CHAPTER 53 #2
“What...” I started.
A crack split through the phone speaker.
Jameson’s body jerked hard against the restraints.
Red bloomed across his upper chest.
He made a sound I’d never heard from him before, a raw, broken burst of pain ripped out of him before he could swallow it down.
“No!” The scream ripped through my throat hard enough to hurt.
The gun nearly slipped from my hand. My knees almost went with it.
My shoulder hit the wall, and I braced there, still watching Jameson’s blood spread across a screen I couldn’t reach.
Whitaker lowered the phone and slipped it back into his coat like it hadn’t just ripped my heart in half.
I stared at the space where the screen had been. My lungs refused to expand. My ears rang. My chest burned.
My chest hitched once, then again, panic tearing up my throat before I could swallow it down.
“Did you kill him?”
Whitaker watched me.
“Did you kill him?” I said again, louder this time. “Did you just fucking kill him?”
“No,” he said. “Not yet.”
My stomach dropped.
“I needed you to understand how serious I am,” he said.
“You shot him.” My voice scraped raw, too small for what he’d done.
“I had him shot,” he said.
A sound broke out of me. Not a laugh. Not a sob. Something worse. “He went to you.”
Whitaker’s expression didn’t change.
I didn’t know if that was the right word.
Trust felt too declarative.
But Jameson had called him. He had left me in that house and gone toward London because Graham Whitaker was someone he valued enough to do so.
Maybe not a friend.
But not this.
A bridge back to a life he hated but still understood.
Whatever Whitaker was, Jameson had believed he was safer than the alternatives.
And he had been wrong.
“He called you,” I said. “He went to meet you.”
For the first time, Whitaker looked almost tired.
“He made his choice when he cut us loose after killing the op,” he said, low enough that it barely sounded meant for me.
Then his face shut again. “And he made it again when he chose you.”
My blood went cold. “What does that mean?”
“It means Mercer was supposed to come back to us,” he said.
I stared at him.
“We realized Reinhardt was investigating,” Whitaker said. “Once he put the right word back into the world, we let the trail remain visible long enough for Mercer to see it. Enough for him to understand what was waking up and come back into the fold.”
Matt. Oh my God.
“Not chase you across Europe,” Whitaker said. “Not turn himself into your shield. Not start pulling at threads in the architecture he was meant to recognize and follow back to us.”
My stomach twisted.
“We wanted the architect to remember what he built,” Whitaker said. “And to understand it was operating again.”
“And instead he found me.”
Whitaker’s eyes stayed flat. “Instead he chose you. So now it’s time to remove you from the equation.”
He took one slow step closer. “This is your last chance. Take what I’ve offered and leave.”
My fingers tightened again around the pistol.
“Because if you don’t, I won’t just kill you,” he said. “I’ll kill him for the trouble.”
The gun stayed up.
My hands didn’t shake.
That was the worst part.
Some part of me was still trying to fight. Still trying to make this a problem I could shoot my way out of.
But Jameson was bleeding somewhere I couldn’t reach.
And Whitaker knew it.
Something in me broke anyway.
“I’ll leave.”
It didn’t even sound like me.
Whitaker didn’t smile. Didn’t nod. Just acknowledged it like it was inevitable.
“Good choice. Smart woman.” He turned away. “And in return, he keeps breathing. He doesn’t pay the price for your refusal... again.”
“I need time,” I managed.
Whitaker glanced back, one brow lifting.
“To pack,” I said. “I can’t disappear with nothing.”
His gaze moved briefly toward the bags in the kitchen before returning to me. “Take what you need.”
“How long do I have?”
“You leave today,” Whitaker said.
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“No.” His voice remained calm. “It wasn’t.”
He moved toward the door, then stopped with his hand on the knob. “I’ll come back to make sure you’re gone.”
My stomach tightened. “When?”
“You don’t need to know,” Whitaker said.
The answer was deliberate. Another way to make sure I never felt safe enough to hesitate.
Whitaker’s eyes held mine, cold and final. “If I return and find you here, if you try to contact Mercer, or if you give me any reason to believe you haven’t followed my instructions, he’ll pay for it.”
“Again,” he added.
Then he opened the door and stepped outside, leaving me alone with the quiet click of the latch.
I waited until I couldn’t hear his footsteps anymore.
Then I collapsed in the bathroom and threw up everything I hadn’t eaten.
When I finally stood, it felt like moving underwater.
Think.
I braced both hands on the sink and stared at myself in the mirror.
Think.
There had to be a way out. There was always a way out. A door. A window. A weak point. A timing issue. A blind spot. Something.
I could shoot Whitaker the second I stepped outside.
No.
My fingers curled against the porcelain.
No, because Whitaker wasn’t the whole threat. He was just the man standing closest.
Jameson was somewhere else. Bound. Bleeding. Breathing because someone had decided, for now, to let him.
And if I hesitated, they would take that away.
If I fought from here, they would kill him.
If I made Whitaker doubt me, they would kill him.
If I tried to turn this into one more problem I could claw my way through on instinct, they would kill him, and then they would kill me too.
The thought should have ended there.
It didn’t.
My hand slipped lower, hovering over my stomach before I could stop it.
I froze.
A future I hadn’t confirmed.
A future I had no proof of.
Not real proof.
Just the fact that I should have bled when the active pills stopped.
And I hadn’t.
I’d told myself it was stress. Running. Fear. Bad sleep. Too much adrenaline and not enough food. A body could miss a step under pressure. Mine had every reason to.
But then I found out the new pills were wrong.
Nearly two more weeks of swallowing something I thought was keeping one part of my life from detonating.
And still nothing.
No blood.
No easy way to pretend fate hadn’t reached into the middle of this mess and made a decision for us.
I dragged in a breath that scraped the whole way down.
There was nothing I could do from this house except get him hurt.
So I had to leave.
Packing became mechanical.
Clothes. Gear. The gun. Every bag in the house.
Mine.
His.
If Whitaker returned, I didn’t want him finding anything he could use against Jameson. No equipment. No documents. No proof of where we had been or what Jameson had carried with him.
I would clear the house and figure out what to do with everything once I was far enough away.
I went into the bedroom for my bag, but his larger one was closer.
I stopped in front of it like proximity alone had teeth.
For one second, I just stared at the zipper. Then I crouched and opened it before I could talk myself out of it.
His things were folded with the same quiet precision he put into everything.
Shirts stacked neatly. Socks tucked into corners.
A spare pair of glasses in a hard case. The kind of order that made my chest ache because even running for his life, Jameson still packed like chaos was something he could insult into behaving.
I reached for one of his shirts.
Then another.
The fabric was soft beneath my fingers, worn in the places his body had made familiar. I lifted the first one to my face before I could stop myself.