Mia’s story unspooled in the damp cellar air, each sentence another crack in the coffin I’d watched go into the ground. The wreck I’d been told killed her? A staged opportunity. Victor Hale’s men had been trailing her charity audits for weeks, waiting for a moment to erase the only person who could map his pipeline of “rescued” women who never made it home. The body I’d buried was Elena’s, switched in the chaos by a detective Hale owned, while Mia—concussed, pregnant, half-conscious—was smuggled out by Martha, who chose perjury over a funeral for her living daughter. My text threads, the ones I’d reread like relics, had been Martha’s careful mimicry, keeping me close enough to fund them but far enough to stay off Hale’s radar. Now my in-person visit, my car on the cliff road, my very existence in that town, Mia said, meant the trail was lit again, and the man who once sent her my photo with the caption “widowers are easy to ma… Continues…