BURY

THE USB

We didn't have a laptop. Foster kids don't have laptops at 4 AM.

Marco did. In his trunk. Under the red dresses.

"I have one for school," he said, driving again, cop car still behind us but now with Marco's fake purse report, officer writing slow. "It's at 2% though."

"Plug it in," Damon said. He ripped the car charger from his own phone and threw it at me.

4:22 AM. 1 hour 8 minutes.

I sat in the backseat, mud on the seats, three papers on my lap getting wet again - the $47M fake, the half-burnt _USB IN -_ note, and Harrison's recant with the gold stamp still warm.

The USB. Black, glitter tape. Maya's tape.

I pushed it into Marco's pink laptop. It was one of those cheap ones, stickers all over it, _PROPERTY OF VALENTINO_ crossed out and _MARCO_ written over it in Sharpie.

2% battery. Screen flickering.

It spun.

Not empty.

One file.

One video. Date: *11/14/2024* - last year. 8 months after they told me Maya died in a car crash.

File name: `IF UR READING THIS IM NOT DEAD LENALOOP.MOV`

My hands stopped shaking.

I clicked it.

Maya. Older. Hair cut short, like mine. Same nose. She was in a laundry room, the one at St. Agnes, hiding between washers, whispering into a phone, same way we used to hide to call each other when they separated us.

"Loop, if you're seeing this, I'm not dead, okay? Vincent said I'm dead but I'm not, I'm in the basement of the white house, Damon's white house, he locks me here when I say no. He took the 47, he forged your name, he made Harrison do it, I saw the paper, I stole a copy -"

She held up a paper. The same $47M paper. Same blue lines.

" - he says if I run he'll file it and you'll go to prison because it's your name. I'm leaving this USB under your desk because he never looks under yours, he thinks you're dumb, Loop, he thinks you're small but you're not, you're the one who counts, you always counted -"

Footsteps in the video. Door opening.

"s**t - he's coming - Loop, the death certificate is fake, Mrs. Alvarez has the real one, she helped him, check her filing cabinet, key is under her Jesus picture, Loop, I love you -"

Video ends. Black.

1 minute 12 seconds. 11/14/2024.

Maya was alive last year. In Damon's basement. While Damon lived upstairs.

I looked up at Damon in the front seat. He was staring at the road, knuckles white on the dashboard, not driving, Marco driving, Damon listening.

He heard it. _I'm in the basement of the white house, Damon's white house, he locks me here._

"Damon," I whispered, voice small again, foster-kid small, the one before you lie to a social worker. "You knew."

He didn't turn around. Rain on the windows.

"My father told me she ran away," he said, voice breaking for the first time since the gates. "He told me the basement was flooded. He told me not to go down. I didn't go down, Lena. I swear to God I didn't go down for a year."

Marco stopped the car. Middle of an empty street. 4:29 AM. 1 hour 1 minute.

"Lena," Marco said softly, looking at me in the mirror, red dress, makeup gone, just my brother now. "If she's alive, where is she now? Vincent said the USB was empty because he checked. That means he FOUND the USB under your desk last year. And if he found it after she made that video -"

Then he knows we know she's alive.

And he moved her.

My phone buzzed. Not Vincent this time.

Unknown number, but the profile picture was Maya. Short hair, laundry room, same as the video.

Text: _Stop looking for the desk, Loop. He moved me. I'm not in the basement anymore. I'm at Alvarez house. She locks the filing cabinet. Key under Jesus. Hurry. - M_

Maya texting from an unknown number at 4:29 AM.

Alive.

Or Vincent texting as Maya. Again.

Damon grabbed the laptop before it died at 1%, closed it.

"Alvarez house is 6 minutes away," he said. "If it's Maya, we get her. If it's Vincent, we get the death certificate and we end this before 5:30 AM."

He looked at me, really looked at me.

"You have to choose, Lena. Do we believe the text?"

The three papers were bleeding in the rain on my lap. The USB was hot in my hand.

1 hour until I become a felon, or until I find out my sister has been alive in a filing cabinet lady's house for a year.

I said, "Drive."