Chapter 10 – The Last Dawes

Back at Maya’s kitchen table, Ronny spread out both maps—the one from Margie’s buried box and the one left ominously in the barn. The contrast between them was stark. One was a quiet plea for help; the other, a warning in black ink and jagged lines. They studied the second map again. No names. No legend. Just a crude “X” and that unsettling message:

YOU’RE NOT THE ONLY ONES LOOKING.

Maya took a sip of coffee and set the mug down harder than she meant to. “We’re missing something.”

Ronny nodded. “Like who exactly we’re up against.”

“Or what they’re after.”

She stood and grabbed her laptop, opened it, and started typing. “Let’s see if any of the Dawes family is still around. There’s got to be a public record somewhere—voting rolls, tax data, obituaries…”

Ronny leaned back. “There was a ‘Dawes’ named in the photo, right? One of the five men?”

“Yeah. Josiah Dawes. He was the one on the far left. I ran the name earlier. Born 1902, died 1966. No surviving children listed in the obituary.”

“But maybe grandchildren?”

Maya scanned through a genealogy forum. Then she paused. “Here. A family tree posted by a user called G.Dawes84. Claims to be the grandson of Josiah Dawes. Lives in Evansville.”

“Indiana?” Ronny asked.

“Yep. Not far—maybe forty-five minutes west.”

She clicked through to a profile and found a first name: Gideon. There was a generic Gmail address attached. “Worth a shot?”

“Definitely,” Ronny said. “Send him a message. Brief, but enough to raise curiosity.”

Maya typed quickly:

Hello, Mr. Dawes.
My name is Maya Caldwell. I’m a local historian in Henderson, Kentucky. I’m researching a property once owned by your grandfather, Josiah Dawes, and came across some documents that may relate to your family. Would you be willing to speak with us—by phone or in person?
Best regards,
Maya Caldwell

She hit send.

Ronny stood and stretched. “We’ll be lucky if he responds.”

Less than ten minutes later, her phone buzzed.

New email from: G.Dawes84@gmail.com
Subject: Dawes Property Inquiry

Hi Maya,
You’re actually the second person to contact me about my grandfather this week.
I’d be willing to talk, but I’d rather do it in person.
I don’t want anything going through email that someone else can read.
I’m free tomorrow morning.
Meet me at Maxwell’s Café, corner of 3rd and Vine, Evansville. 10 a.m.
—Gideon Dawes

Maya and Ronny stared at each other.

“The second person this week,” she said slowly.

Ronny’s jaw tightened. “We’re not the only ones asking questions.”

Chapter 9 – Dawes Farm

They reached the turnoff to the old Dawes property just before noon.

The gravel road was little more than a pair of ruts now, overgrown with grass and flanked by barbed wire fences long since rusted through. Trees leaned in from both sides, forming a tunnel of shadow that felt colder than the sunny spring air should allow. As they drove deeper into the woods, Maya checked the coordinates again.

“This is it,” she said quietly, watching the blue dot settle on the pin. “Straight ahead, maybe another quarter mile.”

Ronny’s truck creaked and groaned as it bumped along the uneven path. Branches scraped the sides like fingers. The woods opened suddenly into a clearing—and there it was.

The barn.

It stood alone at the edge of the field, its red paint faded to pink and gray, the roof slumping like an old man’s shoulders. One of the big double doors hung open slightly, swaying with the breeze. Behind it, the remains of a farmhouse stood in ruin—collapsed porch, chimney leaning precariously, vines coiled around shattered windows.

“This place hasn’t been touched in years,” Ronny said.

“Not officially, anyway,” Maya replied, already unbuckling her seatbelt.

They stepped out. Birds scattered from the grass. The silence here was different—thick, watchful.

Ronny walked slowly toward the barn, every footstep muffled by a bed of soft pine needles and damp earth. The closer he got, the more familiar it looked—not from memory, but from the photograph. The boards. The shape of the roof. Even the crooked weathervane. This was it.

The place in the picture.

Maya stayed by the truck for a moment, scanning the tree line behind them.

“I don’t like how quiet it is out here,” she muttered.

Ronny pushed open the barn door.

It groaned like it hadn’t moved in years. Dust filled the air in a shimmering cloud, and the scent of mold, wood rot, and old hay hit him like a wave.

Inside, the barn was mostly empty.

No tools. No equipment. Just the skeleton of a loft above, a few rotted bales of hay along the far wall, and a dirt floor.

