what I’m talking about. Will you live alone forever? What if you have children one day? What about your parents and siblings and their children? That’s what you must protect. The information you have could be the thing that will protect them. Not only will I protect you during the proceedings, but afterward, if you still wish to hide, I’ll help you do it properly. You and whatever loved ones you wish to take with you. You don’t have to believe this, but you can see the same fear in me. I know what you’ve been through and what you feel. Believe that I’ll do right by you and everyone else who has suffered.”
Sandra closed her eyes, and I listened to the rush of breath in her throat and focused on the bead of sweat trickling down her neck.
The silence swelled and the ticking of the clock a few rooms away boomed in my ears.
Her lips trembled and she opened her eyes. “You’ll help my family?”
I nodded. “I will.”
She exhaled and her shoulders sagged. “I need time to—”
“There is no time. Unless you want the enemy to win, it has to be now.”
Her hands shook. She opened her mouth twice before speaking. “I’d been working on the Ringly case right before I finished work that day. I usually left him until last because he tended to erupt on the phone each time I knocked his DA back. That happened a lot over the three years I worked with him. That particular day, I left work and found a list of my family’s home addresses in my letterbox. I didn’t know who the list was from at first. As time went on, each time I had an interaction with Mr Ringly, a new copy of the letter would appear. First, just in my letterbox. Then at my workplace. I’d get off the phone with him and a letter would be sitting there on my desk. Toward the end, I found them in my bedroom. Sometimes while I’d been sound asleep.”
Fuck. Even without knowledge of Vissimo that was terrifying.
“I told my superior and hoped that would be an end of the trouble. Instead, he asked me to stay on the case so Mr Ringly wasn’t alerted to the police investigations. It took a while to realise he hadn’t told the police about the harassment at all. I contacted the police myself and tried to go directly to the mayor. After that, the police stopped returning my calls. The mayor blocked me at every turn. I started to believe he must have some kind of stake in Mr Ringly’s plans. It was the only thing that made sense.”
She cut off and took a deep inhale. “That was about the time I began to spot the same man everywhere. I’d see him at the supermarket, and then pass the same man in the parking lot three seconds later. I’d stop beside the same man again at the traffic lights. I’d pass him twice on the same escalator and see him again on the next level walking out of a store. Meanwhile, each day at work was hell. Everyone thought I was creating trouble—I don’t know what they were being told, but my colleagues turned against me overnight. No one would help or listen. Whoever was threatening me was extremely powerful, and I still had no idea who they were or how they were doing these things to me.”
“What did you do?” I whispered.
“I sent my family away, out of Bluff City. I told them the truth and told them they had to leave. For how long, I didn’t know. The man was following me at that point, and I was going crazy. Because how could he be in so many places at once? He was everywhere.”
There was a very good reason for that. “Hazel eyes and brown curls? Tall? Cold eyes?”
Her gaze flew to mine. “Yes.”
The triplets. I’d wondered how Fyrlia got away with this kind of shit. They hadn’t directly approached her or compelled her. They’d broken her. Or tried to. Focusing on something unrelated, I said, “There’s more than one of them.”
“That did occur to me at first. But then they came closer, and I began to see stranger things. Things that couldn’t be possible. Their teeth were long—fangs. Once, the man blurred across the road a-and ripped the head off the neighbour’s cat. I woke up and the cat’s head was sitting on top of my letterbox. My neighbours reported me