Chapter 58
Professor Preston Sinclair
The motion alert flashed across the monitor seconds earlier. He’d seen the deputy drop out of frame and reacted.
In the yard, Sinclair moved fast. He took aim and fired.
The shot had been clean.
He crossed the grass and found Scout where the hedges had broken his fall—twisted near the branches, blood dark against his shoulder.
He pressed two fingers to Scout’s neck.
Counted.
No movement. No groan. Not even a twitch.
Sinclair’s mouth tightened.
The fall hadn’t finished the job.
He straightened and listened.
A dog barked somewhere down the road. No doors opened. No lights snapped on.
Mountain country. Gunshots in December barely earned a glance.
Good.
He crossed toward the main house and rapped once on the back door. When Margot appeared, wide-eyed, he kept his voice even.
“Back your SUV up to the pool house. I need the cargo open.”
Her gaze flicked past him, toward the yard.
“Preston—”
“It’s fine,” he said smoothly. “Go.”
He would load Scout and take him to the smokehouse on his family’s hunting property — hundreds of acres of mountain and trees.
Out there, no one would hear a thing.
The same place Lauren had been laid to rest, until Sara dug into the past.
He watched Margot disappear down the hall.
Then he turned back toward the hedges.
Toward the broken body waiting for him in the dark.
Burke — Arrival
Minutes later, Burke’s truck came in too fast, tires spitting gravel as he swung into the drive.
Rosie was already snarling in the passenger seat, body vibrating with urgency.
Burke saw it immediately.
A man dragging a body toward an open SUV.
The man he’d hunted with.
The man who’d played poker.
Dragging Scout through the dew like trash.
Burke’s blood turned to ice.
“STOP!” he roared, gun up. “Sheriff’s Department! Hands up!”
Sinclair froze.
For one heartbeat, he stood there with Scout’s jacket fisted in his hand, Scout’s body half in the grass.
Then Sinclair’s head turned slightly.
Then he let go.
And ran.
“DAMN IT!”
Burke sprinted forward, Rosie launching ahead of him like a missile.
Burke dropped to his knees beside Scout.
“Scout!” he barked. “Talk to me!”
Scout stayed silent.
Face pale. Eyes half-lidded. Blood soaked his shoulder — high and forward.
Through-shot.
Burke’s hands shook as he checked for a pulse.
Weak.
But there.
“Hey, brother,” he whispered. “You stay with me.”
He keyed his mic.
“Dispatch, deputy down. Gunshot wound. EMS to Sinclair’s address now. Code Three. And where the hell is my backup?”
He had seconds to decide: lock down the scene, or stop the bleeding and go after the man who might still reach Tessa.
Burke clawed at his belt for the trauma pack, fingers clumsy for a heartbeat before muscle memory took over.
“You’re hit high,” he muttered. “Through and through.”
He tore open a pressure bandage one-handed, shoved Scout’s jacket aside, and pressed the pad hard over the front wound.
Scout hissed. Teeth bared.
The pain dragged him back from the edge.
“Stay with me,” Burke snapped, wrapping the bandage tight.
Blood slowed. He cinched it down.
“That’ll hold for a minute.”
A groan scraped out of Scout.
His eyes fluttered.
“Burke…”
“Yeah. I’m here.”
Scout swallowed hard.
“Tess… inside…”
“I know.”
“Go,” Scout rasped. “Get him.”
Burke’s gaze snapped toward the tree line — Rosie’s bark cutting sharp through the woods.
Every instinct screamed to stay.
To hold the pressure.
To wait for EMS.
But Scout’s hand caught his sleeve.
Weak. Bloody. Commanding.
“Burke,” Scout rasped. “GO!”
Burke looked down at his friend — bleeding out in the frost and still trying to give orders.
Then toward the woods.
And made the call.
Burke crashed into the tree line, branches whipping his face.
He’d lost sight of him.
Rosie hadn’t.
Her bark shifted—lower now. Hunting.
Burke followed the sound, boots sliding over wet leaves.
Movement to his right.
An old equipment shed hunched against the slope, door hanging half open.
Rosie lunged toward it.
The door slammed.
Burke rounded the corner just as Sinclair burst from the far side, trying to circle downhill.
Rosie hit him mid-stride.
She slammed into his side and dragged him down again, teeth sinking into his coat sleeve.
Sinclair let out a raw sound—not dignified, not controlled, just human.
“Fass!” Burke barked.
Rosie held.
Sinclair twisted, reaching toward his jacket pocket.
Burke saw the movement.
Gun up.
