Page 62 of Beckett
I closed the trunk and walked around to the driver’s door. Something white fluttered under my windshield wiper—what looked like a flyer or advertisement.
I grabbed it absently, my mind already on timing. Start the cake first so it could cool while I prepped dinner. The steaks would need to come to room temperature. The potatoes would take an hour to bake.
Then I looked down at the paper in my hand. It felt wrong. Too thick. Too smooth. Photo paper, not regular printer paper.
My stomach dropped before my brain caught up, and I turned it so I could see what was printed.
The photograph trembled in my hands. The one from Draper’s Tavern just a few days ago—all of us crowded around the table. Beckett, Hunter, Jada, Lachlan, Piper, me. Hunter had taken it for the tavern’s social media, said something about needing pictures of people actually enjoying themselves.
But this version had been defiled. Black X’s obliterated every face except mine. Thick, violent marks that turned my friends—God, when had I started thinking of them as friends?—into erasures. Into absences. Into promises.
My face remained untouched, circled in red ink so fresh I could smell it, metallic and threatening in the fading light.
No. Please, no.
My hands shook so hard the photo rustled like leaves. I turned it over, already knowing what I’d find. The handwritingwas exactly as I remembered—precise, controlled, each letter formed with obsessive care.
An eye for an eye.
The same message. Always the same message.
The parking lot kaleidoscoped around me, fracturing into pieces that wouldn’t fit back together as I spun, looking everywhere for who had done this. My chest compressed, ribs feeling like they might crack under the pressure. The air turned thick, impossible to pull into my lungs. I could only stare at the photo, at those black X’s that turned innocent people into targets.
A car door slammed nearby. The sound hit me like a gunshot. An elderly woman walked past, giving me a concerned look. I must have looked deranged, standing frozen beside my car, staring at a piece of paper like it contained my death sentence.
Which, in a way, it did.
Seventeen days. That’s all the peace I’d been allowed. Seventeen days of pretending I could have a life. Of having my little cabin I’d come to think of as home. Of letting myself imagine a future that consisted of more than just running, hiding, looking over my shoulder.
The photo crumpled in my fist, the sound sharp in the quiet lot. The cake ingredients in my trunk felt like artifacts from another life—one where I was just a woman planning a surprise for a man she cared about. Where birthdays were celebrated and dinners were shared and people weren’t marked for destruction because of proximity to me.
He’d found me. Despite the cash-only jobs. Despite destroying any electronic trail. Despite choosing a town Todd had only mentioned once in passing years ago, so briefly I’d almost forgotten it myself.
The stalker had found me, and this time, he’d marked the people around me.
The message couldn’t be clearer:I can reach them. I will hurt them. Because of you.
I stood there in the grocery store parking lot, the crumpled photo burning in my closed fist, its weight heavier than anything I’d ever carried. The mountains that had felt protective moments ago now loomed like prison walls. The peaceful town that had promised safety now felt like a carefully laid trap.
I had to leave. I had to get out.
I wouldn’t even go back to Pawsitive Connections. I could go right from here. I crumpled the paper further. Damn it, I had left a lot of my money there. My stuff. I needed it.
Jet.
A sob escaped me at the thought. I had to at least say goodbye to him. One more hug. One more time to bury my face in his fur.
I searched every inch of the car for any sort of tracking device but didn’t find one. I got in and pulled out of the parking lot in the opposite direction of Pawsitive, my eyes glued on the rearview mirror. Nothing.
I drove all the way to the next town and went inside a diner, hiding in a corner booth where I could see any cars coming in or out. I stayed there for three hours, sipping on a single cup of coffee long after it went cold.
I wasn’t being followed.
I touched the scar at the back of my neck. Not being followed didn’t change anything. I still had to leave, but maybe I could give Beckett his birthday dinner. Hold it together long enough to show him how thankful I was to have met him. To have loved him.
I couldn’t tell him the truth. The truth would get him killed. I had no doubt in my mind.
But I could at least say goodbye in my own way, even if he didn’t know that was what it was.
