Glancing back over his shoulder once more, T watched Griff extract the lock pick set from his pocket. They were in the shadows of a huge cottonwood but not quite as covered as he would’ve preferred.

Griff had spotted a side entrance to the courthouse. It was a safer bet than walking in the front but it was a push-handle door. Picking it would be far more difficult.

Taking a chance, T pulled on a glove and pressed the latch handle. To his shock, it opened.

“What the hell? They don’t even lock up the freaking courthouse?” Griff huffed quietly.

“Middle of Nebraska my friend, not the middle of Baghdad. Bet the front door’s locked but not this one.”

They slipped inside and Griff eased the door shut. “I’m locking this. I don’t want any interruptions.”

“Just remember to unlock it when we leave.”

“We have to go out this way, genius.”

“See, if we’d come in this afternoon we could’ve seen all of this in the daylight,” T reminded him.

“We were too busy with Cheryl.”

“How the hell was I supposed to know she’d show up?”

“It’s a small town, T. Everyone shows up because showing up is all there is to do.”

T clicked his Taclight on and kept it low. There was a front counter, a desk in the corner, eight by ten photographs of mayors from the last hundred years along one wall, and three rooms with shut doors behind the counter. One was conveniently labeled Land and Family Records.

“This is going to be like taking candy from a baby.” He immediately took photographs of the room with his phone so they’d be able to restore the things they went through to make certain no one knew anyone had been in the courthouse after hours.

“I don’t know. This computer looks like it crawled up from the Carter administration. We should’ve brought Echo with us,” Griff huffed.

“We don’t need Echo for this. Boot it and see if there’s anything interesting but I’m betting everything we need is in there.” He pointed to the door.

“I’m not sure it’ll even boot without defib paddles, man. Hang tight, I’ll see.”

The threadbare carpeting in the front room appeared to be older than the computer, but T was thankful for it. It did a decent job of masking their footsteps.

Griff shook his head. The computer groaned to life only to display a picture of three kids with jelly smeared faces sitting in a tree. Had to be somebody’s grandkids.

“Looks like this is mostly for show. This is probably the only courthouse in America that didn’t get metal detectors after nine eleven.

“Nah, I bet none of these ranching towns have ’em. It’s a different world. You know that.”

“Yeah, I know and I want to get back to the real one. Let’s check the records room.”

T tried the door. “Well, you are gonna get to use your lock pick kit after all.”

“Good. I’m glad something’s secure. This is way too fucking easy.”

The lock took less than five minutes to pick and Griff was pissy again. T rolled his eyes. “Not everything has to be difficult.”

Metal filing cabinets lined every wall of the room. Griff tugged on the drawer label with a handwritten C. “Spoke too soon, my friend. Every one of these drawers is locked too.” This seemed to please Griff.

“Good thing I hired a guy who can break most any lock.” This lock proved no more difficult than the door.

Griff extracted a handful of manila folders. “The Camdens.” He laid them on a folding table in the center of the room.

T rubbed his hands together. “I love my job.”

“You take the first half. I’ll take the second.”

T set a Rothco anglehead flashlight on the table and they dug in. “Okay, I love my job slightly less.”

“I take it you just figured out there’s no filing system here. They just stick stuff in the folders however feels good.”

“Mm-hmm.”

An hour later, he stumbled upon something very interesting. “Hand me those birth certificates.” He pointed to a neat stack by Griff.

“Okay, so Ev and Jessie have five living children, right?”

“Uh yeah, I’ve got Lucas, Grant, Austin, Natalie, and Holly. Here are their records.”

“Yeah, so who is Brock Camden?”

“Uh…” Griff dug through papers until he located another yellow sheet of paper. “Birthdate in 1982. No death certificate that I see. Mother’s signature is here. Her name is Mary Mendell Camden. No father’s signature.”

“Apparently, half of Camden Ranch actually belongs to him. Looks like it’s nothing more than a gentlemen’s agreement. It’s not even typed, just handwritten.”

“But he isn’t one of the kids.”

“Right, so who the hell is he?” The familiar feeling of discovery and digging surged through T. He loved this part.

“Hang on. Okay, I’ve got a marriage certificate for Everett and Jessie and one for Henry and Camille from 1952. There’s one for Austin and Summer, Lucas and Indieanna, Holly and Declan St. James, who I also have immigration paperwork on, one for Grant and Kaitlyn Sommerville, and one for Brock Camden and Hope Hendrix. They’ve been married a while and had to have gotten married here for the certificate to be here.”

“Was he adopted?”

“I haven’t come across any adoption paperwork and you and I both know if he had there’d be four more folders of just that.” Griff sighed.

“And I’m back to who the hell is he.”

“Answer has to be here somewhere. Dig.”

