Chapter Twenty-Five Violet
Chapter Twenty-Five
Violet
The walls weren’t white. They pretended to be, but under the fluorescent hum they were the color of old teeth. The table in front of me was metal, bolted to the floor, its surface scuffed and scratched from far too many people sitting in my exact spot.
The chair was straight-backed, cold, forcing me to sit too tall, too stiff. There was no window, only a mirror that wasn’t a mirror, but a microscope through which others could watch me like a science experiment.
The door opened on a burst of stale air, and Agent Matt strode in like he owned the world.
He stunk of arrogance. Landry followed, notepad at the ready.
She still wore the nylon jacket she’d had on at my house, and the material whispered as she sat, pen already poised.
I thought about how quickly she’d cataloged me last night, like I was a specimen pinned to a board, a dead butterfly with its wings spread out.
Matt didn’t bother with greetings. He dropped a thick folder onto the table, the slap of paper loud in the sterile room. “We’ll make this simple,” he said. “You tell us what we need to know, and we’ll see where it goes. You hold back, and it gets harder for you. Understand?”
“I’m not sure that’s how this works.” I was surprised I’d found my voice enough to say all that. “I am traumatized from finding a human organ in my backyard. Maybe a gentler approach would go further?”
Matt’s jaw clenched in response, but he just leaned back and let his partner take the lead.
Agent Landry’s tone was softer, but not kinder. “We know last night was hard. We just want to figure things out so we can bring justice to these women.”
I felt my stomach clench and nodded.
“We’ll start with your background. Basic details. We ran your name—Violet Santos. No records existed before you arrived here in Sweetwater Lake. No school history, no previous address. Nothing.”
“Looks pretty suspicious,” Agent Matt spat out.
I felt the room press in on me. I forced my voice to hold steady. “I moved. Started over. I had a terrible past. Family issues. I wanted a clean slate.”
Matt snorted. “Everyone leaves a trail—paper, digital, footprints. You’re no different.” He leaned forward, his forearms braced on the table, his shadow cutting across the metal. “How about you tell us your real name, and why you want to be someone else?”
I wrapped my arms around my waist and exhaled.
Landry’s eyes held mine, steady, probing. “Who are you running from?”
The words lodged in my throat. “I-I had people who hurt me,” I said finally. “I left. I changed everything. I didn’t want to be found.”
Her voice stayed calm, maybe too calm. “And yet here you are, being found again.”
A pulse of heat shot through me. It sounded like more than an observation. It sounded like something else. My paranoia rose. Did she know me?
Agent Matt’s voice was sharp. “Why’d you change your name, Violet?”
Clearly what I’d just told Agent Landry didn’t matter to him. He kept pressing. I kept my voice steady, though my hands tightened. “I’m not answering questions about my past identity without an attorney present.”
He snapped then, his fist hitting the table. “That’s convenient. You think you can just clam up and we’ll let it go? You’ve got nothing on record. No birth certificate, no old address we can find. That’s not normal.”
I met his glare head-on, jaw tight. I knew men like Agent Matt. They got off on control and anger. “It’s my legal right. I won’t discuss who I was before without counsel.” I’d seen enough criminal law shows to hope I could bluff my way out of this.
Agent Landry cut in, her tone quieter but edged with warning toward Agent Matt. “She’s within her rights. If she invokes counsel, we don’t press. Not on that.”
He gritted his teeth, eyes still locked on me. “Fine. But hiding doesn’t make you look innocent.”
Matt shoved the folder closer. Photos spilled out, crime scene shots of the first victim at the lake, and then the girl in the woods. I stared at the way the newest victim was posed, her arms bound and outstretched, her long hair shielding her face.
And then there were last night’s evidence photos. I swallowed the lump in my throat as I stared at the heart in its clear bag, sitting on my counter.
“Explain why the latest victim’s heart was placed in your backyard,” he snapped. “Why you?”
My mouth was dry, my throat too tight. “I don’t know why that was left on my property. That’s your job to figure it out, because I’m traumatized as hell over it.”
Matt smirked, close enough I could smell his coffee-burned breath. “Bullshit. People don’t cut bloody organs out of murder victims and drop them off at random people’s houses like they’re delivering a bouquet.”
I shook my head, eyes stinging. “I don’t know anything,” I lied too easily. I’d been lying about my ties to the cult since I escaped. “I don’t know why they’re doing this.”
