Only Her Touch のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 51 - チャプター 60

Alicia forced herself to breathe evenly, Ignacio's threat still hanging cold and heavy in the air between them, and made herself think rather than panic, the way she'd trained herself to do since she was old enough to understand that panic never once solved a single crisis in her life."Priya," she said quietly, muting her end of the call for a brief, urgent moment. "Get someone with a long lens on whatever he's actually holding. I want to know exactly what we're dealing with before anyone decides how to respond."Priya relayed the request instantly, and the agonizing seconds that followed stretched long enough that Alicia felt her own pulse pounding audibly in her ears. Finally, Priya's voice returned, careful and considerate."Our agent got a clearer look," she said. "It's small, metallic, wired with a short antenna. Could be an explosive trigger. Could also be something else entirely.""Like what?" Roberto asked, tension radiating off him in waves."Like a degausser," Priya said sl

Carla arrived within the hour, exhaustion visible on her face despite the sharp, focused energy she always seemed able to summon whenever a real breakthrough presented itself."I pulled the account's full history overnight," she said, spreading printouts across the table between them. "It was opened by Isabel Duarte herself, thirty one years ago, roughly two months before Rafael's death. Small deposits at first, the kind a frightened woman might set aside quietly, building something for herself and her son in case she ever needed to disappear quickly.""She was already planning an escape," Alicia said softly, old grief for a woman she'd never met rising unexpectedly. "Before Rafael even died. She already sensed how dangerous her own family had become.""It looks that way," Carla agreed. "The account went dormant for exactly eleven months after her death, untouched, unclaimed. Then activity resumed, small at first, growing steadily larger over the following years. Someone found it, und

Doris heard the door open before she saw him, and some old, buried instinct recognized the particular weight of his footsteps before her mind fully caught up to the danger."Hello, Doris."She turned slowly from the window, her bandaged arm still cradled carefully against her chest, and felt her whole body go cold at the sight of her father standing just inside the doorway, hood pushed back now, his face carrying none of the composed authority she'd spent her entire life learning to fear. He looked tired. Older than she remembered. Human, in a way she'd never once allowed herself to see him before."You shouldn't be here," she said, forcing steadiness into her voice despite the fear pounding hard beneath her ribs. "Security's everywhere in this building.""Security that took eleven minutes to notice me," Ignacio said, stepping further inside, closing the door quietly behind him. "I've had considerably more practice than they have, Doris. Old skills, still useful, even now.""What do y

"Absolutely not," Roberto said, before Priya had even finished relaying the message fully. "You are not meeting that man alone, Alicia, not after everything he's already done to try to control you.""I'm not agreeing to meet him unprotected," Alicia said carefully, though her own pulse was racing faster than she wanted to admit. "I'm agreeing to hear whatever he thinks is important enough to trade his own surrender for. If it ends this manhunt, if it finally brings him into custody properly, I think that's worth managing the risk carefully rather than refusing outright.""He held a gun to you three days ago," Roberto said, fear sharpening his voice into something raw. "He grabbed you, threatened to kill you, and you want to walk into a room with him voluntarily?""I want to end this," Alicia said quietly, taking his hands, steadying herself as much as him. "Every day he's still out there, Doris isn't safe, Marsh isn't safe, your mother isn't safe, none of us are truly safe. If hearing

The private medical facility sat quiet and unremarkable behind tall hedges on the edge of the city, nothing about its plain exterior suggesting it currently held the man who'd spent thirty two years evading exactly this kind of quiet, controlled ending."You don't have to do this," Roberto said gently, one final time, his hand steady around hers as they walked toward the entrance. "Nobody would think less of you for refusing.""I know," Alicia said. "But I think I need to see this through, Roberto. Whatever happens in there, I don't want to spend the rest of my life wondering what I might have understood, if I'd only had the courage to walk through that door."Doris walked beside them, quiet and pale, having insisted on coming the moment she learned where Alicia was headed. "I need this too," she said simply, when Alicia glanced at her with a silent question. "Whatever he still is to either of us, he's still the only father either of us has ever known. I won't let him disappear from m