I looked at his face, carved hollow by fear and guilt and twenty years of bad decisions.
“I need to know,” I said. “If Marcus destroyed him completely, I need to know. And if there’s anything left of the man I married, I need to know that too.”
“And if he is completely destroyed?” Dad asked quietly.
“Then at least I know I’m walking into that plant alone.”
My thumb hovered over David’s name.
After five years of marriage, five years of lies and surveillance and engineered love, I was about to have the first honest conversation of our lives.
I pressed call.
Carter’s hand shot out and stopped me.
“Wait.”
I looked up.
“The tracker is still active,” he said. “If you call him now, Marcus hears everything through it. Every word. Our whole plan.”
I stared at my shoulder.
The thing under my skin.
“We have to remove it,” Carter said. “Now.”
A woman stepped forward from the tactical team. Mid-thirties. Dark hair pulled back. Blue gloves already on.
“I’m Agent Elena Torres. Field medic. I can extract it here. Local anesthetic. Five minutes.”
“How long for the anesthetic to take?”
“Two minutes for injection. Three to numb fully.”
Carter checked one of the feeds, then grimaced.
“We don’t have five minutes if Marcus is mobilizing.”
I pulled off my jacket and tugged down the collar of my blouse.
“Then cut it out.”
Torres looked at Carter.
He hesitated.
“Emma, that is not necessary—”
“Do it now,” I said. “Or I call David with the tracker still in me and Marcus hears everything anyway.”
After a beat, Carter nodded.
Torres laid out sterile instruments on a metal tray. Scalpel. Forceps. Gauze. Antiseptic.
The calm efficiency of it all made it worse.
“Dad,” I said.
