Page 94 of Beckett
Lachlan’s phone buzzed. He answered immediately, listening with the intense focus of someone receiving critical intel. “Understood. Send everything to my office, copy to Travis Hale at this number.” He hung up, turning to face us with renewed energy. “Portland PD just confirmed vehicle details. Dark blue Honda Civic, 2015 model. License plate beginning with WRX-7. They’re adding it to the national database now—every automatic plate reader in the country will flag it.”
“That’s the car.” The words emerged as barely a whisper. “Dark sedan. I never had more details than that.”
“What about associates?” Beckett asked. “Prison connections who might shelter Reggie?”
“Portland PD is running that down now,” Lachlan said. “But from what they’re telling me, Garrison was a loner even inside. His obsession with revenge apparently made him unreliable for prison politics.”
The weight that had been slowly crushing me for over a year began to lift incrementally. We knew his name. We knew his face. We knew his vehicle, his credit cards, his patterns. The ghost that had haunted me for so long finally had a form, and that form had weaknesses.
“It’s not a matter of if we catch him,” Lachlan said, meeting my eyes directly, his voice carrying the weight of absolute conviction. “It’s a matter of when. Hours, if we’re lucky. Days, at most. Especially if he maintains his current arrogance, and everything in his pattern suggests he will.”
For the first time in fourteen months, I let myself imagine what freedom might feel like. Walking without mapping escaperoutes. Sleeping through the night without jolting awake at every sound. Answering a phone without my heart rate spiking. Seeing a dark blue car and not immediately planning how to run.
The constant, crushing weight of terror that had become my normal existence—the exhaustion of perpetual vigilance, the isolation of never staying anywhere long enough to matter—all of it might finally end.
This nightmare might really be over.
Chapter 31
Beckett
Catching Reggie Garrison had ended up being anticlimactic as fuck.
That was the thought rolling through my head as I drove toward the sheriff’s station, the morning sun cutting through the windshield. Only a few hours since Travis had informed us of Reggie’s existence, and now he was in custody.
Travis had been right about Reggie’s arrogance. It had made him sloppy. Overconfident. Sure that Audra was still out there on her own, jumping at shadows, too scared to trust anyone with her story. The prick had been so certain of his power over her that he’d stopped bothering with basic precautions.
Lachlan’s call this morning had been brief, professional, but I’d heard the satisfaction underneath. Found the bastard napping in his car at a rest stop off Highway 93, a few miles out of town. Positive ID confirmed. In custody.
Just like that. No dramatic chase, no shootout, no last-minute escape. They’d walked up to his sedan while he slept offwhatever bender he’d been on and slapped on the cuffs before he’d even fully woken up.
Anticlimactic as fuck.
But anticlimactic was fine with me if it meant Audra was safe. If it meant this was all finally over and she could stop looking over her shoulder every minute of every day.
Lachlan had asked if I wanted to be there for the questioning, more out of our lifelong friendship than because I’d bring anything useful to the situation. We’d been friends since seventh grade, back when his biggest worry was whether Sarah Mitchell would dance with him at the spring formal and mine was whether I’d make the basketball team even though I was the shortest kid in our class.
The badge on his chest now didn’t change that history, and he knew I had a personal stake in this. Could tell what Audra meant to me even though I hadn’t spoken the words to my friend.
Lach wouldn’t go as far as letting me in the room with Reggie—that would compromise the case, give some defense attorney ammunition down the line. But watching through the two-way mirror, getting information in real time instead of filtered through reports later? I’d take it.
Audra hadn’t wanted to come, and that was for the best. The relief that had washed through her when I’d told her about the arrest had been something physical, visceral. Her whole body had changed, like someone had cut invisible strings that had been holding her rigid for months. She’d sagged against the kitchen counter at her cabin, one hand pressed to her chest like she was holding her heart in place.
“He’s really arrested? Really in custody?”
“Really,” I’d confirmed, watching tears slip silently down her cheeks. Happy tears, for once. “He’s going back to jail.”
She’d have to face him eventually, at the trial. Stand up in court and tell her story, look him in the eye and refuse to be his victim anymore. But that was months away. For now, she just needed to process the fact that her nightmare had an ending.
She and Lark were doing the morning chores at Pawsitive, feeding schedules and kennel cleaning, the routine tasks that had become Audra’s anchor these past weeks. Lark had wrapped her in a fierce hug when she’d heard the news, the kind of embrace that said everything words couldn’t. I’d left them discussing plans for the fundraiser next month, Audra’s voice already steadier, carrying something I’d never heard from her before—hope.
The sheriff’s station squatted on Main Street like it had for the past fifty years, all brick and small windows, built back when architecture was more about function than form. I parked beside Lachlan’s cruiser and headed inside, nodding to Deputy Richards at the front desk.
“Sheriff’s expecting you,” she said, buzzing me through without asking for ID. Small-town benefits.
I found Lachlan in the observation room adjacent to interrogation, standing in front of the two-way mirror with his arms crossed. He looked tired—the twins were probably still keeping him and Piper up half the night, even when there wasn’t an attempted murderer running around town—but satisfied.
“Beck.” He didn’t turn from the window. “Thanks for coming.”
