The courthouse was cold.
Not just in temperature, but in spirit—like the walls themselves remembered everything people tried to bury inside them.
Arden sat beside Cole at the back of the records office, the fluorescent light flickering above as a clerk wheeled in the requested boxes. They were old, stained with watermarks and the kind of dust that made memories harder to breathe.
"Fire incident. Witness testimony. Hart, Daniel," the clerk said, sliding the first box forward. "Pulled straight from archive storage."
Cole opened it.
Page after page of court transcripts. Typed interviews. Redacted statements. Names blacked out.
Arden leaned in.
Her name appeared in the header of the first file.
She remembered this moment—barely. The day she sat on that stand after Jamie died. How cold her hands had felt. How Daniel's eyes had watched her from across the room, calm and unreadable.
She scanned the page.
> "Did your brother ever express concern about Mr. Hart's behavior?"
"No," she'd answered.
"Did you ever witness Mr. Hart threaten Jamie?"
"No."
"Did you love Mr. Hart?"
"Yes."
Arden winced.
She had testified on Daniel's behalf. And she hadn't even known the half of what he'd done.
Cole was already digging into the next file. "Here. Look at this."
He passed her a statement—unsigned, but familiar.
Arden frowned. "That's my mother's handwriting."
It was a personal letter. Never submitted in court. Tucked between files.
> "I don't trust him. He's too perfect. And Jamie says strange things about him—how he watches us. I found a check from a law firm in Daniel's jacket pocket, and when I asked, he smiled and told me not to worry. But I am worried. I'm worried something's coming, and that my daughter won't see the truth in time."
The letter ended without a signature.
And it had never been included in the trial.
"I didn't even know she wrote this," Arden whispered.
Cole ran a hand through his hair. "It was buried."
"Like everything else."
A sudden noise outside the office made them both stiffen. A knock—slow, deliberate—on the glass front doors.
It was after hours.
The clerk frowned, heading out of the room.
But Arden had already stood.
She moved to the hallway and peered through the office glass.
The door was empty.
But a single white envelope had been slid beneath it.
She picked it up.
Inside: a photo.
Jamie, standing in front of a car.
And Daniel in the driver's seat.
Smiling.
The date stamp?
The night before the fire.
Arden's breath hitched. She turned it over.
Three words written in ink:
> "You still don't know."
Arden stared at the back of the photo, the handwriting burning into her skull.
You still don't know.
"Who left this?" she demanded as the clerk returned. "Did you see someone?"
The woman blinked. "No one was there. Just this."
Cole stepped closer, gently prying the photo from Arden's fingers. "It's his handwriting."
"Daniel's," Arden said hollowly. "I'd know it anywhere."
They returned to the table, the unearthed files now feeling like pieces to a game they were only beginning to understand. Arden flipped through transcripts, scanning testimony from students, teachers, firefighters.
Too many of them echoed the same phrase: "It happened so fast."
Too fast.
She opened another file—an investigative report.
Her blood ran cold.
There'd been a delay in the sprinkler system activation—two minutes and thirty-eight seconds. The cause had been deemed "technical error."
But in the margin of the page was a note scribbled in red:
> "Override manual pulled. Tampered?"
She passed it to Cole.
"This isn't just a fire anymore," she said. "This was a setup."
He nodded grimly. "And they covered it."
Another file. A payment receipt from a private technician to a shell company—one with a link to Daniel's financial records. The trail was faint, but it was there.
Arden's pulse pounded.
And then—at the very bottom of the final folder—another video file.
This time, on a battered flash drive tucked inside an envelope marked CONFIDENTIAL: DO NOT DUPLICATE.
They plugged it into the courthouse computer.
The video opened in a dark room. Grainy.
Daniel.
Younger. Harsher. Speaking directly to someone out of frame.
> "She's too soft. She needs to learn what it costs to protect people. To love people who are weak."
> Pause.
> "If it takes fire to burn that lesson into her—then so be it."
Arden's heart stopped.
That voice wasn't just cold.
It was venomous.
And calculating.
"I have to show this to the police," she said, her voice barely audible.
Cole didn't respond right away.
Because something had changed in his expression.
He pointed to the reflection in the glass behind Daniel.
A silhouette—small. Familiar.
Jamie.
He was there.
Listening.
Watching.
And he hadn't stopped him.
The camera turned abruptly, and the footage cut off.
Arden backed away from the screen.
Cole spoke first, voice low. "They knew about each other. They weren't just enemies. They were bound together."
