The guitar leaned against his knee—a worn, sunburst Gibson Les Paul that smelled like old wood and cigarette smoke. He’d found it that morning at a garage sale in a dusty corner of Bakersfield. The old woman selling it had said, “That was my brother’s. He came home from the war and never played the same. Ten dollars.”

A noise from the kitchen. His wife, Jenny, was making coffee. She wouldn’t understand. She’d make him call the police.

He didn’t tell Jenny. He just played it that night, alone in the garage. And the notes that came out sounded like a man who had finally come home from a war he never left.

Leo’s blood went cold. He looked down at the guitar. Under the grime, he could just make out the faint, almost scrubbed-away engraving on the back of the headstock: “Property of C. Hargrove.”

Ten dollars.

He closed the laptop. He picked up the guitar. It weighed nothing—or everything.

The screen flickered. A plain white page loaded. No ads. Just a single line of Courier font: