“If my guesstimates are correct, it’s buried about a mile away and several million years ago,” I told her.

“Jeezum Crow, man. You’ve really gone all out on this, haven’t you?”

“I had to. I couldn’t make it easy for these bastards to get to us or the case.”

“Yeah, but that made it quite difficult for us, too.”

“It couldn’t be helped. Besides, since when was anything ever exactly easy for us?”

“Hmm. I see your point.”

“Anyway, once this rain’s stopped, we can walk the mile up the road we need to go, then I’ll look for the case.”

“Will it still be there, do you think?”

“We can only hope…”

• *

The rain eventually died down, so I unzipped the tent, and we got out and stretched our legs. I folded the tent back up, hid it under the woodland detritus, and then we started walking.

20 minutes later, we were stood in the middle of the field where I’d buried the real case several million years ago.

I broke off one of the planks from the fence that surrounded the field, and started using it to dig…