“Don’t you move.”
Low.
Deadly calm.
Sinclair froze.
Mud streaked his face. His glasses hung crooked. His breathing came fast now — real panic.
“Release.”
Rosie let go but stayed between them.
Burke kicked Sinclair’s hand away.
A small blade slid into the leaves.
Burke stared down at him.
For a second, he didn’t speak.
Just looked.
It wasn’t confusion anymore.
It was rage.
“Sinclair,” he said quietly.
No sheriff voice.
Just Burke.
“I respected you.”
Sinclair tried to gather himself. “Burke—”
“I hunted on that ridge with you.”
Sinclair swallowed.
“We sat at the same table.”
“You stood in my office. Looked me in the eye.”
“And all the while you were taking women.”
Silence.
“You killed one.”
Sinclair’s mouth opened.
“You shot my deputy.”
Burke stepped closer.
“I ought to end you right here.”
Rosie growled.
“But that’s not how this works.”
He holstered his weapon, grabbed Sinclair by the collar, and hauled him upright.
“You don’t get a clean ending,” Burke said.
“You get a courtroom.”
The cuffs snapped on hard.
“For what you did to Lauren.”
Click.
“For what you did to Sara.”
Click.
“For what you did to Tessa.”
Sinclair didn’t fight.
For the first time —
He had nothing to say.
Burke shoved him forward.
“You’re walking. You so much as twitch, and I drop you.”
Rosie stayed tight at his side.
They moved back toward the yard.
Scout — Beside the Pool House
While Burke forced Sinclair toward the house, Scout didn’t stay down.
Sound came back first.
Movement near the house.
Through blurred vision, he saw her.
Margot.
Crossing the grass.
Heading for the pool house door.
Tessa was still inside.
Scout dragged in a breath that felt like broken glass and rolled onto his side.
Not her.
Not alone.
He forced himself onto an elbow.
The pool house door opened.
Warm light spilled across the yard.
Margot disappeared inside.
Scout started to crawl.
Frost bit through his clothes. Every pull with his good arm sent fire through his shoulder.
He kept going.
Margot — The Believer
Margot Holt sat in the main house, watching the monitor like it was church.
She’d watched the skylight shatter. Tessa dive. The desk flip.
And when the violet hit the floor and broke—something inside Margot clenched.
Not because she cared about Tessa.
Because the room was supposed to be perfect.
A clean place to create.
Her sanctuary.
Ruined.
She couldn’t help herself.
She crossed the yard quickly, keys in hand, and slipped into the pool house.
Inside, the room looked destroyed—glass everywhere, the desk overturned, the Royal on its side, soil and petals smeared across the rug like blood.
Margot’s face tightened with something that looked—at first glance—like grief.
“Oh no,” she whispered.
Tessa’s shoulders locked.
She lifted her head slowly.
Margot crossed the room and tugged the blanket tighter around Tessa’s shoulders with practiced hands.
“You’re freezing,” Margot murmured. “You always get cold after the pills.”
Her tone was gentle. Familiar. Routine.
Then her fingers lifted to Tessa’s hair.
She began separating strands with quick, familiar precision.
Tessa froze.
It had been Sinclair and Margot this whole time—the braids, the pills, the pages.
Lauren’s journal flashed in her mind—waking up drugged… disoriented… and finding her hair braided neat.
“You think it just happens?” Margot’s mouth curved faintly. “Lauren used to ask the same thing.”
Tessa snapped her head back and slapped Margot’s hand away.
“Don’t,” she said, voice low and lethal.
Margot blinked—hurt, almost offended.
Then she recovered.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Margot whispered. “You’re scared.”
Tessa stared at her.
“You did this,” she said hoarsely.
Margot’s eyes widened—not in denial, but in genuine surprise that Tessa was only now catching up.
“Of course I did,” she said softly. “He can’t even remember to feed you.”
“He gets lost in structure,” Margot continued. “In endings. He forgets the body.”
Her fingers smoothed the blanket again, gentle as prayer.
“Someone had to make it kind.”
“You…” Tessa breathed. “Oh my God.”
“It was you,” she whispered. “You were in this with him.”
“He said you were close to the ending,” Margot murmured.
“The ending,” Tessa repeated.
Margot nodded. “All you had to do was finish it.”
Tessa’s mind raced backward. The soups. The stews. The way the world always went soft at the edges halfway through a bowl. Waking to find one journal missing, another returned later—slashed with red edits.
“He only ever talked to you through the wall,” Margot said. “You were so sure you were alone. But you weren’t. I was always here.”
