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.”