CHAPTER 67 #3
I did.
The phone vibrated twice more.
Then stopped.
For nearly an hour, no one mentioned the article.
We talked about the café, the students Marina had hired, and the crib Leo still insisted would survive anything short of a structural collapse.
Jameson corrected him.
Leo immediately regretted reopening the subject.
Mama brought out peaches from a neighboring farm. Leo followed with a bottle of something homemade and poured it for everyone except me.
I objected on principle.
Jameson objected to my objection on medical grounds.
Mama gave me peach juice in a wineglass so I would stop complaining.
It worked better than it should have.
By the time we left, the moon had risen above the olive trees.
My phone remained facedown in my bag.
***
The cottage was dark when we reached it.
Jameson unlocked the door, waited for me to enter, then checked the road one final time before following.
I lit the lamp near the kitchen.
The room looked exactly as we had left it.
Two cups near the sink.
My notebook beside the window.
The crib against the bedroom wall, structurally prepared for disasters no infant should ever encounter.
Home.
The word still startled me sometimes.
Jameson locked the door.
I set my bag on the table.
The phone inside it vibrated again.
Neither of us moved toward it.
His gaze moved down my body.
The dress had tightened across my stomach in the last week, the fabric pulling enough that I had spent most of dinner adjusting it every time I stood.
His attention lingered there.
Then rose slowly.
Heat moved beneath my skin.
I leaned into him.
His mouth met mine slowly.
No urgency.
No door we might have to run through.
No one bleeding in another room.
His other hand settled over our daughter as he kissed me, and the tenderness of it broke something open beneath my ribs.
I curled my fingers into his shirt.
He kissed me again.
Deeper this time.
I began unfastening his buttons.
“We should probably discuss the international consequences of what we did today,” he murmured against my mouth.
“Tomorrow.”
“The initial response is moving faster than projected,” he said.
“Tomorrow.”
“There are at least three variables I don’t like,” he said.
I pulled his shirt free of his trousers. “Jameson.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Take me to bed.”
***
A sound pulled me out of sleep.
Not loud.
A short electronic pulse.
Then another.
I opened my eyes.
The bedroom was dark except for the strip of moonlight between the shutters.
Jameson was already awake.
He sat up beside me, every trace of sleep gone before I understood what I had heard.
The pulse came again from the other room.
Not my phone.
The secured terminal.
Jameson left the bed.
I pushed myself upright and reached for the sheet. “What time is it?”
“Three forty-one,” he said.
“Please tell me the world had the decency to end during business hours somewhere.”
He pulled on his shorts and crossed the room.
I found his shirt on the floor, dragged it over my shoulders, and followed.
The terminal sat inside the cabinet Jameson had built beneath the kitchen counter after arriving in Greece. No external signal reached it unless he opened a narrow encrypted channel manually.
The screen was already lit.
A new message waited in the corner.
The sender field contained no name.
It didn’t need one.
Rook’s channel carried a narrow geometric mark beside the timestamp.
Jameson opened it.
A link appeared without explanation.
He selected it.
The article loaded beneath a breaking-news banner.
FORMER MI6 OFFICIAL GRAHAM WHITAKER FOUND DEAD IN LONDON RESIDENCE.
The room went quiet.
I read the headline again, but the words did not change.
The report was brief. Police had found him earlier that evening after a request for a welfare check. No cause of death had been released. Authorities were not commenting on whether his death had any connection to the investigation published that morning.
Jameson did not move.
“Jameson.”
His eyes remained on the screen.
I stepped closer. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
The answer came quietly, without the precision he usually reached for.
I rested my hand against his shoulder.
Before either of us could say anything else, another message appeared beneath the link.
SERPENS IS EMPTYING.
Jameson’s attention narrowed.
A second line followed.
STAFF ARE LEAVING. VEHICLES HAVE TAKEN THREE DIFFERENT ROUTES. INTERNAL SYSTEMS ARE SHUTTING DOWN.
I leaned closer.
“Because of the article?”
“Yes,” he said.
The cursor blinked.
Then Rook sent one final message.
I’M GOING IN. I’LL CONTACT YOU WHEN I KNOW WHAT THEY LEFT BEHIND.
Jameson reread it.
“She shouldn’t go alone,” I said.
“No,” he said.
“Are you going to stop her?”
His attention stayed on the message. “I don’t think anyone stops Rook.”
Less than eighteen hours earlier, Whitaker had still been a man the article might expose, Serpens had been operating behind locked doors, and the people inside it still believed the truth could be contained.
Now Whitaker was dead.
Serpens was emptying.
And Rook was walking into whatever they had abandoned.