Chapter 31
thirty-one
Cole
Damian's voice comes through the speakers, soft and patient. "Tell me about finding Rose."
Victoria's hands flatten against the table. The first real movement in twenty minutes.
Angelina sits beside me, close enough that her perfume reaches me, mandarin and rose underneath the professional scent she wears to court.
It should not register now, not with what is happening through that glass, but my brain files it anyway.
Files it with every other detail about my firefly I have collected over the years.
"Eighteen months." Victoria's voice is hollow. "Eighteen months of legal channels. Police reports. Private investigators. Embassy contacts. Nothing."
"So you found her yourself."
"A shipping container manifest. Buried in a customs database no one was supposed to access." Victoria's laugh is brittle. "She was inventory. My sister was a line item on a spreadsheet."
Inventory. The word lands like a blade between my ribs. Fourteen judges dead because one woman's sister became a line item. And somewhere in this city, my firefly has a countdown ticking toward the same fate.
Angelina's breath catches. I keep my eyes on the glass.
"I traced the route. Istanbul to Vienna to Prague. Fourteen months of following paper trails and bribing port officials and pretending to be people I'm not." Victoria's jaw tightens. "I found the basement in Prague."
Fourteen months. Victoria Lockwood spent fourteen months hunting her sister while I spent seven years watching mine through cameras. Different searches. Same useless distance.
Damian waits.
"She was alive." Victoria's voice fractures on the word. "Chained to a radiator in a room with no windows. Fourteen months in that basement. She didn't—"
Her hands curl into fists.
"She didn't recognize me. Her own twin. She looked at my face and saw a stranger."
My chest locks. What would Chesca's face look like after fourteen months in a basement? The thought surfaces before I can stop it. I shove it down. Eyes on the glass. On the woman behind it. Angelina's hand finds mine, her fingers cold.
"I tried to take her." Victoria's voice wavers. "I had a plan. Extraction route, safe house, medical contacts. I was going to save her."
I was going to save her. How many times have I said those words to myself? About Angelina. About the mission that killed Kevin and Danny and Yuki. Plans do not mean anything when the world decides to break what you love.
"What happened?"
Silence. Then, barely audible: "She begged me to let her die."
Angelina's hand locks around mine. I squeeze back. Hold on.
"I held her for three hours. Told her who I was. Who she was. Showed her photographs of us as children." Victoria's voice does not steady. It just... empties. "She didn't remember any of it. She just kept asking me to make it stop."
"Morphine." Victoria's voice is barely above a whisper now. "From the medical kit I'd brought to treat her injuries."
Silence from the interrogation room. Damian gives her space.
"I told her it would help her sleep. That she wouldn't hurt anymore. That I'd stay right there with her." Victoria's hands tremble against the table. "She said thank you. She was so—she thanked me for—"
Her voice breaks. She presses her palms flat, steadying herself.
"I'm sorry." The words slip out, reflexive. "I know that doesn't—I'm sorry."
"I held her hand. Watched her breathe slower.
Slower." Victoria looks up, finally meeting Damian's eyes.
The glassy sheen is there now. Tears building but not falling.
"I was looking at my own face the entire time.
And I kept saying it's okay, it's okay, you can rest now.
I don't know if I was talking to her or to myself. "
The monitor flickers. Nobody speaks.
I have seen men die. Held them while they bled out in places whose names I cannot say. But this, watching a woman describe killing her twin sister with kindness, this is something else. Something that settles in and does not leave.
"I thought—" Angelina's voice is barely a whisper. "I assumed she found her already dead."
I did too.
Damian gives her time. Patient as a grave.
When the sobs slow, he continues. Quiet. Almost gentle.
"What happened after?"
Victoria wipes her face with her cuffed hands. Composing herself piece by piece—but the composure does not reach her voice. That stays gutted.
"A week later, someone contacted me. Said they knew what I'd done. What had been done to Rose." She stares at her hands. "They had names. Judges who'd let traffickers walk. Who'd taken bribes. Who'd looked the other way while girls like Rose disappeared."
"And you believed them."
"They had evidence. Documents. Photos." Victoria looks up. Meets Damian's eyes. "They said Rose didn't have to die for nothing. That I could make sure no other sister had to do what I did."
On the monitor, Damian leans back. The movement deliberate, controlled.
"The handler." That is where it starts.
Victoria's jaw tightens. Then releases. Surrender in the loosening.
"I never met them. Never saw them."
He waits.
"Encrypted app. New one every week." Victoria's voice finds something like professional ground, though the emptiness underneath bleeds through. "They'd send a link through a burner email. I'd download, we'd talk, the app would delete itself. Seven days maximum before the next one."
"Voice," Damian says.
"Distorted. Software modulation. Could have been anyone—man, woman, old, young. No way to tell."
At the console, Vanessa mutters something under her breath. Her fingers fly across the keyboard, pulling up file after file.
"Payment."
"Cryptocurrency." Victoria almost laughs. The sound dies in her throat. "Different wallet every time. Untraceable. I thought it was security. For the investigation. To protect witnesses."
"Investigation."
"They showed me files. Sealed court documents. Medical records. Things I couldn't access on my own." Victoria shakes her head slowly. "I assumed it was classified access. That my handler had clearance I didn't. It never occurred to me to question it."
"Why would it? You trusted the mission."
"I trusted that Rose's death could mean something." The words come out flat. "That I was stopping the people who destroyed her."
At the console, Vanessa's typing slows. Her shoulders draw forward. Head tilting.
