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Buried Saints had started as something I did for myself because I didn’t like the idea of victims being forgotten completely. Somehow, people started listening to it. Now thousands of people were waiting for me to find the answers that someone else couldn’t.

I opened the folder with all the information about Daniel Mercer’s case. There was still something I was missing; I could feel it. I just had to find it.

I switched off the recording equipment and sat alone in my dark apartment, listening to tonight’s recording again.

My own voice, tiny and distorted, filled the small room as I explained the disappearance of Daniel Mercer, tracing the lines of financial documents and organized crime relationships I’d spent weeks following. I stopped the recording during the segment about hidden money routes.

The words I’d recorded took me back to memories I’d tried to shove away for years. I could still smell the acrid smoke, still hear the gunshots downstairs, feel the heat on my skin. I peeled the headphones off my ears and sat perfectly still.

Fifteen years, and the memories refused to fade. I opened the drawer beside my desk and pulled out the newspaper clipping I’d tucked away beneath a stack of old documents. The paper was brittle and yellowed, its edges soft with handling. I carefully unfolded it and read the headline:

FAMILY KILLED IN LATE-NIGHT HOUSE FIRE.

That was how the paper referred to my parents’ deaths. A family, killed in a fire. The article hinted at gang violence and retaliations between criminal entities. It suggested the involvement of certain dangerous associates my father had allegedly been connected to, but provided little information about the actual investigation. No suspects were named, the motive remained unclear, and the case had all but disappeared.

I’d never believed the official story, not even as a child. My parents hadn’t been killed in a house fire. They’d been murdered by a man, the masked man, the man who’d saved me. The police never explained any of it to me. They never explained how I’d ended up outside my house. They’d never found any of the men who were there that night. And they’d certainly never found the one who’d pulled me out of that closet.

I looked at the clipping in my hands again and remembered his eyes. For fifteen years I’d guarded that memory, never speaking of him in any interviews. Never confessing that the man who’d saved my life that night had been one of the armed murderers inside my house. Perhaps I’d been too young to understand then. Perhaps I’d feared that nobody would believe me.

Buried Saints was born from the belief that victims whose stories had been forgotten deserved to be remembered. For years, I’d chased other people’s tragedies and meticulously avoided my own. Tonight, that was over. I picked up my notebook and flipped to a fresh page. At the top, I wrote down the date of the fire and the first question I needed to answer.

I stared at the words until my hands finally stopped shaking. For fifteen years, I’d lived with unanswered questions. Now, I was going to find the answers, no matter the cost.

Who killed my parents?

CHAPTER TWO

Ronan

The warehouse appeared abandoned to those passing by outside, but that was the intention. Rusty shipping containers lined the sides of the structure, and the downpour had transformed the surrounding ground into muddy patches and pools of water.

The intel was straightforward: a rival was holding a meeting in a safe house, and somewhere in the dusty structure were financial papers we were desperate to obtain.

I looked at the men behind me. “No unnecessary casualties,” I informed them. “Anyone who surrenders, lives. No women will be harmed, and if there are children in the house, they’ll go free. And no one starts a fire. Understand? We’ll do this quickly.”

The men all nodded, and I turned to the warehouse’s entrance. We entered the warehouse silently. The first guard dropped before he could raise his weapon, and then all the men behind me came barreling in. The warehouse went up in chaos within seconds. Gunfire erupted throughout the building.

I moved through the warehouse effortlessly. I’d learned a long time ago that panicked individuals were careless of their surroundings. I didn’t panic; I didn’t hurry; I took calculated movements. The resistance ended within minutes. Three were dead, two chose to surrender when all seemed lost, and a third fled through a back entrance. Trevor grabbed his arm and pulled him back inside the building.

I approached the captured individual. “Where are the documents?”

He glared at me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I sank down to one knee. The man continued to stare at me silently. He believed that silence made him strong in this situation. I shot off his pinky.

He let out a deafening scream as he stared at his bloody fingers, a stream of dark red flowing down his hand and soaking his sleeve. Irritated, I cocked his chin up with the muzzle of my gun.

“If you make me repeat myself one more time,” I said very calmly, “you’ll be sorry. Now, where are the documents?”

He was shaking as he gave me a location, stammering in fear. Glad to see he had some sense after all. Too bad I was still gonna leave a bullet in his skull once he was done talking. He explained a room with a locked door and a false wall behind it, where a second safe was hidden.

“Is there anything else?”

He shook his head. I looked at the man’s face for another moment before standing. His expression changed when he realized what I was going to do. The gunshot echoed briefly through the warehouse before silence took over. Trevor returned a few moments later, carrying the papers with him. He gave me a look and then held up the documents.

“Everything’s here.” I took them from him and nodded. The men started checking through the other rooms while I stayed in place for a moment. I could faintly smell smoke from a fire somewhere outside, and my chest tightened.

“Move out,” I hissed. Nobody questioned me. We left the warehouse and disappeared back into the rain before the sun rose.