Page 72 of Operation Heartbeat

Dawn spread across the horizon in an explosion of pink and gold. Sophie would give anything to be back on that hotel terrace with Con, watching the sun come up, and not here, playing this waiting game.

The tight knot in her chest only yanked tighter the longer they sat there. So far, there was absolutely no sign that Deniz’s wife was inside that building. The guards they’d seen by drone were nowhere around now, and according to Con, there was no movement inside the building either.

Con suddenly twisted his head away from her, listening hard to the comms device in his ear. “Go ahead, Charlie 2.”

Sophie’s nerves snapped. She didn’t have access to their communications the way she did at the concert, and not knowing was making her crazy.

He looked to Henner crouched behind a vehicle a few feet away and performed a series of hand signals. A moment later, Henner sent the drone on another flyover. From this position, Sophie couldn’t see what the drone revealed onscreen, but she did see Henner shake his head.

“Roll out,” came Con’s order.

Sophie blinked. That was it? They weren’t blowing off the door of that compound and searching the place for Deniz’s wife?

Con’s fingers under her arm, lifting her, were tender compared to the grating edge of his tone just now. Left with no other choice, she allowed him to pull her to her feet and propel her at a fast clip to the SUV that brought them here.

He guided her into the back seat, and the team piled in. All four doors shut. They took off down the street.

“What was that?” Sophie broke the silence.

Con looked at her. “What do you mean?”

She threw up her hands. “Nothing happened! We didn’t get the wife!”

“No one showed up at the dock, which means Team One didn’t get the intel. One was reliant on the other.”

“But couldn’t you guys have gone into that building after his wife? You know she was in there!”

He shook his head. “No, we don’t know she was in there. We know somebody was in there when we first flew the drone over. This time, the drone showed no heat signatures at all. If they ever had her in there, they moved her.”

Her eyes bulged the longer she stared at him, and she ran a finger between her brows, praying for patience. “So we just give up?”

Con’s gaze moved over her face as if trying to figure out why she was getting so upset. “We never give up until the very end. Sometimes nothing happens, Sophie. It’s a waiting game.”

“So unsatisfying,” she muttered and turned her head to look out the window.

“Sophie.”

She whirled to face him again. “This is why we could never be together. You don’t have the same feelings about romantic relationships that I do. To you, this is all work. To me, people’s hearts are on the line.”

He stared down at her, his expression giving away no sense of what he might be thinking or feeling.

One fact stood out to her like a blinding neon sign: they were too different.

She really wasn’t cut out for this kind of adventure. She could never have a future with Ryan. She’d be stuck in a classroom while he was out saving the world and getting shot at. She was crazy if she entertained a single thought that they could make this work.

Wait—when did she ever say that theycould? When did she ever think about a future with him? Never.

On several occasions, her emotions had swept her away, confusing imagination with reality. She was only here to solve those cryptograms—nothing more.

Long fingers stretched across her thigh, making her jolt with surprise. She looked down at the very familiar long fingers, sprinkled with dark hair on the back of each knuckle, and drew in a hitching breath.

Logic told her that this was just a fling, but her heart…

Oh, her poor heart would never recover.

Once this all ended, and she was back to her small and humble life, she knew that she would be replaying moments like this in her head.

Little moments when Con didn’t have to show that he cared…but he did.

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