mara says.
“I think he wants us to believe the mystery is solved before we discover what Grant hid at those coordinates.”
“Then Fred Miller may not be the traitor.”
“He may be. But he isn’t the only one involved.”
A deputy enters through the rear door.
“Sheriff, we found blood behind the church, but the trail ends at the road. Looks like he had another vehicle waiting.”
Tate issues orders to establish roadblocks while Wolf helps Trigger outside.
Mara remains beside me.
“You saved Parker.”
“I stopped the bleeding.”
“He could’ve died.”
“He didn’t.”
“Because you were here.”
I close the metal case.
“Don’t make me into something I’m not.”
“What are you?”
“A medic who couldn’t save the one man he needed to save.”
“Grant was shot in an ambush.”
“You weren’t there.”
“No.”
Her voice softens.
“But you were. And you carried his dog tags for fifteen years. Men who don’t care don’t do that.”
Her words break through a wall I’ve spent years building.
I turn away.
Mara reaches for my hand.
Her fingers close around mine.
The touch is gentle.
No demand.
No accusation.
Only warmth.
I should let go.
Instead, I stand in the dusty darkness holding Grant’s sister’s hand while the past closes around us.
“There may be another copy of the coordinates,” she says.
“Grant gave me the only one I knew about.”
“You said Grant chose his words carefully.”
“He did.”
“He wrote that you had the coordinates. He didn’t write that you had the only copy.”
I look at her.
“The lockbox.”
Her hand tightens around mine.
“Grant gave me the key before he deployed,” she says. “But if he sent something home after he discovered the betrayal…”
“He could have put another copy in the box.”
“Or something that tells us where those coordinates lead.”
“And we don’t know where the box is.”
“No. Mom must have moved it after Grant died.”
“But the key is still on your charm bracelet.”
“At my house.”
I nod slowly.
“Tomorrow we retrieve the bracelet.”
“And then we figure out what Mom did with Grant’s lockbox.”
For the first time since the coordinates disappeared, I feel something other than frustration.
Grant planned for failure.
Not before he deployed.
After he realized someone was going to make sure we didn’t come home.
If he managed to send anything back to his mother, the lockbox may contain the one piece of evidence our enemy hasn’t found.
A floorboard creaks above us.
We both freeze.
This building is supposed to be empty.
I release Mara’s hand and draw my weapon, pulling her behind the nearest support post.
She raises hers beside me.
A shadow moves beyond the second-floor railing.
Then a man’s voice comes through the darkness.
“You’re too late, Doc.”
Every muscle in my body locks.
I know that voice.
I heard it give briefings.
I heard it argue with Grant.
I heard it over the radio before our convoy entered that valley.
A voice belonging to a man who has been dead for eleven years.
Elias Hampton.