But in the center of the barn, something broke the emptiness.

A single wooden chair.

Placed precisely beneath the broken window, with a bundle of something resting on the seat.

Ronny hesitated. “You seeing this?”

Maya stepped beside him. “Yeah... and I don’t like it.”

He moved forward cautiously. The bundle was a folded piece of fabric, tied with twine. Old. Carefully placed. He untied the string and opened it slowly.

Inside was another map.

Hand-drawn, like the one Margie had hidden—but this one cruder, newer, and missing the elegance of her careful sketches. There were no annotations, no place names. Just a few jagged lines, an “X,” and one message written across the top in bold black marker:

“YOU’RE NOT THE ONLY ONES LOOKING.”

Maya inhaled sharply. “Someone’s been here. Recently.”

Ronny nodded. “And they knew we’d come.”

He folded the new map slowly, glancing around the barn. “This was left for us.”

“Or as a warning.”

Just then, a sound echoed across the clearing—distant but unmistakable.

The click of a camera shutter.

They spun around, but saw nothing. Only trees. Stillness. The wind.

Maya grabbed his sleeve. “Let’s go.”

They jogged back to the truck, eyes scanning the woods. No figures. No movement. But the feeling—the weight of being watched—clung to them like humidity.

As Ronny started the engine and turned the truck around, he kept one eye on the rearview mirror.

“Someone’s following the same trail Margie left,” he said. “But they’re not trying to solve the mystery.”

Maya looked down at the new map, now clenched in her lap.

“They’re trying to bury it.”

Chapter 8 – Faces in the Photograph

They sat in silence, the open box resting between them on the bench seat of Ronny’s truck. The photograph lay on top, catching the late morning sun filtering through the windshield.

It was sepia-toned, curled at the corners. Five men stood shoulder to shoulder in front of a weathered barn. Their clothes were plain: work shirts, suspenders, boots thick with dust. Two held rifles casually, like they were leaning on broom handles. One wore a flat cap pulled low over his eyes. Another had a crooked smile and a jagged scar running down his cheek.

But it was the man in the middle who caught Ronny’s attention.

He was taller than the others, standing straight, with one hand at his side and the other gripping what looked like a folded piece of paper. His eyes—though blurred from age and wear—looked directly at the camera, as if he knew someone would be watching, decades later.

“Do you recognize anyone?” Maya asked, gently brushing dirt from the corner.

Ronny squinted, then shook his head slowly. “Not sure. Could be Collier. Or Rayburn. But...” He trailed off.

Maya leaned closer. “But what?”

He took the photo from her hands, flipped it over.

On the back, in faded pencil, were three names:

Collier – Dawes – Ellis

He froze. The name jumped out like a snake in the grass.

“Ellis,” he said quietly. “That’s my family name.”

Maya blinked. “That man in the middle—he’s your grandfather?”

“I don’t know.” Ronny stared at the photo again. The resemblance wasn’t obvious, but something about the shape of the jaw... the posture... the look in his eyes.

It was possible.

But before he could say more, Maya reached for her phone.

“I’m going to scan this and run it through the county historical photo database. There’s a small chance we’ll get a match—or at least confirm where that barn was.”

As she held the photo under her phone’s camera, something shifted in the light. A shimmer. A faint glint near the edge of the image.

“Wait,” she said. “Do you see that?”

Ronny leaned in. “Where?”

“Right there.” She tapped the bottom-right corner.

Barely visible beneath the surface of the photo, like it had been hidden under the emulsion, was a faint set of numbers—almost invisible unless the light hit just right.

38.2321 -87.4917

Maya’s eyebrows rose. “Coordinates.”

Ronny grabbed the map app on his phone and punched in the coordinates.

The pin dropped on a location barely ten miles south of Rayburn Creek—on a piece of undeveloped land, marked simply as: Dawes Farm (abandoned).

“Dawes,” Ronny muttered. “One of the names on the back of the photo.”

Maya gave a low whistle. “So Margie buried the box near Rayburn Creek, but the photograph points to the Dawes place. She must’ve wanted whoever found this to follow the trail.”

“To what?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But we’re not the only ones following it.”

Ronny looked at the faces again. Five men. One buried secret. And maybe... one woman who saw too much.

The wind shifted outside the truck, rustling the leaves along the roadside.

Ronny folded the photo back into the box.

“We go to Dawes Farm next.”

