Chapter 502

Chapter 501:

He didn’t wait for a reply. He was already gone — a man who had engineered every contingency suddenly helpless against the one thing he had never been able to control. He ran, driven by the terrifying certainty that he was about to lose the only part of his world that had ever truly mattered.

The phone felt like a stone in his hand.

Gaston Collins stood in the center of his study, the city lights of Manhattan bleeding through the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him, and stared at the screen. CALL FAILED. He pressed redial. Nothing. Again. Nothing.

His thumb moved to the security app. The GPS tracker for Jocelyn’s vehicle showed a stationary blip on I-95, just outside Philadelphia. It hadn’t moved in four minutes.

Four minutes. He had heard the explosion. The tearing metal. The silence that followed.

His chest contracted — not a heartbeat, but a cessation of all rhythm, a fist closing around his lungs so tight he couldn’t draw breath. The room tilted. He reached for the edge of his desk, missed, caught himself on the leather chair.

“Sir?” His house manager appeared in the doorway, alarmed by the crash.

Gaston didn’t answer. He was already moving.

He shoved past the man, his shoulder catching the doorframe hard enough to splinter the molding. He punched the elevator button. Waited one second. Two. The doors opened too slowly, and he forced himself inside, his finger driving the garage level button with enough force to crack the plastic.

As the elevator descended, he pulled out his second phone — the encrypted satellite device — and hit the emergency broadcast button.

𝗣𝗼𝘱𝘶l𝗮𝘳 𝗌𝗍𝘰𝘳𝗂es 𝘰𝗇 ѕ.c𝗼m

“Nightingale,” he said. His voice didn’t sound like his own. It was raw, stripped of all civilization. “Full activation. Philadelphia corridor. I-95 northbound. My wife’s vehicle. Now p>

“Confirmed, Mr. Collins.” Carter’s voice was instant and calm. “Assets mobilizing. Helicopter ETA to Manhattan pad, eight minutes p>

“Four minutes, Carter, or I will personally ensure you never work in this hemisphere again p>

The line went dead. The elevator doors opened. Gaston ran.

The garage was a cavern of polished concrete and recessed lighting. He bypassed his armored Escalade and went straight to the service corridor leading to the private helipad on the roof. His footsteps echoed against the floor — a frantic rhythm that matched the pounding in his skull.

She was alive. She had to be alive. He would know if she wasn’t. The connection between them — that terrible, beautiful tether he had spent ten years cultivating — would have snapped. He would have felt her go.

Unless he was too late.

The service door slammed open. Cold January air hit his face like a slap. The helicopter was already spinning up, its rotors cutting through the night. His pilot saw him coming and didn’t wait for the pre-flight checklist. The skids left the roof as Gaston was still climbing aboard.

“Philadelphia,” he barked, pulling on a headset. “Direct line. Ignore airspace restrictions. I’ll handle the FAA p>

“Sir, that’s p>

“Now p>

The pilot’s mouth closed. The helicopter banked hard toward the south, throwing Gaston against the cabin wall. He didn’t notice. He was already pulling up the tablet, watching the GPS blip that represented his entire world.

Still stationary.

He pressed the call button again. Listened to it ring. Ring. Ring.

Voicemail.