CHAPTER 16: HAROLD
376 Words
The night had been too quiet.
No late-night emails. No unexpected calls. Not even the usual low buzz from the hallway camera feed.
It was the quiet that woke him. That, and the flicker.
A glitch in the bedroom security monitor—a fraction of a second—but Harold saw it.
He always saw everything.
He sat up slowly, pulse steady, eyes narrowing.
“No one touches my house,” he whispered.
He reached for the tablet beside his bed. Black screen. Dead battery.
Odd.
He flicked on the security panel by the nightstand—offline.
Very odd.
He swung his legs off the bed, pulled on a robe with the cold precision of a man who hadn’t panicked in years.
Until now.
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Downstairs, something felt... wrong. Not broken, not loud. Just off. The kind of off that comes right before everything snaps loose.
The girl.
The thought hit him like ice in the chest.
Scarlett. Scarlett is out.
He hadn’t seen her face in over a decade, but he’d watched her life—every parole denial, every therapy note, every shred of paperwork passed through his hands under different names and seals.
She wasn’t supposed to get out.
And even if she had—she wasn’t supposed to get this far.
Harold turned toward the closet and pressed the hidden latch behind his suits. A panel slid open, revealing a compact steel box and a travel bag already packed.
Not because he was paranoid.
Because he was prepared.
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He activated the silent alarm with a press of his thumb. It wouldn’t trigger sirens. But it would alert the private team—Plan Omega.
By the time Scarlett or anyone else realized he was gone, he’d be crossing state lines. Maybe farther.
---
He opened the lockbox.
Inside: a passport. Cash. USBs. A gun.
Harold grabbed all but the weapon.
He didn’t need to shoot his way out.
He just needed to disappear.
Let the world think he was still in control.
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He didn’t know how much they’d learned.
Didn’t know how much they’d taken.
But he knew what it meant when a ghost came knocking.
It meant the walls were closing in.
And Harold Jones didn’t wait around to be buried.
- Writer
