CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Protective ActionThe words did not sound real through the phone.Maybe because Jonah said them in that careful voice children used when they knew the adults were already scared.Maybe because See you at Briar sounded too theatrical, too strange, too much like a threat written by someone who enjoyed being feared.Or maybe because Violet’s brain simply refused, for one merciful second, to accept that someone had just reached for her son with a fake social worker, an unsigned petition, and a destination waiting like an open mouth.Briar.Again.Always.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Under the DockViolet did not lower the phone.She sat frozen in the passenger seat with Theodore’s coat-wrapped file box on her lap and a dead call pressed to her ear.Rain whispered over the windshield.The road curved ahead through wet trees.Beside her, Theodore had gone so still that even his breathing seemed disciplined.Mrs. Blythe leaned forward from the back seat.“Miss Harlow?”Violet lowered the phone slowly.The unknown number stared back at her screen.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The Woman Who Wasn’t ThereThe scream came from the trees.High.Female.Terrified.Then it stopped so suddenly the silence afterward felt staged.Theodore moved toward the sound.Violet grabbed his arm.He stopped.Not cleanly. Not easily. His whole body resisted her hand, every part of him tuned toward the rain-dark woods and the place where the scream had come from.But he stopped.That mattered.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

ComplianceThey got back into the car without another word.Not because there was nothing to say.Because there was too much.The kind of too much that could split a person open if handled carelessly.Violet climbed into the passenger seat with the file box on her lap, the note sealed inside Theodore’s handkerchief, and Gideon’s words still crawling over her skin.My mother never left girls where she found them.Mercy Vale.Compliance.Briar.A woman declared dead by the very machine tha

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

MercyTheodore stopped the car ten feet from Mercy Vale.Not because he wanted to.Because she did not move.The headlights caught her in hard white light, turning the rain around her into silver threads. She stood in the center of the narrow road with her hands folded in front of her and a pale blue ribbon tied around one wrist like a bracelet.Not a ghost.Not a recording.Not a mechanism.A woman.Real enough to block the road.Real enough to smile.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

What Vanessa SignedMarisol made them change cars in a grocery store parking lot.Not because it was glamorous.Because, according to her, glamour got people killed and grocery stores had cameras, witnesses, bad lighting, and enough elderly women with carts to make an ambush inconvenient.Violet could not argue with the logic.The rain had thinned to mist by the time Theodore pulled into the far end of the lot. Martin was already there in a plain gray SUV with no visible connection to Cain Holdings. He stood near the driver’s side wearing a black coat and the neutral expression of a man who could either open a door or break one down depending on the request.Marisol g