Chapter 5
The investigation expanded overnight.
By morning, reporters were outside Brenda’s house.
Parents from years earlier began calling police.
Some remembered strange details.
A missing jacket.
A child coming home unusually quiet.
A daughter insisting she had been called another name.
Things adults had dismissed because children sometimes played strange games.
Now nobody was dismissing anything.
Detective Brooks asked me not to watch the news around Lily.
I agreed.
Daniel did not.
He sat at the kitchen table reading every article he could find.
“Stop.”
He looked up.
“I need to know.”
“You need to sleep.”
“I need to know what happened.”
“So do the detectives.”
His eyes were red.
“I trusted Brenda.”
“You barely knew her.”
“I still trusted her with Lily.”
He looked toward the bedroom.
“I signed the permission form.”
I sat across from him.
“You keep trying to find the moment where this became your fault.”
He said nothing.
“There isn’t one.”
“I should have protected her.”
“You are protecting her now.”
His voice cracked.
“After.”
I reached across the table.
“After matters.”
He finally looked at me.
“Rachel would hate me.”
That made me angry.
“No.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I knew my sister.”
I leaned forward.
“She would hate Brenda.”
Daniel’s eyes filled.
“She would hate Hale.”
I squeezed his hand.
“But she would not hate the man sitting awake all night because his daughter is scared.”
He looked away.
Before he could answer, Lily appeared in the doorway.
“Daddy?”
Daniel immediately stood.
“What’s wrong?”
She held a piece of paper.
“I remembered something.”
My stomach tightened.
“What?”
Lily walked over.
On the paper, she had drawn a house.
Seven stick figures stood inside.
A larger figure stood near the door.
Another figure was outside.
I pointed.
“Who is that?”
Lily said, “Ava.”
“Ava was outside?”
She nodded.
“When Mr. Hale came.”
Daniel looked at me.
“Why?”
Lily shrugged.
“Mrs. Cole told her to go upstairs.”
“But you drew her outside.”
“She came down later.”
Lily pointed to a square beside the house.
“She went here.”
“What is that?”
“The garage.”
Daniel immediately called Brooks.
Within an hour, detectives returned to Brenda’s property.
Ava was interviewed again.
This time, she told them something she had been too afraid to say.
Her mother had made her record parts of previous sleepovers.
Not the children changing clothes.
Not anything sexual.
Just names.
Questions.
Games.
The kind of recordings that could later be dismissed as innocent.
But Ava had secretly saved copies.
She knew her mother deleted things.
So she had hidden an old tablet inside a plastic storage bin in the garage.
Police found it.
The videos changed everything.
There were four previous gatherings.
Different children.
Different dates.
Victor Hale appeared in two.
Another unidentified man appeared in one.
Brenda was visible instructing children to use alternate names.
In one video, she told them:
“If someone asks tomorrow, this was all pretend.”
I felt physically ill hearing Brooks describe it.
“What were they trying to do?”
“We’re still investigating the broader purpose.”
“But Hale wanted to take Sophie.”
Brooks nodded carefully.
“That appears likely.”
Daniel’s face hardened.
“And the earlier children?”
“No confirmed abductions connected to Brenda.”
That mattered.
It mattered enormously.
But it did not erase what almost happened.
Brooks continued.
“We believe the gatherings were used to identify children with routines that could be exploited later.”
Daniel stood.
“Say that again.”
Brooks met his eyes.
“Children who were frequently alone, picked up by babysitters, walked predictable routes, or had complicated custody situations.”
I felt cold.
“They were scouting them.”
“We believe so.”
Daniel walked away.
I could see his hands shaking.
“Where is Hale?”
Brooks answered, “Police located the stolen rental vehicle this morning.”
“Again?”
“He abandoned another vehicle after crossing state lines.”
I stared at her.
“So he’s still running.”
“Yes.”
Lily was not in the room.
I was grateful.
“How dangerous is he?”
Brooks chose her words carefully.
“Dangerous enough that we are taking precautions.”
I hated careful answers.
They were always worse than direct ones.
That afternoon, Lily asked to speak with Ava.
I hesitated.
So did Daniel.
A therapist recommended supervised contact if both girls wanted it.
Ava arrived with her father.
She looked smaller than I remembered.
She stood in the doorway clutching a backpack.
Lily stared at her.
For a few seconds, neither moved.
Then Ava started crying.
“I’m sorry.”
Lily looked confused.
“For what?”
“My mom.”
Lily walked toward her.
“You’re not your mom.”
Ava sobbed harder.
That sentence broke every adult in the room.
Her father turned away.
Daniel covered his mouth.
I wiped my eyes.
Ava said, “I knew she did weird stuff.”
Lily asked, “Why didn’t you tell?”
Ava looked down.
“She said they’d take me away.”
Lily thought about that.
Then she said, “She lied a lot.”
Ava nodded.
“Yeah.”
Lily took her hand.
“Then we tell the truth a lot.”
I had to leave the room for a minute.
Not because I was sad.
Because I suddenly understood something.
Brenda had tried to control those girls through confusion.
Names.
Fear.
Secrets.
But children were not as powerless as she believed.
They remembered.
They talked.
They protected one another.
And now they were destroying the silence Brenda had depended on.
That evening, Brooks called.
“Victor Hale was arrested.”
I sat down so fast the chair scraped the floor.
“Where?”
“At a bus station outside Columbus.”
“Did he resist?”
“He tried to leave through a service exit. Officers stopped him.”
I closed my eyes.
Relief hit me so hard I almost cried.
“Does Lily know?”
“Not yet.”
“Can I tell her?”
“Yes.”
I found Lily coloring beside Daniel.
I knelt.
“They found him.”
Her crayon stopped.
“The man?”
“Yes.”
“He can’t come here?”
“No.”
“Promise?”
I looked at Daniel.
He nodded.
I held out my pinky.
“I promise the police have him.”
Lily hooked her finger around mine.
Then she asked the question I had been dreading.
“What about Mrs. Cole?”
I answered carefully.
“She’s still in jail.”
Lily looked toward Ava, who was asleep on the couch after asking to stay a little longer.
“Good.”
May you like
Then she whispered:
“Because Ava told me there’s one more person.”
