Chapter Thirty-Two Violet
Chapter Thirty-Two
Violet
They arrived when the sky was purple and blue. They came in silently. No sirens, no show of force. Just plain clothes, folders under arms, cardboard boxes balanced like props.
The kind of quiet they brought felt thick enough to bruise.
My attorney was back, briefcase on his lap, the lawyer’s calm folded into his posture.
Marie laid a tidy stack of photographs on the kitchen table, sliding them toward me.
ADA Mowery entered with the soft authority of someone who controls a room without raising her voice.
It was clear she was powerful in her own right, and didn’t need theatrics to get her job done.
Kaufmann and Lawson filled the remaining spaces, elbows in, pens ready.
There were also a few new faces, all of them holding the same unblinking expressions.
“We’ll walk you through these,” Kaufmann said, tapping the top picture.
“They’re compiled from mug shots, DMV files, surveillance stills pulled from the locations you named in Ohio, and social media matches our cyber unit ran against your descriptions.
We’ve also got plate hits from cameras near those sites. ” His voice was blunt, practical.
They’d done it all so fast.
“We also received an anonymous tip last night that narrowed the field,” Kaufmann said, tapping the corner of the top sheet with his pen.
“And our techs pulled a CCTV hit on the SUV with Ohio plates you described near Sweetwater Lake. This new footage confirmed the full plate, which led to a registration and then to a few matches in the databases.”
A scoff of confusion escaped me. An anonymous tip the same day I told them? The coincidence tasted bitter. That they’d already pulled footage and started matching it should have been a relief. Instead, it made the room feel like it had been set up around me.
I stared down at the photos. At first the faces were strangers. Then, one by one, they hit me like a fist in the chest.
Anna’s image landed like a punch. Mother Hen.
She was older than I remembered, and her hair was longer and streaked with gray.
Her skin folded at the jaw, and wrinkles lined her face.
But those eyes were the same—flat, patient, and sociopathic.
Michael’s photo was next, and he had aged, too, but his posture still had that stone-still stoicism.
Jameson looked strung out in his picture.
Frankie’s mug shot carried a private grin, the kind that meant he’d been given a secret he liked.
Probably thinking about the latest sacrifice.
And Stephanie . . . her mouth was a thin, practiced line.
I felt the memory of her hand as if she had just slapped me.
“They’ve all been arrested?” I asked, my voice paper-thin.
Kaufmann didn’t blink. “Not all right now, but several have prior arrest records. County and state mug shots gave us starting points. We ran those against DMV registrations, cross-checked travel logs and gas receipts, and our cyber unit pulled open-source social posts and ran facial matches.”
So much cop talk that it confused the hell out of me.
“So they left breadcrumbs,” I said, more to myself than to him.
“They weren’t careful,” Lawson added. “We’ll just say that. They didn’t scrub everything. They don’t expect people to look.” His voice was flat.
The authorities had worked fast. It should have comforted me that everything was all coming together, that it should end soon. Instead, this all felt like someone tightening a collar around my neck, slowly choking me.
I realized how small my breath sounded in the room.
Mr. Steinbach radiated a lawyer-calm that made it seem like nothing in the room could touch him. Meanwhile, I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole. “She identifies, or she doesn’t,” he said evenly. “We proceed at her pace. No suggestions, no pressure.”
I lifted a shaking finger and pointed at Anna without hesitation. “That’s Mother Hen. Recruiting was her job.”
The agents scribbled notes as I moved down the line, naming each one until my throat felt raw.
Mowery cut in with the legal drill: where, when, who else.
Her questions came sharp and fast. Mr. Steinbach stopped the ones he didn’t like, his voice crisp as he dropped terms like leading and argumentative.
Midway through, Marie slid another photo across the table, this one of a vehicle.
“We ran traffic cam pulls off the SUV from last night,” she said, her tone steady and precise.
“Picked it up three intersections over. Same vehicle, clear plate this time.” She tapped the glossy image with her pen.
“Came back to a black sedan registered to a local residence. It gave us two IDs.”
Something cold slid through me and made my chest ache. My vision tunneled, but I forced my lungs to expand. “Only three intersections over?” I rasped. My voice steadied as I repeated it louder. “They’re that close already?”
Lawson’s gaze sharpened, but he didn’t soften his words. “They’re not subtle, Ms. Santos. That’s clear.”
