Excitement rushes through me, alive and visceral, as I pocket my phone and run.

What did Sirena find?

Yesterday, she began to explore parts of the estate previously deemed irrelevant, impenetrable spaces enclosed in stone, untouched by the chaos of our search.

Heart pounding, I bound down the dusty stairs and descend beneath the earth.

“Over here.” Her voice drifts from behind rows of aged bottles and forgotten vintages.

As I round the corner of the wine cellar, she waves me over.

“There’s a closet.” She steps back, making room for me in the narrow space. “Lots of shelves. They’re all empty but one. We didn’t remove anything. I sent the team away, just in case…”

In case I find something incriminating.

The air swirls with dust as I squeeze behind a wall of wine.

Hidden behind a false panel in the wine rack lies a chamber so cleverly disguised that it blends seamlessly with the surrounding stone.

Inside, carefully preserved against the damp and the dark, waits a fireproof safe with a keypad lock.

The set of my jaw, the tension in my shoulders, every inch of me is strung tight as I remove the box. The sleek keypad gleams under the flickering light, each button a gatekeeper to the unknown.

One by one, I input the codes known only to me and my father, a series of numbers and combinations, each carrying the burden of past confidences.

When I reach the date of my brother’s death, my fingers hesitate. A chill brushes my spine. The digits fall like a hammer, each press a stab of accusation.

The safe clicks open, the sound reverberating against stone, unlocking more than just a metal door.

The moment hangs, suspended between the shadows of the past and hope for the future.

Sirena backs away, giving me privacy.

My hands steady as I reach inside, withdrawing a cache of documents. The papers rustle, a whisper in the silence, promising answers or perhaps more questions.

Each breath is a battle, every heartbeat a drum of war, as I unfold the first secret.

Blue paper. White lines. Before computers, this is how architects created building drawings.

If this is the blueprint for this estate, it’s too little, too late.

But as I study it more closely, I don’t recognize the floor plan. The design is a two-story log cabin built on massive pilings that anchor into permafrost.

With a cellar.

That’s insane. The ground freezes and thaws every year over permafrost, making it an active layer. No one builds beneath it.

Except Rurik Strakh.

He was an architectural mastermind, top of his class at university. He owned the largest construction company in Russia and here in Alaska.

But that’s not how he accumulated his obscene wealth.

The craftsmanship and sophistication detailed in this blueprint is unmistakably that of my father, his genius evident in the lines and annotations that pepper the pages.

The question is…did he build this? Where? For what purpose?

Maybe he wanted a safe house in the event that his enemies discovered his fortress here?

More blueprints accompany it, designs for solar panels on the roof, dual chimneys, coal stoves, a water tank that switches between electricity and wood heat, and…

What is this?

A hydroelectric generator?

My eyes scan the mechanics, the complexity. It’s a rural, single-family power system that feeds off a nearby river. The concept is brilliant and innovative, promising self-sufficiency.

This is the work of my brother.

Denver was a genius with an engineer’s brain. Years ahead of his time, he conceptualized and designed machines that ran on alternative power. Before he died, his dream was to harness free energy for everyday use.

My stomach knots.

All of this reeks of an off-grid refuge, hidden from the prying eyes of the world.

If it wasn’t built, the blueprints wouldn’t be here. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe my father died before he completed it, and the structure is sitting in a remote corner of the world, half-finished and forgotten.

But I don’t think so.

When I cleaned out his office, it was filled with unfinished projects.

He hid this one in a stonewall behind the wine cellar for a reason.

Setting the blueprints aside, I search the other documents for locations, maps, points of reference, anything that may indicate where this cabin was built.

Instead, I find flight logs.

Meticulously recorded, they trace a pattern of movement for a Turbo Beaver, chronicling a series of journeys to and from Whittier. Each entry includes the tail number, checkpoint, hours of operation, and arrival and departure dates. No destination. No pilot information.

