They returned to the house while Derek and Veronica were out running errands, and Carmen kept watch at the window while Manuel pulled up a loose floorboard beneath one of the twin cots in the shed, and drew out a heavy iron box.

The rusted key turned smoothly in the lock.

Inside were the true records of a life: the original property deeds, decades of tax receipts, old family letters, and the closing documents from the sale of the valley land, confirming the hundred-and-seventy-thousand-dollar payout that had saved Derek from prison.

Manuel had hidden all of it, the real paper of his real life, in a box beneath the floor of the shed they had exiled him to, in the one place his captors had not thought to search.

And then Alvin drew out a more recent document, and his stomach turned.