Page 11 of For Vengeance

"And he won't stop with two," Derik concluded, voicing what they both knew to be true. "This pattern suggests a mission-oriented killer. He's just getting started."

Morgan studied the photos again, the two dead men's faces staring back at her from the board. Rodriguez, eyes closed in death, blood pooled beneath his head. Rivera, the same. Two criminal lives ended by someone who had appointed themselves arbiter of justice.

She couldn't help but feel the weight of irony—here she was hunting a vigilante while simultaneously fighting against corruption in the very system meant to deliver legitimate justice. Part of her understood the killer's motivation, the frustration with a system that too often failed its most vulnerable. After ten years wrongfully imprisoned, she knew better than most how broken the machinery of justice could be.

But she also knew where vigilantism led—to chaos, to innocent victims caught in the crossfire, to the erosion of the principles that separated civilization from anarchy. However flawed the system might be, abandoning it entirely was never the answer.

"We need to identify potential targets," she said, turning away from the board. "If our killer is targeting criminals in Santiago Heights who've slipped through the cracks of the system, we need to compile a list of who might be next."

Derik nodded, already reaching for his laptop. "I'll pull arrest records for the area, focus on individuals with multiple arrests but few convictions. Especially violent offenders or those who prey on the vulnerable."

"And I'll reach out to local patrols, see if they have confidential informants who might have heard something," Morgan added. "In neighborhoods like this, someone always knows something, even if they're reluctant to share it officially."

As they settled into the familiar rhythm of investigation, Morgan felt the pressure of dual threats bearing down on her—Cordell's ultimatum ticking away like a countdown clock in the back of her mind, and this new killer, methodically eliminating the criminals of Santiago Heights. Two very different dangers, both requiring her full attention.

Six days left until Cordell's deadline. An unknown number of days until their vigilante killer claimed another victim. Time was running out on multiple fronts, and Morgan couldn't afford to fail at either task. Too many lives—including those of the people she cared about most—hung in the balance.

CHAPTER FIVE

The streetlights of Santiago Heights flickered to life as dusk settled over Dallas, casting long shadows across cracked sidewalks. He walked with purposeful anonymity, his stride neither hurried nor hesitant—just another resident returning home after a long day. The voice modulator device sat heavy in his jacket pocket, alongside the specialized silencer he'd crafted himself. Both had served him well these past weeks.

No one glanced twice at him as he moved through the neighborhood. Average height. Average build. Forgettable features that witnesses would struggle to describe if ever asked. He'd perfected the art of invisibility long before he'd taken up his mission. Decades of sitting in courtrooms, being overlooked, being nothing more than furniture to the judges, lawyers, and criminals who passed before him—it had taught him how to disappear in plain sight.

His eyes cataloged everything as he walked. Three teenagers on the corner of Maple and 4th, hands moving quickly in what appeared to be a drug transaction. A woman hurrying home with groceries, keys already clutched between her fingers as makeshift weapons. The flickering light in apartment 2B of the building across from Rodriguez's—new occupant already, the neighborhood's housing shortage ensuring no vacancy lasted long, even with bloodstains barely dry.

He knew every inch of these streets. Had mapped them meticulously in his mind over the twenty-seven years he'd lived here, watching as the neighborhood transformed from working-class to something darker, more desperate. Each alley, each fire escape, each blind corner committed to memory. Not from official records or maps, but from patient observation. From walking these same routes night after night, year after year, building a mental database more comprehensive than any police file.

The memory of Marcus Rodriguez's final moments surfaced unbidden. The drug dealer's eyes widening in recognition—not of his face, which Rodriguez had never truly seen despite their paths crossing hundreds of times over the years, but of what he represented. Justice, finally catching up. The trembling of Rodriguez's hand as he'd pressed the pen into it, forcing him to document his crimes. The whimpered pleas about a daughter he'd never bothered to visit or support.

And before that, Anthony Rivera. The perverted smile slid from his face when he realized what was happening. The pathetic attempts at bargaining, offering money, offering to stop, offering anything to save his worthless life. As if promises from such a man held any value.

He touched his pocket, feeling the outline of the small notebook hidden there. His docket. Names, addresses, observed crimes, potential targets—all carefully noted in a precise, meticulous hand that had once recorded testimony and legal arguments for the record. Twenty-three years as a courthouse stenographer had given him not just skill with rapid documentation, but a front-row seat to the theater of failed justice.

