Mrs.

Voss answered on the second knock.

She was smaller than I'd imagined.

White hair pinned up loosely.

A cardigan the color of sage.

She looked at Mom through the screen door for a long moment without speaking.

Then she said, "Sarah."

"Hello, Eleanor."

"You look thinner."

"I've had a difficult few years."

Eleanor's eyes moved to me, then to Webb and Reyes standing at a careful distance on the front path.

"Are those people with you?"

"Yes.

They're keeping us safe."

Eleanor looked at them a moment longer.

Then she unlatched the screen door and held it open.

"Come in, then.

I'll put the kettle on."

The house smelled like dry lavender and old books.

A tabby cat observed us from the arm of the sofa and did not move.

Eleanor filled the kettle without being asked again.

Mom stood at the kitchen doorway.

"Eleanor.

The box I left with you."

"I still have it." She set the kettle on the burner and turned around.

"I moved twice in the past eight years.

I took it both times.

Seemed important."

"It was.

It is." Mom's voice caught slightly.

"Thank you."

Eleanor waved one hand.

"Don't thank me.

Just tell me you're all right."

"I'm working on it."

"Good enough." She went to the hallway.

We heard a closet door.

The sound of something being shifted.

She came back carrying a metal box — grey, ordinary, about the size of a thick encyclopedia.

She set it on the kitchen table.

Mom looked at it for a moment.

Then she reached into her coat pocket and took out a key.

The lock opened on the first try.

Webb stepped forward and looked inside without touching anything.

He was still for a long moment.

Then he said, "It's all here."

He looked at Mom with an expression I hadn't seen on him before.

"Katherine," he said.

"This is everything we needed."

Eleanor stood at the counter with her tea and watched all of this with the calm of a woman who had seen enough of life not to be easily shaken.

"You're in some kind of trouble," she said to Mom.

Not a question.

"I was," Mom said.

"I think we're coming to the end of it."

Eleanor looked at me.

"And who is this?"

"This is Clara," Mom said.

"My daughter."

Eleanor studied me for a moment.

"She has your eyes."

"She has her own eyes," Mom said.

"She just lets me borrow the expression."

Eleanor almost smiled.

"Stay for tea."

Webb touched Mom's shoulder gently.

"We need to move."

Eleanor nodded like she had expected that too.

She walked us to the door.

On the front step, she took Mom's hand in both of hers.

"Whatever you're fixing," she said quietly, "finish it.

Then come back and have tea properly."

"I will," Mom said.

Eleanor looked at her with the steady eyes of someone who had waited before and knew how to do it again.

"I'll believe it when I see it," she said warmly.

"Now go."

In the van on the way back, Mom held the box on her lap the whole way.

I watched her hands resting on top of it — still, finally still — and I thought about eleven years of carrying a secret in the shape of an ordinary metal box.

Eleven years of moving it from house to house.

Eleven years of knowing it was the only thing standing between Victor Hale and absolute certainty.

"Mom," I said.

She looked at me.

"We're going to be okay."

She was quiet for a moment.

Then she said, "I know."

She meant it.

I could tell from the way she said it — not as reassurance, but as something she had decided.

Webb's phone rang from the front seat.

He answered.

Listened.

Said nothing for several seconds.

Then: "When?"

A pause.

"All units confirmed?"

Another pause.

"We're twenty minutes out.

Hold until we arrive."

He ended the call and looked at Foss.

"They found the original handler," he said.

Foss turned in her seat.

"Where?"

Webb's eyes moved to the rearview mirror and met mine for just a moment.

"He was trying to board a flight to Lisbon," he said.

"Under a different name."

Mom's hands pressed down on the box.

"He ran," she said.

"Yes."

"Because he knew we'd found the originals."

"Yes."

Mom looked out the window at the passing road.

"Then it's almost over," she said.

But her voice held something careful in it — the particular caution of someone who knew that almost was still its own kind of distance.