the page.
The final visible line was stranger still.
*When you find the locked records, do not begin with Rivergate. Begin with August 18, 1988.*
Adrian lowered the paper.
1988.
He had not even been born.
“What happened on August eighteenth, 1988?”
Marissa shook her head.
“Arthur wouldn’t tell me.”
“What does Daniel’s key open?”
“I don’t know.”
“He gave it to you.”
“Yes.”
“Without telling you?”
Her face changed.
“He told me one thing.”
“What?”
Marissa looked toward the rain-speckled windows.
“Daniel said if anything ever happened to him, I should keep the key somewhere no Whitmore could find it.”
Adrian absorbed that quietly.
“That includes me.”
“I suppose it did.”
“Yet you gave it to Arthur.”
“Yesterday.”
“Why now?”
Marissa looked back at him.
“Because Daniel also told me something else.”
She paused.
“He said that if a Whitmore ever asked about him without already knowing the answer,
