The line went dead.
Jayden sat motionless on the bed.
Use it or lose it.
Easy for London to say. She hadn’t been the one standing in a hallway, heart hammering, watching a man lean in like he wanted to kiss her.
Jayden shook her head. Stood up. Crossed to the desk, where the tour itinerary lay spread out, edges curling in the humidity.
Day 2: Great Barrier Reef Adventure. Departure from Port Douglas, 7:00 a.m. Scenic cruise to Outer Reef. Snorkeling and diving. Lunch on board. Return by 5:00 p.m.
A full day on a boat. Trapped with the tour group. With an assassin. With Dakota.
She scanned the passenger list. Names she’d memorized days ago now took on new weight. New danger.
Gerald Hoffman—the elderly bird-watcher. Sixty-eight, retired accountant from Houston, carried binoculars everywhere. Harmless. Probably. But she’d seen operatives use odder covers.
Mags Winston—the sharp-eyed retired teacher whose husband had been Army intelligence. Thirty years married to a man who analyzed threats for a living. She noticed things. Asked questions. Could be innocent curiosity. Could be something more.
Mags had come with a daughter, Lily, whom Jayden had met earlier, before Dakota came in. She’d seemed tense and, according to Mags, was leaving an abusive relationship. Running from something. But running toward what?
Howard Brennan—divorced insurance adjuster. Too observant about security details for a civilian. The way he checked exits, noted camera positions, seemed to catalogue potential vulnerabilities. Either paranoid or trained.
The Novaks—Czech newlyweds, forties, madly in love by all appearances. So probably not a threat, but that’s why they stayed on the list. Could be good operators.
Sandra Mills—British travel writer, watchful. Asked a few questions about Jayden’s hotel-inspection work. Professional interest or professional suspicion?
And Vic Simons, nervous IT guy.
And those were just the tourists she’d met. Any of them could be the assassin. Any of them could be meeting Alan Martin. Any of them could be playing a role as carefully constructed as her own.
Including Dakota.
She thought about his nightmares. The way he’d thrashed and shouted in his sleep. The raw shame in his eyes when he’d woken up. The scars on his back—shrapnel, bullet wounds, a map of violence she’d only glimpsed.
That wasn’t fake. That couldn’t be fake.
Her phone sat silent on the desk. No more instructions. No more intel. Just her and the impossible task of untangling truth from performance.
A knock on the adjoining door made her freeze.
“Jayden?” Dakota’s voice, muffled through the wood. “Got a second?”
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
Use it or lose it.
She crossed to the door. Took a breath. Opened it.
Dakota stood there, still in the same clothes from dinner. His eyes searched her face.
She wondered what he saw. The careful mask she’d reconstructed, or the cracks underneath?
“I called the front desk. Still no report on the bag.” He cupped his hand behind his head. “I think maybe we should stay with the tour another day.”
She raised an eyebrow. “But don’t you need to get to Sydney?”
“I have a few days.” He offered a thin smile. But something hung in his eyes, something she couldn’t seem to name.
