Chapter 893

“Talk to her,” the rescuer’s voice crackled through the open channel, strained and wet. “She’s fading.”

Jarrod’s voice came instantly.

“Caroline. Two fingers under the latch. Push out, then down. Do it now.”

The command cut through the black water like a hand around her spine.

She obeyed.

The latch gave.

The basket shifted upright with a violent jerk as the jammed strap released and the rescue line took the proper load. The safety officer hooked another carabiner to the side rail, locking the angle before the current could roll them again.

Caroline broke the surface with a convulsive gasp, shattering the moon’s reflection, gulping in huge, ragged mouthfuls of cold night air.

Hands caught the basket from both sides.

“Got her!” someone shouted.

The water team hauled her toward the slick stone edge, boots slipping on mud and wet gravel. A medic leaned over the basket, one hand braced on the frame, the other checking her airway.

“Thompson! Eyes on me!”

Caroline coughed hard, water burning in her throat. Her whole body shook uncontrollably.

In the command center, Jarrod watched her vital signs spike, then stabilize. His face remained carved from stone, but his breath left him in one slow, silent exhale.

K.C. Bell stood at his side, quiet and watchful.

“She’s breathing,” K.C. reported, though everyone in the room had heard the gasp over comms.

Jarrod did not answer at first.

On the screen, medics lifted Caroline from the half-submerged basket and transferred her to a rigid litter. They kept their hands on the harness webbing and under her shoulders, careful not to twist the side that had struck the tower. A thermal blanket flashed silver under the floodlights.

Her lips moved.

The medic bent closer. “Say again?”

Caroline’s voice was barely there, raw from cold and swallowed water.

“Tell him… I can swim.”

For half a second, no one in the command center breathed.

Then Jarrod’s eyes closed.

Not in weakness.

In punishment. In relief. In a grief so sharp it looked almost like anger.

When he opened them again, the commander had returned.

“Get her to the infirmary,” he said. “Full trauma protocol. Hypothermia screening. Rib series. Shoulder imaging. Neurological evaluation. And preserve every piece of that bypass hardware.”

“Yes, sir,” K.C. said.

Jarrod’s gaze stayed fixed on the screen as the litter began moving out of the ravine access point.

His ruined hands had not pulled her from the water.

His command had kept enough of the system alive for her to pull herself the last inch back from death.

And somehow, that was the only kind of rescue she might forgive.

He half-carried, half-dragged her from the water, his own movements clumsy with exhaustion. They collapsed onto a shoreline of sharp, unforgiving gravel, their bodies shuddering.

Jarrod coughed, expelling a lungful of lake water, then crawled to her side. The night wind cut through their soaked uniforms, instantly turning the thin fabric into a sheath of ice.

Hypothermia. The thought was a cold, sharp spike in his mind. It was now their most immediate and deadly enemy.