My parents abandoned me at Grandpa’s house when I was five years old. Seventeen years later, while he was still unconscious in intensive care, they came back with a moving truck.

The drive back from St. Matthew’s took twice as long because the evening rush hour traffic had turned Maple Street into a parking lot of red tail lights and impatient horns.

When I finally pulled Edward’s truck into the driveway, the black Audi Q7 was gone.

The moving truck was gone, too.

At first, I felt a rush of cold relief. Maybe they had realized the legal documents were real. Maybe Mr. Holloway’s threat of a municipal injunction had scared them off for good.

As I climbed out of the truck and walked up the front steps, however, I noticed something wrong.

The front door wasn't locked.

It was standing open about two inches, a thin strip of yellow hallway light spilling out onto the welcome mat.

My stomach dropped into my shoes.

I pushed the door open slowly, the heavy oak hinges creaking in the quiet evening air. "Hello?"

No answer.

The downstairs hallway was dark, save for the amber glow of the porch lamp filtering through the sidelights. The dining table where Sarah had dropped the garbage bags was empty—the hospital bracelet was gone, swept away by someone in a hurry.

I didn't turn on the overhead lights. I kicked off my boots, leaving them by the door, and crept toward the staircase as quietly as a cat. Every floorboard seemed determined to betray my presence, groaning softly under the weight of my socks.

Creak.

I froze on the landing, listening.

From upstairs—specifically from the direction of Edward’s study at the end of the hall—came a faint, rhythmic scraping sound.

Scratch. Tap. Squeak.

Someone was using a pry bar.

I didn't think. I didn't calculate the risk or wonder if I should call the police first. All I could hear in my head was Edward’s raspy voice in the hospital room: “The box... the one your grandmother left before she passed. If they get into that study before Mr. Holloway files the second injunction... they’ll burn it all.”

I reached the top of the stairs and slipped down the narrow hallway like a shadow.

The door to the study was wide open.

Inside, the overhead light was blazing. Brianna was kneeling on the worn oriental rug beside the old cast-iron radiator, her face flushed with exertion as she jammed the flat end of a chrome tire iron beneath the edge of wide pine floorboards.

"Hurry up, Brianna!" Sarah hissed from the doorway, wringing her hands as she paced back and forth across the hardwood. "David went down to the car to check if the locksmith’s tools are in the trunk. If the lawyer or the police show up before we find that box, we’re finished!"

"I'm trying!" Brianna snapped, her voice cracking with frustration as she threw her full weight onto the tire iron. "The nail is rusted solid into the joist! It won't budge!"

"Use the hammer, you idiot! Not the lever!"

"I don't have the hammer, you dropped it behind the desk!"

I stepped into the doorway, my boots making no sound at all on the rug.

"Looking for this?" I asked.

Both of them jumped as if they’d been struck by lightning.

Sarah whirled around, her eyes widening in sheer, unadulterated fury when she saw me standing there blocking the exit.

"You," Sarah spat, taking a step forward. "How did you get back in here? I thought you were staying at the hospital all night like a good little nurse."

"I was," I said, my voice dangerously calm. "Until Grandpa told me what you were really looking for."

Brianna dropped the tire iron with a heavy clatter against the floorboards and scrambled back onto her knees. "What are you talking about? This is our family home now! We can look in whatever room we want!"

"It’s not your home," I said, stepping further into the room. "And you aren't looking for family heirlooms, are you, Sarah? You’re looking for the loan files from nineteen-ninety-eight. The ones where David forged Edward’s signature to steal his military pension."

Sarah’s face went completely bloodless. For a split second, her composure cracked entirely, revealing the panicked, desperate woman hiding beneath the designer clothes and the expensive perfume.

"You don't know what you’re talking about," she whispered, her voice shaking. "Your grandfather was senile. He imagined things. He always held a grudge against your father because—"

"Because David was a thief," I interrupted, finishing the sentence for her. "And you helped him cover it up before you packed your bags and left a five-year-old child on a stranger's porch."

Before Sarah could lunge at me, heavy footfalls thundered up the stairs.

David appeared in the doorway, his face dark and sweaty, holding a heavy-duty master key ring and a crowbar in his right hand.

"What’s taking so—" He stopped dead when he saw me standing between him and the hallway.

His eyes swept over the room—over Brianna kneeling by the radiator, over the half-lifted floorboard, and finally back to me.