Chapter 39 Beau
Beau
The silence in Gabriel's kitchen after the SUV disappears is complete, hollow, like the world's been trampled flat and left bleeding in the dust.
I sit at the scarred oak table where Lucy laughed over pancakes this morning, staring at the scattered documents Richard Kensington left behind like evidence at a crime scene.
Colt paces by the window like a mustang in a too-small corral, his hands clenched into fists that he keeps flexing and releasing.
Every few steps, he stops to stare out at the empty gravel drive, as if willing Lucy's to materialize out of thin air.
Gabriel stands frozen by the sink, gripping the counter so hard his knuckles have gone white as bone.
None of us speak. What is there to say?
I keep replaying the moment she looked at me with those dark eyes desperate and pleading, begging us to believe her. To fight for her.
"Fuck this," Colt finally explodes, spinning away from the window with enough force to rattle the glass. "This is all wrong. Everything about this whole situation is wrong. I don’t believe a single thing… I can feel her heart…"
Gabriel's jaw tightens like he's biting down on broken glass. "She lied about everything from her name to her background."
"No." Colt's voice is sharp as a branding iron, cutting through the thick air. "Did you see the fear in her eyes when she looked at her uncle? That was pure terror, like she was staring at her executioner."
"She's mentally ill, Colt," Gabriel says, but there's no conviction in his voice anymore. Just the hollow echo of a man repeating words he's not sure he believes. "The documents showed..."
I listen to them argue, but their voices feel distant, muffled, like they're talking under water. All I can think about is the way Lucy's face crumpled when I stepped back from her.
She isn't Lucy Reid. But she isn’'t a stranger either.
Impulsive? Undoubtedly. Secretive? Absolutely. But crazy? No. Not the kind of crazy that needed to be locked away and medicated into compliance.
"We fucked up," I say quietly, the words falling into the space between their argument like stones dropped in still water.
Both men stop to look at me, and I can see my own guilt reflected in their faces.
"Beau..." Gabriel starts, but I hold up a hand to stop him.
"No, listen to me. " I stand slowly, feeling the weight of every mistake I've made settling on my shoulders.
"I know what it looks like when someone tries to manipulate you. I've been a target for gold diggers and social climbers since the day I turned eighteen and inherited my first trust fund."
The words come out measured, deliberate.
"Lucy never asked me for anything. Not once." I can hear the incredulity in my own voice, the bewilderment of a man who's spent years having his wallet targeted by every pretty face that crossed his path.
Colt nods emphatically, his pacing finally slowing. "She worked her ass off at my clinic."
"And she flinched every time I mentioned background checks," Gabriel adds, his voice getting quieter as the pieces start falling into place. "Not because she was hiding something criminal. Because she was terrified of being found."
The truth is assembling itself in front of us like a puzzle we should have solved before.
The silence that follows is different from before. Heavier. Loaded with the weight of understanding that comes too late to matter.
"So what do we do now?" Colt asks, looking between Gabriel and me with the desperate hope of a man drowning in his own mistakes. "They're probably halfway to some facility by now. Some place where they can lock her up and throw away the key."
"We go after her," I say, the words coming out with surprising firmness. "We bring her home where she belongs."
Gabriel runs a hand through his hair, and I can see the cop warring with the man who loves her.
"It's not that simple, Beau. Richard Kensington has legal guardianship. Court orders. Official documentation. We can't just..."
His phone rings, cutting through his protest like a blade. He glances at the caller ID and frowns. "Unknown number."
"Take it," I say. "Could be important."
Gabriel swipes to answer, his voice automatically shifting into professional mode. "Sheriff Maddox."
I can't hear the other end of the conversation, but I watch Gabriel's face go through a series of expressions. Confusion, recognition, then something that looks like pure horror.
"Matthew Carter?" Gabriel says, his voice sharpening with attention. "Yeah, I left you a message about Lucy. About Lucinda." A pause that seems to stretch forever. "Yes… I know she is Lucinda Kensington-Reid. Her uncle was here just now—"
Something he is saying alarms Gabriel. He puts the phone on speaker before I can ask what, and suddenly a young man's voice fills the kitchen, scared, urgent, desperate.
"...Sheriff, I don't know what you think you know about Lucinda, but whatever Richard Kensington told you is complete bullshit. She was never mentally ill. She was imprisoned at Rosewood because she was inconvenient, not because she was unstable."