He'd watched them walk free, one after another. Guilty men and women smirking as technicalities, procedural errors, or plea deals mockeries of their victims' suffering reduced their sentences to nothing. He'd transcribed the words of defense attorneys who knew their clients were guilty but smugly manipulated the system anyway. Recorded the reluctant dismissals from judges bound by legal constraints rather than moral truth. Captured it all for the official record while the unofficial truth—that justice had failed—went unacknowledged.

No more.

The thought solidified in his mind as he nodded politely to Mrs. Garza, who was watering the stubborn geraniums that somehow survived in the small patch of dirt outside her building. She smiled back, never suspecting that the quiet man who had lived down the block for decades was anything other than what he appeared to be—a solitary, unremarkable resident who kept to himself.

The Santiago Heights Police Substation came into view at the end of the block—understaffed, underfunded, and overwhelmed. Even now, at dusk, when street activity increased, only two patrol cars sat in the small parking lot. He knew the officers inside by name, knew their schedules, their habits, their limitations. Good men and women, most of them, but bound by a system designed to process crime rather than prevent it. They couldn't protect these streets. They barely maintained a presence.

And the courts were worse. Cases from Santiago Heights were rushed through, plea-bargained away, dismissed for lack of resources or evidence. The neighborhood's victims rarely saw true justice served. The system wasn't just broken—it had abandoned places like this entirely.

Someone had to stand in the gap.

CHAPTER SIX

The evidence room at FBI headquarters was silent save for the soft rustle of paper as Morgan examined the confession letters under the harsh fluorescent lights. The clinical brightness made the bloodstains appear almost black against the white pages, a stark reminder of the violence that had produced them. She leaned closer, her fingers ghosting over the edges of the paper, careful not to contaminate the evidence as she studied the handwriting with practiced scrutiny.

The chill of the room raised goosebumps along her tattooed arms, but Morgan barely noticed, so intent was her focus on the documents before her. The evidence room had always been too cold—a necessity for preservation, but uncomfortable for those who spent hours within its sterile confines. The familiar scent of document preservation chemicals mingled with the faint metallic odor of the blood that had seeped into the fibers of the confession letters.

Rodriguez's confession revealed disjointed sentences and shaky penmanship, the physical manifestation of extreme fear. Morgan could almost see him, trembling as he wrote, the barrel of a gun pressed against his skull. She'd seen enough coerced statements during her law enforcement career—and enough genuine terror during her ten years in prison—to recognize the handwriting of a man facing death. The letter detailed selling narcotics to minors, specifically targeting schools with product he knew contained dangerous cutting agents. These weren't general admissions—they were specific crimes for which he had never been formally charged, down to the names of high schools and the chemical compositions of the adulterants he'd used to maximize profits.

"Look at this," Morgan said, sliding Rodriguez's confession toward Derik. The fluorescent light caught the deep indentations in the paper where Rodriguez had pressed the pen with desperate force. "The details about the cutting agents he used, the specific schools he targeted. This information wasn't public. He mentions using fentanyl to cut heroin sold near Jefferson High specifically, and names three students who overdosed but never reported it."

Derik nodded, his green eyes scanning the document with the methodical precision that had made him an excellent agent. Dark shadows hung beneath those eyes—evidence of the sleepless night they'd both endured after Cordell's visit. Yet his focus remained sharp, professional. "Same with Rivera's confession," he replied, sliding the second document closer. "Details about hidden cameras in the women's restroom at the public library, following three specific women home from the Santiago Heights Community Center." He looked up, meeting Morgan's gaze across the evidence table. "None of that was in his official record. He even gives the exact locations of his cameras—behind the air vent in the third stall, inside the paper towel dispenser. Things only the perpetrator would know."

Morgan turned her attention to Rivera's letter, pulling it carefully toward her with gloved hands. The voyeur's handwriting had deteriorated as he wrote, the letters becoming more erratic with each line, as if his fear had intensified with each admission. The paper bore deep indentations where he had pressed the pen with excessive force—either from terror or from the killer applying pressure to his hand. By the final paragraph, the writing was nearly illegible, the pen having torn through the paper in several places.

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