Chapter One — The Stranger at the Gate
The last thing Emma Carter expected on her twenty-first birthday was a coffin.
She had been complaining about the weather all morning. Rain had turned the little street outside her mother's house into a ribbon of gray mud, and the birthday decorations Emma had taped to the porch kept sagging beneath the damp air.
Then, just after four in the afternoon, the sound of motorcycles rolled down the street.
Emma looked through the kitchen window.
One motorcycle became three. Three became seven.
The riders stopped in front of the house, their engines rumbling beneath the rain. They wore black leather jackets, weathered boots, and the kind of expressions that made Emma's mother, Susan, instinctively reach for the phone.
Then the largest rider climbed off his bike.
He was an older man with a silver beard and a scar running along his jaw.
Two other bikers opened the back of a small trailer.
Emma's smile disappeared.
Inside was a long wooden box.
A coffin.
Susan rushed to the front door.
“What is this?” she demanded.
The older biker removed his helmet.
“My name is Jack Mercer,” he said. “I knew Emma's father.”
Emma froze.
Her father, Daniel, had been dead for eleven years.
Jack looked past Susan and found Emma standing behind her.
“You must be Emma.”
She couldn't answer.
Jack nodded toward the box.
“Your father asked me to bring this here on your twenty-first birthday.”
Emma stared at the coffin.
“Why would my father ask you to bring me a coffin?”
Jack's expression softened.
“Because he knew you'd think the worst first.”
Chapter Two — The Box
Jack refused to open the coffin on the porch.
Instead, the bikers carried it into the old garage behind the house. Emma followed despite her mother's protests.
When Jack finally lifted the lid, Emma covered her mouth.
There was no body.
There were blankets, old photographs, a leather jacket, a small metal toolbox, and a sealed envelope with her name written across it.
Emma picked it up.
Her hands were shaking.
She opened it.
The handwriting was unmistakable.