"No," Arden whispered. "They were planning something. Both of them. And something went wrong."
The fire hadn't just killed Jamie.
It had erased the last chance for the truth to be told on his terms.
But Daniel was still alive.
Still writing the story.
And now Arden was holding the matches.
Arden pressed her palm to the screen, heart thundering.
Jamie had been there.
He'd heard Daniel say those words, and for reasons she couldn't yet understand, he'd stayed silent.
"What was he waiting for?" she murmured. "Why didn't he come to me?"
Cole looked at her gently. "Maybe he was trying to protect you."
"Or maybe," she whispered, "he thought I wouldn't believe him."
She turned from the screen, the courthouse spinning. The walls were closing in—the same walls where she had once testified, unknowingly helping Daniel tighten the noose around her own brother's name.
"I have to find that technician," she said suddenly. "The one who signed off on the override. If we can prove Daniel paid him—"
"Then we can reopen the investigation," Cole said. "And blow a ten-year cover-up wide open."
Arden nodded, fire slowly replacing the tremble in her hands. "Jamie died trying to warn me. I won't waste that."
But just as they stood to pack up the files, Cole paused. His hand brushed the inside of the folder where the flash drive had been tucked.
A second slip of paper fluttered to the floor.
Not court-issued.
Not typed.
Just a torn half of notebook paper. Scribbled in ink that looked like it had been rushed, the letters shaky.
Arden picked it up and read it aloud.
> "Truth costs more than love. Choose wisely. – J."
Her breath caught. The paper trembled in her hand.
Jamie had left it. Sometime, somewhere. And whoever had buried the file had buried this message with it.
"What does it mean?" Cole asked quietly.
Arden folded it and pressed it to her chest.
"It means there's more to lose than just the past."
They stepped out of the courthouse into the bruised twilight, air thick with storm promise. The wind tugged at her coat like a warning.
Cole looked at her. "What now?"
She didn't answer right away.
She thought about her mother, about the man in the car that night. She thought about Daniel's voice—the calm, cutting clarity of it. About Jamie's silence, his secret guilt.
And then she thought about fire.
How it didn't just destroy.
Sometimes, it revealed.
"We find the others," she said. "Whoever helped him. Whoever hid this. We dig up everything."
Cole nodded. "And Daniel?"
A storm rolled in the distance.
Arden turned, her voice a blade.
"We burn what he built."
As they walked away from the courthouse, Arden's grip on the folded paper was iron-tight.
Truth costs more than love. Choose wisely.
Jamie hadn't just been afraid. He'd been torn. And that warning—it wasn't for Daniel. It was for her.
They stopped at the car, the sky above them churning charcoal gray. Cole pulled out his phone, checking something.
"I've been cross-referencing names on that technician receipt. One of the aliases matches a man in Chicago. Retired. Changed his name in 2016."
Arden raised a brow. "You think he'll talk?"
"If Daniel's not still paying him to stay silent—maybe."
Arden stared out over the parking lot. Cars hummed past, headlights casting brief shadows across her face.
"He said something once," she said suddenly. "Right after the fire. When everyone thought it was an accident."
"Daniel?"
She nodded. "He told me, 'Some people are only meant to be remembered in ashes.' I thought he was trying to comfort me."
Cole's jaw clenched. 'He was justifying it."
She turned to face him fully. "What kind of man watches the world burn and calls it mercy?"
"The kind who doesn't expect to be caught."
Arden's phone buzzed.
A private number.
She hesitated, then answered.
A voice she hadn't heard in years crawled down the line.
"Still chasing ghosts, Arden?"
She froze.
"Daniel," she said, the word bitter in her mouth.
"I'd say I'm flattered you've gone digging. But I think we both know you're not looking for truth."
"Then what am I looking for?" she asked tightly.
"Someone to blame," he said smoothly. "Because grief is too heavy to carry alone. But let me save you the trouble."
A pause.
Then:
> "You'll never find what Jamie promised you."
The line went dead.
Arden stared at the phone, hand trembling.
"He knows," she whispered.
Cole moved beside her. "Then we're getting close."
She nodded slowly, sliding the phone away. "Too close for him to stay silent."
From her pocket, she pulled the photo again. Jamie in front of the car. Daniel in the driver's seat. And now the edges felt heavier. Like the paper itself carried blood.
She turned it over.
This time, beneath the original message—You still don't know—another line had appeared, faint like it had been erased then redrawn in pencil.
> He didn't die in the fire.