The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 498

Garrison's heart skipped a beat. Afraid he had misheard, he demanded,

"Who? Who's missing?!"

"Sloane is missing! Did she come to see you?!" Josh's frantic voice tore through the receiver. There wasn't a trace of a joke in his tone.

Garrison's knuckles instantly turned white as he gripped the phone.

The pale afternoon sun filtering through the window illuminated his face, exposing the sheer panic surging into his eyes.

"When did she disappear?"

"She didn't show up for class this morning, and her professor said she didn't excuse herself. We've looked everywhere she could possibly be, and we can't find her. Garrison, do you know something?!"

Garrison's mind violently snapped back to the cafe yesterday. The way she had shoved her cup away and stood up. The hurt, disappointed redness in her eyes. The way she turned, pushed open the door, and walked alone into the pitch-black night.

"Garrison, say something!" Josh shouted, unable to mask his fury.

Garrison's mind went entirely blank. Relying on sheer, desperate instinct, he forced out three words: "Call the police."

With a sharp click, Garrison hung up the phone. He spun around and grabbed his coat off the sofa.

Vanessa was still sitting there, holding her celadon teacup. Her expression was a perfectly calculated mix of concern and surprise.

The sunlight hit her from behind, casting half her face in shadow while the other half maintained its polite, gentle smile.

But her eyes—those eyes gleaming faintly in the dark—were locked unblinkingly onto his back.

"What happened? Who is missing?"

Garrison snatched up his car keys and shoved the documents on the desk into his briefcase, his words rapid-fire. "Vanessa, we'll discuss the launch another day. I have an emergency to handle right now."

He sat in the driver's seat. The dome light was off, leaving only the cold white glow of his tablet screen to illuminate his face, deepening the shadows beneath his brow bone.

His fingers swiped frantically across the screen, pulling up the signal he had been tracking for four grueling hours without a single change in status—the Bio-Trace Patch implanted in Sloane's chest.

The signal logs showed that Sloane's location had left the capital last night, moving steadily north until it reached Northport.

Then, by late evening, the signal had cut straight through the Northport Docks and moved out into the ocean.

Right now, that glowing red dot remained perfectly still. It was anchored twelve miles east of Northport in international waters, unmoving, as if someone had pinned it directly onto the map.

Sloane was out at sea.

That specific quadrant had no commercial shipping lanes and no freight terminals. It was a dead zone, frequented only by smuggler speedboats and human trafficking vessels.