Chapter 42
Seth
We had to leave the Oregon safe house.
The shooter is enough of a warning. He probably watched Brooke for hours before he took the shot. Kristie sent someone to finish what the manor failed to do.
We pack within the hour.
The drive north is not quiet.
Traffic clogs the highway for miles. Headlights stretch ahead of us in a slow line while rain streaks across the windshield. Travis grips the steering wheel like it is trying to escape him. His voice fills the car the entire time.
“I’m just saying this is insane. Someone tried to shoot her. That is a real thing that happened today. A sniper. A professional sniper.”
“Travis,” Beau says.
“What?”
“Shut the hell up.”
Travis lasts about thirty seconds before he starts again.
“I’m just processing the situation out loud. Some people need to talk through trauma.”
“Do it quieter,” Beau mutters.
In the back seat, Brooke is the calmest person in the car.
Considering it is her umpteenth near death experience in the last few months, she handles it better than anyone.
Luna sits curled in her lap the entire drive. The cat tucks herself into the crook of Brooke’s arm. Brooke strokes her absentmindedly until her movements slow.
Eventually her head tips sideways and comes to rest against my shoulder. She falls asleep like that.
Her breathing turns slow and steady while the highway lights pass over us in quiet flashes. One of her hands stays curled loosely around Luna’s back while the other rests against my arm.
Krueger lies across the rear cargo area behind us, watching the road with alert eyes.
The Washington house is different.
It is not a shack. It is not a bunker. It is nothing that screams hiding.
From the outside, it looks like a private mountain home owned by someone with money and good taste.
The structure sits back from the road among tall pines that block most of the surrounding view.
A timber frame supports the high roofline.
A thick stone foundation wraps the lower level.
Wide windows face the forest but reflect the darkness outside, making it impossible to see inside from a distance.
A wraparound deck circles the front of the house.
Nothing about it suggests danger. Nothing about it suggests the kind of people who are about to live there.
Security hides in the bones of the place. Reinforced doors disguised as custom woodwork. Cameras embedded into the beams. The driveway curves just enough that anyone coming up it will be visible for a long time before they reach the house.
You have to want to find this place. You have to know where to look.
It will do.
What stays with me is how natural it looks with Brooke in it.
I watch her move through the house like she belongs there. Luna in her arms. Krueger pacing at her side. She checks the back door. Tests the window latches. Moves down the hall and clears each room without being told.
She doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t look over her shoulder waiting to be hurt. She looks like someone who has decided she won’t be caught off guard again.
I am proud of her for that. I just don’t want it to be all she ever has.
I know how to live in blood. I know how to plan violence and carry it out. I know how to end someone and make sure there is nothing left that can be traced back.
What I don’t know is how to give someone a quiet life without contaminating it with what I am.
And I want to.
Brooke Sinclair deserves a life that is not paid for in blood.
She deserves mornings that don’t start with surveillance reports. Nights that don’t end with body counts.
I don’t know how to build peace.
I only know how to defend it.
So I stand there and watch her set Luna down on the couch, watch Krueger settle near her feet, and decide that whatever it takes, I'm going to make sure she doesn’t have to keep doing this forever.
We move toward the dining room in silence.
Beau stretches out on the couch, boots crossed at the ankles. Krueger sprawls across the floor beside him. Travis paces near the window, phone in hand, thumb moving fast.
Then he stops.
His posture shifts.
“She’s coming to Washington.”
That is all he has to say.
The next name on our list is handed to us without effort.
Kristie Talbert.
Travis turns the phone toward us.
Kristie smiles back from the screen, standing beside a red and blue campaign bus. The slogan beneath her name makes my jaw tighten.
The National Coalition for Safer Communities.
“She’s stopping in Spokane,” Travis says. “Press event. Touring sites affected by vigilante violence. She’s using it for votes.”
“She’s campaigning to be the governor of California,” Brooke raises a brow. “Why Washington?”
“Image rehab,” Travis answers. “Multi-state healing initiative. She’s softening the ground before someone starts digging into her finances.”
“Then we end the campaign.” Brooke doesn’t blink. “We’ll just make her disappear.”
I wait, because Brooke has the rest of the plan ready.
“While she’s on the campaign trail, she’s going to have to get her makeup done in a trailer or something. We take her from there. We take her out to a lake. We dump her body.”
