Then I get the hell out of there. I retrieve my bike and pedal as fast as I can without dislodging the folder still tucked under my clothing. When I’m finally out of the Loop, I spot a mostly empty park and stop. A woman walking her dog smiles at me, and I smile back as I head for a large play area with swings and an enclosed fort at the top of a slide. I climb the ladder, and when I’m safely hidden from view, I peel the folder from my sweaty skin and open it on my lap.

Like all the other files, it contains blueprints. Only this one has two sets. One from 1992 when the condominium building was constructed, and another from fifty years later when the structure was overhauled by the City Pride Department. I spread the second set of blueprints for something called a Unity Center in front of me and understand why my mother thought this was important.

In this version of the plans, the shimmering black-and-silver building my mother died next to has been transformed into what can only be described as a jail.

Twelve

Unity Center.

The name evokes people coming together. But this . . .

All windows are tinted so no one can see in. The building has been soundproofed so that none of the people held in the eight-foot-by-six-foot cells on the upper floors, or in the large barred-in spaces in the lower levels marked as “transfer area,” would be heard by anyone on the outside. There is also an underground garage. The plans call for a restructuring of the entrance to accommodate the “transition transportation” vehicles.

A hollow ache grows inside me.

There are still prisons in Chicago. Crime hasn’t vanished completely. That would be impossible. But the news continuously reports on the historically low number of residents in those jails. So there should be no reason for something like this unless everything Atlas told me about people being taken by the Marshals and not being seen again is real.

Is this what my mother was looking for in the archives? Could this be what she wanted people to know about and why she was on that sidewalk the night she died? The folder was in the future projects drawer. If the building still exists . . .

I pull out my phone and dial Atlas.

“Has anyone heard anything about your father yet?”

“Meri? I told you I’d come find you later—”

“If the Marshals took your father, I think I might know where he’s being held.”

There’s a beat before he asks, “What are you talking about?”

“There’s a place my mother learned about. I have the archives file and I think it might be why they killed her. I don’t know exactly what the building is used for, but I can go and—”

“Stay right where you are,” Atlas says. “I can be at your place in twenty minutes.”

“I’m not at my house,” I admit.