Page 172 of Rangers Last Promise

That's dangerous.

Normal makes a man think he can stay.

I don't stay.

I learned that lesson a long time ago.

Then Mara reaches for my hand.

And apparently I haven't learned anything.

Robert Vance's address doesn't exist anymore.

The road does.

Barely.

McKinley Road once ran along the northern edge of the pasture behind Mara’s mother’s house. Twenty years ago, the county rerouted it after repeated flooding damaged the bridge.

The old road became part of the McKinley property.

Which means Robert Vance once lived less than half a mile from Mara’s family.

I don't like coincidences.

I like this one even less.

Sheriff Tate spreads an old county map across the conference-room table.

Mara stands on one side.

Wolf and Trigger stand on the other.

Hampton sits in a chair against the wall with one wrist cuffed to a steel ring beneath the table.

He isn't happy.

That makes two of us.

“Here,” Tate says.

He taps a faded square near the creek.

“Vance owned six acres and a small house.”

“When?” Mara asks.

“Bought it seventeen years ago.”

Two years before Grant died.

“When did he sell?”

“He didn't.”

We all look at Tate.

“What happened to it?” I ask.