Clean and perfectly staged, despite the piles of boxes and totes along the walls.
“Something’s wrong.” Jordan’s near whisper drips with fear.
I sweep the room again. No windows or other entry points. Not even attic access. Just one closed door that we already walked through. A fluctuating tapestry of shadow and light dances on the walls and furniture. A rich man’s unused office turned storage room, frozen in anticipation.
“What do you mean?” I circle her and check the corners anyway, more out of old habits than superstition.
I sense nothing.
She’s at the desk, her fingertips gliding across the lacquer, her face drawn tight. She looks as if she’s caught the faintest vibration through the wood itself.
It would be easy to laugh at the idea of auras or haunted energy.
All the things I used to scoff at.
But she’s proven she’s so much more than a flake. She’s tuned to a frequency I can’t hear.
I keep my voice low, mimicking hers. “What do you feel?”
“It’s like…” She frowns. “Someone’s been here. Just now. The energy’s wrong. All churned up.”
I check my watch. Eighteen minutes remaining. “Where’s the safe?” The mission matters above all else. We can figure out the rest later.
She scans the shelves, searching for the anomaly. “There.” Her finger picks out a stretch of books identical to all the others, but she sounds certain. “Behind those.”
I go where she points, shoving aside rows of unread volumes, and find precisely what I’ve been hunting for.
Behind the dustless books lies the hidden panel for a classic wall safe. The old-school combination lock is a good choice.
It’s not even Eleanor and Richard’s safe, and still they hid the thing. They really are fanatics about security.
I haul the heavy box out. The metal lands with a decisive thud on the desk.
Jordan’s gone still. She braces her hands on the desk, every muscle drawn tight. She’s not looking at me or even at the safe. Her attention is fixed somewhere off in space, like she’s listening to a sound crest over the horizon.
The tension vibrates between us, and electricity sizzles through the air.
“Jordan?”
She pivots slowly, the chill in her eyes absolute. “Something’s really wrong.”
Fuck.
I scan again. No movement. No threats. But the room holds pressure, a sense of the floor tilting sideways beneath our feet. “Combination?”
Her robotic answer floats out, as if she’s reading off a list carved into her bones. “Eleven, twenty-seven, thirty-two.”
I spin the dial. Left. Right. Left. The mechanism is smooth, the clicks speaking in a sharp and satisfying language I know by heart. The handle turns.
Instead of files, folders, and evidence spilling out…
We find a gift box precisely wrapped in white paper with geometric blood-red lines and a matching glossy bow in the center of the otherwise empty compartment. The wallet-sized package sits like a threat, like someone laughing at me from behind a two-way mirror.
“No. That wasn’t there before.” Jordan sounds unmoored. Lost. “There were papers. Pictures. A hard drive.”
The hair on the back of my neck rises.
This is a message. A trap. The “Insurance” never mattered.
