A black SUV rolled into the storage facility and stopped two rows away with its engine still running. Fear rushed through me as I slipped inside Unit 16 and lowered the metal door until only a narrow strip of daylight remained.

Footsteps echoed outside. A man knocked softly on the door and called my name, claiming they only wanted to talk. Another voice followed, warning that my mother had involved me in something dangerous.

With shaking hands, I opened the envelope my mother had left behind. The note warned me not to trust the police, Richard Hale, or anyone connected to Lawson Financial. She told me to take the red folder and escape through the back fence.

Then someone scraped metal against the lock. When a voice outside said my mother was dead because she had stopped cooperating, I realized her death had not been an accident-