Mowery leaned forward, folding her hands in a gesture that looked patient but wasn’t.
“The vehicle alone doesn’t prove intent.
Could be a coincidence. But we’re not taking chances.
Between your statement and the corroboration we’ve gathered, we now have probable cause to move.
We’ll be drafting search warrants for the addresses you identified and pursuing arrest warrants where the evidence supports it.
Everyone is working overtime to keep the circle tightening. All of this takes time.”
I gripped the edge of the table until my knuckles ached. “But we don’t have time. Women are being murdered.” The room went silent except for the scratch of Kaufmann’s pen.
I lifted my chin, even as my heart thrashed inside my chest. “I kept quiet too long. I won’t do it again.” If you think they’ll stop at my doorstep, they’re wrong. This doesn’t end until Marcus is gone, I thought.
“For now, containment and intel are the priority,” Lawson said flatly. “You stay put until we move.”
After Mr. Steinbach finished hashing out the last details with the detectives and they all filed out, I was left behind with this empty feeling. This hollow weight filled me, like the house itself had swallowed all the air and left me suffocating.
Grayson moved through the small space like he was trying not to set off a trip wire. “They compiled decent material,” he finally said, his voice low. “Mug shots. Stills. Records. Enough to build a solid case.”
I only nodded, my throat locked tight. My gaze stuck on him, cataloging the lines of strain around his mouth, the pinch of his lips, the sharp pull of his brows.
He crossed the room, closed the blinds another inch, and checked the locks again.
Each action was precise, deliberate, like a ritual.
But under it, I saw it—a wire stretched so tight I thought it might snap.
And the silence between us only amplified that heavy feeling, turning it ominous.
Hours later, when I couldn’t fold another blanket or scrub an already-clean counter, I peeled the blinds back and watched the street. A cruiser idled two houses down. An unmarked car sat across the block like it belonged there. The world looked ordinary enough to be a lie.
A smear on the glass made my skin prickle. I looked closer, and the smear resolved into the sigil of the Blood God.
My lungs emptied. The room stilled. Grayson was at my side before I could register the sound of his feet. He didn’t look at me. He stared at the symbol clinically. It looked like someone had exhaled on the glass and drawn a threat in the fog.
“They found you. Fuck, how in the hell . . .” he seemed to say to himself.
His jaw worked as the words came out low and hard.
For a heartbeat, suspicion flared. Could the protection detail itself be compromised, someone letting them get this close?
But I shoved it down, too exhausted to chase that shadow yet.
I wanted to demand answers. Instead, I heard myself ask the practical thing, “What do we do?”
He answered by the book. We had to play their game and stay put, trust the rules, and pretend due process could protect against something as feral as the cult. It should have landed as comfort, neat and procedural, but it only sharpened the reality.
Every instinct screamed at me to run. Yet running wasn’t freedom—it meant always looking over my shoulder, knowing they’d find me again, and again. If the cult didn’t kill me, the cops would drag me back in cuffs.
I swallowed hard. “So we pack a go bag,” I whispered, eyes wide on him. “Just in case.”
He nodded once, jaw flexing. “Until then, we do it right. Detectives looped in. Attorney notified. Everything logged. No gaps they can exploit.”
We moved through the house on autopilot, fueled by survival. Grayson handled the calls. His voice was clipped and controlled as he replayed everything to Marie and Mowery. I dragged out a duffel and shoved in clothes, chargers, and what little cash I had. My hands shook even as I zipped the bag.
Forensics was already en route. Units were sweeping the perimeter, pulling CCTV feeds, cataloging every breath and shadow. And still the bag sat there, mocking me with the reminder of what my life was.
When we were done, we sat on the couch in silence, the room suffocated under the weight of everything we couldn’t control.
Outside, patrol cars idled like a mechanical heartbeat, voices could be heard, footsteps coming closer.
It was all so steady but hollow. Inside, the condensation sigil pulsed in my head even though the blinds were drawn tight.
My nails dug crescents into Grayson’s palm until he turned, until his eyes locked on mine, sharp and unwavering.
“If they come for you,” he said, low and certain, “we don’t wait. We don’t freeze. We run.” His voice was half vow, half warning. “But not without a plan.” The silence that followed was a heavy blanket of dread.
And I knew when the balance tipped, no one could stop what came next.