Chapter 5: The Safe

At four in the morning Hannah set off the smoke alarm in my parents' kitchen.

She did it with a slice of burnt toast and a dish towel, and she screamed "Fire!" loud enough to wake the street.

I was standing in the dark hallway upstairs, listening.

My mother's feet hit the floor first. Then my father's.

They went down the stairs together, my mother in her robe, shouting my sister's name.

I waited until the kitchen light came on.

Then I slipped into their bedroom.

The gun safe stood in the closet behind my father's suits. Hannah had told me the code on the walk to my car.

It was Trevor's birthday.

I put in the brass key and the numbers, and the door swung open with a quiet click.

Inside I found a stack of papers, a velvet jewelry box, two boxes of shells and a thick manila folder with a label I could not read in the dark.

My passport lay on top of it, with my birth certificate underneath.

I picked up the passport and flipped it open to check my face.

My mother's voice was rising downstairs, and all I could think was that I had thirty seconds.

I slid the passport and the certificate into my jacket and left the folder where it was.

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