Behind the mirror, Damian continues. No wasted movement. No unnecessary words.
"Whoever they are, they know tradecraft." Victoria's voice still carries that void, but she is reaching for professional assessment like a lifeline. "Military. Intelligence. Someone with operational experience."
"Or hired someone who does."
"Maybe." She meets Damian's eyes. "But the level of detail—knowing which judges to target, when, how to time it with their verdicts—that's not just hired help. That's someone with serious access."
Damian shifts. Weight distribution. New angle.
"They were scared."
His attention sharpens.
"Of what?"
"I don't know. But three weeks ago, the messages changed." Victoria's hands still. "Before, they were specific. Detailed. Patient. Then suddenly—urgency. Pressure. They wanted Castellano dead faster than the others."
Angelina's whole body goes still. I feel it through our joined hands—every muscle locking.
"Why?" Damian asks.
"They wouldn't say. Just kept pushing, moving the timeline up, increasing the dosage, make it happen now." Victoria's voice drops. "I asked why. They said she'd become a liability. That she knew something that made her dangerous."
My hand finds Angelina's again. Her fingers are ice cold.
Three weeks. Right when I started the protection detail. Right when Angelina's security increased.
"What pieces?"
"I don't know." Victoria looks straight at the mirror now. "But whoever my handler is, they're more afraid of what Judge Castellano might figure out than they are of getting caught killing her."
"Anything else about the handler? Frustrations, complaints?"
Victoria thinks. "They were careful. Professional. But... there was frustration sometimes. About operations being disrupted."
"Disrupted how?"
"I don't know specifics. Just that shipments were getting intercepted. Girls being pulled out before they could be moved." She shrugs. "Handler thought it was one of the rescue networks. Said some American was causing problems—Asia, then Eastern Europe. They couldn't pin him down."
Kade's voice cuts through the speakers—he has moved to the intercom. "What kind of problems?"
Victoria looks toward the mirror. "I don't know. But it had been going on for months. He said someone was 'getting in the way of the pipeline.'"
Kade releases the intercom. His expression has not changed, but I catch it—loss. Hope. The flicker he will not name. In my peripheral vision, Damian goes very still.
Some American. Could be anyone. Could be one of Maya's people. Could be nothing.
Could be Roman.
Damian moves on. Payment timing. Communication windows. Target assignment protocols.
On the monitor, Damian rises from his chair. Says something to Victoria—too quiet for the speakers to catch. Then he is through the interrogation room door, leaving her alone with her cuffed hands and her sister's ghost.
At the console, Vanessa has pulled up a new interface. Federal database access logs. Her fingers fly across the keyboard.
"What are you looking for?" Angelina leans toward the console.
"Pattern." Vanessa does not look up. "If Victoria's handler had access to sealed court documents, there's a trail. Someone logged in. Someone pulled those files."
Screens cascade. Federal access logs from multiple field offices: Houston, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco.
"I'm cross-referencing access logs against the victim timeline. Who pulled files on judges before they died?"
Silence except for the keyboard. On the monitor, Victoria has not moved. Just staring at the wall, hands flat on the table.
"Same credentials keep appearing." Vanessa frowns. "FBI. Different field offices, but the requests route through San Francisco."
More typing. Vanessa's jaw tightens.
"Someone pulled files on eight of the fourteen victims within 72 hours of their deaths. Same credentials every time."
"Who?"
A pause. Then: "Special Agent Richard Monroe. FBI liaison on the judge killings."
Monroe. The FBI agent who sat in that conference room and told Angelina the Bureau was "committed to her safety." Who shook her hand. Looked her in the eye.
And fed her location to the people trying to kill her.
My hands curl into fists under the console. When I find him—
"He also pulled her case files three times in the last month," Vanessa adds. "Before any flowers arrived."
Angelina is staring at the screen like she can will the name to change.
"If this pattern holds," Kade says, "Monroe's feeding sealed intel up the chain. Victoria receives it downstream. They never interact directly."
"Compartmentalized." I force my hands to flatten. "Classic cell structure."
Kade nods. "Holloway's clean. Ran him six ways—nothing. He's been suspicious of Monroe for months, couldn't prove anything."
"So we use what we have."
"Victoria's handler doesn't know she's compromised." Kade is already thinking three moves ahead. "We keep her contained. Feed Monroe a lead through Holloway—something too good to pass up."
"And when Monroe moves on it?"
"We'll be waiting."
On the monitor, Victoria sits alone in the interrogation room. Staring at nothing. That vacant expression unchanged.
"What happens to her?" Angelina asks.
"That depends on how useful she stays." Kade's tone is neutral. "Right now, she's the only thread we have to the handler. We pull too hard, it breaks."
Angelina watches the screen. "She killed people."
"Yes."
"Fourteen people."
"Yes."
"Julian Orozco drove a van for his cousin," Angelina says quietly. "Thought it was furniture. Didn't know there were girls in the back until border patrol opened the doors." She pauses. "I gave him eighteen months. He served six."
I wait.
"He wasn't innocent. But he wasn't the one who loaded that van. He wasn't the one who sold those girls." Angelina's jaw tightens. "Someone handed him the keys and pointed him at the highway and he was too desperate or too stupid to ask questions."
"You think she's the same."
"I think someone handed her a target list and she was too broken to ask who was holding the pen." Angelina finally looks at me. "It doesn't make her innocent. But it makes her a weapon someone else aimed."
The observation room feels colder.
My phone buzzes. Vanessa's voice, tighter now: "Just got off with Holloway. He's meeting Monroe tonight."