Cole’s fingers paused over his tablet. He looked up, but knew better than to ask questions beyond the scope of his duties.
“I’ll check the database.” He pulled up the ledger. “1922... no. Not conquered. There’s one logged encounter—” He scrolled. “Peter Pangbourne, approximately thirty minutes ago. Contact was made, but the encounter ended without completion. She escaped.”
Escaped.
The word loosened a knot of tension in Jack’s chest.
“Breached, then,” he asked, keeping his voice neutral, “but not taken?”
“Correct. She’s still in play.” Cole studied him for a moment longer than necessary. “Shall I flag her feed for priority monitoring?”
“No.” The word came too quickly. Jack forced his shoulders to relax. “Standard protocols. I was simply reviewing…progress.”
“Of course.” Cole tucked the tablet under his arm. “If there’s nothing else, I’ll see to the extraction as soon as I finish my sweep of the family wing.”
Jack nodded. “Give Ms. Volkov my regards.”
Cole’s blank expression slipped, but he quickly recovered, deliberately choosing not to acknowledge Jack’s comment about the Volkov’s sister. It was a dick move, but Jack’s nature insisted he remind the man of his upper hand. Insurance that Cole didn’t go digging into 1922.
“Thank you, Cole. That’s all.”
“Yes, sir.” The security officer withdrew, the door clicking shut behind him.
Jack reached for his phone.
He scrolled through camera logs, searching for feeds from the last hour until he found what he was looking for.
Her.
Pausing the moment she looked up at his balcony, he zoomed in on her face. Her mask was pushed up like a headband, her face fully exposed. Blonde hair fell in a tangle to her shoulders, studded with twigs and small leaves from whatever hedge she’d crawled through.
The feed showed a closer angle, catching the details he’d missed. Her feet were wrapped in strips of pale fabric—silk torn from something. Her arms were streaked with dirt, or maybe blood. The beaded hem of her gown was stained in mud, and God knew what else.
His heartbeat remained steady, even as it pounded heavier.
She looked like a wild thing. A creature of the forest, not one who had just danced the tango in a ballroom. All that careful grooming undone, all that manufactured elegance stripped away to reveal raw vulnerability underneath. And still, she was somehow beautiful.
He rewound the footage, watching her emerge from the shadows near the veranda and tracking her journey backwards. The moment her gaze found his balcony—found him—something shifted in her face.
Even on the grainy footage with only the moonlight illuminating her face, he could see it. The way she stilled. Fear and then…courage.
The way her chin lifted, not in defiance but in recognition. That was the moment she truly saw him.
Not another hunter, or a stranger in an emerald jacket. Something else. Something every other person missed. She saw past the mask and found something human and vulnerable, perhaps a reflection of herself.
He zoomed in on her face, looking past the smears of makeup until the woman underneath surfaced. He was searching the applicant. The girl who had the courage to submit an essay.
“It’s you.” He remembered her now. Recognized her from the government IDs they sent with the files.
He remembered those weary eyes. Not tired from a lack of sleep alone, but exhausted from years of struggle. She had the eyes of a person who refused to give up—regardless of the odds stacked against them.
Her essay gutted him. He had read it three times, the words still seared into his memory.
‘It would be a luxury if, for just one day, I could breathe air that doesn’t smell of hunger…’ Jack knew that air. Had choked on it for years.
He’d chosen her for those words. He understood them. God, did he understand.
Her name escaped him. But he’d paused the first time he read it. It was from another era, vintage, and dated. Graceful and feminine. Classical but followed by something awful like Mudd or Crick. He remembered thinking how much one name contrasted with the other.