“Lauren wasn’t supposed to be the ending,” Margot continued. “The story stopped too soon. Then Sara came along. She fit. So much like Lauren.”
Her gaze flicked over Tessa, assessing.
“And then you,” Margot said, eyes bright with devotion. “You were the ending.”
“You’re sick,” Tessa whispered.
“I believed in what he was doing,” Margot said simply. “I still do.”
Her eyes softened.
“You slept so deeply once the drops settled,” she went on. “Lauren. Sara. You. You still fought in your sleep, but that’s just fear. I bathed you. Dressed you. Braided your hair so you’d wake up tidy. I brought your pages out so he could work.”
“He never saw the parts that mattered,” Margot said softly. “The trembling. The nightmares. The names you whispered in your sleep.”
Her eyes locked on Tessa’s.
“I did.”
A beat.
“I was the only one who stayed.”
The words hung there—intimate. Possessive.
Then her mouth curved.
“Sara was in love with Deputy Scout,” Margot murmured. “It was all over her pages. And then you were, too. It was delicious—the two of you circling the same man and pretending you weren’t bleeding over him. Of course we pressed there. You only ever told the truth when it hurt.”
Everything snapped into place.
He wrote the lines. Margot made sure they bled.
Margot’s eyes flashed.
Then she moved.
Not away.
Toward Tessa.
Her hand shot out and clamped around Tessa’s forearm with startling strength.
“You don’t get to end it,” Margot hissed, all softness gone. “You have no idea what you’re throwing away—”
She yanked Tessa closer, fingers biting into muscle.
Tessa’s heart kicked hard—but she held her ground.
And then—
“Let her go.”
The words cut through the room like a gunshot.
Margot went still.
Tessa’s head snapped toward the doorway.
Scout Wilson stood there.
He’d crawled. Dragged himself along the hedge line until the side door came into reach. He didn’t remember standing up.
Now he stood there on sheer will alone.
One arm hung useless at his side. His sleeve had been ripped open and knotted tight across his shoulder—fabric twisted into a crude tourniquet. Blood had dried black down his forearm.
He pinned himself to the doorframe and lifted the gun.
One arm useless.
The other rock-steady because it had to be.
“Hands up,” Scout said, voice flat and lethal. “Now.”
Margot’s grip tightened reflexively.
Scout didn’t blink.
“Let. Her. Go.”
Margot’s grip loosened.
“Hands behind your back,” he said. “Now.”
“You can’t—”
“I said. Now.”
Something in his tone—iron over the edge of collapse—cut through her.
Margot’s hands lifted slowly.
Tessa stepped forward—legs shaky, drug-heavy—but her mind clear as glass.
“My cuffs,” Scout said without lowering the gun. “Right pocket.”
Tessa reached carefully into his pocket and pulled them free.
Her fingers trembled.
Not from fear.
From rage.
From Lauren.
From Sara.
From everything Margot had touched and called care.
Tessa snapped the cuffs shut.
Metal clicked.
Final.
“You don’t get to touch another woman ever again,” Tessa said quietly.
Scout’s weapon never wavered.
The door behind him opened.
Boots. Authority.
Burke stepped in and stopped.
Margot restrained.
Tessa upright.
Scout wounded but steady.
Their eyes met.
Burke gave the smallest nod.
Behind him, Sinclair was shoved forward hard enough to stumble.
His gaze swept the ruined room.
“You don’t understand story,” he said.
“She wasn’t correcting your writing,” Tessa said. “She was trying to teach you that people aren’t drafts. You don’t get to rewrite them when they don’t behave.”
Silence.
For the first time, Sinclair had nothing.
“It’s over,” Burke said.
Denton appeared in the doorway. His eyes found Tessa first.
“You good?”
Tessa met his gaze.
“I am.”
That was enough.
“Take them both,” Burke said.
They were led out.
Scout finally lowered his weapon.
His knees buckled.
EMS rushed in.
They lifted him.
“I’m here,” Tessa said, voice breaking. “I’m okay.”
His mouth twitched.
Then he was gone.
The room fell quiet.
Tessa’s gaze drifted to the gray metal box on the wall.
POOL PUMP.
The hum beneath her feet cut out.
For the first time—
Silence.
No hum.
No voice through the walls.
Just air.
The adrenaline drained out of her.
Her legs gave way.
Burke caught her.
“You’re safe,” he said quietly. “I’ve got you.”
Sirens wailed outside.
Radios crackled.
The world rushed back.
Tessa stayed upright.
Alive.
Free.