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“It’s Monday, Violet. Not much of a week yet.” She kept her gaze focused outside at the traffic leaving exhaust in its wake.
“I mean since last Monday. I brought you old-fashioneds from Gibson’s. You could stand to eat, Mom.”
Mom whipped her head around and glinted. “Don’t tell me what to do. No one tells me what to do. And stop calling me Mom. I hate that.” She snatched a pack of Marlboro Lights off the side table and lit one up, inhaling deeply. Smoke plumed and curled around her face as Violet bit back a cough.
“Right,” she whispered.
Grandmother eased into the recliner next to Mom’s. Sandwiched between the plush chairs was a small table with Southern cuisine magazines in a tall stack, an ashtray full of butts and ashes, and a half-empty cup of coffee. “Saw the news about a nasty killer the SCU caught in Oregon.”
Four divisions of the Strange Crimes Unit covered the country, working with local law enforcement and other agencies, and had authority to take a case over, unlike some of the other federal agencies. Her special agent in charge had to pull rank on only two cases. He’d rather work with the locals and not ruffle their feathers, and most often the local agencies welcomed their expertise.
“You help with that?” Grandmother asked.
“No. Not my division, and they didn’t ask for assistance.” She rubbed her clammy palms on her thighs. “You need anything? I brought you some money, but if you need anything...”
“We do all right. Always have.” She arched an eyebrow. “When you weren’t making trouble, of course.”
Violet’s insides burned. She couldn’t deny that truth. The fires she’d started around the neighborhood, the items she’d been caught—on purpose—stealing. The morbid fascination with death that consistently sent Grandmother into an episode and her mom on a tangent about being her father’s daughter.
She supposed she was her father’s daughter.
Which is why she’d been fixated on finding him. Entering law enforcement had given her access she wouldn’t have otherwise had. She’d searched for years, coming up empty until the Nursery Rhyme Killer. Even with Fiona’s help these past few months, they had zip.
But she would not rest until she faced him to see the truth. Was she like her father? Could she end up like him?
That one incident. That one girl.
But she’d had it coming.
“Of course.” She stood and straightened her blazer.
“I’ll see you next Monday unless I’m traveling.” She waited a beat. No one had anything to say to her. She dipped her chin. “Grandmother. Reeva.”
Mom didn’t wave or say goodbye. She never did.
Out in the hallway, she picked up her pace to escape when a blond, curly-haired kid bounded out of the elevator, her mother already calling for her to slow down.
She ran right into Violet, the child’s sticky hand leaving residue on her pant leg.
Lovely.
“Hewoo,” she said, and her sparkling blue eyes peered into Violet’s. Innocence. Goodness.
“Hello,” Violet said, uncomfortable and irritated at the stain on her pants. But it had no comparison to the stain inside her soul.
“You’re pretty.”
The preschooler wrapped her arms around Violet’s leg like a leech.
“Mommy says I’m pretty too.”
Must be nice, and it was true. The kid was cute. The mom, with an exasperated expression, threw her hands in the air. “Charlee!” Her smile was apologetic. “Sorry, she never meets a stranger.”
Violet awkwardly lifted her leg, the kid attached, and motioned for the mother to peel her off. “Might want to teach her stranger danger. Or she’s going to end up in parts in someone’s freezer.”
The woman gaped and her face blanched. She scrambled to untether her daughter’s tiny arms from Violet’s leg. “Come on, honey.” She gripped her hand and turned back to Violet. “Why would you say something like that?”
“Why not?” She stepped into the elevator and shrugged. “It’s possible.” Violet might have done the woman a favor, waking her up from a fairytale. There was entirely too much of a false sense of security in the world. No one thought anything bad could happen to them.