My blood turns to ice water in my veins. "Who is this?"
"Matty Carter. I was at Rosewood with Lucinda. We escaped together two years ago." His voice cracks with emotion. "That place isn't a hospital, Sheriff. It's a prison for rich kids whose families want them to disappear."
The words hit me like a physical blow. Rosewood. The place her uncle claimed was helping her. The place he said she needed to return to for treatment.
It was a prison. And we just sent her back to it.
Gabriel leans forward, his sheriff's instincts kicking in even as his personal world crumbles. "That's a serious accusation, son. You're talking about kidnapping, false imprisonment..."
"I'm talking about the truth," Matty's voice cuts through the static, raw with desperation. "Lucindas's uncle had her committed because she was about to turn eighteen and inherit billions. He wanted control of the money, and she was inconvenient."
The words slam into me like a freight train. Billions. Lucy. Lucinda, is worth billions, and she was living in a beat-up van.
"The records showed..." Gabriel starts, but Matty cuts him off.
"Sheriff," Matty continues, his voice cracking with urgency, "if Lucinda is with him now, she's in real danger. He's not taking her to get help. He's taking her somewhere to finish what he started."
Colt is already moving, grabbing his jacket from the back of a chair with sharp, jerky movements. "We need to go. Right now."
We pile into Gabriel’s patrol car, the big diesel engine rumbling to life with a sound like controlled thunder. He already has his radio in hand, coordinating with dispatch to track the SUV's route. Colt sits in the back, his leg bouncing with nervous energy, hands clenched into fists.
Gabriel pushes the patrol car hard down, the speedometer climbing past eighty as we race through ranch country. Fence posts blur past the windows, cattle scattering as we roar by with sirens blaring and lights flashing.
The radio crackles to life. "All units, we have a reported collision on Highway 89, approximately fifteen miles north of Briarhaven. Multiple vehicles involved. Unknown number of injuries. Proceed with caution."
My hands tighten on the steering wheel, knuckles going white. "Highway 89. That's the route to the interstate."
"Could be anyone," Colt says from the back seat, but his voice is tight with barely controlled panic.
The dispatcher's voice cuts through the static again. "Be advised, one of the vehicles involved is registered to Roy Cutter. Suspect is considered armed and dangerous."
My heart stops. Roy Cutter. The drug dealer who tried to kill Lucy weeks ago. The one who got away when Gabriel arrested his brother.
"And the other vehicle?" Gabriel barks into the radio, his professional calm cracking.
"Black SUV, New York plates. Registered to Kensington Holdings."
Lucy's uncle' s car.
Gabriel floors the accelerator, the big diesel engine roaring as we surge forward. "Hold on," he says through gritted teeth, taking a curve fast enough to make the tires scream. "We're almost there."
But even as he says it, I can't shake the feeling that we're going to be too late. That whatever's happening up ahead, Lucy is facing it alone.
Just like she's been facing everything alone for the past three years.
The scene that greets us when we crest the hill is pure chaos painted in red and blue strobing lights.
The black SUV sits upside down in a ravine about thirty yards off the highway, smoke rising from its twisted metal frame like incense from a funeral pyre.
A pickup truck is wrapped around a massive cottonwood tree another fifty yards up the road, its front end accordion-folded beyond recognition.
Emergency vehicles swarm the area. Ambulances, fire trucks, more patrol cars than Briarhaven has seen in months. The air tastes like smoke and spilled gasoline.
But it's the figures standing near the overturned SUV that make my blood freeze solid in my veins.
Roy Cutter, wild-eyed and clearly strung out on something stronger than coffee, has a gun pressed against Richard Kensington's temple.
Lucy's uncle is on his knees in the gravel, blood streaming from a head wound that's turned his silver hair crimson.
His expensive suit is torn and filthy, no longer the armor of wealth and power he wore into Gabriel's kitchen.
And Lucy...
Christ, Lucy is pulling herself out of the wreckage, moving slow but under her own power.
She's alive.
Hurt, blood on her face, dirt on her clothes, moving like everything hurts, but alive.
"You lied to me!" Cutter screams at Richard, spittle flying from his mouth as he presses the gun harder against the older man's skull. "You said there would be drugs in that van! Good stuff! Enough to set me up for months!"