CHAPTER 28
ROXY
Two months later.
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
The cargo manifest showed the plane was delivering armoured vehicles from the United Kingdom, ahead of His Majesty the King's visit to Australia next week. Except that appearances could be deceiving. It was just a cover-up: the plane was bringing back a ghost.
The hydraulic whine of the cargo ramp had echoed through the morning air as it lowered slowly to the ground.
Roxy emerged onto the ramp, standing straight, in a black tactical suit, with gear on her shoulder.
Her face was unreadable, her features drawn but devoid of any emotion.
Within, there was nothing but a void. In the last two months, her pride and relief disappeared, and the overwhelming devastation left her without clarity.
She walked down the ramp like a lost soul, as if she were running on her last reserves of energy. She couldn't feel anything anymore. Even the breeze blowing across the tarmac was numb to her. All of this left her feeling utterly hollow.
Whoever Roxy'd been before boarding the plane two months prior had burned out somewhere in the suburbs of Jakarta.
Nothing about this mission went as planned, and for the first time since she'd been working for the Service, she truly believed she was going to die and never had the chance to see her again. Yes, the man was dead, but at what cost.
Roxy was now gripped by an indelible fear in the pit of her stomach and no longer knew where her limits lay. This was hardly surprising, given that she had always pushed the boundaries further for years now. The inevitable happened, and something inside her broke. For good.
Roxy marched on, eyes glued to the black Range Rover waiting for her on the tarmac. Since Roxanne Powell hadn't officially left Australia two months ago, there was no immigration check. She was free to go.
The driver opened the Range Rover door, and she slid into the back seat. Just as she was about to let out a loud sigh, the Service's phone vibrated with a single message on the screen.
London Operational Centre - 6:45 AM
GHOST PROTOCOL LIFTED.
Asset 45943 dismissed.
All external communications now permitted.
Asset 45943. Roxy was just a number to them. They weren't even using the persona they attributed her back in 2017.
"Destination?" the driver asked, breaking the rhythm of her thoughts. He faced Roxy and gave her an envelope with her personal phone inside—the one they'd taken during the 'Ghost Protocol.'
After a slight pause, she grabbed the envelope and said, "Belvoir Street." It was the first time she didn't give her home address after completing an assignment. Well, what it used to be her home.
That's all Roxy gave him. Receiving the message, the driver stayed quiet for the rest of the ride. As the car pulled away, she leaned her head against the seat and closed her eyes, trying to figure out the possible damages.
She knew the damage would be significant: she'd been missing for two whole months. It was a stark contrast with the other 'Ghost Protocols' she'd been involved in, which had lasted no more than two or three days top and had been much less violent.
It was the 'one'—the Mission with a capital 'M' the agents secretly wished to never be assigned.
She couldn't close her eyes because she could see the look in the eyes of the man she had killed without hesitation in Jakarta. Yes, it was an order, but it was also a question of survival: it was his life or hers.
Even so, her breaking point had been reached: don't ask her to ever kill again. She won't be able to do it.
Forty-eight hours later, she found herself with her head pressed against the glass of a British diplomatic car, and eyes fixed on the world outside. A world in which Ellen Caldwell lived.
How was she doing?
How much had Roxy destroyed her?
How guilty did she feel?
Will she be forgiven?
Questions that gave Roxy the creeps.
Roxy believed that returning to the calm yet lively side of Sydney would help her regain her bearings and return to her pre-mission state, but no. A dismal failure.
With a deep breath, she found the nerve to take her phone from the envelope, off for the last two months. Her connection to a forbidden world.
The reality Roxy'd been trying to escape hit her square in the face when her phone lit up. It was a tsunami of missed calls, unread messages, and voicemails. Name it. And each one was like a knife to the heart.
The worst part was that only two people would ever call her personal phone, and those were the names at the top of the list. She had no one to call family and no one to call a friend.
Missed Call: Charles Roberts (10)
Missed Call: Ellen Caldwell (12)
Voicemail (10)
Charles Roberts - 15/02 11:23 AM Hey, can you call me? We need to talk.
Charles Roberts - 20/02 8:15 PM Hello Roxy. I've given you a few days and breathing space, but we need to discuss what comes next. Like the house, for example. Should I be worried?
