Back at the Funeral Home
When the last mourners slipped out, the air still smelled of lilies and incense.
I stood at the lid, my palms still cold from the sandbags, and stared at the woman who had tried to silence me.
“You think you can hide a child in a coffin and not answer for it?” I said, voice steady despite the tremor in my throat.
Her eyes flickered, a flash of something—fear, anger, calculation—then she lifted the tissue and whispered, “You’ll regret it.”
The room was empty now, but the walls seemed to echo her warning.
I pushed the lid open, felt the weight of the blanket shift, and caught a glint of metal beneath the folds.
It was a thin USB drive, its plastic casing cracked, as if someone had tried to snap it off in haste.
I slipped it into my pocket, the cold metal biting my skin.
“You’ve gone too far,” she said, stepping forward, but I was already moving.
Outside, the night was a blanket of fog; the funeral home’s parking lot was deserted, the streetlights casting pale halos.
I didn’t look back. I walked straight to my car, the drive humming beneath my seat as I drove toward the hotel where I’d spent the night.
My mind raced—what could be on that little piece of plastic? Evidence? A confession? A dead end?
When I slammed the hotel room door shut, I felt the weight of the day finally lift, replaced by a sharp, surgical focus.
I set my laptop on the cramped desk, plugged in the USB, and stared at the blinking cursor.
Video from the Cabin
The screen flickered, the encrypted file demanding a password I didn’t have.
I typed the same code I used on every secure server in my career—four numbers, a dash, three letters—hoping the same logic applied.
The lock clicked open and a grainy video began to play.
It was night at a remote cabin, the trees like black silhouettes against a thin moon.
Two figures moved inside, voices low, a rustle of a zippered bag.
One of them—familiar posture, a limp that matched my ex‑husband’s—slid a small, wrapped bundle onto a table.
The camera wobbled as someone stepped closer, the lens catching a flash of a tattoo on the wrist.
My breath caught; the tattoo was the same one I’d seen on my ex‑husband’s mother’s hand years ago.
Just as the shadow reached the edge of the frame, the video stuttered.
Pixels scrambled, a harsh static burst filled the screen, and the file froze.
“Stop digging,” a voice crackled through my phone.
It was my ex‑husband’s mother, the same cold tone from the funeral home, now amplified by the speaker.
“You don’t know what you’re playing with, Colonel,” she hissed. “Let this go, or you’ll lose more than you think.”
The line went dead, the laptop screen still blinking on the corrupted footage, a dark figure looming just out of view.
Defying the Warning
I booked the next flight before the sun even rose. The plane’s hum felt like a battlefield chant as I stared at the clouds, rehearsing the line I’d never imagined saying: “You won’t keep my child hidden any longer.”
Landing in the county’s small airport, the air smelled of pine and damp earth. I rented a battered SUV, its diesel cough echoing through the empty lot. My hands trembled around the steering wheel, but the GPS kept pointing me toward the cabin’s coordinates.
The cabin sat like a forgotten relic, its porch sagging under the weight of weathered boards. The door was ajar, a thin slice of darkness inviting me inside.
