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He’s a Redhaven native and only one degree removed from Ethan’s mystery with his own missing sister for so long.
He gets it.
“Nothing else?” I ask.
“Not yet, but they’re still working it, Cap,” he answers—just as a call goes up from across the field.
“We got something!” a voice calls.
I glance at Lucas before pushing off the car and speeding across the clearing.
A woman in a white jumpsuit and mask crouches over a hole in the ground, gingerly sweeping dirt off—wood?
Yep, polished wood.
Her gloved hands gently lift up a gleaming box of rose-tinted redwood, roughly the size of a shoebox.
Doesn’t look that old—and doesn’t look like it’s been in the ground all that long, either.
There’s not enough dirt accumulation to be as old as those bones.
Plus, the moisture along with the freezing, melting, and heating cycles would’ve warped the wood bad, never mind insects and worms eating away at it, too.
This thing was buried not too long ago.
The woman gives me a questioning look through her goggles.
I nod.
“Open it.”
She returns my nod and pries the latch. The little bronze hook opens smoothly, no rusty squealing, confirming its age.
Inside, I see stacks of folded paper, yellowed with age, thin enough so the handwriting on the other side looks like ghostly scribbles bleeding through.
I stare at the box with Mason Law’s voice on replay in my mind—until something brushes my elbow and I just about bust right out of my skin.
When I look up, Lucas stands by my side, holding a pair of nitrile gloves.
I take them with a grateful nod and snap them on, then take the box from the woman and retreat back to the patrol car.
The urge to read the letters wars with professional obligations to treat this like crime evidence—because it is.
No prints, no smudging, so I carefully set an evidence bag on the hood of the car and place the box on top before I settle down and pick up the first sheaf of folded pages, peeling them open.
They’re definitely older.
Handwritten.
All blue, sloping ink, a light and loopy feminine style with a slightly older feel I can’t explain. The top page is dated over twenty years ago—October, just like now.
Dearest,
It’s freezing today.Cold enough to feel the loneliness, your absence, though I know why I can’t see you.
Not right now. Maybe not ever.
I told you I won’t deceive myself about what we’re doing.