“Holy fuck.” T lifted another set of birth certificates from one of his folders. Certainty and accomplishment surged through him. This was why he loved his job.

“What?”

“Looks like Henry and Camille had two children, Everett and Michael.”

“Who’s Michael? Why haven’t we seen more of his shit?”

“No idea, but I’m betting I know who Brock belongs to.”

“Interesting. Did Cheryl ever mention any of the Camdens while she was trying to calculate your net worth, specifically whoever Michael is?”

“I wasn’t interested in her telling me all about the residents of Pleasant Glen.”

“Work from what we know. Find everything you can on Brock.”

“On it.” They continued reading every piece of paper and stacking them according to generation and then individual families in each generation.

“There’s got to be more somewhere. We’re missing something. I feel it. Do you feel that?”

“No, but after serving with you for twelve years I tend to trust your feelings,” Griff allowed.

T stood, stretched out his right calf. The steel rod they’d put in, making him able to walk after the incident, always made him stiff if he sat too long.

Stalking to another set of filing cabinets, he tugged on yet another drawer labeled C-L. “Dammit, open this one, too.”

“Don’t get your g-string in a knot.” Griff popped the lock and then returned to his methodical searching.

Flipping through folder after folder, nothing caught T-Byrd’s eye until he reached the last folder in the drawer. “What do we have here?” He extracted a file from a lawyer’s office. He turned to Griff with a sly grin. “I just found the Camden wills.”

“Well, bring them over here. We don’t have all fucking night.”

T flipped through all of the standard lawyer speak laid out in every last will and testament until he reached the special family allocations and instructions.

Ink written over the typed print on one of the final pages of Henry and Camille Camden’s will immediately caught his eye. “Well, I found Michael.”

“And?”

T shoved the will in front of Griff. “Looks like Michael Brock Camden was written out of the will September 27, 2000. Everything was given to Everett and it was done in red ink.”

A low whistle slid between Griff’s teeth. “Bet that made for some bad blood.”

“Yeah, but hang on. Everett’s will gives each of the six children, not his five, their agreed upon portion of Camden Ranch with the stipulation that it be given to their children equally upon their deaths.”

“Wait, when did A say her birthday was?” Griff sorted through one of his piles until he found Natalie’s birth certificate. “September 20, 1988.”

“He said whatever happened, happened just before her…”

“Twelfth birthday?”

“Holy fuck.”

“If my brother molested my kid I’d do a whole fucking lot more than throw him off my ranch,” Griff snarled.

“You and me both.”

“So, that’s what happened. This is the land they took away. Is he who we’re looking for?”

“Seems like it. Sketchy details on everything but the dates though. They didn’t exactly take land from anyone. It already belonged to the Camdens.”

“It makes sense though. Ev gave Brock back the land that was originally willed to his sperm donor a few years ago. Who knows if Michael is even still alive?”

“I can find that out from Lincoln.”

“A’s gonna want harder evidence than this. You know how he is about taking shaky intel.”

“Yeah, but this is it. I can feel it.”

“I’d feel better if we had something more substantial.”

The sound of a siren outside had both men standing and making their way to the front windows. T’s heart hammered out a frantic warning. A police car from the next town over flew past the courthouse, never even slowing down. He let himself breathe again. Before he returned to the paperwork, something caught his eyes. “We’re both from small towns, right?”

“Don’t remind me.” Griff rolled his eyes.

“Someday, I want to know what the fuck happened to you that made you so surly. Right now, think back. If anything of any significance happened where you grew up, where’s the first place people went to find out about it?”

Griff began methodically placing papers back into the files they’d come from. “The newspaper,” he finally stated.

T pointed to a diminutive office beside the library across the street labeled The Pleasant Glen Gazette. “Don’t you think the wealthiest family in town, the one with the most land and, hell, probably the most kids, being broken up would’ve made the papers?”

“I’d say it’s a safe bet. Guess it’s too much to hope there’s an online archive.”

“You’re dreaming. Google News is not saving stories from the Pleasant Glen Gazette. Trust me. But I’ll bet they’re on film in that newspaper office and I know there will be a microfiche machine in the library.”

“They don’t have metal detectors in their courthouse but they have a microfiche.”

“The ways of the small town, my friend. It’s kind of nice.”

“We clearly have different definitions of nice and you know my rule. I only break into two buildings in one night,” Griff chuckled.

“But you’ll bend that for Triple A.”

“Yeah, all right let’s clean this up and I’ll figure out how to get into the library and the newspaper office.”

Fifteen minutes later, T was keeping watch while Griff silently picked the lock on the library door. It was a safe bet there was an interior door between the library and the newspaper offices, but there was only one entrance into the Pleasant Glen Library and it was front and center on Main Street.

