THE AFTERNOON AN OLD WOMAN BORROWED SIX BIKER SONS—AND DESTROYED THE MAN WHO THOUGHT HE’D ALREADY STOLEN HER LIFE_011

Grant Mercer did not laugh when Margaret Callahan asked the question.

He did not glance at his brothers for permission either.

He simply looked at her the way experienced men look at storm clouds, calmly at first, then with the quiet understanding that something serious is already moving toward them.

Around them, the diner held its breath.

The waitress near the coffee station froze with a glass pot halfway lifted.

A man at the counter stopped chewing.

Even the old country song playing through the ceiling speakers suddenly seemed too bright, too ordinary, for whatever was unfolding in that back booth.

Margaret kept her chin raised, but her fingers were white where they pressed against the table.

She was afraid.

Not vaguely uneasy.

Not uncertain.

Afraid in the deep, unmistakable way that only comes when a person has been cornered slowly and politely for so long that they finally understand someone intends to erase them while smiling.

Grant set down his fork.

“What kind of pretending?” he asked.

His voice was low, steady, and without mockery.

Margaret swallowed.

“The kind where six large men sit with me for one hour and make it very clear I’m not alone.”

One of the younger riders, a lean man with a scar across his cheek named Jesse, let out a soft breath through his nose.

Another, broad-shouldered and bald, shifted in the booth but said nothing.

Grant’s eyes never left Margaret’s face.

“Who are we performing for?”

Margaret glanced toward the diner windows.

The parking lot shimmered under a weak Kentucky sun.

A pale sedan sat across the street, too clean for the neighborhood and too still to be casual.

Then she looked back at Grant.

“A man named Dale Wexler,” she said.

Something in the way she spoke the name made it sound less like identification and more like a stain she wanted removed.

“He says he’s coming to help me with paperwork.”

Grant tilted his head slightly.

“And you don’t believe that.”

Margaret gave him a dry little smile with no humor in it at all.

“Mr. Mercer, at my age, when a man with expensive shoes and a sympathy voice shows up carrying folders, he is never there to help.”

That earned the faintest reaction from the table.

Not amusement.

Recognition.

Grant leaned back.

The leather of the booth creaked beneath his weight.

“Sit down and tell me what he wants.”

Margaret hesitated only a moment before sliding carefully into the end seat.

The action alone changed the atmosphere.

A second earlier she had been an old woman asking strangers for a favor.

Now she was inside the circle.

Now the six men in road-worn leather no longer looked like a threat at a distance.

They looked like a wall.

The diner noticed that too.

People were still watching, but differently now.

Not with suspicion.

With curiosity.

With the uneasy fascination that comes when something invisible begins to reveal its shape.

Margaret folded her trembling hands on the table.

“My husband and I owned a house on Briar Lane for forty-two years,” she said.

“It’s not grand, but it’s mine.”

She said mine with the soft force of someone defending much more than square footage.

“There’s a wraparound porch Robert built himself.”

“A magnolia tree in the backyard.”

“A pantry with pencil marks inside the door frame from when my children were small and insisted on measuring themselves every birthday.”

Her voice quivered for the first time.

“My youngest drew stars on the basement wall in yellow crayon when she was seven.”

“She’s fifty-eight now.”

Grant listened without interrupting.

Margaret continued.

“Three months ago, I had a fall.”

“Nothing dramatic.”

“Slipped on wet leaves carrying in groceries.”

“My neighbor called an ambulance, and after that, a social worker stopped by.”

“She said someone from the county wanted to make sure I was managing safely.”

Her mouth tightened.

“That is when Dale Wexler appeared.”

She described him the way people describe snakes after nearly stepping on one.

Pressed suit.

Smooth hair.

Expensive smile.

The language of concern delivered with the precision of a salesman.

He introduced himself as a “housing transition consultant” working with a private elder care placement firm contracted by local agencies.

He said words like dignity and security and planning.

He praised her home.

He complimented Robert’s workshop.

He noticed the framed photographs.

He remembered the names of her grandchildren too quickly.

Then, one visit later, the suggestions began.

Perhaps a property like hers was too much responsibility.

Perhaps a smaller assisted living residence would offer peace of mind.

Perhaps she should sign temporary authorization forms so his office could “streamline options” and “protect her interests.”