Chapter 7 – Flight Through the Thicket

 The sound came again—closer this time.

A sharp crack, followed by the unmistakable rustle of brush being pushed aside.

Maya’s eyes darted toward the trees. “That’s not a deer.”

Ronny didn’t reply. His hand tightened around the box, still damp with decades of soil. It was heavier than it looked—weighted not just with the past, but with something urgent, something dangerous.

They didn’t wait to find out who—or what—was coming.

“Go!” Ronny hissed.

Maya slung her pack across her shoulder and took off down the narrow path they’d come in on. Ronny followed close behind, the crate pressed to his chest. Brambles clawed at his arms, and low-hanging branches smacked him in the face, but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t.

Behind them, another sound—a footfall, fast and deliberate—punched through the stillness.

They weren’t alone.

“Faster!” Maya called over her shoulder.

The path narrowed near the bend in the creek, where the bank sloped down and the trail turned slick with mud. Ronny nearly lost his footing but caught himself against a tree.

A voice rang out through the trees. Male. Close.

“You’re not supposed to be here!”

Ronny didn’t recognize it. It wasn’t the same voice from the phone. This one was louder. Angrier.

Maya didn’t slow down. She veered off the main trail, cutting left through a narrow gap between two thorny shrubs. Ronny followed, ducking low, thorns scratching his arms and snagging his sleeves. The woods grew thicker here—untouched and wild.

“There!” Maya shouted, pointing.

The old metal gate came into view. Just beyond it, the truck.

Ronny surged forward, lungs burning. He vaulted the gate with a grunt, landed hard, and scrambled toward the driver’s side. Maya was already yanking open the passenger door.

The moment Ronny threw the truck into reverse, a figure burst out of the treeline—dark jacket, ball cap pulled low, face obscured.

Too late.

Gravel flew as the tires spun, caught, and the truck lurched backward. The figure stumbled toward them, but the distance was growing fast.

“Don’t come back here!” the man shouted. “You hear me?”

Ronny didn’t answer. He jammed the truck into drive, and they tore down the gravel road, bumping and rattling as low branches scraped across the windshield like fingernails.

Neither of them spoke for a full minute.

Finally, Maya exhaled. “That wasn’t random. He was watching us.”

Ronny nodded, white-knuckling the steering wheel. “He knew exactly where to find us. Which means—”

“He’s after the same thing we are,” Maya finished.

They didn’t slow down until they reached the county blacktop. Ronny pulled over into the gravel shoulder, turned off the engine, and sat in the silence.

The box rested on Maya’s lap, dirt still clinging to its edges.

She reached into her bag, pulled out a cloth, and gently unwrapped the oilskin bundle inside.

What they saw made them both lean closer.

Inside the folds were three items:

• A black leather journal, the initials M.E.D. embossed faintly on the cover.
• A faded photograph of a group of men standing in front of a barn—two of them holding rifles.
• And a yellowed piece of parchment paper, sealed with wax, bearing only two words:

“For the truth.”

Maya looked up. “Ronny... I think we just inherited someone’s unfinished mission.”

Ronny stared down at the box, heart pounding.

And for the first time in years, he wasn’t thinking about retirement or regrets or how quiet the house had become. He was thinking about purpose.

And the fact that someone—maybe Margie E. Dalton herself—had left this for him to find.

Chapter 6 – Rayburn Creek

Ronny barely slept.

The anonymous call kept replaying in his head—“Some things are buried for a reason.”
He didn’t recognize the voice. No accent, no name, just a cold, flat warning dropped like a brick through his window of curiosity. But instead of deterring him, it lit something in him he hadn’t felt in years.

Resolve.

By morning, he’d already packed a thermos of coffee, a flashlight, his old hiking boots, and a folded map wrapped in a freezer bag. At exactly 8:00 a.m., he pulled into the Henderson Library parking lot. Maya was already there, standing beside her Subaru with a small backpack slung over her shoulder.

She looked him up and down. “Didn’t sleep either?”

“Nope.”

“Bring coffee?”

He handed her the thermos without a word.

They headed out of town, following old county roads as the sun rose behind them, casting long golden beams through the trees. The GPS got them close, but it was the map that got them there. They pulled off onto a gravel path that had long since stopped pretending to be maintained. Overgrown brush scraped the sides of the truck as they crawled along, until they came to a rusted metal gate sagging across the road.

