"You're sure this is the right direction?" I asked Dan for the third time as we drove past what seemed like a never-ending expanse of farmland.
"We're heading to the coordinates you gave me," Dan said. He stifled a yawn and reached for the coffee in the cupholder. He'd stumbled into bed sometime about five, and we'd been up again at nine when one of the Taskforce team had called Dan to tell him the victim from the club had turned at sunrise.
One more plague vamp in the world.
Hardly the news we'd been hoping for, but neither of us was surprised.
But Dan had insisted that the team tasked with helping the man—his name was Trey—through his transition didn't need us to help them and that we should instead keep following the breadcrumbs my dad had left us.
I'd agreed, though in the clear light of day, the way I'd found the information seemed more like a dream. It had taken me a long time to fall asleep, replaying the image of my dad and the words he'd said over and over. Hard to believe he'd planted something so real in my mind. Harder still to believe I had no memory of him doing it. In fact, the more I thought about that part, the more it was creeping me out. I needed to talk to Marco about what kind of vamp power would let someone do that without me remembering. And how the hell I could prevent it from happening again.
I'd let Jase in and it had been fine in the end, but the thought of a vampire being able to get inside my head and leave me with no memory of it at all scared the hell out of me.
But that fun conversation was going to have to wait. Finding out what had been worth putting me through all that was the first priority. So road trip it was. Daylight road trip, despite the fact that none of us had gotten enough sleep, to limit the chance of any vampire-related interference.
But we all needed extra caffeine, and we'd already stopped once at a gas station to top up our travel mugs. The coffee tasted little better than battery acid, but it at least seemed to wake me up a little. Maybe. My eyes were gritty, and I had a headache as the result of the emotional turmoil of the memories, letting Jase thrall me, crying my eyes out, or all three.
Esme, sitting behind me in the back seat, looked alert and well rested. I was never sure how she managed it. You'd think cat shifters would need as much as sleep as their animal counterparts, but unless Esme had mastered the art of catnapping while keeping her eyes wide open, she seemed to survive happily on hardly any. Or maybe she just slept every moment she wasn't on the job.
We were heading to Kingville, a town an hour or so north of Caldwell. I'd never been there, and I couldn't remember my dad ever mentioning it to me, but that didn't mean anything. No parent tells their kid their every move.
Bug had been awake when we'd staggered out to find whatever stuff we had in the kitchen that we recognized as quick and easy breakfast while we tried to wake up. But Dan hadn't wanted to tell her where we were headed. Instead, he'd asked Pen to take Bug out for the day, and Bug seemed happy enough when we told her we had to go out of town for Taskforce business but that we'd be back later in the day.
Her lack of gentle guilt-tripping me for working too hard only made me feel worse about leaving her. She was being too calm. Too nice. Bug usually told it how it was. But I wasn't going to get her to talk about how she was feeling about the fire until I got to spend more time with her. The universe wasn't helping in that regard.
Kingville was farm country. People think Washington is covered in trees but that's not true. We do agriculture as well as big old forests and mountains.
Though why my dad was hanging out in farm country, I didn't know. He and my mom met at UW when he was studying for his bachelor's degree. They'd lived in Seattle while he'd finished medical school and his fellowship for immunology. We'd only moved to Caldwell when he'd gotten the job at Synotech, when they’d helpfully built a research facility an hour out of Seattle. It made the commute about the same whether we lived in the city or not, and Dad had leaped at the chance to move back to his hometown.
"Maybe Dad was testing his theories on cows?" I said, trying to lighten the mood in the Jeep. There were plenty of cows around.
Dan's mouth quirked, but he kept his eyes on the road. "Not sure that's how vaccines work. Cows aren't people. They're definitely not vampires." He glanced at the GPS display on the dash. "We're getting close."
I scanned the area visible out the window. There was no sign of anything much other than fields, more fields, and the odd farmhouse. We'd passed through the town of Fox Hill about thirty minutes earlier and hadn't yet hit Kingville. It was small, population approximately six thousand. Definitely not a connection to any research facility that we'd been able to find.
I hoped Dad hadn't been playing some sort of elaborate practical joke on me. But then, as Dan started to slow the car in response to the GPS's chirpy message that our destination was approaching on the right, I realized he hadn't been. Because in the field we were pulling up next to was the same giant tree I'd seen in my mind.