Margaret had spent enough years behind a library desk to know how language can hide a knife.

She refused.

He returned anyway.

Twice.

Then four times.

Each visit more confident.

Each refusal treated not as a final answer, but as a delay in a process he had already decided would end his way.

Grant’s face did not change, but his fingers tightened once around his coffee mug.

“What gave him leverage?” he asked.

Margaret’s eyes lowered.

“My son Daniel signed something.”

There it was.

The wound beneath the wound.

One of the older riders across from Grant, a heavyset man called Otis, shifted forward slightly.

Margaret looked ashamed, and that made Grant’s voice gentler when he spoke again.

“Tell it straight.”

She nodded.

Daniel, her middle child, had always been the one who tried to fix things quickly.

He lived in Nashville, worked in insurance, had a polished voice and an urgent schedule and a habit of interpreting worry as a problem to be managed.

When Margaret’s fall happened, he came up for a weekend.

He walked through the house with his phone in his hand, taking pictures of loose rugs, steep stairs, old locks, and the narrow upstairs hallway.

He loved her, she said that much clearly, but he loved efficiency too.

He had listened to Dale Wexler.

Worse, he had trusted him.

There had been a set of preliminary estate transfer papers, not a full deed, but a conditional management agreement that would allow “temporary oversight” if Margaret were deemed unable to maintain independent living.

Daniel had signed as witness.

He thought it was precaution.

He thought it was harmless.

He thought, like so many busy adult children think, that paperwork could remain abstract until a real emergency arrived.

But Dale Wexler did not treat it abstractly.

He treated it like a loaded weapon.

Two weeks later, notices began appearing in the mail.

Site assessment requests.

Property valuation correspondence.

A recommendation for urgent transition review.

Then yesterday, a contractor she had never hired appeared at her porch asking about measurements for “minor accessibility modifications.”

This morning, Dale called and said he would meet her at the diner at two-thirty with “the next necessary documents.”

Necessary.

The word seemed to poison the air when she repeated it.

“Why the diner?” Jesse asked.

Margaret gave a grim smile.

“Because men like him prefer to strip you politely in public.”

No one at the table spoke for a moment after that.

Outside, a pickup rolled past and the pale sedan across the street remained exactly where it was.

Grant followed Margaret’s gaze.

“You think he has someone watching?”

“I know he does,” she said.

“I’ve seen that car twice this week.”

The waitress approached with a coffeepot, clearly pretending this was normal, and asked if anyone needed a refill.

Grant looked up at her.

“Bring pie for everybody,” he said.

The woman blinked.

“All six?”

“All seven,” Grant said, nodding toward Margaret.

It was such a small thing, almost ridiculous in the middle of tension, but Margaret’s face changed when he said it.

For the first time since sitting down, she looked less like prey and more like a woman being accounted for.

The waitress hurried off.

Grant folded his hands.

“When Dale arrives, what does he expect to find?”

Margaret gave him the answer immediately.

“A frightened widow with no witnesses and a purse full of reading glasses.”

Grant nodded once.

“Then that’s not what he’ll find.”

He turned his head slightly toward the rest of the table.

“Listen up.”

The six riders leaned in.

There was no dramatic scraping of chairs, no movie-style swagger, just the easy focus of men used to operating in wordless sync.

“From this moment on,” Grant said, “she doesn’t sit alone, stand alone, or speak unsupported.”

He looked at Margaret.

“With your permission, ma’am, for the next hour you’ve got six sons.”

Margaret blinked hard.

Then she nodded.

“Yes,” she whispered.

Jesse slid out of the booth immediately.

“Then I’m the rude one who questions paperwork,” he said.

Otis grunted.

“I’ll be the one who doesn’t blink.”

A bearded rider called Luis smiled faintly.

“I can do disappointed son real well.”

Even Margaret laughed at that, though it came through tears she clearly had not meant to show.

Grant reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a clean handkerchief, setting it quietly beside her plate.

She stared at it, then at him.

“You do this often?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“No.”

“Then why help me?”

That question settled over the table heavier than the rest.

Grant looked at the diner window, at the rain-scrubbed daylight beyond it, and when he answered, his voice had changed.

Not softer.

Deeper.

“My mother lost her house when I was nineteen,” he said.

Nobody at the table moved.

Not one of the riders.

Not Margaret.

