29. Holden
TWENTY-NINE
HOLDEN
That’s our window. Tonight we take it.
We’re parked in the turnout past the bend, lights off, engine ticking. Knox is ahead on Webster’s expected route, behind a stand of trees with the road flares. Eli’s at the intersection behind the bend, ready to drag the road-closed sign across once Webster passes and seal the road behind him.
Next to me, Milo’s on his laptop, the blue wash of the screen making him look like something off a deep-sea documentary.
“Dashcam’s a Nextbase,” Milo says, not looking up.
“Cloud-synced. The second we’re in the car I kill the upload and wipe the loop.
His phone’s pinging the Verizon tower off the marina every few minutes like a good little boy.
” He taps at his screen. “We can make sure it stays close to the body so it keeps pinging. Phone goes where Webster goes. Marina, coast road, bridge. Last location consistent with a man who drove out there by himself at night. The story tells itself as long as nobody fumbles the geography.”
“How would anyone fumble the geography?” Eli asks over comms. He’s been flat all day. The closer we get to a kill, the quieter Eli goes, like he’s drawing all the noise inward to keep his hands steady.
“I don’t fucking know,” Milo says. “Shit happens sometimes. I’m just covering my bases.” Milo looks up and jerks his chin. “Headlights. That’s him.”
I see them sweep the bend—a single set, high and white, slowing for the curve the way a careful man slows. Webster’s Volvo. He has no idea the next ten minutes are the last ten minutes.
“Sign’s in place,” Eli announces in my ear.
“Flares,” I say, watching ahead.
Down the road, three points of red light flare to life across the asphalt—Knox, laying them in a line, then melting back into the dark.
A road closure. The most boring, ignorable thing in the world.
A man sees flares and a dark shape that might be a stalled truck, and he does what every law-abiding citizen does.
He slows. He stops.
The Volvo’s brake lights bloom. Webster powers his window down, leans out, looking for the worker who should be attached to a setup like this.
Knox is already at the rear passenger door.
I’m out of the car at a run.
Gravel shifts under my shoes as I cut across the dark. Knox yanks the rear door open and folds himself into the back seat like violence taking human form. Webster jerks hard enough to hit the steering wheel with his wrist. The horn gives a pathetic half-blast.
Knox’s pistol kisses the base of his skull.
“Go,” he says.
Webster freezes.
I catch the opposite rear door, wrench it open, and slide in beside Knox, shoulder knocking leather, my own gun already in my hand.
The interior smells like cologne, stale coffee, and the sharp, immediate stink of fear.
Webster turns just enough for me to see one wide eye in the rearview mirror as he takes in the masks and the gun in my hand.
“This is a mistake,” he says. Breathless. “Take the car, take my wallet, whatever you want—”
Knox presses the muzzle in harder. “Drive or die here.”
His hands clamp the wheel. Reflex. I watch the tendons jump in his wrists, the pulse battering at his throat. He’s not a fighter. You can tell in a second. No plan to attack, no instinct to resist. Just fear.
And still he hesitates.
A stupid little pause. Half a second of denial while his brain tries to rewrite what’s happening into something survivable.
I lift my gun and level it at the side of his face.
“You heard the man. Drive.”
The words cut clean through the paralysis.
His foot slips on the pedal the first time. Then the engine growls, the Volvo lurching forward. Gravel spits under the tires. In the side mirror, I catch Eli getting into the van with Milo so they can follow us.
“Straight,” I say.
Webster’s breathing is ragged now. Too fast. His hands are locked on the wheel so hard I can see the blanch of knuckles even in the dark. He drives below the speed limit for three seconds before Knox leans in.
“Faster.”
The needle climbs.
Milo’s voice crackles low in my ear. “Dashcam is dead. Cloud sync severed. Congratulations to everyone on participating in tonight’s deeply upsetting field trip.”
“You following?” I ask.
“We’re on your six and headed toward a lovely secluded bridge where our rope is already tied and waiting for us to push this fucker off.”
“See you there.”
Webster makes a sound in the back of his throat. A choked whimper.
I gesture with my gun. “Left at the sign.”
He flinches and drifts over the center line before correcting.
“Pay attention.”
“Please.” His voice shakes. “Please, I have kids.”
Knox says nothing. But he presses the muzzle of his gun harder into the back of Webster’s neck.
“You should have considered that before you put your hands on other people’s children.”
The car jerks.
Webster’s breath catches.
“No,” he says immediately. The way they all do when justice finds them. “No, you’ve got the wrong—”
“Keep driving.”