Rayburn Creek shimmered just beyond it—thin, winding, shallow this time of year.

“This is it,” Maya said, stepping out and slamming the door behind her. “Just like the map shows. Creek bends left. Ridge to the west. And...”

She pointed toward two tall, gnarled trees just beyond a field of thistle and overgrowth.

“Twin sycamores.”

Ronny looked at them, both massive and white-skinned, their pale trunks like the bones of giants.

It was exactly what the message said.
“I buried it near the twin sycamores.”

They slipped through the gate and started walking. The air was still damp from last night’s rain, the ground soft beneath their feet. Birds sang high overhead, and the scent of wet grass and decaying leaves filled the air. It was the kind of morning that felt older than time.

Ronny paused near the base of the trees and pulled out the small hand-drawn map.

“It should be... right here. Between the two trunks, maybe ten or twelve feet out, just past where the fence line ends.”

Maya crouched and examined the area. “Ground’s been disturbed here before. It’s sunken a bit.”

He didn’t ask how she knew. Years of being around local farms and digging through cemetery records had taught her to notice things most people didn’t.

They both knelt down, brushed away layers of dead leaves, and started to dig—not with shovels, but with their hands, scraping and pulling back soft earth.

Five minutes passed. Then ten.

And then Maya’s fingers hit something hard.

“Here!” she said, breathless. “There’s something—wood?”

Ronny helped her clear more soil, revealing the rotted edge of what looked like an old crate or box, nailed shut and wrapped in waxed cloth that had mostly disintegrated. It was barely a foot long and about six inches wide. Whatever it was, it had been buried deep enough to escape detection from animals—or people—for a long time.

He tugged at it gently, and it came free with a faint suction sound, heavy with age and water.

They set it on the ground and peeled away the last of the cloth.

“No lock,” Ronny muttered. “Just rusted nails.”

Maya pulled out a small multitool from her pack—he hadn’t even thought to bring one—and pried up the corner.

With a low groan, the lid gave way.

Inside was a bundle wrapped in oilskin—still mostly intact—and something else. A small, brass key. Tied with a bit of twine to a folded sheet of paper, barely legible.

Ronny held it up to the light.

“To whomever finds this: He followed me this far. I couldn’t go home. If you read this, finish what I couldn’t. - M.E.D.”

Maya looked up. “She never made it back.”

Ronny nodded, staring at the key.

And then something cracked in the woods behind them.

Both of them froze.

Another crack. Closer.

They turned slowly.

Someone—or something—was coming through the brush.

Chapter 5 – The Stranger on the Street

The library closed at 6:00 sharp, and Maya, ever the rule-follower, flicked the overhead lights twice before ushering Ronny out the side door. He carried the file folder under his arm like it might evaporate if left unattended. They’d copied everything—maps, clippings, even the margin-noted folklore passages—and agreed to meet again in the morning with boots, flashlights, and whatever passed for field gear in their current lives.

“Sleep well,” Maya said with a half-smile. “If you can.”

Ronny nodded and watched her lock the doors behind her, then turned and walked toward his truck. The rain had cleared completely now, leaving the pavement wet and glistening like a stage floor. A few birds chirped from the trees along the courthouse lawn. For a moment, the world felt quiet.

Too quiet.

He felt it just as he reached for the truck handle—a sliver of unease, a chill that didn’t come from the air. He turned slowly.

A man stood across the street in the shadow of the old feed store, just inside the glow of a flickering streetlamp. Lean. Dressed in dark clothing. Holding... something.

A walking stick?

No. A crowbar.

Ronny squinted. “Hello?”

No answer.

The man stood still for another beat, then turned and walked down the sidewalk, disappearing behind the corner of the hardware store without a word.

Ronny waited. Watched.

Nothing.

He opened his truck, tossed the folder onto the passenger seat, and locked the doors the second he climbed in.

---

Back at home, Ronny triple-checked the locks and pulled the curtains. His house was rural enough that no one passed by without a reason. He’d always liked that about it. Tonight, the silence felt heavier.

He laid the copied maps and articles out across the dining room table, scanning them again with fresh urgency.

Who else knows about this?
Why now? Why after all these years?

And then he noticed something new.

The hand-drawn map—his original, the one from the thrift store—had a small crease at the top he hadn’t bothered unfolding before. He pulled it gently open, revealing what looked like another short message, nearly rubbed away by time.

"He followed me. I buried it near the twin sycamores."

There was no signature.

