Chapter Seven
The image hit Garrett like a gut punch. For a heartbeat he couldn’t breathe. It could be Harris. God help him, it could be.
He forced himself to look again, to remind himself that a grainy blur was just that. It could just as easily be someone else.
Beside him, Leah gasped, a sharp sound that tore through the room. Tears welled in her eyes, and she started forward as if she meant to storm out the door that very second and head for Paula’s property. Randall caught her arm and pulled her back, his grip firm but gentle.
“This is exactly why I didn’t show you and Dad,” Anais said quickly, her voice thick with nerves. “I knew it would upset you. We don’t know for sure yet. We need proof that it’s him. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.” Her gaze slid to Garrett and Isla.
Suspicion flared in Garrett’s gut. He leveled a stare at Anais. “Why didn’t you take this to the cops?”
Anais squared her shoulders. “Because Paula has friends at the San Antonio PD. If I hand it over to them, there’s a chance it gets buried. I couldn’t risk that.”
Garrett’s stomach twisted tighter. The image still burned in his mind, a blur that carried twenty-two years of guilt and loss.
Leah’s voice sharpened, rising higher with each word. “We can’t just sit here while she keeps him from us. If that’s Harris—”
Randall tightened his grip on her arm again, his own voice calm but edged with steel. “Leah.” He looked straight at Garrett and Isla. “Will you look into this? Discreetly. I’ll hire Crossfire Ops if I have to. Just… please. Find out the truth.”
“If Paula’s had him all this time, she could have brainwashed him against us,” Leah snapped.
That thought hit Garrett like another punch to the gut. It was possible. God help them, it was possible. Still, he forced himself to keep his head clear. A grainy photo did not equal proof.
“We’ll check it out,” he said at last, his voice firm. “Anais, text Isla and me that photo.” They gave the young woman their numbers so she could do that, and seconds later, their phones sounded with the incoming image.
“Stay put,” Garrett added. “All of you. Isla and I will handle Paula.”
He didn’t say the rest. That he’d be looping in Sheriff Raines whether Anais liked it or not. Anais’s distrust of the cops was obvious, but Garrett trusted Raines. Trusted him to keep this from spiraling out of control.
Anais hesitated, her fingers knotting together. “There’s something else,” she said finally. “Paula might already know we’re onto her.”
Garrett’s shoulders went rigid. “Explain.”
“Yesterday afternoon, after I saw the drone footage, I drove out there. Just to scope the place.” Anais’s voice dipped, uneasy. “She saw me. I swear she did. She came out with a shotgun and leveled it right at me. I left fast, but…” Her eyes darted between them. “She knows.”
The tension in the room shifted, tightening like a wire. Garrett’s tone cut through it. “What time was this?”
“Around three,” Anais said.
Garrett’s jaw clenched. That had been only a few hours before Trudy was attacked. His mind churned, the question twisting in his gut. Had Paula been spooked enough to try to clean house? To silence Trudy before her secret came out?
The possibility lodged in him like shrapnel.
Garrett ended the conversation with a final warning. “Stay put. All of you. We’ll handle it.” He didn’t wait for pushback. He opened the door, and Isla followed him out into the brisk morning air.
Once they were off the porch and moving toward the SUV, Isla glanced at him. “You think they’ll actually stay put?”
Garrett pulled open the driver’s side door. “I hope so. But just in case they don’t, we need to get to Paula first.”
Isla slid in beside him, already tapping her phone. Within seconds she had Paula’s address pulled up on the screen. “It’s out in the country. About thirty minutes.”
Garrett started the engine, the SUV rumbling to life. As he pulled onto the street, he gave a voice command. “Call Sheriff Raines.”
The call clicked through, and Raines’s steady voice came on the line. “McCall. You on your way to see Anais?”
Garrett kept his eyes on the road. “We already did. She showed us something, Sheriff. A drone video over Paula Benton’s property. Grainy, but there’s a young man in the frame. Could be Harris. Could be someone else.”
Silence stretched for a beat before Raines asked, “And you believe it?”
“I believe it’s enough not to ignore,” Garrett said. “But that’s not all. Anais told us she drove out to Paula’s place yesterday afternoon, right after she saw the footage. Said Paula spotted her and leveled a shotgun at her.”
On the other end, Raines swore under his breath. “What time?”
“About three,” Garrett answered. “Which puts it only a few hours before Trudy was attacked.”
“Hell.” Raines let the word hang heavy. “Paula just called me this morning, rescheduled her interview. Claimed she’s having car trouble. Now we’ve got her pointing guns at people and maybe cleaning house before I can ask questions.”
Beside him, Isla leaned forward. “She’s had firearms training. It could have been her who shot Trudy.”
Raines’s voice was thoughtful but tight. “It’s possible. I could send deputies out there, but if she’s hiding something, that might drive her off. If she really has Harris, that’s the last thing we want.”
“If she sees cops, she might run,” Isla said quickly. “Or worse, she could take him and disappear.”
