Chapter 9 — The Safe

It took the better part of twenty minutes, and the whole time the thought that kept me moving was that Christopher might come back to check on me before I reached it.

When I finally got to the shelf, I shoved the HOLIDAY ORNAMENTS tub aside with my shoulder and cleared the dust from the small steel door set into the floor.

My hands were shaking so badly, from cold and shock, that I entered the combination wrong twice before, on the third try, the lock clicked and gave.

Inside was the backup phone, connected to a charged battery pack, and the stack of copies I had made two weeks before.

I lifted out the top document, and there it was in black and white — a preliminary deed transfer, for the prime commercial building in downtown Cincinnati that my grandmother had given me years before she died.