Like a cap to a water bottle.

I point the water bottle cap out to the tech. She picks it up, looks underneath it, then sets it back down. “Nothing.”

I don’t want to touch anything. I have a fear of the camera catching me picking up something we find and the footage getting played back later in court as proof that the FBI “Witch” pulled a trick. “Pick it up again. This time, tap it on the table.”

She follows my instructions and gives the cap a few swift raps. She feels something click. Even with the wind blowing across the highway we hear the sound of something fall. She pulls the cap away and on the table there’s a white disk that exactly matches the interior of the cap. Sitting on top of it is a tiny SIM card. Hidden in plain sight.

The Warlock can tell something is going on. He tries to twist his head around and is told to face forward by an arresting agent.

All his planning. All his elaborate schemes. Foiled by the first magic trick I ever owned. Child’s play.

Knoll is beaming at me.

We got him.

I think I’ll give my father a call. Possibly Grandfather. I’ve avoided acknowledging it, but I’m here because of them. For better or worse, what they taught me made me who I am.

57

KNOLL AND I watch the man in the interrogation room through a security camera. He sits quietly and ignores the questions. He didn’t need any prompting from an attorney to do that. He’s committed to not saying anything. Occasionally, he looks up at the camera as if to look back at who’s watching him. He wants me to know he’s looking back at me.

With his mask off, he’s just another sick fuck. It’s hard to connect the specter of the Warlock to the man in the wrinkled polo shirt underneath the bright fluorescent lights. That’s the disturbing part. It doesn’t take a demigod to kill Denise, Chloe, Claire or Swanson. All it takes is a man.

Up close he has thin brown hair that’s slightly receding. He looks to be in his early forties. His face is more restrained than expressive. Light brown eyes, they see everything. You can tell he’s listening carefully and thinking everything over.

He knows his best strategy is to wait things out and let his law firm, the most prestigious one in Texas, the one used by presidents and billionaires, even third-world dictators, handle things. They know the real charges we want to bring against him. They also know that a thousand things can go wrong in our attempt to prosecute him for endangering a child and intent to kidnap.

We only found the SIM linking him to Rosa. So far, his laptop has resisted our best efforts to crack its encryption. With nothing else on him or his truck, we suspect somewhere in south Texas he’s got a safe house like the Michigan warehouse where we hope to find more incriminating evidence. We hope to find some clue of what he was up to. We still have no idea what his plot was going to be here.