BURY

THE ASH

3:31 AM.

It was raining again. In this house it was always raining when something needed to stay buried.

Damon didn't park in the driveway. He killed the lights two streets over and we walked, coats off, because coats make noise and white makes you a target against black gates.

The garden behind Damon's white mansion was not a garden. No flowers, no grass that anyone watered. One dead tree, branches like a hand. And under it, a black circle.

Marco hadn't even tried to hide it.

Ash. Wet ash. Cigarette ash mixed with notebook ash. The rain had turned it to paste.

"There," Damon whispered. He had a gun again. It wasn't shaking anymore.

I dropped to my knees. My knees in the mud. Red dress ruined. Red dress always ruined. The real $47M paper was folded tight inside my bra now, under the dagger strap, because if we got stopped again I wasn't going to have a coat to hide it in.

I dug with my hands. Foster-kid hands. We know how to dig. In group homes when they tell you to bury your stuff so the other kids don't steal it, you learn to dig with nails.

Ash under my nails. Black under my pink.

First page: nothing. Blank charred edge. Gone.

Second: corner. Burnt. _MA_ - just that. Maya's big loop M.

"Maya," I said, and Damon knelt beside me, hand on my back, not to comfort, to keep me from falling face-first into it.

Rain harder. 3:37 AM. 2 hours 23 minutes.

I dug faster. The ash was cold. Marco had used lighter fluid. I could smell it.

Then - not ash. Paper that had folded over itself. Paper that had been damp when he burned it. Foster kids know. If the paper is damp, it doesn't burn. It scorches.

I pulled it.

Half a page. Spiral torn. Maya's black notebook. The one she carried in her apron. The one Marco said he burned "because Dad told me to clean."

Black ink, waterproof, she always used Sharpie so Vincent couldn't erase it.

> _V. TOOK 47M - FORGED LENA'S SIGN - IF I DIE SHOW THIS TO FBI - USB IN -_

That's where it burnt off.

Damon read it over my shoulder, rain dripping off his nose onto the ink, making it bleed but not disappear.

"USB in -" he whispered. "In what? Where?"

I knew. God, I knew.

When Maya got moved to the last foster house before she aged out, she had a desk. Little kid desk from a group home. She taped things under it. Money, photos, my first tooth she stole from the pillow lady because she said the tooth fairy was Vincent - taking things that were ours.

She taped a USB under my desk too. At St. Agnes. My childhood desk. The group home they closed in 2019.

"If I die show this to FBI - USB in - " In her desk? In my desk? In the tree?

My phone buzzed again. Mud on my fingers, I almost dropped it.

Vincent: _2 hours 14 minutes, Lena. The scan is already uploaded. All I have to do is click submit. My lawyer is awake. Are you digging in my son's garden like a dog? I can see you on camera, foster girl. Come inside. We can still talk. - V_

He could see us. Camera in the dead tree. Of course there was a camera in the dead tree.

Damon stood, gun up, looking for the red light. Found it. Small, blinking, nailed into the bark like an eye.

He shot it. Once. Clean.

Black.

"Time to go," he said, pulling me up, ash on my face, half-page in my fist, real paper still against my heart.

"We have to go to St. Agnes," I said. Rain in my mouth. "The group home. The desk. If the USB is still there -"

"St. Agnes was demolished last year, Lena. It's a parking lot now."

"No," I said. "They didn't demolish the desks. They sold them. Mrs. Alvarez sold all the old desks to - to the flea market on 5th. She told me. For $5 each. Maya's desk might still be there, taped underneath -"

Damon looked at the ash circle, at the house where Vincent was now standing in the window in his white robe, not smiling anymore, phone in his hand, watching us through the glass even without the camera.

He was counting.

3:44 AM. 2 hours 16 minutes until I become a felon.

Vincent mouthed something through the window. I couldn't read lips, but I knew what it was.

_You left the gun under his pillow, Lena. You left the other gun too._

He knew about Marco's text.

Behind us, headlights. Not Damon's car. Marco's old Honda, red, loud, coming down the alley, fast.

Marco in his red dress again, window down, shouting over the rain:

"GET IN! HE CALLED THE COPS! NOT FBI! LOCAL COPS! THEY'RE 4 MINUTES OUT! GET IN!"

Damon grabbed my hand.

The ash was still on my knees. The half-burnt proof in my fist. The real $47M forgery against my chest. And somewhere across town, in a flea market pile of $5 childhood desks, a USB that Maya left 6 years ago that said _IF I DIE_ -

We ran for the red dress car.