Not even the waitress returning with pie seemed to breathe as she set plates down and backed away.

Grant kept his eyes on the glass.

“She signed papers she didn’t understand after my father died.”

“Some bank man and a cousin with nice manners told her it was temporary.”

“It wasn’t.”

“We came home one Thursday to a notice nailed to the door.”

He looked back at Margaret.

“I learned then that theft doesn’t always wear a mask.”

A silence full of understanding passed between them.

Margaret laid one hand over his for just a second.

Not sentimental.

Not dramatic.

Just human.

Then the diner bell over the front door jingled.

Every head in the building turned.

Dale Wexler entered with an umbrella in one hand and a leather folio in the other.

He was exactly as Margaret had described him.

Mid-forties.

Perfect haircut.

Navy overcoat.

The kind of polished face that looked rehearsed even while smiling.

He paused just inside the door, scanning the room, and for half a heartbeat that smooth expression faltered when he saw Margaret in the back booth surrounded by six men built like freight equipment.

Then the smile returned.

Adjusted, but returned.

He walked toward them with that carefully measured confidence professionals use when they assume civility is armor.

“Margaret,” he said warmly, “there you are.”

Grant did not stand.

Neither did anyone else.

Dale slowed when he reached the table.

His eyes flicked over the patches, the boots, the road-battered jackets, then back to Margaret.

“I wasn’t aware this was a family gathering.”

Margaret lifted her chin.

“It is now.”

The line landed perfectly.

A few people elsewhere in the diner actually looked down to hide their reaction.

Dale gave a tiny chuckle.

“Well, that’s lovely.”

He placed the folio on the table edge without asking permission.

“I only need a few signatures so we can continue the transition planning we discussed.”

“No,” Jesse said instantly.

The single syllable cracked through the air like a snapped branch.

Dale looked at him.

“And you are?”

“Concerned,” Jesse replied.

Luis took a bite of pie and added, “Very concerned.”

Grant still had not moved.

He simply said, “Open the folder.”

Dale hesitated.

That alone was revealing.

Then he smiled again and unclasped it.

Documents appeared.

Typed forms.

Tabs.

A notary page.

A facility brochure showing cheerful seniors in cardigans playing cards beneath bright windows.

Margaret didn’t even glance down.

“Explain page three,” Grant said.

Dale kept his pleasant tone.

“It’s a standard provisional occupancy transfer acknowledgment.”

Jesse leaned over.

“That sounds like a sentence built in a laboratory.”

Otis took the top sheet with blunt fingers and held it out farther from his face.

“Looks like surrender paperwork to me.”

Dale’s jaw twitched.

“Sir, I’m trying to help Ms. Callahan secure safer accommodations.”

Margaret’s voice cut in before anyone else could answer.

“I have not requested safer accommodations.”

Dale turned to her with practiced empathy.

“Margaret, after your recent fall, we talked at length about future contingencies.”

“No,” she said.

“You talked.”

That pulled a visible ripple through the diner.

Even the cook leaned halfway out of the kitchen pass-through.

Dale shifted tactics.

He straightened slightly and lowered the warmth in his voice, replacing it with professionalism edged by impatience.

“The county assessment flagged concerns.”

Grant’s eyes sharpened.

“What county assessment?”

Dale’s gaze moved to him.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss protected case details with unrelated third parties.”

Grant finally stood.

The booth seemed to shrink.

The room changed with it.

He was not theatrical about it.

He simply rose to his full height, shoulders broad beneath faded leather, and rested one scarred hand lightly on the table.

But the effect on Dale was immediate.

His careful balance slipped by a fraction.

“Then discuss them with her,” Grant said, nodding toward Margaret, “because you keep speaking around the only person who matters.”

For the first time, Dale looked irritated.

“Ms. Callahan’s son Daniel understands the necessity of these arrangements.”

Margaret’s face went pale, but only for a second.

Then something fierce lit behind her eyes.

“My son made a mistake,” she said.

“That is not the same as my surrender.”

Dale opened the folio again and slid out another sheet.

“This authorization has already been preliminarily acknowledged.”

Jesse took it before Margaret could.

He scanned it, then held it up.

“This date is wrong.”

Dale blinked.

“What?”

“This witness date,” Jesse said.

“It says Daniel Callahan signed in person on March twelfth.”

