********************************POV: Liz*************************** The screen flickered. Once. Twice. Then, the signal stopped. I didn’t breathe. For three days, Claire’s pulse had danced across the screen like a whisper—light, coded, steady. That small, silent heartbeat was the only thing tethering me to sanity. The only proof she was still fighting was And now it was gone. My hands were shaking before I realized I’d stood. The war room blurred—whiteboards covered in scrawled maps, mission logs, images of the villa, the signals, Claire’s face—God, her face. Then, from the far corner, Henry’s voice broke through the static buzzing in my head. “We just lost her.” No one responded. Because we all felt it. Something had happened. “Pull up the satellite feed again,” I said hoarsely, moving closer. “Zoom in on the villa—west side. That’s where she was.” My voice barely worked, but somehow, Henry understood. His fingers flew across the keyboard, pulling the latest drone visual
**************************POV:Claire ***************************** The sound of the gunshot still echoed in my ears. It wasn’t the kind that faded quickly. It hung in the air—thick, searing, final. Liam’s body hit the floor with a dull, heavy thud, folding awkwardly over itself like a marionette whose strings had just been cut. His eyes were still open. That… that was the worst part. His lips twitched, not into a smile or a grimace, but something in-between, like even in death, he wasn’t quite done speaking. But there would be no more words. No more whispers behind closed doors. No more cold hands around my wrists. No more lies. I stood frozen, back against the wall, breath lodged in my throat. Everything in me trembled—not from fear exactly, but from the release of something so long held in that I didn’t even know what it was anymore. A shadow moved beside me. Mack. He was already turning, gun still raised, eyes scanning the corners of the room like there might be more th
*****************************POV: Mack*************************** The air was thick with salt and tension. From our position along the cliffside, the villa was a cold silhouette against the black sea—its modern glass and concrete edges glowing faintly in the moonlight. It looked empty from here. Still. Quiet. But I knew better. Liam was in there. So was Claire. And this time, we weren’t guessing. I crouched low behind a ridge of jagged rock as Reeve’s voice crackled in my ear. “Signal confirmed. All comms are dark. You’ve got twenty minutes max before they switch to a backup grid.” “Copy that,” I said. “Team, move.” We split. Julian and I swept left toward the western balcony. Nora and Rowe covered the opposite flank. Our boots hit the gravel without a sound. Our breaths were tight and measured, like the sea crashing below—violent, restrained. Claire had changed the signal again. The shift in timing, the faint deviation in the frequency—it wasn’t random. It was brilliant. She’d
******************************POV: Claire************************** --- The knock came soft at first. Then louder. Steadier. The kind of knock that wasn’t really a question—it was a declaration. I opened my eyes slowly, my body half-curled beneath the ivory quilt. For a moment, I couldn’t remember where I was. The room was too still. Too quiet. Morning light spilled through gauzy curtains and settled across the polished floors like honey, warm and sticky, and too sweet. Then I heard his voice. “Claire.” Liam. “Time to wake up.” No. No, not yet. I sat up quickly, heart pounding, clutching the quilt tighter around me as if that could stop the reality from rushing in. The air smelled like roses—too many of them. Like something had died beneath the perfume. A dress was draped over the chaise at the foot of the bed. White. Floor-length. Tulle at the hem, pearls stitched into the bodice. I stared at it. He meant it. He was actually going to do it. “Claire,” he said a
POV: Mack --- The war room buzzed. Not with panic this time, but with movement. Real movement. No more waiting. No more sitting around like ghosts chasing signals in the dark. I stood over the operations table, sleeves rolled up, palms flat against the smooth metal, staring down at the newly flagged red dot flashing off the Montenegrin coast. Claire’s signal had come through again—only this time, earlier. And different. A deviation like that wasn’t a mistake. It was deliberate. She was telling us something. “Coordinate locked?” I asked without turning. “Confirmed,” Reeve said. “It’s a shift of thirty-seven minutes, just like you suspected. Same transmitter. Same frequency. But she’s altering the drop time now.” “Which means she knows we’re watching,” I said, straightening. “And more importantly,” Liz added from the side, arms folded across her chest, “she’s buying us time.” For the first time in days, she didn’t look like she was carrying the weight of the world. Her eyes
POV: Claire --- The house had teeth. Not the kind you saw. The kind you felt—sharpened edges tucked behind beautiful walls, smiles lined with threat. It was morning again, maybe. I couldn’t tell anymore. The shutters were always drawn tight. I’d counted forty-eight sunrise cycles by now. Maybe more. Maybe less. The calendar I kept was in scratches beneath the loose floorboard—one mark per signal. But last night, I didn’t make a mark. I couldn’t. The transmitter had gone dead after the last pulse. And Liam... Liam had started watching me differently. That smile he wore like a charm had frayed at the corners. Less patient. Less rehearsed. As if the mask was starting to itch. He hadn’t touched me last night. He’d just watched. From the far end of the room, standing with one hand resting on the doorknob like he was waiting for something. Or someone. And when he finally left, he didn’t say goodnight. Didn’t kiss my forehead like he usually did. Just turned and walked out. I stayed