Chap­ter 231 opens with Saint seat­ed at her office desk late into the night, her focus locked onto the thick file labeled Macauley. The qui­et hum of the desk lamp seems almost mock­ing as she rereads the sequence of events tied to Richie Mon­trose and Nix, both of whom had left a dev­as­tat­ing trail behind them. Saint is no stranger to stress, but the sit­u­a­tion at hand feels heav­ier than any case she has han­dled since step­ping into this role. Ear­li­er, she had told Deputy Michaels he could head home, think­ing the night would wind down qui­et­ly. Yet Michaels, sens­ing the grav­i­ty of what was unfold­ing, had remained close by, offer­ing silent sup­port. Saint appre­ci­at­ed it, though she didn’t say so aloud. With every page turned in the file, she was draw­ing clos­er to truths she might not be ready to face. Her instincts warned her: what she would find might change every­thing.

As the clock neared mid­night, Saint tried to men­tal­ly con­nect what she knew so far. Nix had made a delib­er­ate choice—he had tak­en a weapon and trav­eled to Dar­by Falls, where he end­ed Richie Montrose’s life with a sin­gle act of vio­lence. There had been no hes­i­ta­tion in the report, no ambi­gu­i­ty in the phys­i­cal evi­dence. Even if Mar­ty Tooms’s expla­na­tion about the dog held weight, it failed to change the fact that the blood found on his prop­er­ty belonged to Cal­lie Mon­trose. That blood­stain spoke loud­er than words, cast­ing a grim shad­ow over his entire nar­ra­tive. Saint couldn’t ignore the grow­ing impli­ca­tions, and yet, her gut still told her there was more hid­den beneath the sur­face. The feel­ing of some­thing unre­solved gnawed at her, pulling her deep­er into the mys­tery. Each clue seemed like a frag­ment of a much larg­er, more dan­ger­ous truth wait­ing to be uncov­ered.

As Saint stood to pack up for the night, her phone rang, its shrill tone break­ing the still­ness and jar­ring her out of her thoughts. Expect­ing Himes to be check­ing in again, she answered briskly, only to find Lucy Alston from the foren­sic lab on the oth­er end. Lucy’s voice was calm but firm, a tone that sig­naled she had news that could­n’t wait until morn­ing. Saint’s mind instant­ly jumped to the enve­lope found at the Mon­trose crime scene, the one marked with the chill­ing phrase: I’ll see you in hell. The hand­writ­ing had haunt­ed her since the moment she saw it, but Lucy was about to offer more than spec­u­la­tion. “We have a match,” Lucy stat­ed, and Saint imme­di­ate­ly felt her body stiff­en. The prints belonged to Nix. The real­iza­tion hit her hard—not just because of the con­fir­ma­tion, but because it dragged her deep­er into a past that refused to stay buried.

Still pro­cess­ing that bomb­shell, Saint pressed Lucy for more details, hop­ing there was something—anything—that could add more clar­i­ty or direc­tion. What Lucy said next only deep­ened the mys­tery: there were addi­tion­al match­es found on the enve­lope. Fin­ger­prints from Mar­tin Tooms and Joseph Macauley had also been iden­ti­fied, widen­ing the web of con­nec­tion far beyond what Saint had pre­pared her­self for. Each of those names car­ried his­to­ry, weight, and scars, and now they were linked by foren­sic evi­dence at a mur­der scene. The impli­ca­tions spun in her mind like a storm, unset­tling and unre­lent­ing. How could all three of these men be tied to that sin­gle enve­lope? Was it a col­lab­o­ra­tive mes­sage, or did some­one intend to frame the oth­ers?

Her thoughts churned as a dull ache began to rise behind her eyes, the ten­sion grow­ing unbear­able. She felt the weight of each clue, each rev­e­la­tion, stack like bricks on her chest. There was too much ambiguity—too many emo­tion­al under­cur­rents to ignore. The inves­ti­ga­tion, instead of nar­row­ing, had just opened anoth­er lay­er that chal­lenged her under­stand­ing of loy­al­ty, revenge, and jus­tice. As she sat back down, her hands hov­ered over the Macauley file once again, the evi­dence now star­ing back with greater force. This wasn’t just about who had pulled the trig­ger. It was about an entire lega­cy of silence, sac­ri­fice, and buried truths, each inch­ing clos­er to the sur­face. And Saint knew, with sink­ing cer­tain­ty, that the answers weren’t going to bring peace—they were going to tear things apart.