Page 245 of Rangers Last Promise

Grant’s handwriting fills both sides.

Doc,

If you’re reading this, then either I’m dead or Hampton finally decided to become useful. I’m hoping for the second one, but with my luck, it’s probably the first.

Behind me, Hampton calls, “That’s insulting.”

Sheriff Tate shouts, “Stop listening!”

I almost laugh.

Almost.

I keep reading.

You’re going to blame yourself. I know you. You blame yourself when it rains on a day you planned to grill.

I stop.

A memory comes back.

Grant standing beneath a tarp in a thunderstorm, accusing me of ruining dinner because I’d said the sky looked clear.

Mara’s hand finds mine.

I continue.

So hear me now. Whatever happens in that valley is not your fault. Captain Miller changed the mission after we crossed the border. Kane knows why. I think Miller is afraid of the man Kane calls the Colonel.

Captain Miller wasn’t the Colonel.

Miller worked for him.

I read faster.

Twenty-three men were moved through Site Seventeen. They were soldiers on paper until their files were erased. Some were recruited. Some were threatened. Some disappeared.

I found their names.

Kane took the list before I could copy it.

“Damn it,” Wolf says.

Mara looks toward the phone.

“Kane still has the list.”

“Or knows where it is,” I say.

The letter continues.

Vance is the Colonel’s cleaner. If Vance is in Eagle River, he’s searching for the one thing I took from Site Seventeen.

I look inside the box.

The folded green cloth.

The patch.