Kira Blackwood stepped through the broken door of the small stone cottage and stopped. The thatched roof sagged. Moss-laced walls had been split open. This was the only home she had known since she was nineteen, and someone had torn it apart looking for the family's heirloom — a copper tree strung with glass blossoms that proved their name and their land. She moved through the wreckage slowly. Smashed chairs. Torn drawers. The thief had been thorough, and fast. A sharp cry pulled her eyes upward. A red-tailed hawk circled low over the ruined roof, its bright wings catching the gray light. It did not leave. It kept circling the same patch of debris near the hearth. Kira knelt where the bird watched. Beneath a fallen beam, half-buried in ash, lay a small copper vine sculpture with glass leaves. It had been knocked loose from its hiding place inside the chimney stone. The thief had missed it. She lifted it carefully and saw a maker's mark pressed into the base — a name she recognized. She closed her fist around the vine. The hawk cried once more and flew east. Kira stood, the clue warm in her palm, and knew exactly whose door to watch next.

Kira slipped the copper vine into her coat and followed the hawk's path until dawn turned the sky pale. She circled back toward the family's adobe house, its ivy curtains heavy with dew. She meant to clean the cottage before anyone saw it. She was too late. They were already standing in her doorway. Three of them, pale and silent, staring at the smashed terrarium on the floor. Broken glass and runes glittered in the moss. The thief had cracked it open looking for the heirloom inside. "Kira." The oldest stepped forward. "What happened here? Where have you been?" She felt the rusted lockbox press against her ribs beneath her coat. Inside it were the maker's mark rubbings, the fence's address, a folded list of names she had no right to be holding. If they saw it, they would know everything. They would try to help. They would die. She lied. She told them a drifter had broken in while she slept at a friend's. She told them she would handle the cleanup. Her voice stayed flat and steady, the way it always did. They did not believe her. She saw it in their faces. But the old agreement held, and they did not push. They left her alone in the wreckage. Kira pressed her hand to the lockbox under her coat. The lie had worked, but something between them had cracked, quiet as the glass at her feet. She had bought herself one more day. She would need every hour of it.