Chapter 15
RAMPAGE
The federal agent was a woman named Diaz, mid-thirties, efficient without being cold, and she shook Emily's hand and set her bag down and looked around the compound common room with the practiced neutrality of someone who'd conducted interviews in stranger places.
Rampage had arranged it carefully. He’d brought in the good couch, not the table. It was softer, less interrogation adjacent. Savannah was sitting on Emily's left, Makenzie in the chair nearby. Coffee was already made. The kind of setup that said you're supported without making a production of it.
He stood near the back of the room.
Diaz had looked at him when she came in.
At the position he'd taken, the distance he was keeping. She'd read it correctly. He’d made the deliberate choice to be present without looming, and given him a small nod of acknowledgment. He was worried she might make him or the girls leave. He’d raise hell if she tried.
She didn’t.
He'd taken stock of her in return. Good instincts. Clean interview technique. She'd do.
Emily sat on the couch with her hands wrapped around her mug and her spine straight and answered every question with clarity and detail. Rampage was incredibly proud of his girl. She was being so brave.
She remembered everything. The Facebook group, the first comment of his.
It was a reply to a post she'd made about a local trail being closed for maintenance, anodyne and friendly. Then the listing two weeks later, appearing in her feed because they were in the same neighborhood group. He’d explained to her that he had two homes, one in each town, due to work, when she’d asked him why the gym equipment was three hours away from their community.
She’d bought his excuses and he couldn’t blame her. They were believable.
The messages that followed, three of them, all transactional, nothing that would have triggered alarm.
The first visit when she came and looked over the equipment, leaving her car alone in the driveway.
She’d entered his garage alone. Rampage’s gut churned thinking about her in there alone with him.
He could have moved on her then but didn’t.
Why didn’t he grab her then? She explained the condition of the garage and the empty hooks.
Diaz leaned forward when Emily described the hooks.
"How many empty, approximately?"
"Maybe thirty percent of the board. Upper section, larger hooks. The kind you'd use for heavy equipment."
"What was the flooring like?"
"Concrete. Clean." Emily thought. "There were scuff marks, though. Drag marks maybe. Wide ones."
Diaz wrote something. Emily watched her write it.
"During the first visit," Diaz said, "did he suggest a second meeting? Or was the hardware bag mentioned during that visit?"
"He didn't say anything about it during the visit. I came to look at the equipment and make sure it was worth what he was asking for it. That was actually his idea. Told me to come check it out and if I liked it I could come back and pick it up. I told him I would have to come back. He texted me after I’d picked up the equipment on the second visit. "
"How long between the visit and the text?"
"It was late that night."
Diaz nodded. "And when he texted, did he specify what the bag contained?"
"Mounting nails and hardware for the squat rack. He said he'd accidentally left it out of the lot." She paused. "It was specific enough to be believable. The squat rack did need hardware for proper installation."
"Did you verify the hardware was actually missing before you went back?"
She stopped for a minute and stared blankly ahead.
"No," Emily said. Quiet.
"That's not a judgment," Diaz said, quickly and genuinely. "I'm establishing the sequence. The pretext was convincing. That's by design."
Rampage watched Emily take that in. The small tension across her shoulders. The way she breathed through it. Savannah squeezed her knee in encouragement. God, his brothers had chosen so well. These women were good people.
"When you returned," Diaz continued, "describe his demeanor."
"He answered the door fast. Like he was waiting for me." She set her mug down. "He smiled. Wide. Slow." She stopped. "I know what you're going to say, that hindsight is making it worse in memory."
"Maybe," Diaz said. "But your instincts flagged it in real time too, correct? You stayed on the porch."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"It felt wrong to go in." She met Diaz's eyes. "I didn't have a reason. I just didn't go in."
"That decision," Diaz said, "in combination with what happened after, staying in the car, calling for help, keeping the doors locked, made this a very different outcome than we usually see."
The room was quiet.
Emily looked at her hands. Nodded once.
Rampage stayed at the back of the room. His fist clenched at his side. God help the man if Rampage got to him before the feds did.
The interview ran ninety minutes. Diaz took Emily through the Facebook messages a second time with a printed copy she'd brought, cross-referencing timestamps with activity logs she'd pulled.
The two months of prior contact came out in that section.
He watched Emily's face when Diaz laid out the timeline from the first comment in the neighborhood group, the progression, the deliberate low-heat nature of the contact.
Designed not to alarm. Designed to build a sense of familiarity so that when the listing appeared, Emily's brain already categorized the name as known rather than stranger.
Emily looked at the timeline for a long moment.
"Two months," she said.
"Yes."
"He was watching me for two months before he ever sent the first message."
