Page 89 of Rangers Last Promise

“Don't.”

“Don't what?”

“Pull me behind you.”

“I wasn't planning to.”

“You were thinking it loudly.”

I hear Trigger's laugh in my head.

Mara opens the door.

The smell of sawdust and old wood reaches us.

Shelves line the walls. Search-and-rescue equipment occupies most of the room now—ropes, helmets, packs, emergency blankets.

But along the back wall stands an old workbench.

Mara stops.

“Dad's.”

She walks toward it slowly.

Her fingers move across scratches in the wood.

“I used to sit underneath this while he worked.”

I remain several feet behind her.

This isn't my memory.

It belongs to her.

She crouches.

Then freezes.

“What?”

Mara reaches beneath the workbench.

I hear metal scrape against wood.

She pulls out a small steel box.

My pulse stops.

“Is that Grant’s?”

She looks at the lock.

Then Mara turns the box around.

Two letters have been scratched into the bottom.

G.E.