Chapter 898

“Where is he?” Caroline rasped.

Dr. Reed’s expression changed.

Not confusion.

Recognition.

“He’s alive.”

The words should have helped. They didn’t.

“Where?”

“Command center.”

Caroline tried to move past her. Her knees almost gave out.

Dr. Reed caught her by the shoulders, not harshly, but with enough force to stop her. “You have hypothermia exposure, possible rib trauma, a shoulder impact, and you inhaled water. You are not walking across base on bare feet to satisfy your panic.”

“Take me to him.”

“Caroline.”

“Take me to him.”

There must have been something in her face, because Dr. Reed stopped arguing. Her mouth tightened with professional fury, but not at Caroline.

“Bell,” she called without looking away.

K.C. Bell stepped into view from the hall as if he had been carved from the darkness there. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes took in everything: the dangling IV tape, the bare feet, the shaking hands, the terror Caroline could no longer hide.

“Wheelchair,” Dr. Reed snapped. “Now.”

K.C. disappeared and returned within seconds.

Caroline hated the chair. Hated the weakness of needing it. Hated the way her body betrayed her when she tried to stand again and the floor rolled under her like water.

But she sat.

Dr. Reed wrapped another thermal blanket around her shoulders, tucked it tight, and pointed a warning finger at K.C. “Observation window only. Two minutes. If she loses color, you bring her straight back.”

“Understood.”

K.C. pushed the chair down the corridor.

The base at night was a different creature. The fluorescent lights were too bright, the halls too clean, the air too full of disinfectant and wet wool. Every turn felt endless. Every closed door looked like another place where bad news could be waiting.

Then they reached the glass wall overlooking the command center.

And she saw him.

Jarrod stood at the main screen, still in his modified dark utility jacket, his right arm locked across his torso inside the heavy medical brace. The rigid frame distorted the line of his body beneath the fabric. His splinted left hand hung useless at his side, stiff and pale in its wrap.

He was not bare-chested in moonlight. He was not folded out of his brace by some impossible miracle. He was exactly as injured as he had been before.

Alive.

Motionless.

Terrifying.

His face was carved from stone as he watched technicians scrub through ravine footage frame by frame. Beside him, a blown-up image of the damaged bypass hardware glowed on the screen.

K.C. spoke quietly into the room’s intercom. “Sir.”

Jarrod turned.

For one second, the commander vanished.

The man underneath saw her.

Something raw and devastating broke through his eyes before he locked it down. He moved toward the door, not fast, not smoothly. Every step was controlled around the brace, every movement carrying the punishment of a body that had already paid too much.

K.C. opened the command center door from the outside.

Jarrod stepped into the corridor.

Caroline tried to rise from the chair.