Matt’s stare sharpened. “Then let’s talk about Iverson.”
My heart instantly started beating faster at the mention of Grayson.
“Why is he at your house at all hours? Why is he running plates for you? Why are there cruisers posted outside like you’re a protected witness? What’s your relationship with him—exactly?” He rapid-fired questions at me until my mind swam.
Heat climbed my throat. I gripped the edge of the chair to keep my hands still. “I first met him at the coffee shop I work at. He told me he had been assigned to the case. So when I saw someone I felt was following me, on top of the SUV, I got frightened and called him. He’s helping me out.”
“Are you sleeping with him?” Matt’s pen hovered, ready to spear me to the page.
My jaw ached from holding it shut.
“Agent,” Landry hissed. “Let’s stick with the case and not cross lines.” Matt smirked at her statement, but kept his focus on me. I was surprised she’d shut him down—impressed, even, that she wouldn’t let him bulldoze every boundary.
“He’s helping me. That’s it. Because I asked.” I lifted my chin. “And who I do or don’t sleep with isn’t your fucking business.”
A low sound slid out of Matt’s chest—annoyance, or maybe something darker. The way he stared didn’t sit well with me. He glanced at Agent Landry as if he expected her to scold me for my tone. She didn’t.
“Grayson is in another room,” she said instead, smooth, gentle.
“Because he was at your house when the evidence was found, he’s answering questions, too.
It’s important you’re truthful about anything that could be of interest or .
. . a conflict.” A pause. “Between you and him. Between him and this case.”
“He put a cruiser at my house because I felt like I was being stalked, like I said when I mentioned the SUV following me,” I said.
“Maybe he shouldn’t have done that, or checked on me, but I’m thankful he did.
” I didn’t want to lie, but I didn’t know what Grayson was telling them.
Outright lying wasn’t going to do me any favors right now.
“He ran the SUV plates through a contact he has because I noticed the vehicle kept coming back.”
“Contact?” Matt asked slowly. He let the word sit like bait. “This contact, I assume, is a private eye?”
My pulse ticked faster. “I assume. I never asked.”
Matt’s mouth tilted like he didn’t buy a word I said.
“Here’s what I think, Violet. I think Iverson knows more than he’s telling me.
I think you know more than you’re telling anyone.
” He tapped a knuckle twice on the photo of the heart in its bag.
“Organs don’t wind up on kitchen counters by accident.
Somebody wanted you to see it. Somebody thought it would mean something to you. ”
I kept quiet as I stared so hard at the metal tabletop it blurred.
Landry’s pen grazed the pad, barely a whisper. “When you say an SUV kept coming back, did you call the station? Make a report?”
“No,” I whispered.
“Why not?”
I shrugged. “Scared, I guess. Maybe I thought I was just being paranoid.”
“People only feel paranoid if shit is going down, right?” Matt asked.
“I don’t know what other people do or don’t do.”
“You said you saw someone following you? Someone acting suspiciously?”
I nodded and licked my dry lips. “A bald man. I saw him across the street from where I work. My coworker Harper saw him, too, and mentioned he looked suspicious. Then I saw him again across the street from my house last night. He got in the SUV and left. And hours later I found the heart.”
Matt snorted, as if he hated the poetry of it. “Has this man approached you?”
I shook my head. “No. But he clearly wanted me to notice him.”
Landry’s gaze sharpened. “Are you connected to these murders, Ms. Santos?” Those words dropped into the room like a stone into water.
I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. Vessel. The word the cult used when they whispered in the dark around the fire. The word Marcus used when he looked at me was like I was the answer to the equation.
“No.” That word came from me soft, like a whisper in the air. Not convincing at all.
Matt leaned back, chair legs scraping tile. Both the agents were staring at me, hard and viscerally. I looked at the mirror. I swore I could feel eyes on the other side.
I thought about Grayson and how he was dealing with this.
I could hear his voice in my head, low, even, and getting right to the facts.
I thought about his thumbs pressing circles into my skin to keep me on earth when I thought I’d get swallowed by hell.
I pictured how he’d stood in my kitchen like a wall.
Unmovable. Strong. How he’d opened the box so I didn’t have to.
“I’m going to ask you again,” Matt said in a low and menacing voice. “Who is Grayson Iverson to you?”
“He’s the only person who has made me feel like I had every right to be happy, that I was actually alive and not just existing,” I said. “Is that what you want to hear? What you want to jot down on your notepads?”