"For six years, nobody believed my mother was innocent after she received a death sentence for my father's murder. But everything shattered when my little brother leaned over and whispered something to me, with a mere five minutes left before her execution.

The impact of landing on the hood of Delgado’s police cruiser knocked the wind completely out of my body, leaving me gasping for air as the cold metal crumpled beneath us.

Delgado grabbed Ethan, pulling him safely off the vehicle, while two paramedics who had just arrived rushed forward with blankets and oxygen masks.

"Are you okay?!" Delgado shouted over the roaring noise of the arriving fire engines.

"I’m fine!" I wheezed, coughing up black soot, clutching Delgado’s leather jacket. "Delgado, you have to get to River Road! Victor has the original evidence! If he destroys that ledger, my mother dies tomorrow night!"

"I’m already on it," Delgado said, helping me stand up. "My unit is moving in, but Victor’s got private security with him. Sit in the ambulance, Maya."

"No!" I barked, grabbing the door of his cruiser. "I’m coming with you! I know which locker it is, and I know what the ledger looks like!"

Delgado looked at my smoke-stained face, saw the absolute, uncompromising determination in my eyes, and nodded once. "Get in."

We sped through the city streets at ninety miles per hour, the siren wailing, cutting through morning traffic like a scalpel.

1402 River Road was a sprawling, industrial complex of corrugated metal storage units sitting beside the murky, grey waters of the river.

As our cruiser smashed through the chain-link perimeter gate, the sound of gunfire echoed off the metal buildings.

POP! POP! POP!

"Shit! Shots fired!" Delgado yelled into his radio, pulling his vehicle behind a row of concrete barriers. "Units, be advised, suspects are heavily armed at Sector 8!"

Up ahead, near Storage Locker 8B, Victor’s two hired men were exchanging fire with the two police officers who had arrived before us.

Victor himself was standing inside the open doorway of Locker 8B, holding an industrial acetylene blowtorch, attempting to melt through a heavy steel floor safe embedded in the concrete floor.

"He’s trying to burn the ledger!" I screamed.

I didn't wait for Delgado. I opened the cruiser door, staying low behind the line of parked utility vans, crawling through the dirt and gravel toward the side entrance of Locker 8B.

"Maya! Stay down!" Delgado yelled, firing three suppressive shots at Victor’s armed guards, forcing them to duck behind an SUV.

I reached the back wall of Storage Locker 8B.

The air inside smelled of burning dust and blue chemical flame. Through the side window, I saw Victor kneeling over the open floor safe. The heavy iron door had just yielded to the blowtorch, falling back with a loud metallic clatter.

Victor reached his gloved hand deep into the safe, pulling out a thick, faded dark-red leather book stamped with my father’s initials: A.H.

"Finally," Victor laughed, a maniacal, wheezing sound. He raised the blowtorch, aiming the blue cone of flame directly at the paper edges of the book. "Goodbye, Arthur."