“I will.”
“Good.” Marcus offered his hand again. “Traci’s badge is in your car, right? In that box you never unpacked?”
“How did you?—”
“Because I know you.” Marcus’s expression was kind. “Take it out. Display it somewhere. She would want you to remember her, not hide from the memory.”
Brooks drove away with tears he’d been holding for three years finally breaking free. By the time he reached his hotel, he felt hollowed out but clean.
He returned to his hotel and called Vivienne.
She answered on the second ring. “How’s Austin?”
“Hot. Loud. Familiar in all the wrong ways.” Brooks settled into a chair by the window. “I met with Rodriguez. Submitted my resignation officially. It’s done.”
“How do you feel?”
“Lighter.” He paused. “I also saw Traci’s husband. Her family.”
“That must have been hard.”
“It was. But it needed to happen. He gave me permission to move on. To forgive myself.” Brooks’s voice roughened. “He said Traci would want me to find something worth living for.”
“And have you?”
Brooks thought about the past five weeks. The case, the town, the woman who’d challenged everything he thought he knew about truth and evidence and faith.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I have.”
Silence on the other end. Then Vivienne’s voice, soft: “When are you coming home?”
Home. Not back to Westerly Cove. Home.
“Tomorrow afternoon. Flight gets in at three.”
“I’ll pick you up at the airport.”
“You don’t have to?—”
“I want to.” Her tone was firm. “Partners, remember?”
“Partners,” Brooks agreed.
After they hung up, he sat watching the Austin skyline until the sun set. This city had been his life for fifteen years. He’d built a career here, made friends, lost people he loved. But it wasn’t his future anymore.
That night, Brooks took a box from his suitcase. Traci’s badge gleamed in the lamplight, the metal polished by her family before they’d given it to him.
He traced the badge number with his finger. 2847. Traci had been so proud of that number—her father’s old badge, passed down when he retired.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you,” Brooks whispered. “But I’m trying to honor what you taught me. Trust my instincts. Listen when people warn me. Don’t let the data blind me to the truth.”
He set the badge on the nightstand. Tomorrow he’d pack it carefully to take to Westerly Cove. Display it somewhere he’d see it every day. Not as a reminder of failure, but as a memorial to a good cop and a better friend.
His phone buzzed. Vivienne again.
Dawn says you’re not allowed to bring any Austin sadness back with you. Her words, not mine.
Brooks smiled.