I flip to the end.

The log ceases twenty years ago. A few months before my parents’ deaths.

Whittier.

Blood roars in my ears.

My parents died in their private plane—a luxury Gulfstream—on their way home from Whittier. To this day, I don’t know why they visited that small port town or how the engine malfunctioned, causing the freak accident.

After an intense, unsuccessful investigation, I left it alone and moved on.

These flight logs, marked by the name Alvis Duncan, may be a key to unlocking the mystery of their visit to Whittier.

Alvis Duncan.

Never heard of him, but it shouldn’t be hard to track him down.

“Sirena.” I turn to her with a surge of excitement.

As she strolls forward, I’m quickly tempered by a stark realization.

This discovery, while significant, doesn’t draw us closer to Frankie. If anything, it opens a new avenue of inquiry. The off-grid cabin, the plans, the flights—they weave a narrative separate from her disappearance, a divergence from our primary goal.

Regardless, one thing is certain.

“We leave tomorrow.” I breeze past her, heading toward the stairs.

“Okay.” She follows, huffing. “Are you going to tell me what we found? Or where we’re going?”

My breath quickens, caught in indecision.

Alvis Duncan, a name never mentioned or documented in all my dealings with my father, merits exploration. But not at the expense of our current quest.

At the top of the stairs, I pause, staring at the documents in my hand. “These are blueprints for an off-grid cabin. Probably a safe house for my parents.”

“Another clue. This could be it, Monty. It could lead us to her.” She smiles. “Well done, us.”

“Well done, you.”

She doesn’t know that this discovery saved her job. It shows her determination, her ability to accomplish anything I demand.

I need her at my side, despite her infatuation with me.

“So where’s the cabin?” She angles around my arm, trying to peek at the blueprints. “Where are we going?”

“Sirena…” With a heavy heart, I acknowledge the need to compartmentalize our efforts. “This discovery, while momentous, cannot distract us from finding Frankie.”

“But I thought—”

“I didn’t know about the cabin’s existence until now. That means Frankie doesn’t know, either.”

The question of why these documents were hidden so deeply, of what my parents were involved in that necessitated such secrecy, compels me to hand over the flight logs.

“Alvis Duncan.” I point at the signature. “Find this man, see what he knows, but keep it separate. Our priority remains on my wife.”

“Understood.” She reads through the logs, fully absorbed, given her robotic response. “I’ll handle the investigation discreetly and find out what Alvis knows without losing focus on Frankie. You have my word.”

She flips through the pages. There must be a hundred flights listed over ten years.

As she reaches the end, a few slips of paper fall out, fluttering to the floor.

Two photographs.

One of them lands face up, and a pair of chilling gray eyes stare up at me.

Eyes I hoped never to see again.

I slam my shoe down on it. Too late.

“Who is that?” Sirena squats, tugging on the corner, trying to slide it into view. “Looks like Brad Pitt.”

A sickening wave of nausea swarms in my gut. I press my weight into my foot, holding the photo in place.

I burned every picture, document, and mention of Denver’s existence. I erased him from this house, from my memories, from the goddamn planet, yet there he is, glaring a hole through the bottom of my shoe.

“If you’re withholding information…” She releases her grip on the photo, staring up at me. “I can’t help you.”

“He has nothing to do with my wife.”

“Who is he?”

“My brother.”

“Why is this the first time I’m hearing about a brother?” Her eyebrow curves upward. “Any other siblings I don’t know about?”

“Just the one.”

“Where is he?”

“Dead.”

Leave it alone, Sirena. This is not a hole you want to go down.

Gone is the woman who wants to fuck me. The team leader of my investigative team plucks the second photo off the floor and straightens to her full height, glancing at it before meeting the full force of my glare.

“Give me the photo.” I hold out my hand.

She tucks it behind her back. “How did he die?”

“I don’t know.” I shake my hand with impatience.

“Liar.”