Margaret leaned forward sharply.

“That’s impossible.”

Dale looked at her.

“Why?”

“Because Daniel was in Denver on March twelfth,” she said.

“I spoke to him that evening while he was snowed in at the airport.”

The first real crack appeared in Dale Wexler’s face.

A tiny thing.

An eye twitch.

A flash of calculation.

But Grant saw it.

So did every man at the table.

And, judging by the hush that swept the room, so did half the diner.

Dale recovered fast.

“Likely a clerical entry issue.”

“No,” said a voice from near the front.

Everyone turned.

A woman in a brown blazer had just stepped in from the rain, carrying a messenger bag and a phone still in her hand.

She was in her early thirties, sharp-eyed, breathing hard as if she had hurried.

Margaret’s mouth parted.

“Clara?”

The woman walked straight toward them.

“I got your voicemail twenty minutes ago,” she said.

Then she looked at Dale and added, “And that is not a clerical issue.”

Dale went rigid.

Clara Benton was not family.

She was the assistant manager at the Franklin Public Library, where Margaret had worked for decades, and more importantly, she was one of those people certain men underestimate because they confuse kindness with passivity.

Clara set her bag down, pulled out a folder of her own, and placed it atop Dale’s documents.

“I called the county office after Margaret left me that message,” she said.

“There is no active transition order on her property.”

“No safety board review.”

“No county-appointed housing consultant contract.”

“No registered file assigning you to her case.”

The diner erupted into whispers.

Dale’s voice turned dangerous under the smoothness.

“You’re making a serious accusation.”

Clara held his stare.

“You’re forging one.”

Margaret looked as if the floor had shifted beneath her.

“Clara…”

Clara softened for just a heartbeat and touched Margaret’s shoulder.

“You were right.”

Then she faced Dale again.

“I also called Daniel.”

That landed hard.

Margaret inhaled sharply.

Dale said nothing.

Clara pulled out her phone.

“He’s on his way.”

For the first time, Dale stopped acting like the room belonged to him.

His gaze flicked toward the windows.

Toward the door.

Toward the pale sedan across the street that had now pulled closer to the curb.

Grant saw that too.

He saw the driver step out.

Then another man from the passenger side.

Neither looked like county employees.

They looked like men hired to conclude paperwork with their hands.

Grant’s voice dropped.

“Your afternoon just got more expensive.”

Dale noticed Grant noticing.

The smile vanished completely now.

“You should stay out of this,” he said quietly.

Grant leaned down just enough to bring his face level.

“She asked for sons.”

“You showed up with predators.”

Something changed in Dale then.

Not fear.

Contempt.

The mask slid off.

“She’s old,” he snapped.

“She can’t maintain the property, the taxes are behind, and the development offer expires next month.”

Margaret stared at him.

“Development?”

There it was.

The real word.

At last.

Not care.

Not transition.

Not safety.

Land.

A developer had been buying the whole Briar Lane stretch, likely through shell buyers and legal proxies, waiting for holdouts to die, panic, or sign.

And Margaret’s house, with its magnolia tree and pencil marks and yellow stars in the basement, was the last one blocking a profitable parcel.

Dale realized too late that he had said the quiet part aloud.

The room reacted all at once.

Gasps.

Murmurs.

Someone actually cursed.

The mother near the window pulled out her phone.

The waitress did too.

Public sympathy shifts quickly when a story becomes clear enough to taste.

Margaret did not cry.

That might have been the most devastating part.

She simply looked at Dale with the stunned, hollow pain of a woman discovering that people had walked through her memories with measuring tape.

“You came into my home,” she said.

“You sat in Robert’s chair.”

“You touched my kitchen table.”

Dale lifted his chin, trying to gather control, but he had lost the room now.

“Ms. Callahan, emotions won’t change market reality.”

Grant’s hand moved before the sentence had fully settled.

Not a punch.

Not a threat.

He simply placed his palm on Dale’s precious folio and pushed it, slowly, until the folder slid off the table and spilled papers across the diner floor.

The sound of loose pages hitting tile was somehow louder than shouting.

“Pick them up,” Grant said.

Dale stared at him.

“Excuse me?”

“You brought them,” Grant said.

“You pick them up.”

The two men from the sedan reached the diner entrance just then.

