The photos in the last box made tears well up in my eyes. They were all shots of my mother. And not just of her, but me, Bria, and Annabella as well. I didn’t know how long Fletcher had been watching us, but he’d snapped dozens of shots of us around our mansion, playing in the backyard, window-shopping, and walking the streets of Ashland. There was even a picture of the four of us sitting in a booth at the Pork Pit, looking over our menus.

   Instead of being angry that Fletcher had never shown these to me, I found myself comforted instead. The old man hadn’t left these here as a reminder that my mother had been mixed up in the Circle, but because he knew that I would want the photos as mementos of her and Annabella. Of my family. Of happier times.

   Simpler times.

   I stared at a photo of my mother holding me close to her side and smiling down at me. I’d been thinking a lot about what had happened before the holiday party and then later on that night in her office. I still didn’t know exactly how she’d been involved with the Circle, or the horrible things she might have done for them, but the unanswered questions didn’t eat away at me the way they had before. Because my mother hadn’t worked for Tucker of her own free will, and she’d tried to protect our family as best she could. Those were the things that mattered, and those were the things that told me the kind of person she’d been—a mother who’d loved her daughters.

   I traced my fingers over her smiling face, then set that photo aside and looked through the others. When we finished with the last box, Finn looked out over the table where all the boxes were lined up, their tops open, revealing the pictures inside.

   “What do you want to do with all of this?” His voice was rough with emotion. “Take it to Dad’s house?”

   I shook my head. “No. There’s too big a risk of Tucker breaking in there, seeing it, and realizing that we’re finally onto the rest of the Circle. Let’s leave it all here. It was safe in the vault all these years, and I want it to stay that way. We’ll make copies, and leave all the originals here.”

   “But aren’t you worried about Tucker finding the copies too?”

   I grinned. “Oh, I know just where to hide those.”

   * * *

   I told Finn where I planned to store the information. He snorted out a laugh, and we both got to work, pulling out our phones and taking photos of everything. Once we were finished with that, we slid the original photos into the appropriate containers, put the boxes back into their slots in the wall, and locked them up tight again. After that, we went to Finn’s office, where he printed out copies of all the photos, since he had a fancy color printer, among other things.

   Two hours later, I left the bank carrying that cardboard box that I’d used to hold Finn’s food the other day. Empty cartons were stacked in the box now, and a thick folder of photos was nestled in the very bottom. I kept that folder hidden inside the box while I worked my usual shift at the Pork Pit, closed down the restaurant, and went home to Fletcher’s. Then, late that night, after I’d changed into my usual black assassin clothes, I grabbed the folder out of the box, left Fletcher’s house, and headed to my new home away from home.

   My shipping container.

   I drove into the city and cruised around the downtown streets for almost an hour, just to make sure that I wasn’t being followed. Then I parked my car three miles away from the shipping yard, just for a little bit of extra insurance. Now that I finally had some information about the Circle, I wasn’t going to be foolish enough to let Tucker stumble across it and realize how close I was to identifying his friends. I had the advantage now, and I was determined to keep it.

   I approached the shipping yard cautiously and quietly, doing a complete circuit around the perimeter, but except for a single giant guard, the area was deserted, and even Lorelei wasn’t here tonight. Still, I kept scanning the landscape and was extra careful as I crept toward my container. Just like the last time that I’d been here, I bent down and listened to the rocks that I’d strategically placed around the metal container, but they were in the same positions as before, and no one had been near them in days. Good.

   I opened the padlock, slipped inside, and shut and locked the door behind me. Then I turned on the lanterns and went over to the dry-erase board that I’d set up along one of the walls. All those blank boxes and question marks didn’t haunt me nearly as much as they had before. Not now.

   I wiped everything off the board, leaving only a few of the silly doodles that Lorelei and I had drawn in the corners. Then I opened up my folder of information and grabbed the group shot of those people sitting in the lobby of the Bullet Pointe hotel. I put that in the top center of the board, since it was my starting point, the first strand that I would use to build my web of death. I traced my fingers over my mother’s angry face, then went through all the copies of the photos that had been in Fletcher’s safety-deposit boxes, matching up photos of individual people with the ones in the group shot.

   It took me a couple of hours, but by the time I finished, I had several sections of photos tacked up to my dry-erase board. I still didn’t know their names, but I thought that I now had a pretty good idea of who the members of the Circle were. Big-time movers and shakers in Ashland and beyond, just like Tucker had claimed.

   Only one big piece was still missing—the man in the middle of it all. Tucker’s boss and the leader of the Circle. The only shot I had of him was of his back, so I still had no real clues as to his identity. But I’d find him eventually. And once I did, I’d ask him exactly why he’d given Mab Monroe the green light to murder my mother, what trouble Eira had been making that had resulted in her death.

   Then I would kill him for taking her and Annabella away from Bria and me.

   It was late, and I should have gone home to get some sleep. I still had the Pork Pit to open up in the morning. But for the first time since this whole thing had started, for the first time since I’d learned about my mother and the Circle and everything else, I wasn’t tired. Wasn’t weary or heartbroken or just sick to my stomach.