“At Mom’s birthday dinner, my brother calmly announced, “Your empty house is sold. Someone had to pay your debts.” The family nodded in approval.

“Neil!” I hissed, though he couldn’t hear me through the rain.

Two figures emerged from the station shadows.

One was tall and broad-shouldered, wearing a dark coat. The other held a gun.

Neil froze.

Monroe shoved open her door. “Federal marshals! Drop the weapon!”

Everything happened at once.

The armed man turned. Monroe fired. He went down hard, his gun clattering across wet pavement.

The tall man ran into the station.

“Stay in the car,” Monroe shouted at me.

Then she and the other marshal sprinted after him.

For three seconds, I obeyed.

Three whole seconds.

Then I saw Neil stagger.

He hadn’t been shot. The fallen man had clipped him with something when he dropped—a knife, maybe, or the edge of the gun. Neil was on one knee in the rain, one hand pressed to his side.

I threw open the door and ran to him.

“Emma!” Monroe’s voice echoed from inside the station, furious and distant.

Neil looked up. “I’m okay.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“Not much.”

It was a lie, but not the worst lie I’d heard that night.

A shout came from inside.

Then a crash.

Then silence.

I helped Neil under the station awning. “Stay here.”

He caught my wrist. “No.”

“I know where locker seven is.”

“That doesn’t mean you go in.”

I looked at the blue door.

Rain streamed down my face, washing blood from my temple into my collar.

“My whole life,” I said, “everyone has decided what I’m allowed to know.”

Neil’s grip loosened.

“I’m done.”

I entered the station.

The smell hit me first: wet wood, rust, mold, and underneath it, impossibly, cedar.

The main hall was darker than I remembered. Moonlight came through broken high windows. Rain drummed on the roof. My footsteps splashed through puddles on the cracked tile.

“Marshal Monroe?” I called softly.

No answer.

Somewhere deeper in the building, wood creaked.

I moved past the ticket booth. Broken glass glittered on the counter. The faded birds were still painted on the far wall, their wings spread toward a sky that no longer existed.

The baggage room was to the left.

I knew it before I saw the sign.

My father’s ghost led me there.

The room was narrow, lined with old brass-front lockers. Most hung open, empty and dark. A few were rusted shut.

Number seven was closed.

A fresh scratch marked the metal near the handle.

Someone had already tried it.

I grabbed the latch.

Locked.

Of course.

I searched the top, the sides, the floor. Nothing. Panic rose in my throat.

Then I heard Dad’s voice in memory.

“Seven is lucky, Em. But luck still needs a key.”

He had shown me a loose brick once. I remembered him laughing as he hid a penny behind it.

I dropped to my knees beside the lockers, running my hands along the wall.

One brick shifted.

My fingers closed around something cold.

A key.

For a second, I couldn’t move.

Dad had placed it there more than twenty years ago, and now my hand was exactly where his had been.

A floorboard creaked behind me.

I turned.

The tall man in the dark coat stood in the doorway.

He looked about thirty-five, maybe forty, with pale hair plastered to his forehead by rain and a face too composed for the ruined room around him. He held a gun low at his side.

“Emma Pierce,” he said.

My mouth went dry.

“Marcus Hale.”

He smiled faintly. “Your brother talks too much.”

“Where are the marshals?”

“Busy.”

I didn’t let myself look toward the door. “If you killed them—”

“I didn’t. Yet.”

He stepped inside.

I stood slowly, key hidden in my fist.

He looked at the lockers. “Number seven. Sentimental. Your father should have chosen something less obvious.”

“My father was smarter than you.”

“Your father was dead by thirty-eight.”

The words hit exactly where he meant them to.

He gestured with the gun. “Open it.”

“No.”

He sighed, almost politely. “Emma, I have spent years watching powerful men grow old in peace because Thomas Vale stayed hidden. My father died in prison waiting for a trial that never finished. Men who paid him walked away. Judges retired. Senators became consultants. Everyone survived except the people who did the work.”

“Your father murdered mine.”

“My father removed a threat.”

I stared at him. “You say that like it makes you different from a monster.”

His expression chilled. “Open the locker.”

I held his gaze.

Then I lifted the key.

His eyes flicked to it.

That was all I needed.

I threw it as hard as I could through the broken window.

The key vanished into the rain.

For the first time, Marcus Hale lost his calm.

He lunged at me.