Chapter 30 Find Me Anywhere
Find Me Anywhere
Jacob
The station reeks of burnt coffee and sweat. Too bright. Too loud. Phones ringing, printers stuttering, radios spitting static. Every sound chews through my skull.
Constance and Adelaide are at the hospital. Navarro and Maddox, along with some Broadachre badges, have gone to see them. To see if they can dig out any information I might have missed.
I’ve been staring at the same bank of CCTV monitors for an hour, and I still can’t see her. Nothing but headlights and shadows. SUVs. Pickups. Same body shapes, same goddamn plates that come up clean. Too clean. Stolen. Swapped. Scrubbed.
Jackson Moore didn’t claw his way out of a maximum-security cell just to leave me breadcrumbs.
“Roll back camera six,” I bark, throat raw.
Carter’s at the keyboard. His hands don’t shake, but his jaw does.
He hasn’t looked me in the eye once since we walked in here.
He pulls the footage back, frame by frame.
Grainy, washed-out, some gas station outside town.
An SUV pulling through. License plate crystal clear.
Useless. It belongs to a grandma three counties over who hasn’t left her damn driveway in a year.
I slam my fist into the table. The monitor’s flicker. My knuckles split open again, blood slick against the steel edge.
“Fuck!”
“Sheriff—” Carter starts, but I turn so fast he shuts up.
There are three others in the room. Young deputies. Fresh. Faces pale like they’ve seen ghosts just being in here with me. Maybe they have.
“Run the plate against out-of-state databases,” I snarl.
“We already did,” one of them says quietly. “Nothing. It’s clean.”
Of course it is. Of course it fucking is.
I throw my chair back, rise to my feet and pace back and forth.
The walls are closing in, suffocating me with the hum of machines and the stench of failure.
Every second she’s out there with him—every second—it’s a knife turning deeper.
I see her face, her hair, the first time I saw her in her parents’ garden.
That smile that ruined me before I even knew her name.
And now she’s with him. With Jackson. My tears sting but they don’t fall. Not here. Not in front of them.
I spin and sweep the desk clear with both arms. Paper, coffee cups, radios, files—everything crashes to the floor. The monitors rattle, one topples, screen splintering into spiderweb glass.
“Sheriff!” Carter barks.
I grab the edge of the next desk and flip it, wood splintering, metal legs screeching against tile. One of the young ones jolts back so fast he trips over his own chair.
“WHERE THE FUCK IS HE?” I roar, voice tearing out of me. “WHERE THE FUCK DID HE TAKE HER?”
Nobody answers.
Because they don’t know.
Because Jackson will always be five steps ahead.
Because I should’ve seen this coming.
I drive my fist into the drywall. It caves, dust spilling down, blood smearing into white. I don’t stop. I punch again, again, until my knuckles are pulp and the hole’s wide enough to shove my whole arm through.
“Sheriff—stop,” Carter snaps, grabbing at my shoulder. I whirl, grab his shirtfront, slam him into the wall so hard his head bounces off the plaster. His eyes widen but he doesn’t raise a hand. Doesn’t fight me.
“She handed herself over,” I snarl, the words ripping out of me before I can stop them. My breath comes out ragged, splintering on the edges. “She walked out that door willingly. To save her friends.”
The fury builds, choking me. “She sacrificed herself,” I hiss, stepping closer. “Handed the damn axe to the executioner and bowed her head to the block.”
The room goes still, the echo of my voice hanging between us like smoke.
Carter swallows. His throat bobs against my grip. His voice stays steady. “Then you’d better keep your head if you want to get her back.”
I shove him away like he burned me. My chest heaves. My hands shake with blood and plaster dust. The room’s silent now, except for the buzz of the monitors that survived my tantrum.
I drag both hands down my face, smearing red across my skin. The taste of iron lingers on my lips where it seeped into the cracks of my knuckles.
Carter straightens his shirt. He doesn’t look at me with fear, not like the others. Just exhaustion. The same exhaustion I feel grinding me down to the bone.
“They moved everything,” I mutter. “The warehouse, the women—wherever they were keeping them before, it’s gone. They wouldn’t risk it while Jackson was inside. But now—”
“Now he’s out,” Carter finishes for me.
I nod once. Slow. Final.
“He’ll want somewhere temporary. Somewhere no one’s watching. Close enough to move fast. Far enough nobody stumbles on it by accident.”
The others exchange glances. One pipes up, voice uncertain. “It’s going to take time to find it, boss. Finding where he’s at isn’t going to be easy. He could be anywhere.”
I turn on him, slow. His face drains of colour.
“Then find me anywhere,” I growl.
Nobody moves. Nobody breathes.
I know the truth. Jackson’s not going to slip up. He’s not going to leave a trail. And every wasted minute brings me closer to the one image I can’t erase—the look in her eyes when she realizes I didn’t come in time.
I grip the back of a chair and squeeze until the metal groans.
Carter clears his throat, rubbing the back of his neck. His voice cuts through the static in my skull.
“There are more men here tonight,” he says, quieter now. “Not all of them active. Not all of them… official.”
I lift my head. My vision blurs with fury and plaster dust, but I focus on him. “What the fuck does that mean?”
He doesn’t flinch. He just jerks his chin toward the far end of the hall. Through the glass, I see two figures sitting in the dark— shadows hunched over paper cups, cigarette smoke curling like ghosts above their heads.
