The tenth step creaked beneath my foot, sending an adrenaline-spiked bolt of alarm through me, and the thirteenth was rotten under my hand. The seventeenth lodged a huge splinter in my left palm. But two steps after that, my head rose above the floor of the stand, and my cat’s eyes focused easily on the small chest in one corner, thanks to the last rays of starlight now peeking from behind a cloud.

The first bit of daylight would shine shortly after 7:00 a.m., which gave us under two hours to get what we came for, get back to the car, and get the hell out of Dodge. No pressure…

I hauled myself up carefully, wincing when my cast scraped the floor, though it didn’t hurt. I wondered if I would have smelled Brett’s residual scent on the wood, if I were in cat form. Assuming he’d actually been where I now sat, a couple of days earlier.

Jace whined, and Marc asked the question for them both. “Do you see it?”

“Yeah. We are a go for an old wooden chest.”

They both exhaled in relief from twenty feet below.

Several patches of the floor looked suspiciously soft and dark, so I crawled around them on my knees and elbows, staying close to the right-hand railing. Crawling distributed my weight over a broader area, and my elbows kept pressure off my broken wrist.

The box was nothing more than a rough wooden cube, but I could see how a pair of small boys might call it a treasure chest. Might even have kept their own valuables in it.

The lid was a simple pine board, attached to the back of the box by a set of rusty hinges, which squealed when they were used. I lifted the lid slowly with my eyes closed, sending up a silent, fervent prayer that Brett had remembered this place. That he’d thought of it when he needed somewhere safe to store the evidence that could seal his father’s fate, and save so many others.

I opened my eyes. And laughed out loud.

Relief bubbled up inside me like a fountain of joy, and it would not be stifled, even with dawn less than two hours away. Even though we were well inside enemy territory. Even though Kaci would die and my Pride would be slaughtered if we were caught.

“Is it there?” Marc demanded as Jace continued to whine softly, begging for information.

“Yeah. He even put them in plastic.” I lifted the gallon-size bag and held it up. Inside were two huge feathers, striped with a distinctive pattern of colors I couldn’t make out without more light, even with my cat vision. But I saw the dark smears of blood, and I could smell it, even nearly a week old and sealed inside plastic.

On the front of the bag was a white strip, and Brett had printed on it, in clear black letters. “Thunderbird feathers. Lance Pierce’s blood.”

Brett, wherever you are, I hope you’re being spoiled rotten in the afterlife. “Jace, your brother’s a saint.”

Jace huffed, as if he had a dissenting opinion to add, but I only laughed. And when I glanced into the box again, I laughed even harder. “They’re still here!” I called. “Brett’s pop guns and your knife. They’re all still here! Do you want me to bring them down?”

For a moment, there was only silence. Then Jace huffed again, but I couldn’t interpret that one without body language to add nuance, so Marc called up with a translation. “I think he wants you to leave them there. For Brett.”

He must have gotten that right, because Jace didn’t contradict him. So I closed the box and left the abandoned toys as a memorial to Brett, and to the childhood friendship he and Jace had once shared. Then I started back across the floor with the zipper of the plastic bag clutched in my left hand.

I was about a foot from the edge when my jeans caught on something, and my right leg refused to slide forward. I let go of the bag and propped myself on my good hand to twist for a better view. The hem of my jeans was stuck on a nail sticking up from the floor.

“Shit!”

“What’s wrong?” Marc asked immediately as Jace whined louder in question.

“I’m caught on a nail. Hang on. I think I can get it.” I pushed myself slowly backward and shook my foot to dislodge the nail. When that didn’t work, I shifted my weight onto my left hand and reached back toward the nail with my right.

The deer stand creaked, and fear spiked my pulse. My hand broke through the floor. Jagged edges of wood raked the length of my forearm, pushing my sleeve up in the process. I screamed. My face slammed into the floor, and I bit my lip. Blood poured into my mouth.

“Faythe!” Marc shouted. Jace growled, a deep, fierce sound, and Marc’s next words were directed at him. “Let go!” But Jace only growled harder.

“I’m okay,” I said, but it came out as a whisper, with my left cheek still pressed into the wood. Still, the guys heard me.

“I’m coming up!” Marc called, and Jace’s growl grew even fiercer.

“No!” I said, when his meaning finally became clear. “It won’t hold you. I’m okay. Just let me pull myself out of this hole.”

“Let go of me, or I’ll cave your face in,” Marc said, his voice soft and dangerous. Jace growled once more for good measure, then must have let Marc go, because he voiced no further complaint. “Can you get up?” Marc called to me.

“Yeah.” I hope. “Just a minute.” My left arm was useless, hanging beneath the floor from my shoulder on. The lower half of it was on fire, the pain so acute and encompassing that I couldn’t tell exactly where it hurt.

“You’re bleeding. A lot,” Marc said, and twigs crunched beneath his boots as he paced.