My wrench hit the concrete.
I couldn’t move.
Then tears started streaming down my face as I stared at what was waiting for me underneath.
Because suddenly, the morning I’d found Lori sixteen years ago didn’t look like an accident at all.
PART 2
Under the blanket wasn’t what my mind had jumped to in that first terrified second. It was a steel lockbox, the size of a toolbox, dulled gray and dented at one corner like it had traveled a long way to get here. Taped to the lid was a second note, shorter than the first:
The combination is her birthday. You’ll know which one.
My hands shook so badly it took three tries to get the numbers right — not the birthday I’d made up for her adoption papers, the day she was found, but the one the foster agency had estimated from a doctor’s exam sixteen years ago and never told me outright. I only knew it because I’d kept every scrap of paper from that year in a shoebox at home, the way you keep things you’re afraid to lose twice.
The lock clicked.
