Chapter 43: Anastasia

The digital clock on my sedan's dashboard displays 5:15 AM when I cut the headlights. The morning air is filled with fog that smells of wet grass and river silt from the eastern basin. The downpour from the weekend has stopped, but the ground remains saturated, turning the unpaved access road behind St. Jude Academy into a track of thick mud.

I step out of the car, my rubber-soled boots sinking into the dirt. I walk to the manual chain lock on the school’s northern lower annex gate. The metal chain is cold against my bare fingers as I lift the steel lockbox from its iron bracket....