One car is missing.
My stomach drops hard enough that it feels like falling.
“No,” I breathe. “No, no, no.”
He didn’t wake me. He didn’t leave anything behind. He didn’t take his phone.
He just left.
Alone.
My hands start to shake as everything clicks into place at once, the manhunt, his face everywhere, every cop and every federal agent looking for him.
And he has walked straight into it.
“He’s going after Grant.” The certainty settles into me immediately. “By himself.”
Travis swears under his breath, and Beau drags a hand down his face, his expression tightening with a look of dread.
I stand there staring at the empty space where his car should have been, knowing exactly what this means.
Whatever restraint he had left died with his mother on that screen.
Chapter 58
Seth
Ilost track of how long I was on the road.
Time stopped meaning anything the second the screen went dark, and it never started again, because everything stayed frozen on the moment her head snapped to the side, on the sound of the gunshot tearing through everything, on the way her voice cut off mid-word.
Everything after that feels wrong.
The road stretches in front of me, endless and empty, but I don’t remember getting on it, I don’t remember passing anything, and I don’t remember making a single decision that lead me here. My hands are on the wheel, locked tight, my fingers digging in so hard they hurt, but the pain doesn't register the way it should because it gets buried under everything else pressing against me.
I feel all of it at once.
I see her every time I blink, and the image shifts between the way she looked at the end and the way she looked when she said my name, when her voice softened, when she tried to comfort me even as she knew what was coming.
My throat tightens so hard it burns, and I drag in a breath, it gets stuck in my chest like my body has forgotten how to do something as basic as breathing.
I should have been there.
The thought doesn't come quietly, it repeats over and over, crashing into everything else until it becomes the only thing that makes sense.
I should've been there.
I shouldn’t have been watching from a distance, standing in a room while a screen showed me the worst moment of my life. I should've been in thatroom with her, I should've been between her and him, and I should've killed him before it ever reached that point.
My foot presses harder on the gas, and the engine growls beneath me as the car pushes faster, but the speed does nothing to ease the pressure building inside my chest.
I hear the gunshot again, and it doesn't fade or soften, because it keeps replaying in perfect clarity, like it is still happening and will never stop happening.
I hear Grant’s voice right before it, calm and controlled in a way that makes everything worse, because there was no hesitation and no urgency.
He enjoyed it.
I want to kill him.
