Page 33 of Beckett (Warrior Security #2)

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, and eventually 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.

I knew what was coming.

“He… He… He…held it against the back of my neck while he counted to ten. Slowly. I could hear my skin sizzling. The pain was—” She broke off, shaking her head. “Afterward, he leaned close and said ‘Now you’re marked. An eye for an eye, bitch. You’ll never be free.’”

She pulled down her collar.

The scar was deliberate brutality. Raised, puckered tissue formed a pattern—not random but intentional. A brand. A claim of ownership burned into vulnerable flesh.

Silence detonated in the room. Even the electronics seemed to stop humming.

Travis had gone corpse-pale on the screen, his mouth slightly open in horror.

Coop’s hands had formed fists that could shatter bone, the tendons in his forearms standing out like cables.

Aiden had become perfectly, terrifyingly still—the stillness that preceded violence.

His breathing had stopped entirely, chest frozen mid-inhale.

Hunter’s scarred fingers had white-knuckled around his stylus until it snapped with a sharp crack that made everyone flinch.

But I—I was coming apart at the molecular level.

This woman had been tortured. Marked like property. Hunted like prey for over a year. And she’d endured it alone, protecting others even as she ran.

Every time she’d stopped my hand from her neck. Every flinch when I’d moved too fast. Every careful distance she’d maintained. Not rejection—survival. She’d been hiding this grotesque violation, while I’d been irritated by her secrecy.

“Jesus Christ, Audra.” The words ripped from my throat, raw and bleeding.

Her eyes stayed open but unfocused, staring at something beyond the conference room walls.

Her breathing went shallow, barely there.

She’d retreated so far inside herself that I wasn’t sure she even knew where she was anymore.

Complete dissociation—I’d seen it in soldiers after the worst missions, in victims after the worst violations.

Hunter caught my eye, already rising from his chair. “We’ll give you some time.”

“Travis, we’ll check in later,” Coop said quietly, reaching over to close the laptop. The screen went dark.

Aiden stood without a word, his massive frame moving toward the door with surprising gentleness. Hunter paused, his hand on my shoulder for just a moment—solidarity, understanding, permission to handle this however I needed to.

Then they were gone, the door clicking shut behind them with careful precision.

The silence that followed was deafening. Audra hadn’t moved, hadn’t even blinked. She sat frozen in her chair, lost in whatever hell her mind had taken her to. Completely alone with her terror, no comfort even from an animal who loved her.

I moved slowly, deliberately, not wanting to startle her further. As I lifted her from the chair, she was rigid, unyielding, like her body had forgotten how to be human. I sat down in her seat and settled her on my lap, arranging her carefully against my chest.

For a long time, nothing changed. She stayed frozen, barely breathing, a statue made of trauma and enervation.

Then the dam broke.

The sobs came from somewhere so deep I wasn’t sure her body could contain them.

Great, wrenching sounds that shook her entire frame as thirteen months of terror poured out.

Pure, primal fear given voice. The kind of crying that came from being hunted, tortured, completely alone with no one to turn to.

Her whole body convulsed with the force of it, months of suppressed panic finally finding release.

I held her through wave after wave of it, feeling her tears soak through my shirt, hot and endless. Her fingers clutched at me like I was the only solid thing in a world that had turned liquid.

Minutes passed. Maybe ten, maybe twenty. Time meant nothing.

Then, gradually, something shifted. The sobs didn’t stop, but their quality changed. Deeper somehow. Less about fear and more about…loss. The way her brother’s name came out between gasps—“Todd”—barely audible but unmistakable.

That’s when I understood. She was finally mourning Todd.

She’d been running so hard, surviving minute by minute, that she’d never had the chance to grieve her brother properly.

Never had the safety to fall apart over losing the one person who’d always protected her.

Now, with someone else finally holding her up, eighteen months of suppressed grief came crashing down on top of everything else.

I’d hold her like this for hours if she needed it. Days. However long it took for her to empty out all this poison she’d been carrying alone.

The world narrowed to just this—her shaking body, her broken sobs, the sound of grief and terror finally finding release.