I tap my fingers against my knee and scan the spaceout of habit. Cameras. There have to be cameras. Even if nothing streams out of here, the possibility presses in. Being watched is a different kind of restraint than being locked in.
I spot one in the kitchen. Another near the main entrance. Their placement is deliberate and obvious, like he wants people to know where not to linger.
I do not see any in the hall. There appears to be nothing aimed at the study door.
Restlessness tips into decision.
I move down the hallway softly, as if tiptoeing won’t alert anyone to my approach. Everything has a place, yet nothing is personal. A house designed to operate, not to settle into.
I stop in front of the room.
I tell myself I am only checking the door, confirming it is locked, and then walking away. That noticing something does not obligate me to act on it.
I wrap my fingers around the knob, and it doesn’t turn. It stays firm under my palm, locked like he said it would be. But the door shifts anyway.
It moves an inch, then another, gliding inward with a faint scrape of wood against frame. No click. No resistance. Just the quiet give of something that was never pulled fully shut.
I stop breathing.
He locked it. He just didn’t make sure it latched fully when he closed it.
The gap opens into darkness, narrow but unmistakable. Enough to see the edge of a desk. Enough to know this isn’t a mistake I imagined.
This is the moment I should step back. Instead, I ease the door open the rest of the way.
The desk dominates the room, dark and heavy, andunlike the rest of the bunker, it isn’t pristine. Papers sit scattered across its surface, as if someone left in a hurry. That alone draws me closer.
I start with what’s on top. Expense logs. Delivery schedules. Mundane on the surface, even if I don’t know what half of it means. I’m sliding one sheet back into place when something about the bottom drawer catches my attention. It’s slightly ajar. Dust rims the edge, disturbed just enough to suggest it wasn’t meant to be.
I crouch and pull it open.
My fingers brush against something stiff and crinkled beneath loose papers. When I draw it out, my pulse kicks harder than it has since I entered the room.
A thin ledger. Old. Faded. Tucked so far back it feels deliberate.
I flip through it, then stop when I notice the photos slipped between the last pages. My hand stills. The room feels smaller all at once. I glance toward the door, then slide the photographs free.
Each one is sharp and focused, the subjects caught mid-conversation, unaware. Men in bars. Men at tables. Men leaning close to speak. None of them looks at the camera.
Every image has at least one man in it circled in red ink.
I flip through them again, slower this time, paying closer attention to try to understand what they are.
Two men across from each other at a table, their shoulders angled stiffly, conversation caught mid-stream. Another man stands alone in a dim corner, sharp-featured, his expression closed in a way that makes it hard to tell what he’s reacting to, or if he’s reacting at all.
One image holds my attention longer than the rest.
The man is broader than the others, heavier throughthe shoulders. There’s a dark mark along the side of his neck, curling upward toward his jaw. A birthmark, maybe.
I tilt the photo slightly, studying it, trying to decide what about it draws my eye. It isn’t attractive or dramatic. It’s just distinct enough that I know I’d recognize it again.
In that photo, the red marker circled him multiple times, pressed thicker. It wraps around both men at the table.
There are no notes. No dates. No explanation.
Someone cared enough to single these moments out, then cared enough to hide them. Did Ridge hide them, or are they hidden from him, too?
I keep going, slower now, flipping through the remaining photos. The man with the mark on his neck appears again, this time by himself. The shot isn’t clean. It’s slightly blurred, as if whoever took it moved too quickly or didn’t have the luxury of waiting for the angle to settle.
