Chapter 25 #2
“The game,” Grace murmurs. “The fucking word game.”
She steps closer to the monitor and tilts her head to one side. “Do you have a pad of sticky notes or something I can write on?”
Owen opens his desk drawer and pulls out a pad of bright pink sticky notes.
“Bellamy’s,” he says when I raise an eyebrow at the color. “If I had my way we would have nothing but the original yellow.”
Grace lets out a small laugh as she sits in the visitor chair opposite Owen and pulls a pen from the organizer. She writes each letter on a sticky note and lays them out.
“You know I can just rearrange them on the screen, right?”
“Hush,” she says, rearranging the letters a few times. “I think better with something tactile.”
“What game, Grace,” I ask, after she arranges the papers again.
“It was this stupid puzzle game Sampson liked to play with us. He would give us a series of consonants and have us guess the word for the day. It was usually a theme for a date he had planned or something. He and Kara got into an argument over whether Y was a vowel or a consonant. Samuel said it acted as a vowel unless it was at the beginning of the word, and even then, it depended on the sound it made. So that she’s including the y is some kind of throwback to that. ”
I look over her shoulder at the letters and try to place vowels between them, but word puzzles were never my strong suit.
Owen’s fingers are back to starting a fire on his keyboard when Grace claps and grabs three more sticky notes.
She writes an E on one, and an A on the other two. When she rearranges them one more time, the word becomes clear.
B. E. T. R. A. Y. A. L.
“She’s saying the theme of our encounter is betrayal. She feels betrayed by me, by Sampson.”
I squeeze both her shoulders and press a kiss to the top of her head. “You’re sure?”
Grace nods. “It was one of Kara’s favorite accusations to throw around whenever something went wrong.
Someone was always betraying her trust, her expectations.
” She wraps her arms around herself. “After I left them, she sent me one email. Just one. The subject line was ‘betrayal.’ I deleted it without reading it because I knew it would be more of her abusive diatribe about driving a wedge between her and Sampson when she was the one who found me.”
The room feels colder. This isn’t just stalking. It’s perverse. Kara is picking up a conversation Grace ended years ago.
“Kara doesn’t let go of grudges. Ever. And if she blames me for Sampson’s death…” She trails off and stares at the letters on the desk. “This won’t stop at flowers or fucking with my car. If the bomb was hers, we need to be very worried. Kara is vindictive when provoked.”
“You think she’s planning something more direct,” Owen says.
Grace nods but doesn’t say anything else.
“We’re ahead of her now. We have proof, and we have an address. Maybe not enough to involve the police yet, but we’re getting there. She can’t get to you, Mariposa.”
“It’s not just me I’m worried about.” Grace looks up at me, then at Owen. “She knows about the club if she sent Sabrina here with a bomb in her car. And if she is connected to Griffin, she knows about you, about Lili. She’ll target whatever matters to me.”
I know she’s right. It’s textbook stalker escalation. When direct access to the victim is blocked, they move to secondary targets. People, places, things the victim cares about.
“We’ve increased security everywhere we can,” Owen assures her. “Everyone connected to the club is under our protection.”
“And we’re watching Kara now,” I add. “The address is enough that soon we’ll know every move she makes the second she makes it.”
Grace stands and moves to the flowers in the corner, touching one of the delicate petals.
“Sampson loved buying these for me. Said the color reminded him of the peace I brought into his orbit. He would buy Kara these orange lipstick roses that looked like flames. Said she kept things interesting with her spirit.”
Owen snorts, and I give him a sharp look, but I don’t blame him for whatever unkind thought just passed through his mind about Kara.
“What do you want to do?” I ask her directly.
She looks at me, something hardening in her expression. “I want to end this. Before she hurts anyone else. And I trust you to handle it. Just keep me informed.”
“We will end this,” I promise. “And I’m taking you with me every step of the way.”
Owen begins typing again, his focus returning to his screens. “I’ll have detailed surveillance on her property within the hour. Soon she won’t be able to sneeze without me knowing about it.”
Grace nods, her gaze returning to the flowers. “She won’t expect me to fight back,” she says more to herself than to us. “That’s one advantage we have. She remembers me as I was. Not as I am now.”
I place my hand on the small of her back, offering silent support. She leans into my touch, and I kiss her temple.
“We do this together,” I say again. “You, me, Lili. The whole team.”
“I know,” she says. Then she flashes me a smile full of determination and grit. “She wants to talk about betrayal? Fine. Let’s have that conversation.”
In this moment, looking at the determination in Grace’s eyes, I almost pity Kara Lindon. She has no idea what she’s unleashed.