“Come on back, all of you,” Mr. Keats says.
I inhale a deep breath, gathering all my courage.
In a moment, we’ll find out.
We’ll find out if our property was stolen.
And if it was… I don’t know what we’ll do.
The four of us—Keats, Karen, Rory, and I—crowd into the room. The walls are lined with locked boxes of various sizes. I cast a glance around. Which one of these is Donny’s? My gaze falls on Box 451.
That’s it. That’s the number that was on the key inside the glasses case. Funny that I only now remember. How did I think, for one minute, that Donny had taken our key?
Karen opens up her toolkit and pulls out a drill. Keats nods to a plug on the wall. Several minutes pass while Karen readies her tools. The boxes on the wall seem to move in closer. The room is shrinking, closing in on us.
Then the piercing shriek as she drills into the lock.
Epilogue
Donny
It’s Monday morning, and I have a Callie-sized hole in my heart. But I push it into the back of my mind. I can’t dwell on what I can’t have. I have a job to do.
I’m in court, standing in front of the judge, when my phone vibrates in my pocket.
I ignore it, of course. Judges don’t take it kindly when you blow them off to look at your phone.
Already, though, I know it’s not good news.
Call it instinct. Call it a gut feeling.
Call it one of my hunches.
Call it whatever you’d like.
I drone on about the speeding ticket I’m prosecuting. I can do this in my sleep. I’ve defended multimillion-dollar clients. This is nothing. I’m on autopilot.
Inside my body, my guts are twisting. An invisible black cloud forms above me.
When I look at the phone after I’m finished in court, I’ll know. I’ll deal with it.
I’m Donovan Talon Steel, and I will find out who shot my father.
And whoever it is will pay.