Chương 7
The last line was separated from the rest.
Please be my dad first.
Not the person everyone else is afraid of.
I lowered the paper.
The room was quiet.
I expected anger.
I expected someone to tell me what to feel.
Nobody did.
That was worse.
Because I had to sit with it myself.
"She knew you," Ortiz said.
I looked at her.
"What?"
"She knew exactly how you would react."
I folded the paper carefully.
"She was scared of me."
"No."
Ortiz shook her head.
"She was scared of losing you to the part of you that knows how to fight."
I looked back at the handwriting.
The worst part was that I understood.
When Violet was five, she fell off her bicycle in front of our house.
She scraped her knee.
It was nothing.
A normal childhood injury.
But I remember carrying her inside, cleaning the wound, and feeling an anger that had nowhere to go.
She cried because it hurt.
I wanted someone to blame.
A bicycle.
The sidewalk.
Gravity itself.
Claire had watched me and said, "Daniel, she doesn't need you to punish the ground."
At the time, I thought she was joking.
She wasn't.
"You were right about one thing," Ortiz said.
I looked up.
"Which thing?"
"Your daughter was not randomly chosen."
She pointed to the letter.
"But you might be wrong about why."
The evidence room door opened.
A young officer stepped inside.
"Detective."
Ortiz turned.
"We got confirmation."
"What?"
"The prints on the envelope."
The officer glanced at me.
"One belongs to Violet."
He looked back at Ortiz.
"The other belongs to Evan Miller."
The name felt different now.
Not like a suspect.
Like a person standing between answers and more questions.
"Did he open the letter?"
"We can't prove that yet."
"But he touched it."
"Yes."
I looked at the paper again.
Someone had read my daughter's private words.
Someone had seen the one message she was too afraid to give me.
"Where was the envelope kept?"
"In the kitchen drawer."
"Who knew it was there?"
Ortiz answered carefully.
"We don't know."
I thought about the drawer.
The random collection of things inside.
Old batteries.
Receipts.
Keys.
The kind of place nobody searched unless they knew exactly what they wanted.
"Violet hid it there."
"Probably."
"Not Evan."
Ortiz watched me.
"Why?"
"Because she wrote it to me."
That was not proof.
I knew that.
But fathers knew their children in ways that did not always translate into evidence.
The officer looked at Ortiz.
"There's more."
She nodded.
"Go ahead."
"We found Evan's vehicle."
My attention shifted.
"Where?"
"Three miles from the school."
"Was he inside?"
"No."
"Then where is he?"
The officer hesitated.
"He left his phone in the car."
A cold feeling moved through me.
"Why?"
"That's what we don't know."
Ortiz picked up the folder.
"Phones don't usually get abandoned by accident."
"No."
She looked at me.
"They get abandoned when someone doesn't want to be found."
The pieces on the table did not fit.
Evan had hurt Violet.
The messages showed control.
The blood on his jacket connected him.
But someone else was warning families.
Someone else knew about the letter.
Someone else had access to information that should have stayed inside our home.
A simple story had become something else.
And simple stories were usually the ones people told when they wanted everyone to stop looking.
My phone rang.
Claire.
I answered immediately.
"Daniel?"
Her voice was shaking.
"What happened?"
I stood.
"What do you mean?"
"Someone was outside my house."
Everything inside me went still.
"Are you alone?"
"Yes."
"Where is Violet's room?"
A pause.
"Why?"
"Claire."
She heard something in my voice.
"The curtains are closed."
"Lock every door."
"I already did."
"Stay away from the windows."
"Daniel, what is happening?"
I looked at Ortiz.
She was already reaching for her radio.
"I don't know yet."
That was the answer I hated most.
Because for the first time in years, I was facing something I could not solve by finding the strongest person in the room.
I was facing someone who had been planning quietly.
Someone who knew my daughter.
Someone who knew me.
And someone who had just made a mistake.
They had assumed I would come looking for revenge.
They had not considered that Violet had left me a reason to search for the truth.
They had not considered that Violet had left me a reason to search for the truth.
I was already moving before the call ended.
Ortiz grabbed her jacket.
"You're coming with me."
It was not a request.
I followed her through the station doors while she spoke quickly into her radio.
I caught only pieces.
Possible threat.
Residential address.
Need immediate unit response.
The drive to Claire's house took nine minutes.
It felt longer because my mind kept returning to one sentence from Violet's letter.
Please be my dad first.
Not the person everyone else is afraid of.
I had spent years believing those two things were separate.
They were not.
Every time I put on a uniform.
Every time I carried a weapon.
Every time I walked into danger and came home pretending it stayed somewhere else.
Violet had seen the part I tried to hide.
The part that looked at every problem and searched for the fastest way to eliminate it.
Claire's house appeared at the end of the street.
Nothing looked wrong.
That was what made it worse.
A quiet neighborhood was the easiest place for someone to disappear into.
Ortiz parked two houses away.
"Stay here."
I looked at her.
"No."
"Daniel."
"I'm not walking into the house."
She held my eyes.
"I'm not going to make this harder."
She studied my face for a moment.
Then she nodded once.
"Stay behind me."
We approached the front door.
Claire opened it before we knocked.
Her face was pale.
May you like
She looked like she had been standing there waiting for the sound of footsteps.
"Are you okay?"
