Turn the page and continue with Chapter Two...

At 1:30 a.m., the old municipal archive building sat like a looming, dark monolith on the edge of town.

Overgrown ivy crawled up its cracked red-brick walls, and the high arched windows were dark and covered in years of grime. A light rain had begun to fall, slicking the empty streets and making the streetlights reflect off the asphalt like smudged oil paint.

Arthur parked his old sedan two blocks away in the shadows behind an abandoned gas station.

"Eleanor is watching Leo at the house," Arthur whispered, his hands gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white. "I locked all the deadbolts and drew the shades. But Emma... if Thomas’s men check the house..."

"They won't check yet," I said, pulling a flashlight from my jacket pocket. "Thomas thinks he has me cornered. He thinks I'm a desperate single mother with no options who will show up at his estate tomorrow begging for mercy. Arrogance is his blind spot."

We crept through the dark alleyway behind the archive building, the rain cold against my neck. Arthur led the way to a heavy steel door hidden behind a rusted fire escape. He inserted a long, brass key into the lock, turning it with a loud, metallic click that echoed in the quiet night.

We slipped inside.

The air inside the building was freezing and smelled heavily of mold, wet paper, and rot. Dust motes danced in the beam of my flashlight as I swept it across rows of metal filing cabinets and stacked cardboard boxes filled with decades of forgotten town records.

"Where is the engineer's safe?" I whispered.

"In the basement," Arthur murmured, pointing toward a narrow wooden door at the end of the main hallway. "It was used for secure land-deed storage back in the seventies. Nobody has been down there in fifteen years."

We descended the narrow, creaking wooden stairs, our footsteps muffled by the sound of rain hammering against the roof far above us. The basement was pitch black, the walls made of rough-hewn stone and damp mortar.

At the far end of the room stood a massive, black iron safe, its brass dial green with oxidation.

I stepped up to the safe, pulling a small silver slip of paper from my wallet—a paper Julian had given me eleven years ago, wrapped inside a silver locket I had worn around my neck every single day of my life.

"42... 18... 09... 74," I read aloud, turning the heavy dial carefully, listening for the delicate click of the internal tumblers.