Five minutes after I buried my father, the gravedigger pulled me aside to whisper the coffin underground was empty, pressed a brass key marked 17 into my hand, and begged me not to go home—right as my mother, standing thirty yards away pretending to grieve, texted me three cold words: Come home alone.

The sound of screeching tires came from outside.

Multiple cars.

"Get down!" Agent Cole shouted, pulling her weapon.

Dad grabbed my arm and yanked me behind the metal desk just as the storage unit door was ripped open.

Gunfire erupted.

Bullets ripped through the thin metal walls, sparking against the concrete floor. I pressed myself as flat as I could get, my heart hammering so hard I thought it would burst through my chest.

This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening.

Twenty minutes ago, I'd been burying my father. Now I was hiding from gunmen in a storage unit while he sat beside me, very much alive.

"Stay here," Agent Cole said, and then she was moving, returning fire, her shots sharp and controlled.

I heard shouts from outside. The sound of running feet.

Then silence.

"Clear!" a man's voice called out. "Agent Cole, it's us!"

More FBI agents swarmed into the storage unit, weapons raised, scanning every corner.

Agent Cole lowered her gun, breathing hard.

"They were scouts," she said to one of the other agents. "Just testing the perimeter. Hale knows we're here."

She turned to Dad and me.

"We need to move. Now. This location is compromised."

Dad stood up, his face grim. He grabbed the server from the desk, pulling cables from the wall.

"Everything's on here," he said. "Names, dates, account numbers. Everything we need to take them down."

"Good." Agent Cole nodded toward the door. "Let's go."

They hustled us out of the storage unit and into a black SUV with tinted windows. Two more vehicles joined us as we pulled out of the facility, forming a protective convoy.

I sat in the back between Dad and another agent, staring out the window as the city passed by. None of it seemed real.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"A safe house," Agent Cole said from the front seat. "Somewhere Hale's people won't find you. At least not right away."

"And Mom?" I asked, the question burning in my throat. "What happens to her?"

No one answered.

I looked at Dad. He was staring out his window, his jaw tight.

"Dad," I said. "What happens to Mom?"

He turned to me, his eyes sad.

"She's made her choices, Ethan."

"She's my mother."

"And she tried to have us killed."

"She was scared!" I shouted, the words bursting out before I could stop them. "You said it yourself! She's been scared for twenty years!"

"That doesn't excuse betraying her own family!" he shouted back.

The SUV went silent.

The other agent pretended to be very interested in something outside his window.

Dad ran a hand over his face, sighing heavily.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I know this is hard. I know she's your mother. But you have to understand what she's done. She made a deal with monsters. And if they'd gotten what they wanted, we'd both be dead right now."

I looked away, angry and confused and hurt.

I didn't know what to think anymore.

The woman who'd raised me, who'd always been there for me, had betrayed us.

The father I'd just buried was alive and had been lying to me for twenty years.

And the company that sounded like every other big business on the news wanted me dead.

We arrived at the safe house an hour later.

It was a modest home in a quiet neighborhood, the kind of place that blended in, that no one would look twice at.

"Stay inside," Agent Cole said as we pulled into the garage. "Don't answer the door for anyone. Don't use your phone. Don't contact anyone. We'll have agents posted outside around the clock."

She handed me a burner phone.

"Only number in here is mine. If you need anything, anything at all, you call me. Understand?"

I nodded.

She looked at Dad.

"We'll be in touch. The evidence needs to be verified, then we can start building the case for the grand jury. A few more days, that's all we need."

Then she and the other agents left, closing the garage door behind them.

Dad and I stood alone in the kitchen of the safe house.

The silence stretched between us, heavy and awkward.

Twenty years of secrets between us.

"Want a beer?" he asked finally, opening the fridge.

"Sure."

He pulled out two beers and handed me one. We sat at the small kitchen table, the bottles clinking softly as we tapped them together.