Victor's Second Attempt
Chapter 09 - Victor's Second Attempt
Nathan relocated to a small extended-stay hotel across town, Sarah arranging discreet police surveillance given the credible, escalating threat Victor now represented, and for four days, nothing happened, the quiet stretching Nathan's nerves thinner with every passing hour.
On the fifth night, a car followed him from the hotel parking lot to the small grocery store three blocks away, a detail the surveillance officer noticed immediately and relayed to Sarah before Nathan himself had even registered the vehicle's presence.
"Stay inside the store," the officer told him quietly, appearing at his shoulder near the produce section. "We've identified the vehicle. It's registered to Victor Cole directly."
Nathan's heart pounded, the specific, surreal terror of understanding his own brother was, at this exact moment, sitting outside in a parking lot, watching him buy groceries, weighing some version of violence Nathan couldn't fully imagine.
Police intercepted Victor's vehicle before he ever left the parking lot, discovering, during the resulting search, a considerable amount of cash, a burner phone loaded with messages to an unidentified contact discussing "handling the problem permanently," and, in the trunk, tools consistent with the kind used to disable vehicle brakes.
"He was planning to sabotage your car," Sarah told Nathan, once the arrest was finalized. "The same pattern as the scaffold, made to look like an accident rather than a direct attack."
Nathan sat with that revelation, understanding now with complete, devastating clarity exactly how far his brother had been willing to go, not once, but repeatedly, methodically, refusing to accept even a documented failure as reason to stop.
"He would have kept trying," Nathan said quietly. "Regardless of how many times it failed. Until eventually, one of them worked."
"That's my assessment as well," Sarah said. "Which is precisely why this arrest matters so significantly. We finally have him in direct violation of an active investigation, attempting exactly the kind of continued harm we warned you he might pursue."
Victor's arrest, this time, came with considerably more severe charges attached, attempted murder in addition to the original sabotage and conspiracy charges from the scaffold incident, the accumulated weight of evidence leaving little room for his attorney to construct any viable defense.
Nathan, informed of the full scope of charges, felt a complicated wave of relief and grief settle over him simultaneously, understanding that whatever remained of his relationship with his twin brother had likely ended before it had ever genuinely begun.
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"I keep thinking about what kind of person tries this many times," he told Frank, during a quiet evening once the immediate danger had finally passed. "Not out of a single moment of panic, but through weeks of continued, deliberate planning."
"Someone who's convinced himself the alternative is somehow worse than becoming a murderer," Frank said. "I don't think that makes it forgivable. I think it might help you understand it, eventually, even if understanding never quite arrives at forgiveness."