They stepped inside, bulky in cheap jackets, both scanning for angles.

Travis would have called them “confidence men with bouncer shoulders.”

Grant didn’t even turn fully toward them.

He just tilted his head slightly, and every rider at the table shifted at once.

Six men.

Six chairs scraping back.

Six bodies rising in a wave of leather, denim, scars, and calm intent.

No threats.

No shouting.

Just presence.

The entire diner seemed to tighten around that moment.

The newcomers stopped.

One of them looked at Dale as if asking silently whether this was still worth the fee.

It wasn’t.

Everyone knew it.

Everyone except Dale, who was stubborn enough to keep digging.

“You think this intimidates me?” he said.

“No,” Margaret answered.

Her voice was clear now.

Steady.

Stronger than it had been all afternoon.

“This exposes you.”

And then the final turn came, the one no one in that diner could have predicted.

The front bell jingled again.

A man in a charcoal coat entered, breathless, carrying a rolling suitcase and looking ten years older than Margaret’s photographs.

Daniel.

He saw the scene in one sweep.

His mother at the center.

The bikers surrounding her.

The scattered papers.

Dale Wexler rigid beside the booth.

And whatever Daniel had expected when Clara called him, it wasn’t this.

“Mom,” he said, stricken.

Margaret looked at him, and the room braced for heartbreak.

Instead she said, “Did you sign my life away, Daniel?”

The directness of it nearly took the air out of the place.

Daniel looked at Dale, then at the papers on the floor, and his face collapsed.

“No,” he said.

Then louder, desperate now, “No, not like this.”

He crossed the room fast.

“Mom, I signed an emergency maintenance consent after your fall.”

“Roof work.”

“Rail installation.”

“Insurance access.”

“That’s what he told me it was.”

He jabbed a shaking finger at Dale.

“He said the other forms were duplicate county intake pages.”

Clara stepped beside him.

“I recorded our call,” she said to Margaret quietly.

“He admitted he never authorized a property transfer.”

Dale finally lost composure.

“This is absurd.”

Daniel whirled on him.

“You came to my hotel in Nashville.”

“You brought documents after midnight and said Mom’s coverage would lapse if I delayed.”

His voice cracked with self-disgust.

“I trusted you.”

Dale sneered.

“That was your first mistake.”

Otis took one step forward.

Grant lifted a hand slightly, stopping him.

He wanted this to end in daylight, not blood.

Then Daniel reached into his suitcase pocket and pulled out something none of them expected.

A small digital recorder.

He held it up with a face gone gray.

“My second mistake,” he said, looking at Margaret, “was realizing too late that he kept changing his story.”

He pressed play.

Static crackled.

Then Dale’s voice filled the diner, unmistakable and smug.

“If she resists, we use incapacity pressure.”

Another voice asked, “What about the son?”

Dale answered, “He signed once.”

“He’ll sign again if he thinks he’s correcting a clerical problem.”

Then the worst line of all came through the tiny speaker.

“Old women with empty houses always become paperwork eventually.”

The sound that moved through the diner was not a gasp this time.

It was revulsion.

Pure and collective.

Dale lunged for the recorder.

He never reached it.

Grant intercepted him with one forearm across the chest, pinning him against the booth with enough force to stop him and nothing more.

The two hired men took one look at the room, at the phones raised, at the witnesses, at the six bikers now openly ready, and chose sudden loyalty to self-preservation.

They backed toward the door and left.

Cowards often do.

Dale struggled once.

Then he saw Margaret watching him.

Really watching him.

Not as a victim.

As a witness.

And he understood, finally, that the afternoon had collapsed around him.

Sirens sounded in the distance.

Not because he had summoned them.

Because Clara had.

She held up her phone as proof.

“Sheriff’s department,” she said.

“And the county fraud investigator.”

Dale went still.

Grant released him and stepped back.

No hero speech followed.

No cheap line.

Just space enough for the law to arrive and find him exactly where his own arrogance had left him.

Margaret sat very straight in the booth.

Her hands were no longer shaking.

Daniel knelt beside her, tears standing in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

The words were so full of genuine shame that even some strangers in the diner looked away to give them privacy.

Margaret touched his cheek.

“You were fooled,” she said.

“That is not the same as being faithless.”

Then she added, with that old steel returning to her voice, “But next time, read before you sign.”

