Chapter Three
Damon
I ARRIVE IN Ridgewater late Sunday night and get settled in my Airbnb. Most of the other guys who work the fair park trailers next to where we set up, but I’ve always preferred staying in an actual house. It makes me feel like less of a nomad, plus, I get to see more of the towns we visit.
Although I’m already familiar with this town.
After I get my bag unpacked and toiletries stacked in the bathroom, I pour myself a drink and open the case file Jake sent me on the target I’m hunting.
He’s a thirty-four-year-old man who was accused by an eighteen-year-old of raping her last summer at the camp they both worked at.
It reminds me a lot of the first case I worked for the Venatores while I was getting my degree at MIT.
When they approached me, I was intrigued because they helped people like my mom. Those who tried to use the legal system to bring their abusers to justice but the system failed them.
Most of the people in the group were computer hackers and engineers, people who could bypass firewalls, encrypt message boards. Vigilantes who hunted down those who escaped justice on technicalities.
The first person I helped was a thirteen-year-old girl whose camp counselor assaulted her.
He got off due to a lack of evidence, because the girl wasn’t able to report it until she got home.
He was also an MIT student. I found him on his way back to his apartment one night and knocked him out.
I brought him back to a house the Venatores owned, and we tortured him.
Our original plan was just to scare him, but he told us he didn’t regret what he did, that he’d do it again if he had the chance and take it even further.
So we killed him.
The Venatores sent some men in for cleanup, and that was it. No one ever reported the guy missing, or if they did, the Venatores covered it up.
I saw the girl a few years later, around town with some friends. Living her life carefree like any teenager should be allowed to.
I’ve worked with the Venatores ever since. First just as a soldier, but now also as a tech guy sometimes. They send the fair all around the country, and I usually just have to wait for my target to walk into the house.
And my current target almost definitely will. He seems to hang around places like fairs and camps often. So the girl who reported him probably isn’t his only victim.
He got off, though, because she had just celebrated her eighteenth birthday that day and he convinced everyone she had been flirting with him all summer. Asking for it.
Same fucking thing all these disgusting men say.
After I’ve read a bit more about where this guy works and am certain I’ll recognize him when he comes through, I shoot back the rest of my drink and close my laptop.
I pour myself another drink and sit out on the back porch.
It’s a cold night, typical for spring in Ridgewater, but the fresh air is nice.
My thoughts drift to Violet. I wonder if I’ll see her while I’m in town.
I hope I do, and if Alyssa has any say in things, I definitely will.
But I’m also not sure what I would even say to Violet if I did see her.