It took me several minutes to fully scrape away the thick soil that had encased the case (and, incidentally, it took a whole lot longer than that to scrape out the soil from under my fingernails later on), but thankfully, I uncovered it enough to pull it out from the ground completely.

“Is that it, then,” asked Zoe.

“Yep. This is it.”

“How sure are you?”

I sat down on the moist grass, wiped the sweat from my face with my shirt sleeve, then picked up the case and positioned it in my lap. I flipped it over, and—

“Here it is. It’s got the marker I put on it before I buried it. Look.”

I pointed at the marker at the bottom right-hand corner of the underside of the case. Zoe knelt down to take a closer look, and saw my marker: three X ’s, scratched into the metal.

“You’re so cool, Brewster,” she smarmed.

“Yes, thank you, Evil.”

“Can we go now?”

“Of course…but would you mind helping me up, first?”