I carry her upstairs to bed.
And she sleeps through the night.
Chapter 46
Brooke
We found the party before we ever set foot back in Oregon.
Travis worked through the Collective databases, routing everything through a VPN chain so long it made my head hurt. He pulled vendor contracts, encrypted invites, and travel manifests disguised as charity coordination.
Elliot is hosting a private event in Portland.
Grant is on the confirmed list.
So is Sophie.
Knox is dead. Kristie is dead. They know that. They know someone has taken them out. If they have any survival instinct at all, they should assume we are coming.
“They’re either setting a trap,” Travis explains over the call, “or they’re so arrogant they think you won’t come back here after everything that happened.”
Seth leaned back in his seat. “Well they’re fucking wrong.”
The three of us drive down.
Beau handles the wheel for most of the trip while Seth and I sit in the back. The highway cuts through miles of forest and wet asphalt, the sky hanging low and gray above the road. Travis stayed behind at the Washington house with Luna and Krueger so someone could keep eyes on the network and warn us if anything shifts.
“You three get caught,” Travis says, “I will absolutely deny knowing you.”
“You will absolutely go down as our accomplice,” Beau replies.
“Yeah,” Travis admits. “So don’t get caught.”
The closer we get to Oregon, the tighter my chest feels. This is where everything starts unraveling. The manor. The victims. The bodies.
If Elliot is arrogant enough to host a party after all of that, he either believes we are dead or believes he is untouchable.
Neither of those things is true.
We roll into the outskirts of Portland just after dark. We check into a seedy motel on the edge of town. The carpet feels damp under my shoes. The air smells like old cigarettes and cheap cleaner.
Nobody comes looking for us here. That's the only comforting part.
The next day we locate Sophie.
That afternoon, Sophie walks out of the hotel with a driver escorting her to the curb. A black SUV idles at the front entrance, polished and spotless, sitting like a prop in front of the revolving doors.
She wears oversized sunglasses and walks down the steps with the slow confidence of someone who believes nothing bad can ever happen to her.
Every part of that ease raises the tension in my chest.
The SUV pulls away from the hotel and drifts toward the boutique district, stopping in front of a shop with dark windows and a gold logo on the glass. The store looks high-end, with tailored mannequins in the front and frosted glass hiding the back rooms.
We sit in the car across the street and watch the entrance through the windshield. Traffic moves around us, horns sound here and there, and an occasional siren passes in the distance that has nothing to do with us.
She spends almost forty minutes inside the boutique. I picture her in front of a bright mirror, turning side to side, smoothing the fabric down over her hips, maybe laughing with a stylist, acting like she is not a sadistic murderous bitch.
Our car idles between a delivery van and a dark sedan, the engine humming low enough to blend with the background noise of passing traffic. Sophie’s SUV remains parked directly outside the boutique entrance in the alleyway.The engine runs as the driver opens the door and steps out, lifting his phone to check the screen before bringing it to his ear.
