“Can you read it?”
“At your place, not here.”
Then headlights swept across the bedroom wall.
Josie froze.
A car door slammed outside.
Not the Honda. Heavier. Closer.
A fist hit the front door.
“Josie,” a man called. “Open up.”
Maurice.
The house changed. It went from sad to dangerous in one breath.
Micah pointed to the hall closet. “Basement?”
“No basement,” Josie whispered. “Garage.”
Another hit. Wood cracked.
I handed the papers to Micah. “Take her out the back.”
Josie grabbed my sleeve. “What about you?”
“I’m the delay.”
“Nate, no.”
I pulled free.
The door burst open as Micah dragged her toward the kitchen. Maurice entered with the big man from the hospital—Van—and a third man with hollow cheeks and gold rings.
I stood in the living room.
Maurice stopped.
For half a second, he seemed almost amused.
“You are everywhere,” he said.
“Funny. I was thinking that about you.”
His eyes moved around the room. Closet open. Bedroom light on. He understood enough.
“What did she find?”
“Old mistakes.”
The gold-ringed man drew a pistol.
Van shifted his weight, unhappy. Not scared. Unhappy.
Maurice lifted one hand. “Not here. Neighbors.”
I heard the back door close. Good.
Maurice noticed too.
His face hardened.
“You cost me patience, Horn.”
“You brought violence into a house where my son used to sleep.”
“Your son is alive because I allowed it.”
There are sentences a man says without knowing they have ended his future.
I stepped closer.
Van moved between us.
“Boss,” he said softly, “we should go.”
That surprised me. So did the look Maurice gave him.
Suspicion.
The first crack.
Outside, a woman shouted from a neighboring porch. “I called 911!”
Maurice backed away.
“This isn’t over.”
“No,” I said. “It’s finally starting.”
They left fast. Tires screamed.
I found Micah and Josie two streets away behind a closed bakery. Josie was shaking so hard she could barely stand. Micah held up the flash drive.
“You need to see what’s on this,” he said.
Back at McGrevy’s, the drive opened to one folder.
Videos.
The first thumbnail showed Darren laughing beside Maurice in a warehouse full of guns.
The second showed a man tied to a chair.
The third showed Jacob’s bedroom door.
### Part 6
I did not open the third video.
Not right away.
Some doors in life should be opened only when you have cleared the room, checked your weapon, and accepted that what you see cannot be unseen.
Micah watched my hand hover over the mouse.
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
The video was dark. Darren’s phone camera, vertical, stupidly close to his own breathing. Jacob’s bedroom door filled the screen. Darren whispered something to someone off camera.
Maurice’s voice answered, low and amused.
“Scare him enough and Horn pays attention.”
