I crouched beside him.

“Who killed my father?”

His mouth moved. Blood bubbled at the corner of his lips.

For one second, I thought he would tell me.

Instead he whispered, “He kept a copy.”

Then his eyes went empty.

By the time the first patrol cars screamed through the cemetery gate, I was standing over a dead stranger at my father’s funeral, soaked in rain, with one question burning through my skull.

A copy of what?

### Part 3

The police kept asking me why I had brought a gun to a funeral.

I kept telling them I did not trust accidents.

We went through that circle for three hours while rain hammered the roof of a patrol car and mourners gave shaking statements under the cemetery tent. My mother and Eliza sat inside an ambulance wrapped in silver blankets. Every time I glanced over, Eliza was watching me like she no longer knew what I was.

Detective Paul Mason sat across from me in the open back of the patrol car, one elbow on his knee, notebook balanced on his thigh.

He was mid-forties, broad-shouldered, with gray creeping through his beard and eyes too tired to waste words. I knew his type. Local cop who had seen enough to stop believing people were basically good, but not enough to quit trying.

“You understand how this looks,” he said.

“It looks like armed men attacked a funeral.”

“It looks like armed men attacked a funeral and the grieving son dropped half of them before my officers arrived.”

“Then your officers arrived late.”

His pen stopped.

Kyle, standing ten feet away near a cruiser, looked at the ground to hide a smile.

Mason studied me. “You always this cooperative?”

“Only when someone tries to murder my family.”

He looked toward the covered bodies near the road. “No wallets. No phones. No IDs. The SUVs were stolen. Plates swapped. Whoever sent them knew how to clean up.”

“That supposed to reassure me?”

“No. It’s supposed to make you listen.” Mason leaned closer. “This wasn’t random, Mr. Kaine. This was organized. That means you need protection, not revenge.”

I almost laughed.

Protection had not saved my father.

“What did you know about the warehouse?” I asked.

Mason’s face changed by one inch.

A small thing. Easy to miss.

I didn’t miss it.

“What warehouse?”

“The one where my father died.”