Ronny stared at the words until they started to blur. Someone was being followed—had been followed. And something had been buried. Not hidden in a house or stashed in a box. Buried.

He picked up the map and held it to the kitchen light, as if it might speak.

Then his landline rang.

He jumped.

Nobody called the landline anymore. Except maybe one telemarketer and Kelly when his cell signal dropped.

He picked up.

“Ronny Ellis?” a man’s voice asked.

“Who’s asking?”

A pause.

“You don’t know what you’re getting into. Some things are buried for a reason.”

Click.

The line went dead.

Ronny stood there for a long time, the dial tone humming in his ear.

Chapter 4 – Beneath the Ledger

They didn’t head out to Rayburn Creek that afternoon after all. Instead, they returned to the library’s Local History Room, where dust lived comfortably between cracked leather spines and rusted file cabinets.

Maya had already pulled the county assessor’s ledgers from 1937 - 1940—massive volumes the size of Thanksgiving turkeys, handwritten in the elegant, looping cursive of a lost profession. She slapped one open on the table.

“This is where Margie Dalton worked,” she said, brushing a bit of lint from the binding. “Filing land ownership records and tax assessments.”

Ronny leaned over the book. “And we think she might’ve known something she wasn’t supposed to.”

“Or she found something she was supposed to keep quiet.”

They flipped through pages slowly, the room filled with the sounds of paper turning and the soft hum of fluorescent lighting overhead. Most of it was as dull as expected—acres assessed, barns valued, poultry counts, even notes on storm damage. Then Maya tapped the page.

“There.”

A parcel marked under Ernest Dalton, her father, in the summer of 1939. Five acres transferred in July of that year—to a private trust called Oak Lantern Holding.

“That’s odd,” Maya said. “Very few people used trust names back then. It wasn’t common around here.”

Ronny traced the faded ink. “No mention of a buyer’s name?”

“None. Just the trust. But look here—” she turned the page. “In August 1939, the same trust buys an adjacent ten-acre tract that had been abandoned after a barn fire. The seller? A man named Josiah Collier.”

“Collier. From the map.”

She nodded. “What if this whole area—Collier Barn, Rayburn Field, and the Dalton place—was being consolidated? Quietly. Through shell names.”

“Why?”

Maya hesitated. “Bootlegging was mostly done by then, but the land might have been used for storage—or something that had to stay hidden. There were rumors of stash sites, even underground bunkers from Prohibition. Or... maybe it was just a place someone didn’t want found.”

Ronny sat back. His mind was turning faster than it had in months.

He thought of his grandfather—coming back mud-streaked and silent. He thought of Margie Dalton—her cautious smile, her job handling land transfers, and her initials sketched into a secret map.

And then Maya said something that stopped him cold.

“I also found something else. Her name—Margie E. Dalton—shows up one last time.”

Ronny looked at her.

“In the death records?”

She shook her head. “No. In the library’s old borrowing ledger. You know we used to hand-sign the checkout cards.”

Maya reached into a folder and pulled out a yellowed index card.
The book was Folklore of the Kentucky Hills, by Alvin Grayson.
Date checked out: June 5, 1939.
Borrower: Dalton, Margie E.
Never returned.

“I found it in the Rare Books Room,” Maya said. “Just sitting there, wedged behind a shelf.”

Ronny leaned forward. The book’s spine was cracked, and several pages had been dog-eared. One had faint pencil markings in the margin—a legend about burial mounds and lost caves used by river pirates in the early 1800s. Another page mentioned “hollow fences” and boundary trees used as navigation markers in the days before formal mapping.

“Is it possible,” he said slowly, “that Margie was piecing together a hidden place using both county records and old folklore?”

“It’s more than possible,” Maya replied. “It’s exactly what I’d do if I was trying to find something people didn’t want found—and couldn’t talk about openly.”

They both sat back, the air thick with dust and thought.

“Okay,” Ronny said. “We don’t go out there blind. Let’s pull topo maps, land surveys, and anything we can find on underground storage or burial sites near Rayburn Creek.”

Maya cracked a knuckle. “And maybe pack some snacks. This could take a while.”

As they stood, preparing for a dive into even deeper records, neither of them noticed the faint, oily fingerprint smudged into the margin of the hand-drawn map—the one that hadn’t been there that morning.

Chapter 3 – The Name in the Margin

 The next morning, Ronny was up before the sun.

