“Jack,” she said, stepping closer, lowering her voice, “six people were injured today. People who had nothing to do with Eleanor. This doesn’t stop unless we stop it.”
He searched her face, hating that he recognized the resolve there. The same resolve that had once made her walk into cold case archives alone at midnight. The same resolve that had always put truth before comfort, justice before safety.
“Then I’m coming,” he said.
Chen started to object, but Jack cut her off. “I won’t be useful sitting in a chair listening to updates while Annie faces the person who’s been orchestrating this. I know these people. I know how they think. And if anything goes wrong, you’re not going to be able to stop me from acting, anyway.”
Chen’s jaw tightened as she looked between them, reading what neither of them said aloud.
“Fine,” she said finally. “But you follow the operation plan. Exactly. No independent moves. No trying to protect each other at the expense of the mission.”
“Agreed,” Annie said.
Jack nodded.
As Chen began issuing orders and the room shifted into coordinated motion, Jack found his thoughts drifting—not to tactics, not to weapons or exits, but to a woman who had sat on a stone bench nearly a century ago, pregnant and afraid, and still chosen to hide the truth.
Eleanor Blackwood had known the cost.
She had paid it anyway.
And now the echo of that choice had reached them.
Jack closed his eyes briefly, anchoring himself to the weight of what they were about to do. Whatever waited on the other side of this operation, he knew one thing with clarity that cut through pain and fear alike.
They were done running.
And he would stand between Annie and whatever came next, whether it was justice—or the price Eleanor had paid to preserve it.
***
Jack gritted his teeth as the federal agents helped him transfer from the hospital bed to a wheelchair, every careful movement sending fresh waves of pain through his injured shoulder. The wound throbbed with a deep, grinding heat that radiated down his arm and into his chest, a reminder that his body had not caught up with the urgency of the situation. The surgeon had been clear—he needed rest, immobility, time. What he was being prepared for now offered none of those things.
But there was no scenario in which he stayed behind while Annie Whitaker walked into danger alone.
“Detective, you don’t have to do this,” Agent Chen said as one of her agents adjusted the sling, supporting his arm. “We can handle the operation without you.”
Jack forced himself to breathe through the pain before answering. “With respect, Agent Chen, you don’t know these people the way I do. I’ve been inside their patterns for days now. I’ve watched how they move, how they escalate, how they calculate risk.” He lifted his eyes to hers. “And I know Annie. I know exactly what she’s willing to walk into if she believes it’s the right thing to do.”
Chen studied him for a moment, as if weighing the cost of arguing against the reality in his voice.
The evacuation route took them through service corridors and freight elevators, far from the public wings of the hospital. Even so, Jack caught fractured glimpses of the chaos they were leaving behind. Armed hospital security clustered at corridor intersections. Gurneys were being rushed through side halls. A nurse stood pressed against a wall, one hand shaking as she spoke urgently into a phone. This was no longer a containment. It was a crisis.
“How many?” Jack asked quietly as they reached the parking garage.
“Six confirmed injured so far,” Chen replied. “Three security guards, two nurses, one physician who was caught between floors.”
Jack closed his eyes briefly. Six people whose only mistake had been showing up to work. Six lives pulled into violence because a family had spent a century protecting a lie.
They helped him into the back of an unmarked federal SUV, the seat cool and firm beneath him. Chen took the front passenger seat, already speaking into her radio, absorbingupdates, issuing clipped instructions. Jack listened to the coded exchanges and felt the familiar tightening in his chest that came whenever a situation grew too large, too fast.
“Where are we taking Annie?” he asked.
“She’s already en route to the same secure location,” Chen said. “Full protection detail. She’s as safe as we can make her.”
Jack looked out the window as the vehicle pulled away from the hospital. He’d spent most of his career knowing that “safe” was a temporary condition. Determined people with resources and time could reach almost anyone. Sarah Mitchell had already proven that.
The safe house sat in a quiet suburban neighborhood, indistinguishable from the others on the street—neatly trimmed lawn, pale siding, a porch light just beginning to glow in the late afternoon. But Jack noticed the details immediately: the reinforced doorframe, the discreet exterior cameras, the way two agents casually occupied the neighboring driveway under the guise of talking beside a car.