"That's the tree," I said, not quite believing what I was seeing.
"Tree?" Esme unfastened her seat belt, leaning forward so she could look past me. "What tree?"
I hadn't had time to tell Dan exactly what my experience with Jase had been like, let alone Esme. They knew I'd seen him. That he'd given me the coordinates, but I hadn't told them everything that had happened. I was still too raw to share Tootsie Rolls and the trail through the woods. I wished Jase was with us, but Dan's point about limiting the chance of vampires following us in daylight was hard to argue with. It just sucked that sunshine also ruled out Jase. I'd sent him a text to let him know where we were going, but I was hoping he wouldn't see it until sunset when we should be safely home again, and I could tell him we'd found something.
I turned to look at Esme and Dan. "When Jase did what he did, it was like we were following a path through a forest. And then there was a field just like this one. And a tree. A giant tree. Like that one." I undid my seat belt without thinking and opened the door, wanting to get to the tree more than anything.
"Ash, wait," Dan said.
I twisted back, one foot already touching the scruffy gravel at the side of the road. "There's no one else here. No cars. I can't smell anyone else." All I could smell was grass and eau de cow shit. "And, like you said, it's not like vampires can do anything in the middle of the day."
The field was flat. As were the surrounding ones. No cars had followed us from the city. All three of us had been watching for that. Unless some vamps had somehow known where we were going and made themselves some sort of underground tunnels or mastered some sort of Star Trek-level cloaking device—and as far as I knew, such things didn't exist—there was nowhere to lie in wait for us.
"Doesn't have to be a vampire," Dan said.
"I don't think Smith is a sniper," I objected. Besides which, I was fairly sure he wanted me alive not dead.
"He could hire one though," Esme said. She slipped out of the car, pulled out a pair of binoculars from her backpack, and scanned the horizon.
"Well?" Dan asked.
"Ashley is right, I can't smell any people. Or vampires. Just cows. And there's nothing out of the ordinary in range of vision."
I looked at Dan. "There's no way Smith could know where we were going. There's no sign of a tail."
Dan looked unhappy, but he nodded. "Okay. But we'll go across to the tree together, okay?" He got out and went around to the back of the Jeep.
"Sure." I climbed out of the car and headed for the fence. The field was empty, which was lucky. No potentially ornery stock to give us grief. Hopefully there wouldn't be an ornery landowner either. But Dan had a search warrant for the coordinates, so we were covered no matter what happened.
The three of us vaulted over the fence. Supernaturally enhanced strength is handy sometimes. Dan carried a small shovel and a metal detector. There were times when his FBI-honed instincts made me smile.
“Always be prepared,” that was his motto. Though that also brought him frustrations when he couldn't control everything. I still wasn't sure I believed there would be anything to find, but we were equipped for digging if there was.
Dan looked at me. I took a breath, nodded, and we set off across the field.
I compared the tree to the one I remembered. It was larger, if anything, which made sense given the time elapsed since my dad had been here. If he had. I couldn't help thinking that maybe I'd imagined the whole thing and we were going to look stupid, trying to find something under this tree that just didn't exist.
But if I'd made it up, surely Jase wouldn't have experienced the whole thing, too? And it was a weird sort of situation to make up for a last encounter with my long-dead father. Not to mention the fact that if I'd been going to make that sort of thing up, I'd want to see my mom, too. Sure, the last few months had been stressful, but I hadn't reached the point of actually losing my marbles.
"Now what?" Esme asked when we reached the tree.
I stared at it. It was just like my memory. Huge. All three of us could have stood around it and barely spanned it with our arms. The trunk didn't start to branch until several feet above Dan's head. After that it was just a normal tree. Branches, smaller branches, twigs, and leaves. Nothing hanging from any of them that nature hadn't put there.
Disappointing. I hadn't really expected to find another envelope hanging out in the open. It hardly would have lasted for years and years. But I hadn't been entirely sure.
"Buried makes the most sense," I said. "That would give whatever it is a chance of surviving." I looked down at the base of the trunk. The beginning of the roots visible aboveground were gnarled and thick. If my father had hidden anything under one of them, we were going to need a chainsaw. And we'd have a lot more explaining to do to whoever owned the land.
