The rain turned into a thick, gray fog that hung low over the highway.

Every time a car came up behind us, my heart jumped.

I watched the headlights in the mirror, waiting for the red and blue flashes.

But the cars just passed us, one by one.

Alexander stirred occasionally, mumbling incoherent words.

He muttered names I didn’t recognize.

He muttered about a ledger.

“The vault,” he whispered at one point.

“Julian has the key.”

“Shh,” I said.

“We’ll talk about it when we get there.”

I needed him to survive the drive.

I needed to get him behind locked doors before I could process the anger.

Before I could ask him how he could have let them erase our entire life.

The sky was beginning to turn a pale, bruised purple when we entered Maine.

The highway gave way to two-lane state roads.

Pine trees pressed close to the asphalt, their branches heavy with moisture.

The GPS on the dashboard showed we were thirty miles from the cabin.

There was no cell service here.

The signal bars on the screen dropped to zero, replaced by a red search icon.