My nostrils pulse on a harsh exhale. “His death has no bearing on this investigation.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

She considers that. Then passes me the second photo. “Who is this woman?”

My heart stops, careening to a sudden, hard death that sends me stumbling into the doorframe and gripping it for support.

It’s her.

The girl who haunted my teenage years stares back at me, captured in a moment of unguarded beauty.

Fucking hell, it’s been years. Decades.

Yet I remember her like it was yesterday.

In the photo, she stands alone against the black backdrop of her bedroom window. Her long hair cascades like a dark waterfall, framing a face that embodies the essence of the North. Resilient, captivating, utterly gorgeous.

Her eyes, vast and deeply brown, hold the depth of the night sky, sparkling with the light of a thousand stars that seem to pierce through the faded ink of the photo.

Memories crash in, unbidden. She was the daughter of our live-in maid, three years younger than me, her daily life intertwined with ours, yet always a world apart.

Our age gap…

Three years is nothing compared to the twenty years between me and my wife. But back then? When I was sixteen?

She was forbidden.

Didn’t stop the intensity of my crush, or how her laughter filled the corridors of our frigid, imposing home with warmth and life. I wasn’t alone in my admiration.

Denver was obsessed with her, too. Once she invaded his filthy mind with her irresistible innocence, he was hooked like an addict, which set the stage for a rivalry that simmered until his death.

Our competition for her attention was ruthless.

And futile.

She remained achingly too young and unattainable.

The rivalry with my brother, the intense emotions she evoked, the threats my father made against us if we touched her—everything rushes back like a punch in the heart.

I stare at the photo, remembering that yellow dress, the way it hugged her curves and exposed her cleavage.

The emblem of my first fierce yearning.

Her Inuit heritage, pronounced in the striking contours of her face, draws me into a gaze that feels both familiar and ineffably mysterious.

She must’ve been sixteen when this was taken, still living in this house after I went off to college.

After Denver’s death.

Finding her photo now, amid my father’s secrets, provokes a deep, possessive snarl in the back of my throat.

“Monty?” Sirena touches my arm. “Who is she?”

“Kaya Knowles.” I step back and swipe the photo of Denver off the floor.

A brief glance at his face sends a shiver down my spine. His eyes whisper of intention, of secrets so depraved I can’t look at them.

I pocket the photos, rubbing my head. “What is the date of the first flight in those logs?”

Sirena checks the documents and rattles off a time frame that rules out Denver’s involvement. He couldn’t have been on those flights because he died a year prior.

But Kaya? She was still around. When her mother died from a heart condition, my father took her in, provided her schooling, and gave her a job among his staff.

None of this explains why photos of Denver and Kaya were tucked inside the logs. My father didn’t do anything without calculation and purpose.

“Kaya grew up here.” I meet Sirena’s patient gaze. “Her mother was our maid. They were part of our family.”

“Where is Kaya now?”

“No idea. She moved on when I parents died.”

“You grew up with her but never looked into her whereabouts?”

“I was wrapped up in the investigation of the plane crash. She left in the middle of that. Never reached out to me. Never even told me she was leaving. She was twenty years old. Beautiful and ambitious. I think she ready to get out of here and start a new life on her own. I didn’t blame her. Didn’t even know where to look for her. So I let her go.”

“Do you find it strange that photos of her and your brother were buried in a wall with blueprints and flight logs?”

“Of course, it’s fucking strange. But none of this has a goddamn thing to do with my missing wife.”

The pieces are falling everywhere, but the picture they form is unclear.

“Do you want me to find Kaya Knowles?” She tips her head.

Tempting. So fucking tempting.

“Fine.” I expel a breath. “While you’re investigating Alvis Duncan, look for her, too. But—”

“Keep it separate from Frankie. Got it.”

“Tomorrow, we’ll return to the yacht and resume our search along coastlines. Prepare the team.”

I’m ready to put this place behind me.