The visitation room at Red Creek County Jail was unusually quiet that afternoon. The walls were painted a dull gray, the fluorescent lights above buzzed softly, and the thick glass partitions separated inmates from their visitors.

The labyrinth of rusted boxcars was the only thing keeping Noah alive. Gunshots cracked through the freezing night air behind him, the bullets pinging off the metal siding of the cars and sending sparks flying into the snow.

Noah ducked low, scrambling beneath the undercarriage of a flatbed car, crawling through the frozen mud and weeds until he reached the perimeter drainage culvert that led under the highway.

He didn't stop running until he had crossed three miles of suburban neighborhoods, finally collapsing behind a row of industrial dumpsters behind a twenty-four-hour diner.

His lungs burned. His hands were shaking uncontrollably from adrenaline and the freezing cold.

He pulled out the film roll itself—which he had cleverly ejected from the camera housing before smashing it—and clutched the small plastic cylinder in his palm. The physical camera was destroyed, but the photographic negative strip was safe inside its canister.

He needed help. The local police were on Victor Sterling’s payroll; he couldn't walk into a precinct. He needed someone outside Red Creek County.

Then he remembered a name his mother had mentioned once during a late-night phone call months before her arrest—a federal investigative journalist named Arthur Vance based out of Knoxville who had previously exposed municipal corruption in East Tennessee.

Noah stumbled into the brightly lit interior of the diner, ignoring the stares of the late-night truck drivers and the waitress behind the counter. He walked straight to the payphone mounted near the restrooms.

He didn't have any quarters, but he pressed coin return levers frantically until a stray quarter dropped down.

He dialed the number he had memorized from an old newspaper clipping he found in his mother’s desk.

Ring... ring... ring...

“Yeah? Who’s this?” a tired, gruff male voice answered on the other end.

“Mr. Vance?” Noah gasped, his voice cracking.

“Speaking. Look, kid, if this is a prank call—”

“My name is Noah Lane,” the boy interrupted urgently. “My mother is Marissa Lane. You wrote an article three years ago about the corruption in the Red Creek municipal banks.”

There was a sudden, sharp silence on the other end of the line.

“Marissa Lane’s son?” Arthur Vance’s voice sharpened instantly. “Kid, where are you? The word is your mother’s trial is over and done with.”

“She was framed by Victor Sterling,” Noah said, tears finally spilling over his eyelashes. “I have the original wire transfer ledgers on film. Sterling’s men just tried to kill me and took my aunt hostage. They’re hunting me right now.”

Arthur didn't hesitate for a single second.

“Listen to me, Noah,” the journalist said, his tone turning ice-cold and professional. “Do not trust anyone in Red Creek. Do you hear me? Not the police, not the judges, no one. Stay inside that diner, lock yourself in the employee restroom, and do not open the door for anyone except a man wearing a red baseball cap who gives you the password ‘Cumberland.’ Do you understand?”