Chapter 194

Hael's P.O.V.

“Talk about trying to find a needle in a haystack.” I muttered past the consistent throbbing in my head.

An hour had passed of me helping Cole sort through a mountain of footage. There was now a drum circle taking up residency in my skull, each beat pulsing behind my eyelids and across my temples. Fuck, I didn’t know how he’d been doing it for so long.

Scratch that. I knew exactly how Cole had managed to survive the week staring at a tiny television screen. The mountain of empty coffee cups, cans of caffeinated soda, and half eaten boxes of cereal, which he only requested to get under Violet’s skin, surrounded us. It was like a trash bomb had gone off, sparing only the center of the room.

I gave him as much time as I could manage before leaving to meet up with Marcel. We sat in the living room of my mother’s estate, which I’d chosen over my father’s considering I still couldn’t stand the place.

A stack of files lay sprawled out on the coffee table. One for each and every