Chapter 2

The safe room above the cold storage smelled of diesel and cedar. I laid Emil on the leather sofa and wrapped him in every blanket I could find. Ben stood at the door with a twelve-gauge.

“They’re not getting through the outer fence for another ten minutes,” he said. “Maybe less.”

“Make it twenty,” I said.

At 7:20, a second set of headlights appeared on the gravel. Greta Mullen stepped out of a gray sedan, her raincoat plastered to her shoulders. My lawyer. My former foster sister. The woman who had held my hand at Irina’s funeral.

I went back to the gate alone.

“Give them back, Nadia,” Greta said. “Please. This is not a fight you can win with a shotgun.”

“Look at this,” I said. I pressed the pre-op card to the mesh.

Greta’s eyes moved across it. Then she saw the bottom right corner. The raised crimson stamp. Notary Public, State of Oregon. Commission #449210. Greta Mullen.

Her face went gray.

“You notarized this yesterday,” I said.

Greta stumbled backward. “Nadia, you don’t understand.”

“Then explain it.”

“He has Toby,” she whispered. “Paul has the footage from Toby’s accident on Highway 30. He said he’d send it to the prosecutor. He said my son would go to MacLaren by morning.”

Her phone buzzed in her hand. I saw the screen light up. Location sent.

“You just told him where they are,” I said.

Greta’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.

I left her standing in the rain and ran back inside.

At noon, Lina pulled me into the corner of the safe room. She had her rag doll pressed to her chest. The doll’s spine was split open. Inside the stuffing, wrapped in electrical tape, was a thumb-sized digital recorder.

“Mommy put this in before the kitchen got hot,” Lina said. “She told me if Daddy ever took Emil to the blue-tile room again, I had to give it to you.”

My hands shook as I hit play.

Irina’s voice crackled through the tiny speaker. She was breathless, terrified. “Nadia, if you’re hearing this, Paul found out I copied the billing ledger. He’s not fixing fractures. He’s pinning healthy bones in state kids and our own son to bill insurers for experimental plates. I have files. If I die, it wasn’t the fire. It was him.”

The recording cut off.

Emil stirred on the sofa. His fevered eyes found mine.

“He put something in my leg, Auntie,” he whispered. “It hurts where the metal is.”