Chapter 19 #2
"Thalia's network. They're thorough. Every buyer's house, every piece of evidence that could lead to the girls—all ash by dawn.
" Juliette pulls out a pastry, bites into it casually while discussing arson.
"The official story will be a trafficking ring turning on itself. Sterling caught in the crossfire."
"And the girls?"
"Gone. Scattered to twelve different cities with new names, new histories. They never existed here."
A knock at the door.
Too authoritative to be anyone but police.
"Showtime," Celeste murmurs, and her entire demeanor shifts.
When she opens the door, she's a different person—smaller, fragile, eyes already wet with unshed tears.
"Mrs. Lockwood?" It's Detective Wilges from the state police. "I'm sorry to bother you so early, but there's been a development regarding your father."
"Is he—did you find him?" Her voice breaks perfectly.
"There was a fire at a property on the Lockwood estate. We found remains. We'll need DNA confirmation, but we believe it's your father."
Celeste collapses—not dramatically but the way real shock works, knees giving out, hand reaching for the doorframe.
I catch her, pull her against me, the protective husband.
"How?" she whispers.
"We're investigating. May we come in?"
We let them in, two detectives who track blood we've already cleaned, looking for evidence we've already burned.
Celeste sits on the couch, shaking.
I bring her water with a steady hand while Juliette plays the supportive sister-in-law.
"When did you last see your father?" Wilges asks.
"Last night," Celeste says truthfully. "He walked me down the aisle at our wedding."
"You got married last night?"
"At midnight. At the old Lockwood estate. Just family." She looks at Juliette, who nods confirmation. "Daddy seemed... wrong. Drunk. Scared. He kept saying he was sorry, that he'd failed me."
"Did he say anything specific about threats? Anyone who might want to hurt him?"
"Everyone," Celeste laughs bitterly through tears. "When those stories came out about Jake, about what Daddy let him do... people were angry. Someone spray-painted 'ACCOMPLICE' on his house two nights ago."
The detectives exchange glances.
They didn't know about the graffiti—because it didn't happen until Juliette did it this morning on her way here.
"We'll need a statement about the wedding. Timeline, who was present, when you last saw him."
"Of course." Celeste wipes her eyes. "He left right after the ceremony. Around 12:45. Said he had something to take care of."
"At that hour?"
"My father wasn't sleeping much lately. The Jake situation, the investigation... he knew more would come out."
"What do you mean?"
"He protected Jake for years. There were other things too, rumors about missing girls, cover-ups. I think Daddy knew his time was running out."
Wilges writes this down. "You think he might have been involved in trafficking?"
Celeste's tears come harder. "I don't know. I don't want to believe it, but... the evidence keeps mounting, doesn't it? Judge Hamilton, Dr. Wallis—they were all his friends."
"You knew about their... activities?"
"Not until this morning when Juliette told me. But it makes sense now. The late-night meetings, the extra money he somehow had, the way certain cases just disappeared."
She's brilliant, my wife.
Giving them breadcrumbs, letting them build the narrative we want—Sterling was part of the ring, the ring turned on itself, everyone's dead, case closed.
"Mrs. Lockwood, I have to ask—where did you go after the wedding?"
"Here," I answer. "My cabin. We've been here all night."
"Can anyone verify that?"
"Each other," Juliette says dryly. "It was their wedding night, Detective. I doubt they were taking visitors."
Wilges flushes slightly. "Of course. We're just being thorough."
They ask more questions, take notes, go through the motions.
But they've already decided what happened—a trafficking ring collapsed, members killed each other, Sterling got caught in the cleanup.
It's the simplest explanation, and cops love simple.
After they leave, Celeste's tears stop instantly.
"How was that?" she asks.
"Perfect. You should've been an actress."
"I am. I've been acting my whole life—playing the good daughter, the normal woman. Now I get to play the grieving widow."
"Technically you're not a widow."
"I'm widowed from my old life. That counts."
Two weeks pass in a strange blur of investigation and performance.
Celeste plays her part flawlessly—the shocked daughter learning horrible truths about her father.
The police find more evidence in the burned buildings, all pointing to a trafficking ring at war with itself.
The surviving network members flee.
Those who don't run end up dead in various accidents—car crashes, hunting mishaps, sudden illnesses.
Thalia's network is thorough, though we help with two of them.
A honeymoon trip to Burlington that happens to coincide with a trafficker's house fire.
Celeste's book launches three weeks after the wedding.
Her publisher fast-tracks it to capitalize on the tragedy. "Dark Romance Becomes Too Real"—the headlines write themselves.
A daughter who wrote about killing fathers, whose actual father died mysteriously.
The book flies off shelves.
We do interviews via video, Celeste in black, mourning her monster.
She dedicates the book "To all the daughters with complicated fathers, and to my husband, who showed me that darkness can be love."
The sales are astronomical.
Everyone wants to read the "prophetic" book about patricide.
They call it fiction that predicted reality, not knowing it's reality dressed as fiction.
"You're famous," I tell her one night, watching her field emails from movie producers.
"We're famous. The grieving daughter and her reclusive husband. The beauty and the beast of the Adirondacks."
"What now?"
She closes the laptop, comes to sit on my lap. "Now we hunt."
"More trafficking rings?"
"More everything. Predators, abusers, the people who slip through cracks in justice. We have money from the book, freedom from suspicion, and a taste for necessary violence."
"A killing honeymoon that never ends."
"Exactly."
She shows me her research—a network operating out of Albany, connected to Sterling's but independent.
Three main players, all with histories of violence against women.
She's found their patterns, their weaknesses, their schedules.
"When?" I ask.
"Next month. After the publicity dies down. We can't appear too eager."
"And after that?"
"Boston. Miami. Los Angeles. There are monsters everywhere, Cain. We could kill for decades and never run out."
I kiss her, tasting ambition and bloodlust. "Some couples travel to see landmarks."
"We'll travel to create them. Crime scenes as art installations."
The moon rises full and bright over the mountains.
Somewhere, girls we saved are living new lives.
Somewhere, predators are thinking they're safe.
Somewhere, our next victims are counting money from selling innocence.
"I love you," I tell her.
"I love you too," she replies. "Now help me plan how to make the Albany kills look accidental."
We spend the rest of the night plotting death, my novelist wife and I, mapping out a marriage measured in miles traveled and monsters ended.
By dawn, we have three new targets and a dozen ways to kill them.
The news still talks about the Christmas Eve Massacre sometimes, the night a trafficking ring ate itself alive.
They don't know about the bride in the bloody dress or the groom who taught her to hold a knife.
They don't know that justice wore white that night and death said "I do."
But we know, and we're just getting started.
In bed later, sated and planning, Celeste traces patterns on my chest—words again, always words.
"What are you writing?" I ask.
"Our sequel," she says. "The bride and groom take a honeymoon across America, leaving bodies like breadcrumbs."
"Will people think it's fiction?"
"Of course. No one would be stupid enough to confess to future murders in published books."
"We would."
"Yes," she agrees, smiling sharp as winter moonlight. "We would, but no one will know, and even if they suspect, they have no evidence."