T gave two low deliberate whistles. Their sign for hurry it the fuck up. Griff huffed in response. When he coughed, T left his position, stuck to the shadows outside the streetlights, and met Griff on the porch.

Griff pointed to a sign beside the door as they eased inside. Pleasant Glen Library Hours 9:00–7:00 Wednesdays and Saturdays Head Librarian: Hope Camden.

“Brock’s wife is the librarian? Maybe we should do a little more checking in here besides just making use of the microfiche.”

“I love how you seem to think the sun isn’t coming up in a few hours. I keep telling you we don’t have all night.” Griff stalked quickly to a door on the side wall between shelves lined with books.

“Hey, I was right about there being an interior door to the newspaper office,” T reminded him. “So, in a way, you are only breaking into two buildings in one night.”

“Want me to get you a Skittle?”

“Red’s my favorite,” T goaded.

“Dude, shut the fuck up and hand me my jack knife. Everyone knows purple’s the best.”

A half-second later, the door to the newspaper office gave a loud pop and opened. T and Griff both cringed and stood deathly still to make certain no one had heard the door. The seconds ticked by. Nothing happened.

Griff eased inside the office and gestured for T to follow.

T shook his head. “You pull the archives for the month of September 2000. I’m going to find the machine.”

Twenty long minutes later, Griff returned. His hands were full of film. “I don’t think there’s anything on these. I tried looking at them with the light on my phone.”

“You can’t see anything that way. I put the microfiche in the bathroom. Only place where we can turn it on without lighting the whole place up.”

“There aren’t windows in the bathroom?” Griff tilted his head right and left, popping an imaginary crick out of his neck. Something T had seen him do dozens of times, always when he was nervous. T knew Griff had been taken once, before he was with Team Seven. He didn’t know what had happened to him, but he knew Griff didn’t care for being in tight places with no way out.

“There are windows against the ceilings. If we keep the microfiche on the floor the little bit of light will blend in with the moonlight.”

“Let’s just get this done. I don’t like this place.”

They made quick work of setting up and started going through film. The Camden name would pop up often, but nothing of any significance. Natalie had won a horseback riding competition. Austin was calf riding at a local rodeo. Brock and Luke were working on some kind of 4-H project.

They moved on to the week of Natalie’s birthday. The Camden name was oddly missing from every paper published that week. The following week was the same.

“Something not being here isn’t evidence,” Griff sighed.

“Nope. It isn’t. Weird though.”

“Agreed. Hang on I want to grab a few more rolls. I want to know when the Camdens returned to the papers.” Griff slipped the rolls they’d been through back into their canisters and headed toward the newspaper file room.

T slipped back into the library. Heading to what had to have been Hope Camden’s desk, he picked up a picture of two toddlers in a silver frame. There was a wedding photo of Brock and Hope’s wedding and another of Brock with one of their sons on his shoulders. Looked like a stand-up guy but pictures could be deceiving.

He slid open the desk drawer and extracted a few file folders. Book orders and paperwork on some kind of book donation drive. Nothing out of the ordinary for a library. But there under the folders was a letter.

“I knew there’d be something in here,” T spoke to the ether. There was no return address but the postmark was from Wilmington, North Carolina.

The envelope had already been opened, the letter already read. Keeping his Taclight between this teeth, T opened the letter.

Boisterous laughter filled the silent night. “Fuck.” T slipped the letter in his jacket and darted for the bathroom. The front door banged against its casing. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Hoisting the microfiche into his arms, he bolted through the library and shoved it back on the low shelf where he’d found it.

Griff knew the protocol if they were ever interrupted. Quickest means of escape. Phone call an hour later.

Returning to the bathroom, T climbed up on a toilet and slid one of the ancient windows lining the low ceiling to the side. Using his massive upper body strength, he hoisted himself up to the ledge and wiggled back and forth trying to squeeze himself through the small opening.

The front door of the library burst open and another round of female laughter made its way to his ears. Whoever she was she had male accompaniment.

Fuck. The glass panel of the window popped. Glass shattered.

“What was that?” The male asked.

Double fuck.

It was already broken. Maneuvering his knee upward, T kicked it out giving himself ample room to escape. His boots hit the hard dry dirt a second later. The shock of his calf trying to absorb the impact brought him to his knees.

Pain seared up his leg all the way to his groin. Bile shot to his throat. You’re a fucking Green Beret. Get up. Gripping the brick building, he tried to pull himself upright. His leg protested. Clenching his jaw, T took two deep breaths and tried again. This time his managed to stand. Steadying himself, he knew running wasn’t going to be an option so he limped toward the tree line twenty yards away.

Sirens blared. Red and blue lights were far too close for comfort. Not running was no longer an option. Gasping through the pain, he raced farther into the woods praying Griff had gotten out.