A ripple of relieved laughter moved through the room.

Even Grant smiled.

It should have ended there.

It would have, in any ordinary story.

But life has a talent for saving its sharpest turn for the final page.

As deputies entered and took control of the scene, one of them, a square-faced sergeant with tired eyes, examined the documents spread across the floor.

He paused over one page.

Frowned.

Then looked up at Margaret.

“Ma’am,” he said carefully, “did you ever authorize historical survey access to your property?”

Margaret blinked.

“No.”

The sergeant held up a buried attachment clipped near the back.

It was not about assisted living.

Not really.

It was an archival land-use disclosure referencing the original Callahan deed from 1958 and a sealed easement clause beneath the property, one overlooked for decades.

Clara stepped closer.

Daniel too.

Grant watched the sergeant’s face change as he read more.

“What is it?” Margaret asked.

The sergeant looked almost reluctant to answer.

“According to this,” he said, “your house doesn’t just block a development parcel.”

He swallowed.

“It sits over an old bank transit tunnel.”

The entire diner fell silent again.

The sergeant turned the page.

“Used in the early 1960s.”

“Never publicly mapped.”

“Closed after a robbery case that was never solved.”

Dale, handcuffed now, said nothing.

But his expression did.

And Grant saw it instantly.

Shock.

Not at being caught.

At hearing the tunnel mentioned out loud.

Margaret stared.

“What robbery?”

The sergeant looked at the file.

“Franklin Savings armored transfer, 1963.”

“Two guards shot.”

“Cash disappeared.”

“Never recovered.”

Grant turned his head slowly toward Dale.

That man had not come for her house because of market pressure alone.

The development had been camouflage.

The forged transfer, the urgency, the intimidation, the staged concern, even the hired men outside, all of it had been built around access.

Not to a porch.

Not to a tree.

To whatever lay forgotten beneath her foundation.

Margaret’s lips parted.

“My Robert bought that house in 1964.”

No one spoke.

Then Daniel said, very quietly, “Mom… what if Dad knew?”

Margaret looked as if someone had reached through time and opened a locked room inside her.

Robert Callahan had been a quiet man.

A machinist.

Methodical.

Protective.

The sort of husband who repaired drawers before they could stick and paid bills three weeks early.

But in the last year of his life, she remembered suddenly, he had forbidden anyone from tearing up the basement floor during a plumbing estimate.

He had been oddly insistent about it.

Not angry.

Just absolute.

She had teased him then.

Asked what treasure he thought was buried down there.

He had smiled in that gentle, unreadable way of his and said, “Only what’s meant to stay put.”

Margaret looked at Grant with dawning disbelief.

Then toward the diner window.

Then nowhere at all.

Because the afternoon she had only wanted borrowed sons to keep a wolf from her doorstep, she had instead ripped open a fraud scheme, exposed a land grab, and stumbled into the shadow of a six-decade-old mystery hidden beneath her own home.

Outside, the rain began again, tapping softly against the glass like fingers asking to be let in.

Dale Wexler was led out in handcuffs.

The crowd parted for Margaret as if the entire diner suddenly understood they had been sitting in the presence of a woman whose life was far larger than it looked.

Grant helped her stand.

She took her purse.

Her gloves.

Her dignity.

Then she looked up at the six bikers and said, with a composure that somehow made the moment even more emotional, “I only asked for one afternoon.”

Grant nodded.

“You got it.”

Margaret’s eyes moved from face to face.

“No,” she said softly.

“I think I got the beginning of something else.”

She glanced toward Daniel, who still looked shattered and grateful and newly determined.

Then toward the deputy holding the tunnel file.

Then toward the parking lot where the pale sedan sat abandoned, its driver long gone.

And when she looked back at Grant, something bright and unafraid had returned to her face.

Because now the house on Briar Lane was no longer just a target.

It was a secret.

A battlefield.

And perhaps the last unopened chapter of her husband’s life.

By the time Margaret Callahan left that diner, everyone knew the man trying to claim her home had failed.

What no one knew yet was what had been hidden under her basement for sixty-three years.

And somewhere between the magnolia roots and the sealed tunnel below, Robert Callahan had left behind a truth that was about to pull Margaret, her family, and six road-worn bikers into something far bigger than a stolen deed.

Part 3 would begin the moment they opened the basement.