We could have finished what we started. My body is screaming for it. But timing is everything, and right now, we have some soon to be dead motherfuckers to hunt.
Chapter 35
Seth
Travis tracked Knox the same way he tracks everything else, by following the smallest digital trail until it led exactly where he needed it to.
A burner phone tied to a shell company.
The shell company tied to a trust.
The trust tied to old Portland money that likes to pretend it has nothing to do with what happened in that manor.
Offshore accounts bleed into family foundations. Property records surface under alternate spellings. A name that had been scrubbed from one system shows up buried in another.
Knox thinks it is gone.
Thinks the Manor is noise that will fade if he waits long enough.
He's wrong.
It leads to a house outside Portland and a routine he assumes no one is watching.
That is all we need.
We don’t rush it.
Tonight, I train Brooke to watch people closely, to pick apart their habits, their blind spots, so she knows exactly when to strike.
We sit in the car and watch. Rain streaks the windshield in uneven sheets, warping the neon from the club sign into bleeding red and blue smears. The wipers drag back and forth in slow rhythm, never fully clearing the view.
Brooke sits in the passenger seat, hood up, seat reclined just enough to keep her face in shadow. Her eyes never leave the entrance.
She reaches into the center console and pulls out the bag of peach rings.
She opens them without looking away from the door. The plastic crinkles softly in the dark. She tosses one in her mouth and hands me one. We sharethe bag between us, the sour dust catching on our tongues while we watch a man who thinks he is untouchable step into the open like he owns the night.
Two men trail behind him, laughing at something he has said like he rehearsed it. He wears a dark coat open at the front, expensive and useless in the rain, shirt half unbuttoned like he wants to be looked at.
Brooke goes still beside me.
“That’s him,” she murmurs.
Knox pauses under the awning long enough to let someone light his cigarette.
“Look at him,” I tell her quietly.
Brooke’s eyes track every inch.
“See how he stands.”
Knox exhales smoke and turns his back to the street completely. The club door behind him. Open sidewalk in front. No check. No sweep. No glance in the glass of the parked cars.
“He doesn’t rush,” I point out. “He doesn’t look. He doesn’t think he has to.”
Brooke’s hands curl slowly against her thighs.
“He never hunted anyone,” I continue. “He had people brought to him. Delivered. Tied up. Begging. He thinks violence is something that happens on a stage.”
