Page 72 of Beckett
“Psych warfare,” Coop spat the words. His usual easy humor had evaporated completely, leaving something hard and dangerous in its place.
“The police suggested I’d forgotten how I’d arranged things. Stress, they said. Especially when they found out I’d had a death in the family recently.” Bitterness seeped through. “But I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t live there anymore. So I moved across the city. New job. Thought I could disappear.”
“How long until he tracked you down?” Travis’s fingers flew across an unseen keyboard, the rapid-fire clicking like distant gunfire through the speakers.
“Four weeks. Maybe five. Then the pictures resumed. But this time—” She paused, gathering herself. “This time, he attacked me.”
My hand clenched on her shoulder before I forced it to relax. Somewhere in the building, the HVAC system kicked on with a low rumble.
“I was leaving work one evening. It was winter, already dark by five thirty. The parking garage was mostly empty, just a few cars on my level. My footsteps echoed.” She stopped, obviously recalling the fear, then forced herself to start again. “Then I heard other footsteps matching mine. I walked faster. They sped up. I started running for my car, and that’s when he shoved me from behind—hard. I hit the concrete face first, slid about three feet. The impact tore open my cheek and my palms. There was blood everywhere.”
Her fingertips ghosted across her cheekbone. “He grabbed my hair, yanked my head back, and whispered ‘an eye for an eye’ right in my ear. His breath was hot. Then he was gone. By the time security arrived, there was just me and my blood on the concrete.”
The rage that flooded my system was absolute zero—so cold it burned. Someone had touched her. Hurt her. And she’d faced it alone.
“You went back to the police after that?” Hunter’s tone had gone lethal. His scarred fingers drummed once against the table—a sharp, staccato sound that made everyone except Aiden tense.
She nodded. “When they pulled my file, there was a note about my history of making things up, seeking attention. So they didn’t believe me. The cameras from the garage didn’t show anything either.”
“The cameras could’ve been hacked. Hell, even the note in police files could’ve been placed there by the stalker,” Travis said instantly. “Digital discreditation. This guy’s got skills.”
Smart. Methodical. Dangerous. The profile was forming—someone with technical capability and psychological sophistication.
“I left Seattle that night.”
She continued, detailing six months of nomadic terror. Small towns, cash jobs, constant vigilance. The pictures eventually showed up wherever she went. Brief respites shattered by renewed hunting.
“In one town, I befriended another waitress. Single mom, good person. Then one night, she got mugged leaving work.” Audra pressed her hands against her eyes. “The attacker said an eye for an eye as he broke her nose. Obviously, that was a message for me.”
“Still not your fault.” Coop’s voice carried command authority. His chair legs scraped against the floor as he shifted, barely controlled energy looking for an outlet.
“Tell that to her medical bills.” Self-loathing dripped from Audra’s every word. Her arms wrapped around herself, seeking comfort that wasn’t there. “I disappeared that night.”
She described another incident a couple weeks later, a car attempting vehicular homicide—a dark sedan accelerating toward her on an empty street, engine roaring, forcing her to throw herself into a drainage ditch. Her ankle had twisted, jeans torn, hands bleeding from the gravel. The car had stopped fifty feet past, idled for thirty seconds like the driver was considering reversing to finish the job, then drove away slowly.
More running. More terror. Isolation so complete it made my chest ache. She sold her car and got the junker she owned now, stopped staying at motels because there was a digital record, andeventually started taking jobs that paid cash, thinking that was how the stalker was finding her.
“Then three months ago was…” She stopped, her hand moving to the back of her neck—that protective gesture I’d noticed dozens of times. “That’s when…when…”
Whatever was coming wasn’t going to be pretty. I wanted to stop the entire discussion, but that wouldn’t help anything.
“I was in a small town in Oregon. I’d lasted almost a month—longer than anywhere. Nothing for weeks. I got comfortable. Stupid. Started to think maybe I could stay, build something like a life again.”
My gut clenched. Similar to how she’d been starting to feel here.
“I was working the closing shift at a diner. It was almost midnight when I finally got to leave.” Her voice had gone hollow, mechanical, like she was reading from a police report she’d memorized. “The parking lot was empty except for my car, lit by just one streetlight that kept flickering. I was maybe ten feet from my car when someone grabbed me from behind.”
She stopped, her breathing shallow and rapid. Her fingers dug into her own arms, leaving white marks where she gripped too hard.
“He had big hands, strong—much stronger than me. He dragged me into the alley beside the building.” Her whole body had started to tremble, fine tremors that made the conference table vibrate slightly where her arms rested on it. “I fought. I scratched at his arms, kicked, tried to scream, but he had his hand over my mouth. Then he threw me against the brick wall so hard it knocked the wind out of me.”
She swallowed convulsively. The conference room was completely silent except for her labored breathing and the soft whir of Travis’s computers through the speaker.
“He had a knife. Military tactical, about six inches. He held it in front of my face first, made sure I saw it. I thought he was going to stab me.” She stopped for so long, I thought she wouldn’t continue. I’d seen her naked so many times and had never seen anything that looked like a stab wound.
“Then he pulled out a lighter—one of those torch lighter things. He heated the flat side of the knife until it glowed orange. Said…said he wanted me to remember. To carry his message forever.”
I shoved up from my chair, unable to stay still. My reflection in the window showed someone I didn’t recognize—face carved from stone, eyes flat and deadly.
