Chapter 188
[ 498 words ]
Chapter 188:
She walked over to the old wooden desk and pulled open the bottom drawer. Inside sat a stack of her high school yearbooks and a faded diary.
She stared at the innocent objects, and a sudden, violent wave of absurdity washed over her.
Less than a year ago, her biggest worry had been passing her nursing exams. Now she was a former CIA operative, legally bound to a billionaire black-ops commander, hiding from assassins, and terrified that she was about to become a widow.
Widow.
𝗔𝗱𝗱𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗴𝗮𝗹𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹𝘀.𝗰𝗼𝗺
The word exploded in her mind like a flashbang grenade.
Her lungs seized. The air seemed to be sucked out of the room.
Caroline spun around and dropped to her knees beside the duffel bag. Her hands shook so violently she could barely work the zipper. She ripped the bag open, dug past her clothes, and pulled out the heavy black military satellite phone.
Jarrod had explicitly told her he was going dark. He had ordered her not to expect contact.
But the suffocating panic in her chest had completely overridden her logic.
She pressed her trembling thumb against the power button. The screen lit up, casting a harsh, sickly green glow across her pale face.
She took a ragged breath and typed in the six-digit emergency override code Jarrod had programmed into the device — a direct line to his personal comms unit.
She pressed the phone hard against her ear. Her heart hammered against her ribs, beating so fast it physically hurt. She closed her eyes, praying to hear his deep, angry voice cursing her for breaking protocol.
She waited.
There was no ringing. There was no automated voicemail.
Instead, a continuous, flat, horrifying wall of electronic static hissed through the speaker.
Caroline’s blood ran ice cold.
As a former intelligence operative, she knew exactly what that specific frequency of static meant. It wasn’t a bad signal — it meant the receiving terminal on the other end had been completely destroyed, or its power source had been violently severed.
He was offline. Completely.
The heavy phone slipped from her numb fingers and hit the carpet with a dull thud.
Caroline collapsed forward, burying her face in her hands.
The thick, defensive walls she had built around her heart for months finally, catastrophically shattered.
A ragged, agonizing sob threatened to rip from her throat. She clamped a hand over her mouth, swallowing the sound, turning it into a silent, violent shudder. Even in her grief, the instinct to conceal her vulnerability in hostile territory was absolute. She could not let her parents hear her. If they suspected Jarrod was compromised, they would panic and alert his enemies.
The tears came fast and hot, burning her cheeks. She cried for the loss of her normal life, she cried for the betrayal of her parents, but mostly, she cried because she realized the terrifying truth.
She loved him.
She hated his arrogance, she hated his control, but he was the only person in the world who saw the real her and didn’t run away. He was her anchor. And now he might be dead.
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