Raines grunted in agreement. “Then you two go in quiet. But listen to me, McCall—if you see any sign of trouble, you back off. Understood?”
Garrett’s grip tightened on the wheel. “Understood.”
His training itched for action, but his gaze cut briefly to Isla. She was strong, but she wasn’t mission-ready anymore. Not the way she used to be. He wasn’t about to let her get caught in the middle of a firefight.
Garrett ended the call with Raines, thumb lingering on the screen before setting the phone down on the console.
The last of San Antonio slipped away in the mirrors, replaced by open stretches of highway.
Strip malls and gas stations thinned out until the land rolled wide and rough, live oaks crowding the fence lines and limestone ridges.
The Hill Country opened in front of them, stark and quiet.
He picked the phone back up and hit the voice command. “Text Noah. Meeting Paula. Will update you when possible.”
The device confirmed, sending the words off clean and simple.
Beside him, Isla was already working. She popped open the glove compartment and pulled out one of the Crossfire Ops tablets, its matte black casing catching a flash of dashboard light. On her phone, the image from Anais glowed faintly before she transferred it to the tablet.
“I’ll run an analysis,” she said, fingers moving fast as the system booted up. The tablet chimed, secure login waiting, and she keyed in her credentials before dragging the image onto the interface.
Garrett kept his eyes on the two-lane road twisting deeper into the hills. Out here, the landscape was quieter, the woods thicker, the kind of place where anything could hide in the shadows.
Isla stared out the windshield, her voice low but steady. “That image isn’t photoshopped. It wasn’t added in. That man was there. But ‘there’ might not even be Paula’s place. We have no way of knowing unless I go through every second of that drone footage myself.”
Garrett tightened his grip on the wheel. “Then why would Anais lie? Why point the finger at Paula if the footage isn’t clear?”
“Maybe she’s covering for her mom or dad,” Isla said after a pause.
“One of them could have taken Harris. It wouldn’t be the first time family went to extremes to protect themselves.
With Trudy trying to jumpstart the cold case on Harris’ disappearance, maybe Anais wanted to try to point the finger at someone other than her parents. ”
He thought about that in silence, the SUV eating up the miles of road between them and Paula’s property.
“That’s a possibility,” Garrett admitted. “But if that’s what Anais is doing, she deserves an award. She sure as hell did a damn good job of faking how angry she was about missing out on time with her brother.”
The weight of it pressed harder in his chest. Twenty-two years of guilt, now tangled up with more lies and more shadows.
During the rest of the drive, that tension stayed with him. When they rounded a bend and the property came into view, Garrett slowed and eased the SUV onto the shoulder. No other traffic stirred on the road.
He reached into the console for the binoculars and lifted them to his eyes. The place spread out before him, half-hidden by the thick wall of trees.
It was exactly what Anais had described, a former campground.
The main house stood front and center, weathered but sturdy, with cabins scattered across the land. Some looked kept up, paint still clinging, roofs intact. Others sagged into themselves, falling-down shells that hadn’t seen care in decades.
A narrow creek cut through the property, glinting pale under the morning light. Old RV pads lined part of the clearing, cracked asphalt choked with weeds.
The whole place had a quiet, abandoned feel. Too quiet. He saw no one moving, no sound carrying over the trees. But a car sat in front of the house, a faded sedan.
Garrett lowered the binoculars long enough to type in the plates on his dash system. The response came back fast. Registered to Paula Benton.
“She’s here,” he said, his voice flat, the words heavy in the air between them. “Or at least her car is anyway.” Garrett lowered the binoculars and handed them to Isla. “Take a look.”
She adjusted the focus and studied the spread. “During my deep dive on Paula, I found out she bought this place about twenty-five years ago. Bankruptcy property. She got it for next to nothing.”
Garrett kept his eyes on the cabins while Isla spoke.
“She rented out the cabins and RV sites for a while, which gave her a nice extra income,” Isla went on, “but that stopped about twenty years ago.”
He didn’t need her to spell it out. “Because maybe she thought it would be harder to keep Harris hidden with people around.”
Isla lowered the binoculars, her mouth tight. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
The possibility coiled inside Garrett, heavy and sickening.
Isla kept the binoculars pressed to her face, scanning every angle. “Nothing. I don’t see anyone.” She lowered them and handed them back.
Garrett slipped the binoculars into the console instead of raising them again. He shifted the SUV into gear, the engine idling as he weighed their next move.
He wasn’t about to call Paula and give her time to dream up an excuse. If she was dodging the sheriff, she might dodge them, too. Better to show up and catch her cold. And if Harris really was here, Garrett wanted the chance to see the man’s face the second the door opened.
Beside him, Isla spoke quietly, as if giving voice to the doubt pressing them both. “Why would Harris stay hidden all this time? Even if she brainwashed him, I can’t see him never venturing out.”
He didn’t have an answer for her. But if Harris was here, they were about to find out.
Garrett’s hand tightened on the shifter, ready to roll forward, when the crack of a gunshot split the silence.
And a bullet slammed into the SUV.