The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 503

"That's exactly what we're still trying to figure out... I'm sorry, Garrison. We don't have a confirmed name yet."

"The real problem right now," Wyatt shoved his phone into his pocket and leaned both hands against the concrete barrier of the breakwater, staring grimly out at the black ocean, "is that we don't have a boat."

"The patrol boats here at the Northport precinct max out at a four-mile range. Pandora's ship is in international waters, completely out of our jurisdiction. Launching an offshore pursuit requires diplomatic clearance. That's a six-hour process minimum..."

He turned his head and clapped a hand on Garrison's shoulder. "But don't panic just yet. I can pull some strings with the Coast Guard. I've worked with the captain of the Northport Coast Guard division before. Best case scenario, I can get an interceptor boat on the water in an hour..."

At that exact moment, a low, thrumming roar bled from the sky.

The sound approached from the northwest. What started as a faint hum quickly escalated into a deafening, mechanical roar within seconds.

Everyone on the breakwater whipped their heads up. Several cops instinctively rested their hands on their holstered weapons.

The spotlights jerked upward. In the blinding white beams, a massive black silhouette tore through the low-hanging clouds, its red anti-collision lights flashing rhythmically against the dark.

Wyatt's pupils contracted. He whipped his head toward Garrison. "Is that Cassandra's chopper?!"

Garrison stared up at the helicopter as it adjusted its pitch for landing. The violent downwash from the rotors sent his hair flying and his coat whipping violently around his legs.

His expression remained a mask of pure ice. Even over the deafening scream of the engine, his voice was terrifyingly calm and absolute.

"I can't wait an hour."

*

Meanwhile, inside the claustrophobic, sealed cabin of the ship.

And then, his fingers stopped.

They stopped exactly two inches below her collarbone. He rubbed his thumb over that specific patch of skin twice, his brow furrowing. The texture was wrong.

The skin looked completely smooth and flawless, but when he pressed down, he could feel something hard, impossibly thin, buried just beneath the surface. It wasn't taped on. It was implanted directly into her subcutaneous tissue, fused with her flesh and blood.

Grant's face darkened.

As a medical professional, he knew exactly what this was. A subcutaneous biometric monitor.

It didn't just transmit the patient's real-time vitals. It broadcasted their exact GPS coordinates!