I frowned. “Safe?”
“The one in the wall behind the painting.”
I blinked.
I had seen Kwesi go near it before, though I had pretended not to notice.
“It’s probably his birthday,” I said after a moment. “He uses it for everything.”
“Good. We need what’s inside.”
“The police are all over the house.”
“For now,” she said. “By tonight they’ll be gone. If there is anything that connects him to the men he hired, it may still be there.”
“I can’t break into my own burned house.”
“It isn’t breaking in if your name is on the deed,” she said dryly. “And either way, we need evidence.”
“I’m going with you,” Kenzo announced from the sofa.
I turned immediately. “No. Absolutely not.”
His small face tightened with determination.
“Mama, I know where Daddy hides things.”
“You are not going back in that house.”
“There are places you don’t know,” he said softly. “I know because I watch. I always watch.”
Zunaira gave me a look over the rims of her glasses.
“He may be right. Children notice patterns adults overlook.”
I hated it.
I hated that my child had already been made into a witness, already pushed into the role of protector. But I also knew he had seen what I had missed again and again.
The day passed in slow, suffocating inches.
We stayed hidden inside the office, eating crackers and fruit from a vending-machine haul Zunaira kept in her break room, watching the television and the neighborhood camera feeds she had access to through a former client who lived nearby.
We watched Kwesi perform for reporters. We watched him give statements to police. We watched him wander the perimeter of the ruins in visible anguish, shaking hands, receiving hugs, pressing his fingers into his eyes as if grief were physically blinding him.
Lies.
Every gesture was a lie.
At dusk, he finally got into a car and left.
“Now,” Zunaira said.
She handed me dark clothes, gloves, and a small flashlight. She had smaller gloves for Kenzo. We looked like burglars preparing for a job.
In a way, that was exactly what we were.
We parked two streets over and entered the neighborhood from behind, slipping along a service lane where the wall was lower and the camera coverage thinner.
“How do you know this route?” I whispered.
“Occupational history,” she murmured. “I once represented the developer in a divorce.”
We went over the wall one at a time. Zunaira first, then me. We lifted Kenzo down gently on the other side.
The house loomed in front of us, dark and gutted.
The smell of smoke still hung over everything.
“You have twenty minutes,” Zunaira said. “I’ll stay outside and watch. Get in, get what you need, get out.”
Kenzo grabbed my hand.
We slipped through the back kitchen door, which had warped from the heat but still opened enough to let us through.
Inside, the destruction was worse than I had imagined.
The walls were blackened. Parts of the ceiling had collapsed. The air tasted like ash and chemicals and wet insulation. Every step seemed too loud.
We moved quickly through what had once been our living room, then up the scorched staircase to Kwesi’s office.
By some cruel luck, that room had taken less damage than the rest of the house.
The painting that had hidden the safe had burned almost completely away.
I knelt in front of the metal door, punched in Kwesi’s birthdate, and heard the green beep.
It opened.
Inside were documents, a thick bundle of cash, and an old burner phone.
I shoved everything into the backpack I had brought.
“Mama,” Kenzo whispered from across the room. “Here.”