I watch her as she says it. Her voice stays calm and calculated.
Travis swallows. “You want a location with water and no people.”
Brooke turns to him. “Can you pull up where exactly the event is going to be?”
Travis moves his thumb fast again. The map loads. He zooms, scrolls, and tilts the screen like he is reading the terrain with his eyes.
“There’s a lake a couple of miles out from there,” Travis says. “It looks secluded on the map. There’s a narrow access road and not much around it.”
Brooke’s mouth twitches. “Perfect.”
We put the plan into motion.
The lot the next morning is full of people who look busy and tired. Lighting crews adjust panels. Sound guys argue about levels. Staff walk fast with clipboards and radios. Everyone has a lanyard and a purpose.
We get lucky.
Kristie wants to look accessible, relatable. Boots-on-the-ground leadership. So instead of booking a suite at some five-star hotel, she opts to stay on the campaign bus overnight between stops.
Optics over safety.
It makes her easier to kill.
By the time we return to the crowd, Kristie is already at the microphone, and her voice is climbing.
The crowd is small but loud. Local press, bored college students, a few diehard supporters sweating through their red-white-and-blue polos.
The kind of crowd that makes campaign managers nervous.
Too small for someone running a national redemption tour.
Too few bodies to drown out the wrong question.
Kristie Talbert stands on a makeshift stage under a banner with her name printed in bold serif and bullshit. Stars and Stripes with slogans that mean nothing. Her handlers have polished everything. Flags on both sides, lighting soft, podium centered like it gives her authority.
She looks exactly like the kind of woman who has spent decades in country clubs and closed-door fundraisers.
Auburn hair styled into a smooth, shoulder-length blowout that barely shifts in the wind.
Pearls at her throat. Navy sheath dress cut modest and expensive.
Mid-fifties, polished, the kind of matriarch voters find reassuring.
Her makeup is flawless. Her smile is not.
It stretches too tight across her teeth. Her jaw works slightly before each answer. She looks composed, but it's effort. I can see the strain even from here.
I stand next to Brooke under the shadow of a tree, baseball cap low, sunglasses on. Beau leans against the trunk beside us, arms crossed, chewing gum.
“I’ve seen school assemblies with better turnout,” Beau mutters.
Brooke doesn’t look away from the stage. “Don’t jinx it.”
Kristie takes the mic again, voice syrupy with practiced charm. “Thank you all for coming out,” she says. “Despite the media’s appetite for distortion, I’m grateful for the voters who still value facts over fiction.”
“Here we fucking go,” I say under my breath.
The press asks a few planted questions. Softballs. “What inspired your national safety initiative?”
“How do you respond to recent criticisms?”
She swats them away with rehearsed empathy and vague language about unity, reform, and restoring trust.
Then a younger reporter steps forward. He looks nervous. He clutches his mic too tight.
“Mayor Talbert,” he says, voice unsteady, “do you still stand by your statements that your son was innocent, given the allegations from Brooke Sinclair and the evidence recovered in Stratford?”
Kristie’s smile freezes for half a second before settling back into place.
“There was never sufficient evidence linking Nicholas to any murders,” she says evenly.
The reporter swallows. “With respect, ma’am, several witnesses placed him at multiple crime scenes, including the death of his high school girlfriend, and—”
“Allegations,” she cuts in. “Not convictions.”
The crowd shifts.
“But he’s deceased,” the reporter presses. “Which makes a trial impossible.”
She steps away from the podium, heels striking hard against the stage.
“My son cannot defend himself because he is dead,” she says, her voice tightening. “That does not make him guilty.”
She sweeps her gaze across the crowd, then leans back into the microphone.
“What we do have is a confirmed mass casualty event at the Everspring Hotel. A national manhunt for Seth Kincaid. Federal agencies are pursuing him across state lines for what can only be described as a massacre.”
Murmurs ripple outward.
She points toward the press row.
“That vindicates my son. The real killer has already been identified.”
Brooke doesn’t move.
“Seth Kincaid is a wanted man,” Kristie continues. “Law enforcement nationwide is actively searching for him in connection to the Everspring killings. That is fact.”
She lets it settle.
“And Brooke Sinclair,” she adds, tone sharpening, “is either dead or actively aiding him. If she is alive, she is not a victim. She is an accomplice.”