Victoria settles onto the couch, her back to the kitchen. To Cole. She sets the thermos on the coffee table. Chesca curls up on those same cushions on Saturday mornings. The team is positioned around this house. And I want this woman in handcuffs so badly I can taste it.
I take the armchair by the windows. The floor-to-ceiling glass behind me shows nothing but dark hills and distant city lights. From here, I can see everything: Victoria on the couch, Cole standing silent at the kitchen opening behind her, the photographs she's about to spread across my coffee table.
Cole catches my eye. Barely a nod.I'm here.
What Victoria hasn't factored in: Damian waiting in the garage. Asher on the Hendersons' roof with his scope trained on these windows. Jax two blocks out. Vanessa watching every camera in a six-block radius.
Victoria unscrews the thermos cap and pours into it—the cap doubles as a cup. Steam rises. The smell of chamomile fills the space between us, sweet and deceptively gentle.
"Tea?" She takes a sip. "I find it helps. Especially on nights like this."
"I'm fine. Thank you."
She takes another sip.See? Safe.I recognize the performance. I've watched witnesses do the same thing on the stand, demonstrate innocence through casual behavior.
"I've been going through court records," she says, reaching into her bag. She produces a manila folder, spreads photographs across my coffee table. Dead judges, crime scene timestamps."The pattern is accelerating. Whoever is doing this—they're getting bolder."
Whoever.
"And you think I fit the profile."
"I think you do." Her pale green eyes meet mine. There's something wet in them—a grief that never quite dries. "Trafficking cases. Powerful networks. The people behind them have long memories, Your Honor."
"We all have cases like that."
"Not like this." She taps one of the photographs. Judge Patterson. Eleanor, who made me laugh at that ethics panel two years ago. "She thought she was untouchable too."
I look at the photographs spread across my coffee table. Faces I've been trying not to think about. Colleagues, friends of colleagues. People who sat where I sit and made the same choices I make.
"You've done a lot of research, Dr. Lockwood."
"Research. Patterns. Following the money." She recites it like a catechism—practiced, memorized. "Finding the connections others miss."
"And what connections have you found?"
She sets down the cup. The pleasant mask slips. What remains is quieter. Colder. Certain of its own righteousness.
"Of course you have. You're smart. Smarter than the others."
Her lips curve—almost respect, if respect could exist between us.
"They were corrupt," she says. "Every single one. Taking bribes, burying evidence, letting guilty men walk free while girls like my sister—"
Her voice catches. Real grief, rage to match. It lands in my chest—an unwanted recognition. I know what it's like to watch systems fail. I know what it's like to beg for help that never comes.
I can't afford to feel sympathy for the woman who came here to kill me.
"I know about Rose."
Victoria goes still.
"I know she was trafficked. I know you searched for her."
"You don't know anything." The words come out sharp, defensive. "You don't know what it's like to watch the system fail. To file reports that go nowhere. To beg judges—judges—for help, and have them look right through you."
She stands and moves around the coffee table toward the windows, toward me.
My fingers tighten on the armrest. She stops three feet away, staring out at the dark hills beyond the glass. Close enough that I can smell the chamomile on her breath.