The cotton booties I’d slipped on my feet made a soft swishing noise on the carpeted floor as I slipped up the stairs to the room I was after. Kirby had another code she said was for a safe in her mother’s house, but she’d never been in it. The number was in case something ever happened to her mother. My mother didn’t have a safe, and she didn’t have a backup plan in case she died. My mother didn’t worry about things like that. No, she preferred to place all her items in a shoebox and stash it away in the closet like that was a place a criminal wouldn’t first look. I often wondered how two people of such meager intelligence ended up having me.

Reaching the office door, I pulled out the lock-pick tools from my back pocket. This was one of the greatest inventions I’d ever come across. The liquid plastic would squeeze out of the end of the device on a thin piece of metal and fill the shape of the keyhole. It took sixty seconds for the product to harden once it came into contact with air, and just like that, you had a key for any door.

Grabbing the handle, I pushed the door slowly inward. The office was exactly how I pictured it would be—perfectly even lines on the shelves and nothing out of place anywhere on the desk. The walls were such a deep burgundy color that it looked like red wine had been used instead of paint. Crisp white trim circled the room. It was even around the window and door, but the framed accolades were what stood out.

The shelves and surfaces were full of them but free of any kind of family photos. There was nothing personal that told a story about who Margret was outside of work. Not a single picture of Kirby could be found. I circled the desk to be sure, and there was a picture of Margaret shaking the President’s hand sitting in a frame on the desk, but other than that, the room was barren of any emotional ties. I was starting to wonder if Kirby got her inner demons from Margaret. Maybe she was made more like the killers she chased than she liked to admit.