He sobs openly while he does.
The bridge rises ahead in a black line against blacker sky. Old maintenance route. Narrow shoulder. Steel rail. Water and rocks below. It isn’t dramatic. It doesn’t need to be. Most of our work isn’t. Death is usually less theatrical than people hope.
The van’s headlights close in behind us.
“Pull over,” I say.
He whimpers instead of braking.
Knox leans forward, one massive hand braced on the back of Webster’s seat. “Now.”
The Volvo swerves onto the shoulder. Gravel pops under the tires. He brakes too hard. We all pitch forward a fraction. Engine idling. Headlights cutting a pale lane across the bridge.
The bridge is a county relic—decommissioned in the nineties, fenced off, condemned, the kind of place teenagers dare each other onto and the county keeps meaning to demolish.
No cameras. No lights. A forty-foot drop to the riverbed.
And a long history, if anyone cares to look it up, of people coming here when they’ve decided to stop existing.
Eli kills the van’s lights when he pulls up behind us. For a moment it’s just the river sound and the wind in the dry grass and Webster’s breathing, ragged, through the open car door.
Eli walks to the Volvo. Opens the driver’s door. Crouches so he’s eye-level with the man.
“Angus Webster,” he says, voice calm and quiet.
“Oh God.” Webster’s face empties as he stares at the skull over Eli’s face. “No. Please. Let me go.”
“You know why we’re here,” Eli says.
Webster starts shaking his head before Eli finishes speaking. “No. No, I don’t. I swear to God, I don’t. If this is about money—”
“It’s about the boys,” I say.
That does it.
He folds, the structure going out of him, terror pouring in to fill the gaps. His mouth opens on a breath that turns into a whine.
“Please,” he says. “Please, I never—I didn’t—I would never hurt—”
Knox reaches past me, kills the engine, and the night gets bigger.
“Out,” I tell him.
He clutches the wheel.
I put the gun to his cheek. “Out of the car.”
He makes a wet, animal noise and clamps down harder, fingers whitening around the leather. “No. No, please, please, I’ll do anything—”
“You’ve already done too much,” Eli says.
Knox moves first. He holsters his gun and gets out of the car. Then he’s reaching in, peeling Webster’s hands off the wheel while the man starts truly screaming. Thin. High. Disbelieving.
Webster twists and kicks, catches his shoe against the door frame. It doesn’t matter. Knox drags him backward out of the seat like dead weight. I’m out the other side a second later, catching Webster under the arm as he loses his footing and collapses onto the gravel.
“No, no, no, no—” he sobs, scrambling with his heels, trying to push himself backward. “Please, I have a family, please—my wife—my children—”
“You destroyed nine children and their families with what you did,” Eli says.
Milo’s at the hood with the rope already in hand, expression gone sharp in the dark. He tugs on the end of it, making sure it’s securely attached to the bridge’s rail before turning his masked face toward us.
“Has anyone given him the ‘sentenced to death by hanging’ line yet?” he asks, spinning the noose like a lasso.
Webster starts making that sound again. “Please,” he says, voice breaking apart. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I made mistakes, I made mistakes, I can fix it, I can—”
I move in front of him and let him see the gun. Let him see me. Let him understand the way this night is going to end.
“You don’t get to fix what you did to children.”
He shakes his head so hard spit strings from his mouth. “I didn’t—”
“Liar,” I say.
Milo slips the noose over Webster’s head before the man can finish whatever denial he was going to vomit into the dark.
Webster wails and thrashes so hard Knox has to catch him by the back of the shirt and the throat, pinning him upright while Eli tightens the knot.
“Please,” Webster sobs. “Please. Please. Please.”
Eli steps in front of him and starts saying the name of every boy who filed a complaint with St. Clement’s, one after the other. He leaves a beat after each name. Long enough for it to land.
That’s the moment Webster breaks all the way.
His knees give. His bladder goes. The smell hits sharp and sour over the river stink and the eucalyptus and the dust. He starts babbling, words tripping over sobs.
“Please, please, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll confess, I’ll go to the police, I’ll do anything, please don’t—”
Knox hauls him toward the railing.
“The Hangmen have found you guilty,” Eli says. “There will be no trial. No deal. No NDA. Only reckoning.”
We close around him. A wall of skulls.
“No. No.”
“Your sentence is death,” Eli continues. “And the only choice now is do you jump yourself? Or do we do it for you?”