Esme was walking around the tree, shaking her head. "There's a lot of ground under this tree." She paused when she got back to Dan and looked up. "And in those branches. Trunks have hollows."
Dan nodded but grinned at her. "You're the cat. You can climb to check it out."
She rolled her eyes.
"Dad would go with whatever was safest," I said. "Trunks can be damaged. Hit by lightning or whatever." I circled the tree as Esme had, trailing my hand along the bark, trying to think. Here and there were old weathered initials carved into the trunk. Not R and I for my mom and dad. But they gave me an idea. I walked more slowly, scanning the trunk closer. Low to the ground, I found a small circle carved into the bark. And within it, something that might, if I squinted hard, be a Tootsie Roll.
It wasn't going to win any awards for great art, but it looked close enough to a candy for me. Not exactly a common thing to carve into a tree.
"Here," I said, pointing.
Dan came around and peered at the symbol. "What is that?"
"I think it's supposed to be a Tootsie Roll," I said. "Dad loved them. They were in the memory as well."
His eyebrows went up, but he shrugged. "Okay. It's worth a shot. I guess we dig here." He shucked off his jacket, and I stepped back to give him room as he wielded the shovel.
It also made me smile to watch the ripple of his muscles beneath his shirt as he sank the shovel into the earth. He was being careful, but he was still a study in controlled power, easy with the actions, as though he did it every day. Werewolf coordination made everyday things a delight to watch.
"Nice work," I said to him. He grinned back at me over his shoulder.
"You two going to need a room?" Esme muttered.
"I'm just appreciating my man," I replied.
"You could appreciate me by helping," Dan said, pointing the shovel at us. "Esme, do you want to turn the metal detector on?"
He'd scraped back the moss and leaves and odd stubborn tufts of grass and loosened up the top layer of soil, clearing a two-foot square patch around the base of the tree.
"Do you think he would have used metal?" I asked. "Plastic would last longer, wouldn't it?"
Dan shrugged, wiping his brow with his forearm as he watched Esme. "Probably. But there could still be something metallic within the plastic. We don't know what he left for you. If your dad went to all this trouble, he thought it through."
He sounded approving. He would have liked my dad. They were similar in some ways. Both believed in preparation, dedication, and pursuing a cause. Dad might have given Dan a hard time at first, but he'd have been on board with anyone who loved me as fiercely as Dan did.
"You're right. He couldn't have predicted that I'd have FBI help to look for this." Or could he? Clearly the memory in my head and whatever we were going to find were my dad's paranoid version of “break glass in case of emergency.” But no, he would, as Dan said, have considered all the options. Thought about what would happen if I had to come looking on my own.
Burying whatever it was with something metal seemed like a simple way to increase my chances of recovering what he'd hidden if he couldn't leave it in a more normal place.
Esme swept the detector over the ground. Nothing happened. She stopped, fiddled with the controls, and then tried again. This time it beeped.
Dan grinned. "That's a good sign."
He waved her back and started digging again, this time going more slowly, only lifting a little soil at a time.
It didn't take long before we heard the shovel thud against something.
My heart started hammering. There really was something here. I hadn't imagined it. My dad had stood here under this tree however many years ago and buried something that maybe he hoped I'd never need to find.
It didn't take Dan long to clear the rest of the dirt from around our target. He stepped away from the hole, staring down at whatever it was. The hammering in my chest turned to thumping.
"Do you want to lift it out?" he asked. "Your dad left it for you."
He stepped back so I could see what was in the hole. Something wrapped in burlap that was mostly rotted away. I couldn't see much under the layer of black dirt coating everything, but it wasn't very big.
I looked at it, not sure what to say. I wanted to know what it was, but suddenly all I could think was that my dad had held this box, too. That he must have been been thinking of me when he buried it. It hurt. I had some of his and Mom's stuff, of course. But I was used to those things, knowing they'd touched them in the past while now they couldn't. Sometimes those could catch me the wrong way, too, but they were familiar and safe. But this was something new. I would be the first person to touch it since he had.
I had to blink back tears. Dan and Esme stayed quiet, giving me the time I needed. It took a minute to collect myself.
"Here," Dan said when I nodded at him. He passed me a pair of disposable gloves, then pulled on a pair himself.
He wasn't just thinking of keeping my hands clean. The box was potential evidence.
