She climbed up onto the rock and crawled across the soft surface as Xavier stood guard at her back with the rifle he’d acquired last night at the ready.

She flicked on her red-tipped flashlight and shined it in the gap between boulders, lifting the moss blanket as she did so.

Her light landed on a silver cylinder, sealed tight against the elements and bears.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Audrey tucked deep into the hollow in the roots of a large tree and waited for Xavier to settle in beside her before she twisted open the top of the bear canister. She’d peeked inside before they left her Flintstones recliner, and seeing a note along with some pipes and boxes of matches, they’d agreed to move to a less-exposed position to read the letter and figure out the gift George had left for her.

Xavier grabbed the camouflage and orange panel from her pack, but instead of sitting on it this time, he tacked the square to the opening with the mottled-green side facing out to ensure the light from her flashlight wouldn’t be visible. Secure in the knowledge they wouldn’t be easily spotted, she flicked on her headlamp, choosing the dimmest setting as she directed the beam at the piece of folded standard white paper.

She unfolded it and studied what appeared to be a page from a bored high school student’s notebook: quick sketches—line drawings that looked like petroglyphs and pictographs—numbers, letters, random words. And interspersed among it all, a few names.

Familiar names.

Inholding landowners: Harriet Jamison, Jason Caruthers, Bastian Ford.

But wait. Bastian Ford wasn’t an official inholding landowner. He was from the Kalahwamish Tribe. Their reservation was on the shores of Discovery Bay, an inlet of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Many Kalahwamish Tribal members—including George—had family ties to the coastal tribe that claimed Lake Olympus as part of their traditional territory. The Kalahwamish Tribe—which included Bastian—owned a lakeside cabin that had been transferred to the tribe two decades ago when Millie Thorpe Montgomery’s last will and testament had been found nearly sixty years after her death. Millie’s great-grandson, Jason Caruthers—another inholding landowner named on this page—hadn’t waited for the courts to sort out the legalities of the bequest and handed over every property he’d inherited that had been owned by Thorpe Log & Lumber to the tribe, including the lakeside cabin that had been built by Jason’s great-grandfather in the 1920s. The trainers’ vehicles were stored in this cabin’s garage.

Jason remained an inholding landowner, though, because he and his wife, Dr. Simone Atherton, purchased a lakeside cabin several years ago. Simone was a contract archaeologist who did lots of field projects on the peninsula, and Audrey had first met the woman when she was in her teens at a summer archaeology camp run by ONP archaeologist Roy Heller.