The Burner

72 hours. The number was a neon countdown hovering over the sleek lines of my home. But I couldn't go in there. Not with the black sedan parked across the street, its engine idling like a patient predator. That car wasn't the bank. Banks send letters. Banks send process servers. Banks don't send muscle in tinted windows to watch a house in the suburbs.

"We can't go in," I said, putting the car in reverse. "That's not a repo man, Leo. That's a cleaner."

"A cleaner?" Leo’s voice cracked. "Like... for a crime scene?"

"Like for loose ends."

I backed down the street, my hands slick on the wheel. I needed the files from the safe, but the house was compromised. Mark had anticipated my desperation. He knew I would try to retrieve the evidence, and he had set a guard dog.

"Where are we going?" Leo asked as we sped away from the neighborhood.

"To the source of the infection," I said. "Bella's."

Bella lived in a converted loft downtown, a space paid for by the 'artistic stipend' my father had established to keep her from begging on street corners. She was at the office now, playing the dutiful board member, which meant her apartment was empty. And unlike my fortress of a home, Bella’s security was a joke.

I parked three blocks away. We walked through the alley, the smell of damp brick and old garbage a sharp contrast to the sterile suburbs. I felt exposed, vulnerable, a woman in a business suit breaking into her sister's life.

The back door of the building had a simple keypad lock. I typed in *1980*—the year our parents founded the company. The light turned green. Bella never changed her codes. She relied on the past to protect her, just like she relied on me.

Her loft was a chaotic explosion of color and clutter. Canvases were stacked against the walls, half-finished paintings of dark, swirling storms. The air smelled of turpentine and stale wine. It was the habitat of a woman who was drowning, not thriving.

"Check the bedroom," I told Leo. "Look for a laptop, a tablet, anything with a recent login."

I went to the bathroom. Bella had always hidden her secrets in the places she spent the most time staring at herself.

I opened the medicine cabinet. Prescription bottles rattled—anxiety meds, sleeping pills, painkillers. All legitimate, all part of the 'fragile' persona she cultivated. I checked under the sink. Towels, cleaning supplies she never used.

I knelt down, running my hands along the underside of the vanity. The wood was rough, unfinished. My fingers brushed against something smooth. Tape.

I pulled. A heavy, wrapped bundle fell into my hand.

I unwrapped the cloth on the tile floor.

Taped under the vanity: A burner phone and a gun.