The Address
Chapter 11 - The Address
The folded paper found in Victoria Sterling's cell contained seven words and a string of numbers: "2847 Wexford Lane, Reston, VA 20194."
Daniel and Sophie's temporary address.
The one Katz herself had helped arrange three weeks earlier, after the wedding collapse made the Hollowbrook Estate and Daniel's own home both unsafe — the former overrun with media, the latter still technically a shared residence with a woman now facing multiple homicide charges. The address had been shared with exactly four people: Katz, Margaret Winslow, Daniel's attorney, and the county's witness protection liaison who'd helped arrange the temporary housing as a precaution given the scope of what the investigation was uncovering.
Four people. And now Victoria Sterling had it, folded in her cell, passed to her by a woman calling herself Diane Fowler who did not exist under that name anywhere in any database Katz's team could access.
"I need facial recognition run against every visitor log photo we have of this woman," Katz told her team, adrenaline sharpening every word. "And I need units at 2847 Wexford Lane immediately. Not tomorrow. Now."
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Daniel Hawthorne was in the kitchen of the rented house when the patrol car pulled into the driveway at 6:40 PM, lights off, two officers moving with the unhurried purpose of people executing a protective assignment rather than responding to an active emergency.
Sophie was at the kitchen table doing homework, a math worksheet about fractions that felt almost absurdly ordinary given everything that had happened in the three weeks since the wedding.
Daniel opened the door before the officers knocked.
"Is everything okay?"
The lead officer, a young woman named Officer Delgado, kept her tone deliberately calm, aware of the child sitting twenty feet away.
"Mr. Hawthorne, we have reason to believe your current address may have been compromised. Detective Katz is on her way. In the meantime, we need you and Sophie to gather anything essential and come with us to a secured location."
Sophie looked up from her worksheet. Her eight-year-old face, which had spent three weeks slowly softening back into something resembling ordinary childhood, went carefully still again — the same stillness Katz had first seen in the reception tent, the composure of a child who has learned to prepare for bad news before adults finish saying it.
"Is it Victoria?" Sophie asked. "Did she get out?"
"No, sweetheart," Officer Delgado said gently. "She's still exactly where she's supposed to be. We're just being careful."
Sophie didn't look reassured. She closed her math worksheet, folded it precisely in half, and stood up without being asked.
"I'll get my backpack," she said. "I already have a bag ready by my bed. Grandma taught me that too."
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Katz arrived forty minutes later, after Daniel and Sophie had been relocated to a secure department safe house, and immediately pulled up the facial recognition results her team had been running against every frame of visitor room footage.
The match came back with eighty-nine percent confidence.
"Diane Fowler" was, in fact, a woman named Deborah Kowalski.
Victoria's younger sister.
"She's been visiting under a false name because she's on our radar under her real one," Katz said, reading the file that had populated the moment the match confirmed. "Deborah Kowalski has an active warrant in Pennsylvania for check fraud, unrelated to any of this. She's been estranged from public records under her real identity for six years, which explains why she assumed a false name to visit — she assumed we'd flag her real name and deny the visit."
"So she's not part of the murder plot," Wei said. "She's just Victoria's sister, sneaking in under an alias to avoid her own unrelated warrant."
"Maybe. Or maybe Victoria used her sister's desperation to stay hidden as leverage — help me pass this note, or I tell the detectives exactly where to find you."
Katz picked up her phone.
"Either way, I need Deborah Kowalski found and brought in tonight. Because somebody gave Victoria Sterling an address that only four people were supposed to know, and I need to understand exactly how compromised our own process has been before I trust it with Daniel and Sophie's safety again."
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Deborah Kowalski was located at a motel outside Manassas at 11 PM, and she did not resist arrest.
She talked almost immediately, the way frightened people talk when they've been carrying a secret alone for too long and finally have permission to put it down.
"Victoria told me if I didn't help her, she'd tell the police I've been using a fake identity to avoid my warrant. I have two kids, Detective. I couldn't risk getting arrested and leaving them with nobody."
"How did Victoria get that address in the first place? Someone had to give it to her before she could ask you to deliver it."
Deborah's hands were shaking.
"She said someone at the detention center owed her a favor. A guard. I don't know his name. She just said, 'I have people everywhere, Deb. I always have. That's how I've survived this long.'"
Katz felt the case shift beneath her feet like tectonic plates.
If Victoria had a contact inside the detention center feeding her information, the scope of her network — and her ability to continue orchestrating harm even from behind bars — was far larger than anyone had assumed.
"I need full personnel records for every guard and staff member who's had contact with Victoria Sterling since her arrest," Katz said into her phone, already walking toward her car. "Tonight. Every single one."
May you like
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Keep reading Part 8 — because the internal investigation into the detention center turns up something that shocks even Katz. It isn't a guard who's been bribed. It's someone who's been in love with Victoria since long before her arrest — someone who worked adjacent to her old design firm and who Katz never once considered a suspect, because his connection to the case seemed, on paper, entirely coincidental.
