Chapter 14 - THE MAP HIDDEN IN BROKEN GLASS
We went back to the crime scene after midnight.
Because apparently my survival plan now included returning to places where people had tried to kill me.
The temple was sealed behind police tape.
Sloane’s officers guarded the front.
Noah knew an old tunnel from the cemetery.
Of course he did.
Mom stayed in a safe apartment with Agent Pike, who had finally convinced me she wasn’t bought.
Mostly.
Eli, Noah, and I crawled through a stone passage that smelled like wet dirt.
“You two ever consider normal hobbies?” I whispered.
Noah said, “I knit.”
“You do not.”
“No.”
Eli almost laughed.
For half a second, we sounded like a family.
Then we reached the crypt.
Broken stained-glass fragments had fallen through vents into the lower passage.
Noah spread photographs of the original window across a stone table.
“The pattern repeats every thirteen panels,” he said.
I looked at it.
Blue stars. Gold lines. Red circles.
My headache returned.
Then I remembered my father’s voice.
“Count the red ones, May.”
I whispered the numbers.
“Three. One. Seven. Nine.”
Eli looked at the key.
“3179.”
A keypad was hidden behind a carved stone plaque.
Noah entered the numbers.
Nothing.
I touched the key slot beneath it.
The black metal sliver fit.
A deep lock opened inside the wall.
The stone plaque slid sideways.
A narrow staircase dropped into darkness.
Noah smiled grimly.
“Dad, you paranoid genius.”
We descended.
At the bottom was a steel door with no handle.
A small microphone lit up.
A screen displayed one sentence.
AUTHORIZED VOICE REQUIRED.
Noah tried.
“David Reed.”
Denied.
Eli tried.
Denied.
I stepped forward.
“What do I say?”
The headache became a pulse.
A memory pushed through.
Dad kneeling beside me under the temple.
“If the stars ever go dark, May, say the thing I taught you.”
I whispered, “Mercy without truth is control.”
The steel door unlocked.
Noah stared at me.
“You remembered.”
“No. Not all of it.”
Inside was a server room untouched by time.
Old racks hummed beside newer equipment someone had clearly maintained.
Someone had been here recently.
A monitor turned on by itself.
A live security feed appeared.
Tessa stood in Mom’s safe apartment.
Agent Pike lay unconscious on the floor.
Tessa held a gun.
I stopped breathing.
“No.”
Tessa looked directly into the camera.
Then she raised the gun toward my mother.
And on the speaker beside us, her voice said, “Maya, I’m so sorry.”
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