Carter steps closer, lowering his voice like he’s letting me in on something no one else is meant to hear.
“Mason’s here. You remember him.”
Of course, I remember Mason. Thickset, always chewing toothpicks, retired five years back. He looks older now, shoulders bent under grief he never put down. His hand trembles when he lifts the cup. Not with age. With rage.
“His girl,” Carter reminds me, eyes heavy, “was nine years old when a stray bullet from one of Jackson’s men tore through their house. Playing with dolls on the goddamn floor. Mason’s never let it go.”
My chest tightens. I remember the call. The body bag so small it barely filled the stretcher. Mason’s wife screaming until her voice broke.
“And Grove,” Carter adds.
Grove was tall, wiry, the kind of man who carries his grief like a noose around his neck.
“His daughter dated Jackson,” Carter says flatly. “For a few months. Thought he was some charming bastard. Then one day—she was gone. No sign of her. No evidence. Just… gone. Grove’s been chasing whispers ever since.”
Mason and Grove aren’t lawmen tonight. They’re executioners waiting for the rope.
I drag my hand over my mouth, smearing blood and sweat. My heartbeat’s a hammer, pounding harder with every breath.
“They want in,” Carter says. “They’ve been waiting for the opportunity to get their hands on him. For years.”
I study them through the glass. The way Mason leans forward, elbows on his knees, eyes burning through the smoke. The way Grove’s still as a predator, coiled tight, waiting for the signal.
They don’t want justice. They want vengeance. And for the first time tonight, I don’t feel so goddamn alone in mine.
I push off the wall, my boots crunching over broken glass from the monitor I smashed. My voice is a rasp, torn raw.
“Then brief them.”
Carter hesitates. “Sheriff, we need to—”
“I. Want. Them. In.”
He jerks his chin to one of the younger deputies, who bolts out the door to fetch them.
When Mason steps in, the room shifts. His presence is heavy, a storm carried on thick shoulders.
He spits his toothpick into the trash and plants himself at the table, eyes never leaving mine.
Grove follows, quieter, like glass hidden in sand.
His face is gaunt, his hands white-knuckled around his cup.
He doesn’t blink. Just stares through the smoke like he’s already seeing Jackson’s corpse.
Both men carry grief like it’s fused to their bones. Both men would burn this town to ash for one clean shot at Jackson Moore.
And right now, they’re mine.
The office door slams open so hard the glass rattles in its frame.
Haywood’s wife storms in, hair tangled, eyes swollen red like she’s been drowning in her own tears. She doesn’t even hesitate—she makes straight for me, her hand already arcing up.
I catch her wrist mid-swing. My grip is iron, my pulse a war drum in my ears.
“You son of a bitch!” she screams, voice cracked and raw. She thrashes against me, nails clawing at air, trying to land another hit. Her grief is a wild animal. A mother bear with her cub ripped from her.
Carter’s moving instantly, but I don’t let go.
Her heel slams into my shin, hard enough to make bone vibrate. She doesn’t want words—she wants blood. My blood.
Her breath is ragged, soaked in whiskey and salt. “You killed him! You fucking killed him!”
I grit my teeth so hard I feel enamel grind. “He was guarding Summer,” I snap back. “He died doing his job.”
“Job?” Her laugh is broken glass. Her eyes lock on mine—full of hate, full of agony. “You call it a job? He died because of her.”
The room goes quiet. Mason shifts in his chair. Grove’s jaw ticks. Even Carter stiffens.
Her finger jabs the air, trembling, like she can stab me from across the room. “All this death. All this blood. For what? For a bit of young, pretty pussy you couldn’t resist? For some girl half your age instead of a decent woman who could’ve given you a real life?”
Her words detonate in me. Every syllable is napalm.
Summer’s face flashes in my head—terrified, brave, stubborn, hers—and then it’s drowned by the image of her in Jackson’s hands.
I see red.
My voice rips out of me, low, guttural, a threat cut straight from hell.
“You ever speak about her like that again,” I snarl, yanking her closer, “and I will remove your fucking voice box with my bare hands.”
Her mouth falls open, a ragged inhale like she’s choking on air. The whole room freezes. Even Carter looks at me like I’ve just drawn a line we can’t ever walk back from.
“Sheriff,” Carter snaps, stepping in between us, his hand on my chest, pushing me back. His tone isn’t a plea. It’s a warning. “Enough.”
I let go of her wrist. She stumbles back, clutching it to her chest like I’ve broken her bones. Tears streak down her cheeks, streaks of mascara bleeding into skin.
“You’re a monster,” she whispers. Her voice is thin, brittle, but it cuts. “You brought him to his grave.”
She turns on her heel and bolts, the echo of her sobs tearing down the hallway like sirens, then silence drops heavy.
My hands shake. Not from regret. Not from shame. From the fact that she’s half-right. Haywood is dead. And Summer—
I shove a chair so hard it splinters against the wall. The sound makes everyone flinch, but I don’t care.
Carter exhales through his nose, deep, steadying. He nods to Mason and Grove, like telling them silently: this is what we’re working with.
And Mason, the old bastard, just leans forward, his voice gravel and hate.
“Good,” he mutters. “Because if she thinks this is about pussy, she doesn’t know what kind of hell Jackson Moore’s about to bring down. You don’t stop him now, Sheriff—every man in this room is gonna be worrying about more than pussy.”
The words settle like stone, and I know he’s right.