With a groan, the key turned in the heavy door of St. Agnes's archives. Inside, the air was thick with cobwebs that hung around file cabinets like funeral veils. When Lena's flashlight beam struck Sister Agnes, motes of dust catching the light whirled about her form, still at her desk, her skeletal fingers clutching a rosary.
"Margaret Carter came here on a stormy night in '89," the nun whispered—somehow without the two conversing. "She left that baby like she was leaving a stray kitten. Said it was her sister's bastard—too sickly to survive." Her milky eyes, now fixed on Lena, seemingly bore into her very soul. "But the child didn't die. Charles Calloway came for him at midnight. Paid us in cash wrapped in a blueprint."
Ryan's phone buzzed with a fury. Sophie's text blasted across the screen:
GUESS WHO JUST FILED A CLAIM TO CALLOWAY CONSTRUCTION? Some guy named MATTHEW CARTER.
Lena felt her knees go weak. The orphanage ledger quaked in her grip as she managed to find the entry for:
July 17, 1989. Male infant. 4 lbs 2 oz. Respiratory distress. Discharged to father.
The signature made her blood go cold: Charles Calloway.
A great crashing was heard from the chapel next door. Sister Agnes's chair screeched back. "He's here."
(Cliffhanger: Just then, the stained-glass window shattered as a man walked in—holding blueprints written in Lena's grandmother's handwriting.)