I pulled the gloves on and reached for the box. It came free easily enough. Most of the burlap that was left fell away, just a few pieces here and there sticking to the sides of what proved to be a small metal box.
I straightened, held the box out to Dan.
"Do you want me to hold it or open it?" he asked, concern in his eyes. "Take the time you need to."
I shook my head. "Just hold it. I'll open it." I studied the box. It didn't have a lock. It was a simple small blue square tin with a fitted lid. I brushed away more of the dirt and burlap with my fingers, then tried the lid. Dan stayed quiet, but the steady beat of his heartbeat was a thread of comfort. A reminder that I hadn't lost everything when I lost my parents. That I was rebuilding my family now. That I had people who loved me.
The lid was a little stiff, but werewolf strength was handy. I got it free without too much trouble. Esme held out an evidence bag, and I put the lid into that before looking to see what was in the container.
Inside the box was another tin, this one in better condition. Once I pried the lid off that one, I found a small clear plastic container that held an envelope and a key in separate ziplock bags.
More clues. I sighed.
"Was your Dad into treasure hunts?" Dan asked. His tone held an edge of frustration, too, as though he wished this was all more straightforward.
So did I.
"He was good at hiding Easter eggs, but otherwise, no," I said. I put my hands behind my back, resisting the urge to touch. The envelope had my name on it. But until I had clean gloves, I didn't want to mess anything up.
"That looks like a safe-deposit box key," Esme said.
"It does," Dan agreed. He passed her the shovel. "Can you take this and the detector back to the car? We'll be there in a minute."
As Esme walked away, he moved closer. "Ash, are you sure you're okay?"
"I wish I knew when he wrote this," I said. My voice trembled. "I feel like it's the last thing I'll ever have of his. This is the last letter he ever wrote to me." I blinked, determined not to cry. "It's dumb, I know."
He leaned in and kissed my forehead. "It's not dumb. You loved him. You lost him way too soon. I'd worry if you weren't feeling sad."
"But I have to open it anyway, don’t I?" I said. "If we want to know where the key belongs."
He nodded slowly. "Yeah, looks like it. I'm sorry, love. I'd rather give you all the time you wanted. But after what happened last night…."
I swallowed hard. He was right. There was no time to waste. I couldn't let the emotions get in the way. My dad was dead and that sucked, and I hated it, but there were other people at risk.
I held up my grubby gloves. Smearing dirt on the last thing I might ever read from my dad wasn't an option. "We have wipes and more gloves back at the car, right? I don't want to get this dirty."
Dan nodded. "Yes, we're all stocked up. But you can carry the box. It's yours, after all." He passed it to me.
It didn't weigh much at all for something with so much weight of meaning. I resisted the urge to pull it closer. "You're going to tell me this is evidence, aren't you?"
"It will be for a little while. But I’ll make sure you get it back as soon as possible. And our techs can make you a copy of the letter to keep until you can have the original back."
There would be a message for me. There was no way my Dad wouldn't write me a note when he was planning this whole thing. He'd embedded one into the memory he'd left for me. No way would he have missed the chance to do the same physically.
I walked back to the car slowly, watching where I put my feet, paranoid that I might trip or fall and somehow damage the box or its contents. I passed it to Dan when we reached the fence so I could climb but took it back as soon as I was safely on the other side.
Dan opened the back of the Jeep, stowed the shovel and the metal detector, then grabbed his evidence kit. "Fresh gloves, wipes. Take the old gloves off, clean your hands, new gloves." He pulled a packet out of the bag and opened it. It was a small sheet of clear plastic. "Put the box down on this while you clean your hands. There are more plastic sheets in there, too. Spread one of those over your lap if you want to sit in the car. Rest the box on the plastic. Only touch the underside of the plastic yourself. Got it?"
I nodded. I'd had the evidence speech before. Sometimes my line of work meant I handled hardware used in a crime to get to the data I'd need to help investigate a case. I knew about gloves and the chain of custody. But I'd never been the first one to touch a piece of evidence before.
"Esme and I need to check in with the office," Dan said. "Take your time." He tipped his chin at Esme, who was waiting by the fence, and they walked back down the road, giving me some space.