It had become a habit—waking early, not because he had somewhere to be, but because sleep didn’t come like it used to. Most mornings he fed the birds, made coffee, and flipped through the paper without really reading it. But today, the map sat on the kitchen table like it had something to say.

He poured a mug of black coffee, settled into the same chair he’d eaten thousands of meals in, and opened the smaller, hand-drawn map once more.

Last night, it had seemed like a curiosity. Now it felt like a calling.

The paper was brittle, creased in quarters, the graphite faded in some places to the point of vanishing. He squinted at the top left corner, noticing something he hadn’t seen before. It was faint—almost ghostlike—but there, pressed into the margin just above a rough sketch of a creek bend, was a name.

M.E. Dalton

Not written in pencil. Indented, like it had been signed with a dry pen or the pressure of a fingernail. He ran his fingers across the groove.

Dalton.

It wasn’t a name he knew well, but it rang faintly in the back of his mind. Maybe a student from years ago, maybe from one of the old family names that had filtered through Henderson over the generations. He reached for the small spiral notebook he kept by the phone—Rebecca had always called it “the backup brain”—and jotted the name down.

If Maya could find something, it would be her.

He was halfway through his eggs when his phone buzzed.

Maya Caldwell

[8:12 AM]
Newspaper archives from June 1939—missing person report filed on Wayne Ellis. That’s your grandfather, right? Also found a mention of someone named Margie Dalton. Want me to call?

Ronny stared at the screen. That was fast. She must’ve gone digging the second the library opened.

He tapped back:

[8:14 AM]
Yes. Call when you can. Definitely my grandfather. Margie Dalton might be our M.E. Dalton.

The phone rang seconds later.

“Morning,” Maya said, skipping greetings. “You’re not gonna believe this.”

“I’ll try,” Ronny said, wiping his hands on a napkin. “What’d you find?”

“So, Henderson Evening Gleaner, June 13th, 1939. Headline buried inside reads: ‘Local Man Missing; Family Concerned.’ Says your grandfather, Wayne Ellis, was last seen leaving the family farm near Robards around 4:30 p.m. Witnesses report seeing him headed toward the ridge trail behind Collier’s pasture.”

“That’s not far from the area marked on the map.”

“Exactly. And here’s where it gets better. A few inches down the same page—short paragraph about a young woman named Margie E. Dalton. Twenty years old. Reported missing by her employer, of all people. Says she didn’t show up to her job as a filing clerk for the county assessor’s office. Also, last seen near the south road between Slaughters and Rumsey. That’s maybe ten miles from where your grandfather vanished.”

Ronny’s grip on the phone tightened. “Same day?”

“Same day. Same issue of the paper.”

He leaned back in his chair. “Do you think they disappeared together?”

“Could be,” Maya said. “Or they ran into the same trouble.”

“You said she worked at the assessor’s office. That’d give her access to land maps, ownership records...”

“And she might’ve known about something worth hiding—or finding,” Maya finished.

There was a pause.

“You still have the map with you?” she asked.

“Right in front of me.”

“Check the bottom-right corner. Anything look like a cabin or initials?”

Ronny bent closer. There, near the base of a sketched ridge, almost like an afterthought, were the letters:

M.D.

He read them aloud.

Maya exhaled on the other end. “She didn’t just draw this map, Ronny. I think she meant for someone to follow it.”

---

Later that afternoon, Ronny met Maya at the library.

She had laid out a collection of plat books, faded aerial photos, and a single plastic sleeve containing the newspaper clipping she’d found. The photo in the article showed a young woman—Margie Dalton—with tightly pinned hair and a cautious smile, the kind people wore in official portraits.

“She was the daughter of Ernest Dalton, owned a small orchard out near Rayburn Creek,” Maya explained. “Family’s long gone. No known descendants. Margie vanished in June 1939 and was never found. Case went cold before summer ended. Your grandfather reappeared three days later and wouldn’t talk about it.”

Ronny stared at the photo. She looked like someone he could’ve passed in a grocery store and never thought twice about. Except she was a ghost now—tied to a map, a missing person’s report, and maybe something more.

Maya looked at him. “So what now?”

Ronny folded the map carefully and slid it into a file folder. “Now I think I'll pay a visit to Rayburn Creek.”

Maya raised an eyebrow. “You mean we?”

He grinned. “Unless you’d rather stay here and file overdue book notices.”

She rolled her eyes and grabbed her coat.