Snow blanketed Franklin Street a week later, covering the broken door and shattered windows of the rowhouse. But the house still groaned, as if it remembered. Neighbors crossed the block faster now, eyes down, whispering:
"That's the house they dragged 'em out of."
"Bodies, blood, money—everything under the floor."
⸻
Ezra Pike lay in the morgue, toe-tagged and forgotten. His loyalty had been as loud as his rage, and both got him killed before he ever saw the money again.
Silas Ward sat in a padded cell, rocking back and forth, whispering to himself. When the psychiatrist asked what he was muttering, he only said: "It's still scratching. It's still there."
Naomi Glass walked free—for now. Cops couldn't pin her to the robbery, though her prints were on everything. She carried the scar on her shoulder, but deeper than that, she carried the knowledge that she could've run. She could've taken it all. Instead, she hesitated—and that hesitation chained her to Hollow's shadow.
Cormac "Hollow" Vance sat in county, orange jumpsuit stark under flickering lights. He scribbled in a fresh notebook, page after page, his cigarette burning low. A guard passed and sneered, "Writing your confession?"
Hollow looked up, eyes as empty as the day he walked in. "Not confession," he said calmly. "Blueprint."
The guard laughed, but Hollow went back to writing. His pen scratched like nails against wood.
⸻
Detective Rowan Keene stood outside the Franklin rowhouse one last time, cigarette unlit between his fingers. The boards had been ripped up by evidence techs, the duffels gone, the pistol bagged and tagged.
But the house still creaked in the wind.
Keene stared at it for a long moment before muttering, "Secrets don't stay buried. They just wait for the next fool to dig."
He dropped the cigarette into the snow, unlit, and walked away.
Behind him, the house groaned again.
⸻
❄️ END
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