I pulled off the old gloves, wiped my hands, put on fresh gloves, then carried the whole thing back around to the passenger side. Dan had left the door open for me. I got into the car with the box and managed to arrange it and the plastic sheet on my lap. My fingers trembled as I reached for the ziplock bag containing the envelope, and I had to stop and take a breath, the smell of latex harsh in my nose.
Not a particularly calming scent, but it gave me something to focus on other than the fact that I was about to read a letter from my dad. But I couldn't just sit there and breathe in latex forever.
"Get on with it, Keenan," I muttered and tried again.
The ziplock yielded easily, and I gently extracted the envelope. I understood how to handle old documents. Sure, most of my clients had digital records now, but some of them were a few hundred years old and had the ancient records to prove it. Paper gets fragile over time. Thirteen years wasn't that long in the grand scheme of things, but the letter had been buried, and I didn't want to take any chances of damaging it.
A quick scan told me it was in reasonable shape. The envelope was ordinary looking, once white, now yellowed at the edges. Other than my name, there was nothing to distinguish it from any other old envelope. It smelled very faintly of paper, but mostly of nothing. No hint of my dad at all. After so long, it had been foolish, maybe, to think there might be, but it still stung a little that his scent—if it had been there to begin with—hadn't survived. And it wasn't very thick, so I knew whatever lay inside it wasn't going to be long.
I eased the flap open, a feat made more difficult by the gloves. But apparently glue didn't age any better than scent. I slid the folded paper inside out gingerly, not wanting to tear it. It too was age stained.
Darling Ash,
If you see this, then something's gone wrong. I'm sorry to drag you into this. And I'm sorry for whatever happened. Sorry, too, for the cloak-and-dagger and the memory thing. Well, the cloak-and-dagger is kind of fun—you know I love a mystery—but I wouldn't do this to you if I could avoid it.
But this is important, and I need to keep it safe.
So, here's another piece of the puzzle. I hope you were paying attention to all those long-winded stories I used to tell you about meeting your mom. And I hope you still remember some of it. Because I need you to find the fruit, and that will tell you where to use the key.
I'm sure you'll figure it out from there. You've got a world-class brain, and I hope you've never forgotten that. Or forgotten how much I love you. Because that's always been true and always will be true, no matter what's happened.
And if you're going to tell your mom about this, tell her I say 'hi' and I'm waiting.
Love always
Dad xx
The writing blurred as tears stung my eyes. I dropped the letter into my lap and swiped at my eyes with my forearm. He'd thought she'd still be here with me. Whatever he'd been worried about, he'd never expected that he and Mom might die together.
Well, at least he wasn't waiting for her wherever he was. I didn't really know what I believed about the afterlife. Vamps came back from the dead, in a way. Maybe that meant there was part of us that continued on. I hoped so.
I sniffed hard and wiped my eyes again. The meltdown could wait. It would come, but first I had to try to figure out what my dad was telling me.
Their first date. What had he told me about their first date?
They'd met in college in Seattle.
He'd taken her out for burgers, and then they'd gone for a walk, and it had all been very romantic. All normal.
Was I supposed to find whatever he'd left behind somewhere in Seattle?
Doubtful. Why bring me out here to this field if the information I needed was back in Seattle? Besides, the city seemed too obvious. Too easy for someone else who had known him to know he'd met Mom at UW, too. Or think he might have a storage unit or a safe-deposit box.
But Kingville wasn’t obvious. He'd brought me here for a reason. So, what else had he told me about that date?
Burgers. Ice cream. He always joked he'd almost changed his mind about Mom when he found out she didn't like coffee ice cream, but she'd been too cute to give up on.
Especially after the way she'd devoured a double bacon cheeseburger and fries with delight.
Mom had always rolled her eyes at that part.
And then Dad would say. "But what made your mom fall for me was my excellent serenading."
Then he'd break into “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Given he had a tenuous relationship with melody, it had always made Mom laugh and say, "I only kissed him to make him stop singing."
But “Strawberry Fields Forever” had been their song. He'd given her little gifts with strawberries on them every so often, and she'd kept them all. I still had a few of them tucked away in a drawer.
Was that the fruit he meant? Strawberries? I couldn't think of a better option. No other fruit stood out in the tale of that date that I could remember.
Strawberries it was. And I was going to start looking in Kingville. Otherwise, it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack back in Seattle.