"At minimum." Diaz kept her voice even. "He would have been monitoring the group longer than that to identify appropriate targets."
Emily put the printed timeline down on the coffee table. Squared it up exactly with the edge. The precision of the gesture, making the corners line up, giving her hands something certain to do, was something Rampage recognized.
She was managing herself and doing it well.
"How many women?" she asked.
"In our confirmed cases, four. We believe the number is higher." Rampage raised an eyebrow.
"He's done this four times and he's still out there."
"Networks like this are structured to survive the loss of individual collectors.
Delling going dark is expected. It suggests the network knows we've connected him.
It doesn't mean the network stops." Diaz paused.
"What it does mean is that your evidence is valuable.
The hooks you described, the scuff marks, we believe those correspond to another victim.
Your account corroborates physical evidence from a property search we executed last week. "
Emily looked up.
"Your observation helped us," Diaz said. "Directly."
Rampage watched the shape of that land on her. The complicated intersection of horror and utility. The knowledge that what she'd seen was proof of something terrible, and that being able to describe it had mattered. Maybe a flicker of hope, that her contribution could help one of the victims.
"Okay," Emily said. Not small this time. Steadier.
When Diaz left, Emily sat on the couch for a moment while Makenzie and Savannah took the coffee cups to the kitchen and gave her a second of quiet. Rampage stayed where he was.
She looked at him across the room.
"I want to do more," she said. "If there's more I can do. I want to know about it."
"Diaz will follow up with anything they need."
"I mean—" She paused. "Beyond statements. If there's something the club is doing. If there's a way to help."
He crossed the room. Sat in the chair across from her.
"Right now," he said, "the most useful thing you can do is exactly what you've been doing. Staying safe, staying here, not giving the network anything to use against us."
"That feels passive."
"It's not passive. It's strategic." He held her gaze. "And I hear what you're saying. When there's something actionable, and if you can be safe while doing it, I'll tell you."
She looked at him steadily. "Promise me."
He was quiet for a moment. He didn't make promises he couldn't keep. She probably knew that by now.
"Yes," he said. “If something comes up that you can do safely, I’ll let you know. But, I won’t put you in danger.”
Something settled in her face. She leaned back into the couch cushions and exhaled, a long, slowly deflating exhale of someone who had been held at high tension for hours and was finally, carefully, letting it go.
Makenzie appeared in the doorway. "Okay I need to know if people want food because I am stress-eating and I refuse to do it alone."
Emily laughed. It was smaller than her real laugh, but it was something. "What are the options?"
"Whatever Irish will let me make, which historically is a negotiation."
"I'll come help," Emily said.
She stood. Moved toward the kitchen. Stopped in the doorway and turned.
"Rampage."
He looked at her with a raised eyebrow. She was asking permission.
"I'm good," she said. Direct. Clear-eyed. Not asking him to confirm it, just informing him. I'm good.
"I know," he said. “Go ahead. I’m going to find Lucky and then I’ll join you.”
She went to the kitchen.
He sat in the empty common room for a moment. Listened to her voice carry in from the kitchen, heard her say something that made Makenzie laugh, heard the particular lightness of two women who had both been through something and were choosing to be okay today.
He thought about what she'd said on the run.
It must be exhausting. Knowing how to do that.
He thought about the coloring book on the nightstand.
He thought about two months. About a man who'd looked at Emily Carter and seen a target, who'd watched her and catalogued her and built a careful, patient trap around a woman who left positive reviews on marketplace transactions and posted about trail closures and bought a coloring book in a small-town bookstore because she needed something to make her feel safe.
The anger didn't go anywhere tactical this time.
He let it be there for a moment, in the empty room. He let himself feel it. The pulse in his jaw, the heat in his body.
Then he got up and went to the kitchen.
Emily was standing at the stove with a spatula, defending a decision about onions to Makenzie. Savage was in the doorway eating a piece of garlic bread, watching the debate with a smile. Savannah was sitting at the table taking it all in.
"The onions have to be caramelized," Emily was saying. "You can't rush them. Fifteen minutes minimum."
"It's been eight minutes," Makenzie said.
"Which is why they're not done yet."
"I'm hungry now."
"Then eat some bread."
"Savage has all the bread."
Savage looked down at the piece in his hand. Made no move to share it.
Rampage pulled out a barstool and sat at the island.
Emily glanced back over her shoulder at him. Just a glance.
"Eight more minutes," she said, to the room in general.
"She's right about the onions," Rampage said.
Makenzie pointed at him. "You're biased."
"I'm correct," he said. "Those are different things."
Emily's shoulders shifted. Not quite a smile he could see. But something.
He'd take it.