ETHAN'S POV
The rest of the week passed in a blur of checklists and quiet conversations.
I barely slept.
Every spare hour went into making sure there wasn't a single loose end left behind. The passport. The visa. The boarding pass. The emergency cash divided between different pockets. A new phone with nothing on it. No contacts. No messages. No photographs. No accounts waiting to reconnect themselves the moment it touched a network.
It had to be perfect.
Not because perfection existed.
Because mistakes got people killed.
By Saturday morning, I had checked everything often enough that I could have recited the contents of the folder from memory.
Even then, it didn't feel like enough.
The city was still wrapped in the pale grey light of early morning when I pulled up outside Jade's apartment building.
A few minutes later, the entrance door opened.
He stepped outside carrying a single backpack.
Nothing else.
