Chapter 193

Elodie. Lost at sea. It couldn’t be true. But Dashiell had called her phone a hundred times in the past half hour, but no answer. He even held his nose and called Ari. Same result. The storm raged on, but the one truly churning within him was far more terrifying. *** The news report blared from every screen in the opulent Los Montical airport lounge, a constant loop of the tragedy unfolding thousands of miles away. Flight VA317. Missing. Presumed crashed. The words hammered a relentless tattoo against Dashiell’s skull, each repetition a fresh blow. He’d driven straight here after Seth confirmed that Elodie was on that flight. And he wasn’t the only one who reacted immediately. Across the globe, families were imploding in real time. Here, at the epicentre, the atmosphere was thick with a cocktail of grief, panic, and simmering rage. Desperate pleas for information bounced off marble walls, unanswered and echoing in the cavernous space. Dashiell strode through the chaos, his face a mask