Knowing what that meant for him. For Emily. For his sister. For all of us.
“Where’s Emily?” I demanded.
“Right beside me. I’m going to your parents’ where Maggie is. No one is leaving until this is done.”
Just wasn’t sure how we were gonna end it.
No question, the rules of the game had just been changed.
“It’s time to bring in Detective Casile. I know they wanted to wait until they could testify, but that’s not gonna work when there is no one left to testify against,” Royce said.
“I know. Make the call. I’ll call Kade.”
“Done. Get back to Violet. Don’t give a shit if her father meets you on the front porch with a shotgun. You make them understand, and you don’t let them out of your sight.”
Sweat gathered at my nape and dripped down my back.
“I’m already on my way.”
“Stay safe, brother.”
Affection pulled tight across my chest. “You, too. Take care of my sister. Of Maggie.”
“Promised you I would.”
The second he hung up, I punched in another number.
Kade answered on the first ring. “Richard.”
I heaved out a strained breath. “We’re on high alert, man. Double down your efforts.”
“What happened?” he grated.
“Karl Fitzgerald and Cory Douglas are dead.”
“Shit,” he wheezed.
“Getting them to trial is no longer the focus. The detective is being contacted. Backup should be there soon. For now, stand guard and don’t stand down.”
Lily had made me promise the authorities wouldn’t be brought in.
She’d convinced me it was too dangerous.
Wasn’t like she was off base. Someone tried to leave? Expose what was going down in that house and those who visited it? Go to the police?
They ended up gone.
Permanently.
Just like the two women who had agreed to Royce and Detective Casile that they would testify. Even under police protection, they’d disappeared.
It was better the rest of them were thought dispersed into the streets before the raid than as a threat.
Clearly, we were passed that.
“Will let you know as soon as I hear anything,” I told him.
By the time I ended the call, I was coming up fast on the curve that brought the Marin house into view.
My spirit clanged. My guts in knots. They twisted a thousand times tighter when I saw Violet’s truck was no longer parked in the spot it’d been when I’d left.
I raced up the drive, truck jostling like mad. I barely skidded to a stop before I was flying out the door and sprinting up the steps, banging on the door that whipped open a second later.
“Haven’t you done enough?” Mr. Marin spat, words close to a plea.
Not quite.
Because it was time for this all to end.
Thirty-Eight
Violet
I didn’t know how I made it to the library parking lot through the tears that kept fallin’. Didn’t know how I was functioning at all with the sheer, utter devastation that singed and burned and ate me alive.
My ribs feeling like they’d been cracked wide open and my heart ripped out.
I was running on adrenaline alone.
The bit of hope that my sister was comin’ home, even when I didn’t know what that was goin’ to mean. Knowing I was wholly unprepared for the things she’d been through. That I was gonna learn things that I didn’t want to know.
And then there was Daisy.
Daisy. Daisy. Daisy.
The vacancy in my chest howled with the grievance.
That outright fear.
But I just kept reminding myself this wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about me.
I fumbled out of my truck when the sedan whipped into the parking spot beside me, and I jerked open his door and slipped inside.
Unable to breathe.
Unable to see.
Knowing I had to fight for this one purpose. I could fall apart later.
“You’ve got the address?” David Jacobs asked, peering over at me.
“Yes. I think so. I talked with Mr. Baronson. He gave me the address for a P.O. box so I could attempt to contact my sister. I…I think I traced the renter of the box to a house in Lexington.”
“May I see?” he asked.
Hand shaking, I passed over my phone. He looked at the address and then was making a call with his.
“We got them,” he said. I guessed that was when his demeanor shifted from concerned P.I. to something else entirely.
When the mood whipped into something cruel.
And those three little words.
They danced and shivered and spun through my mind.
A moment held.
And then it hit me from all sides.
All at once.
A vat of ice-cold water was dumped over me.
The realization of what I’d done.
That voice.
Oh my god. That voice.
How hadn’t I made the connection?
“You shouldn’t go diggin’ up graves. You never know when you might fall in.”
I swung around to get to the door handle at the same second the locks engaged.
The car whipped out of the spot, and I fought the lock that wouldn’t give, yanking at the handle, trying to escape. “No. Let me out. Don’t do this. Oh, god. Please don’t do this.”
Despair and fear and terror.
They spiraled and curled and shackled.
Leaving me in chains.
I came to the quick, gutting realization. I’d let my despair over seeing Richard in those pictures with Lily overshadow the truth. What had been hidden in Richard’s eyes and in his cryptic words. What he’d been trying to convey.
Hot tears streamed down my face when I realized what I’d done.
The car accelerated like a bullet down the street.
And I knew I was a prisoner.
Nowhere to run. No chance of savin’ my sister.
The only thing I’d accomplished was leading the wolves to the den.
David Jacobs glanced over at me with a smug grin on his face. “You know, I thought you were going to be a complication when we first intercepted that hit that you were actively looking for Liliana Marin. Turns out you did my job for me. Maybe I should be the one paying you. I guess Richard Ramsey couldn’t help himself, could he? You are awful pretty. I’ll call that a bonus.”
He smirked a disgusting smile.
And I knew, I’d just made the biggest mistake of my life.
Thirty-Nine
Richard Six Years Ago
“I warned you
