Two men stood beside it. Military posture. Nondescript clothes. Dangerous in all the ways professionals were dangerous.
The shorter, angular one spotted Vivian and Mara and immediately opened the back door.
A voice crackled on his radio: “Go. Now.”
Maddox.
Not here physically. But orchestrating the extraction.
Vivian dove inside with Mara. The SUV peeled away, tires slicing water off the pavement.
She kissed the top of Mara’s wet hair before she could stop herself.
“You’re safe,” she whispered. A lie. A hope.
The SUV veered off the main road onto a rutted dirt path sloping toward the river. At the end of it, half-hidden by the cliff’s shoulder, a small fishing boat rocked in the lee.
Two men on the dock waved them forward—prearranged timing, unmistakably Maddox’s.
The moment the SUV stopped, hands pulled Vivian and Mara toward the boat.
Wind roared. Waves slapped the hull. Diesel stung her nose.
Vivian kept seeing Blake’s final, crooked smile—We could’ve been good together—a spark in the storm, impossible to extinguish.
The boat shoved off. The cliff swallowed sight of the city behind them. A lantern swung violently above the deck as they cut across the river toward the opposite bank.
Only when they touched gravel on the far shore did she see him.
Maddox stood waiting, coat soaked, collar high against the wind. A man holding news he didn’t want to deliver.
Vivian stepped off the boat, boots sinking in mud. She held Mara close as she approached him.
“Tell me the truth,” she said, voice breaking. “Are you dirty? What is all this?”
Maddox shook his head slowly. “It’s complicated. And we don’t have much time.”
She swallowed. “Is Blake alive?”
Hope pushed into her throat, sharp and foolish and necessary.
Maddox didn’t look away.
“We swept the pier,” he said quietly. “Breakwater. Rocks. The drift. We searched every point we could reach.”
Vivian’s heartbeat fluttered painfully.
“And?”
“No body,” he said. “No blood. No clothing. Nothing.”
For a moment, the rain seemed to fall slower, each drop a ticking second.
“So he could be alive,” she whispered.
“He could be swept out to sea,” Maddox countered. “No confirmation either way.”
Butno confirmationwas enough to turn despair into something fierce.
