The front door opened downstairs.
I peeled off the card, shoved it into the innermost pocket of my jacket, reassembled the photo as best I could, dropped it back into the box, and thought with the frantic clarity fear sometimes produces: if Celeste found me in here, everything ended.
I could not relock the picked lock from the inside in time. I could not climb out the window without being seen. So I did the only thing I could think of.
I staged a break-in.
I slammed my shoulder against the old door frame with all my weight. Once. Twice. On the third hit, the latch plate gave way with a splintering crack. I stumbled backward, forced panic into my face, and screamed.
“Thief! Someone’s upstairs!”
Celeste’s footsteps sounded immediately on the stair landing.
“What are you talking about?”
I rushed into the hallway looking wild enough that I barely had to act.
“I heard a noise,” I gasped. “I came up and the door was broken and—Mama, I think someone got into your room.”
The words worked exactly where I needed them to. Not because she believed me at once, but because fear for her valuables outran suspicion.
She pushed past me and hurried into the room. I stayed in the doorway, heart hammering as she flew to the bedside table, the closet, the drawers. Her hands moved fast, not searching for sentimental things but for money, jewelry, whatever secret stash mattered most to her.
When she found what she had hidden still there, some of the tension left her shoulders.
Then she rounded on me.
“Did you see anyone?”
“No,” I said, letting my voice shake. “He must have gone out the window. I only saw the room after.”
Her gaze narrowed. “And what did he take?”
I swallowed. “I don’t know. I saw the suitcase on the bed. Maybe he thought there was something in it.”
At the word suitcase, her face changed very slightly. Not much. But enough.
Then she recovered and launched into furious complaining about neighborhood security, useless police response times, and bad luck. By the time she circled back to blaming me, the moment of greatest danger had passed.
I bowed my head and let her rant.
Inside my jacket pocket, pressed against the lining, was the first thing Sterling had left me that felt truly alive.
That night I told Celeste I was too shaken by the attempted break-in to sleep in the house. I said I wanted to stay a couple of nights with an old friend from my college days just to calm down. She was too distracted by the broken door and too relieved that her hidden valuables remained untouched to argue hard.
She waved me away with irritation.
I left before she could change her mind.
Jordan was waiting at a backup apartment she had arranged through one of the few people she trusted, a smaller place in an older building with plain furniture, bad lighting, and a table that wobbled unless you put a folded magazine under one leg. Elias Monroe was there too.
I had heard Jordan mention him before, but this was the first time I met him face-to-face. He was in his thirties, broad-shouldered, sharp-eyed, and carried himself like a man who noticed exits in any room. Sterling had once described a friend from work who could fix anything from a dead server to a busted truck axle with equal calm. I knew at once this was that man.
Jordan stood when I came in.
“Did you get it?”
I took the memory card out and held it up.
Her face went tight with relief.
Elias already had a laptop open on the table. He inserted the card carefully and sat back as the screen populated.
One folder appeared.
THE TRUTH.
No one spoke.
Jordan opened it.
Inside were several video files, each labeled by date. The first was recorded three days before Sterling disappeared.
The footage had no sound. It looked like it had been taken from a hidden camera mounted high in the study—Ellis’s study, I realized, or what used to be Sterling’s workspace before everything went bad. The angle showed the desk, bookcases, part of the rug, and whoever sat across from him.
In the first video Sterling was seated with a man I had never seen before. The stranger was older, impeccably dressed, silver-haired, and carried the kind of easy arrogance that made even silence feel threatening. They were arguing. I could tell from the movement of their mouths, the angle of Sterling’s jaw, the way the man jabbed one finger at the desk as if issuing terms.
At the end, the stranger stood abruptly and walked out. Sterling stayed where he was, hands in his hair, shoulders bent under a weight I had not been there to share.
The next videos showed other visitors. A woman in a fitted suit with a hard face. A heavyset man with tattoos peeking above his collar. Another man I did not know. Every meeting ended the same way: Sterling agitated, cornered, furious or exhausted, and increasingly alone.
Then came the final video, time-stamped the day before he disappeared.
This time the man across from Sterling was Ellis.
My stomach dropped.
Ellis laid a thick folder on the desk and slid something else with it—a plane ticket. Even without sound I could tell the conversation was ugly. Sterling remained seated for a moment, then shot to his feet so fast his chair tipped backward. His face, when he turned slightly toward the camera, was red with anger I had never seen in him before.
Ellis stood too. Father and son faced each other across the desk, and though I could not hear a word, disappointment radiated off Sterling so strongly it made my chest hurt.
Then he shook his head, grabbed nothing, and walked out.
Jordan replayed the scene twice.
“Zoom in,” Elias said.