Webster stares at the drop like it might open and argue for him.
It doesn’t.
His mouth works. His knees shake hard enough to chatter the rope against the rail. He’s crying so violently the sound turns inward, little hitching barks of breath and mucus and panic. For one second I think he might actually do it. Save us the effort. Give himself the dignity of choosing.
Then he looks back over his shoulder at us.
“Please,” he whispers.
I tilt my head. “No.”
Knox’s hand clamps harder in the back of Webster’s shirt.
Eli says, “Now.”
Knox shoves.
Webster goes cleanly, almost neatly, and then the rope catches.
There’s a single violent stop. A crack that carries over the water like someone snapping a branch across their knee.
Cervical dislocation. Instant or near enough. His body hangs there, turning once on the line, shoes knocking uselessly in the dark. No kicking. No theatrical choke. Just dead weight and the faint creak of nylon against steel.
Webster got the fast one. Sage didn’t.
I watch for movement because that’s the job. Not because I doubt it.
Nothing.
Beside me, Knox keeps one hand on the rail for another beat, making sure the knot took the strain. It did, of course. Milo ties for finality. Knox shoves for outcome. The system works because each person understands their function.
Milo exhales through his nose. “Well. Gravity remains dependable.”
No one answers him.
I step closer to the edge and put the beam down once, quick and narrow. Webster hangs long enough to tell me what I need to know.
“Done,” I say.
Milo moves immediately. He always does once the line between alive and dead is crossed.
He peels away from the rail and heads for the van, ready to stage the scene.
Knox gives the body one last assessing look, then turns too.
Eli stands still for half a beat longer, staring out into the dark where Webster hangs, then follows without a word.
I take one final sweep with the light. Rail. Gravel. Tire tracks where there should be tire tracks. No dropped weapon, no stupid human error glittering in the beam. The bridge gives us back only what we brought to it.
Good.
By the time I reach the Volvo, Milo is bent through the open driver’s door, gloved hand placing the folded page exactly where a patrol officer will see it the second he shines a flashlight inside. He slides it into the center dash, visible enough to be found, casual enough to look self-placed.
His masterpiece.
He straightens and brushes two fingers over the paper’s edge, aligning it with Webster’s phone beside it.
“There,” he says quietly. “Self-loathing, panic, vague accountability, no legal specificity, and just enough shame-soaked sincerity to make everyone wish they’d taken those allegations seriously. ”
“Poetry and paperwork,” I say. “Your two native languages.”
He preens under the mask. “And both in service of the public good.”
“Move.”
He does. Fast.
Knox is already moving toward the van. Eli circles wide with the light, checking the shoulder one last time. Efficient. Quiet. The after always has its own rhythm. Less adrenaline. More certainty.
I give the note one final look through the windshield. Webster’s phone. Folded confession. A setup that says “troubled suburban monster takes scenic drive and does the world a giant favor.”
Then I shut the door.
“Let’s go.”
We pile into the van.
By the time we’ve switched vehicles and made our way home it’s past eleven.
The porch light’s on when I pull in, and the front curtain moves like she’s been sitting by the window waiting for us. And knowing Sage, she probably has.
The door opens before I can insert my key.
“Wildcat.” I grin and she jumps into my arms, wrapping her legs around my waist and kissing me as I carry her inside, the others trailing behind us.
“I’m guessing everything went well,” Micah says from the kitchen counter where there are two mugs sitting in front of him and a smirk on his face that tells me he spent the last few hours keeping our girl from climbing the walls.
I set Sage back on the floor, dropping a kiss on her forehead before I turn to Micah. “Went as planned. He’s a pendulum under a bridge and the kids of St. Clement’s will be safer for it.”
“Well done,” Micah says, taking a sip of his tea as his eyes move over the others. “No injuries?”
“Everyone’s fine,” Eli says. “Op went clean.”
Sage lets out a relieved breath. Then her chin comes up, and her eyes sharpen, gleeful as she looks between us.
“Sit down,” she says, moving to the dining table. “Tell me everything.” She looks at me. “Don’t you dare leave a single detail out.”
“I’ll get the tequila,” Milo says.
Before all this, I’d have given her a softened version of events and spared her the edges. Protected her from the reality of what we are.
But she fought her way into this room. She’s one of us now, and one of us doesn’t get the soft version.
So we all take our shot of liquor, and we sit across from the woman with the rope scar at her throat, and we tell her how we hanged a man off a bridge and heard the crack of his neck echo around us.
And she leans in, and listens to every word.