"Sadly, yes, Charles. You should be worried," Roxy barely whispered to herself. The driver didn't flinch, as he was trained to do.
Charles Roberts - 26/02 8:45 AM Hello? Did you see my last messages? The mortgage payment is coming up and I'll need your share.
Charles Roberts - 28/02 10:34 AM Thanks for the payment, but we need to talk. Where are you?
Charles Roberts - 03/03 10:34 AM You know what? I give up.
And then came Ellen's messages, ranging from apologies to incomprehension to anger. Roxy could only focus on the latest.
Ellen Caldwell – 01/03 1:35 PM Crystal clear, Roxy.
Ellen Caldwell - 01/03 1:35 PM Thanks for making it so easy to feel like a fucking idiot.
Ellen Caldwell - 01/03 1:36 PM Next time, just say you regret everything. It would've saved me two weeks of wondering.
Ellen Caldwell - 01/03 1:37 PM Don't worry. I won't make that mistake twice. Hope the silence is worth it.
Roxy read it once, then again, and again, until the words blurred. But the meaning remained razor-sharp: Ellen was done.
A powerful impulse to scream, throw an object, and break something overwhelmed her, but it left behind only deep emptiness and heavy guilt. She knew she had only herself to blame.
Why would she think she deserves forgiveness after making someone wait in the dark like she did with Ellen? She was desperate for a chance to make amends, though she understood it was undeserved.
The vehicle stopped in front of the building that housed the Airbnb after a journey that seemed like an eternity to Roxy.
The driver quickly got out of the vehicle to open the door for her, as protocol dictated.
She mustered her last bit of energy, carefully crafting an illusion of composure before him.
Besides driving her, he had to assess her and give his superiors a rundown. It didn't take long for Roxy to grasp early in her career that the Service lacked trust in everyone, including its own people. There was no room for error.
She entered the building and waited for the Range Rover to drive away before beginning her ascent up the stairs.
Each step drained her energy. More and more.
She unlocked the door to the flat, closed it immediately, and double-locked it.
She knew a breaking point was approaching soon and the dam would burst.
She lacked strength in her arms, causing her bag to fall to the floor before her legs gave way as well. Her back cushioned the fall as she leaned against the wall and then slid to the floor. The torrent of tears followed almost immediately.
Everything she had held back for the past two months, or even since the beginning of her career with the Service, came flooding back.
She had never cried like that before. Not during her training, when they had pushed her into the darkest corners of her soul. Neither after her first operation on the field, where she had had to kill a man in cold blood simply because her country wanted him dead.
But this?
This was unknown territory. It was a new form of torture she had never experienced—or inflicted on someone else. The pain associated with her attempts to forget Ellen Caldwell was unbearable.
She finally managed to find the strength to get up and remove the tactical suit she'd been wearing for the past two days.
Once naked and ashamed, she stepped into the shower.
The result was nevertheless unsatisfactory because, despite the amount of soap and shampoo she used, she did not feel any less dirty than she had felt before.
Later, Roxy sat on the couch, all curled up in her oversized sweatshirt. She held her phone and tapped it to listen to Ellen's voicemail— the one she had deliberately avoided until now.
Her voice came through the phone, and it was raw and wounded. She was barely holding back. "Roxy, please, tell me you're okay. I am freaking out right now. Did I do something wrong? I—"
Roxy couldn't hold on for more than five seconds. She put the phone face down on the coffee table and then curled herself to sleep.
***
The sun had set by the time she opened her eyes. The uninterrupted ten-hour sleep Roxy experienced was so deep it could have been easily mistaken for a coma..
She quickly threw on a coat, grabbed her keys, and headed out without knowing where she was going. One thing was clear: it wasn't an option to stay alone in this apartment without becoming crazy.
Roxy needed to reconnect with herself—or at least with Roxanne Powell and her world, whom she could no longer find.
Her body moved before her brain could catch up, and somehow, before she could realize why, her feet had led her there.
She was at the threshold of the place she used to call home, a place she'd always entered without hesitation. Standing there, she felt now unpleasantly like an impostor in her own life. Even so, she found the guts to knock, and the door opened way quicker than she could've guessed.
Right, the doorbell camera…
"Hey, Charles," she said, her voice filled with shame, sadness, and despair.