“Fine,” they chorused, still laughing under their breath.
The moment of levity faded like smoke when Zane exhaled beside Felix, knuckles bone-white where he clasped his hands in his lap. “I want eyes on her,” he said, voice steady but strung tight with strain.
“Got you,” Noah said, fingers already moving. He pulled up the timer on the main screen, the red dot blinking steadily in the east wing. Every tick of the clock echoed in his chest. “Bev was last seen heading toward the east wing, second floor. She’s armed with a rather pitiful kitchen knife from the butler’s pantry.”
“Amateur,” August said dismissively through the comms.
“She doesn’t know the layout,” Noah continued. “Use that to your advantage. Wear her down. Aiden’s workshop is the end goal, but we’ve got an hour or so to play with her first.”
“Understood,” multiple voices confirmed, overlapping into a steady rhythm.
The war room door opened, and Lucas stepped inside, his expression calm but alert beneath his creepy joker makeup.
“Where’ve you been?” Felix asked, arching a brow.
“Checking the children’s wing,” Lucas said. “Wanted to make sure the guards were standing their ground and had their posts locked down.”
“You went out there alone?” Noah asked, voice rising an octave.
“Okay, one, Iwasa trained FBI agent,” Lucas said dryly. “And two, even if I wasn’t, I’m not getting taken out by some decrepit old hag.”
Zane let out a startled laugh, short and hoarse, like his body didn’t quite remember how. He nodded toward the screens. “Did you get…uh, any impressions while you were out there? Of…her?”
Lucas hesitated, then gave a single nod. “She’s terrified,” he said softly, “but still in disbelief. Not that I blame her. Imagine finding out a celebrity billionaire was a secret mass murderer?”
“I mean, aren’tallbillionaires mass murderers?” Lola asked, deadpan.
Noah’s focus stayed locked on the feeds. Beverly had found a window on the second floor and was wrestling with it, pale arms straining, her movements jerky with panic. Calliope had already locked all the exits remotely; the glass didn’t budge. The camera caught the tremor in Bev’s hands, the flash of desperation in her eyes. Even through the grainy stream, Noah could feel the shape of her panic, a cornered thing, mean and wild.
“She’s gonna run for the stairs,” Calliope predicted, her voice low but certain, eyes darting across multiple screens. “Heading down, probably trying for the main entrance.”
“Jericho, Atticus, cover the main staircase. Don’t let her out the front,” Noah ordered, fingers flying across his tablet, dropping satellite pins and marking positions with surgical precision. “Murder muppets, cover east wing exits. Avi, Asa, I want you in the gardens. She’ll run there eventually.”
The hum of the war room deepened, everyone moving in sync. Noah’s pulse thrummed with it, the rhythm of strategy and inevitability.
His gaze flicked to another monitor: Adam, a dark figure in the library shadows. The trench-coat Sherlock silhouette dominated the frame, every movement coiled, deliberate. He held a tranq gun in one hand, a hunting knife in the other,thatknife.
Noah flushed. It was the same blade Adam had pressed against his throat in the kitchen yesterday. The one that had ended up inside him. He shifted in his chair, biting his lip hard enough to sting. The memory wasn’t helping his focus.
Adam stood utterly still, only the faintest ripple of breath betraying life. Predatory stillness turned him into a living sculpture, light and shadow painting his cheekbones in sharp relief. The camera couldn’t do him justice, but it didn’t have to. Noah knew every line of that body, every violence it was capable of, every tenderness too.
“Fuck, you look hot,” Noah purred before he could stop himself.
“Mics hot, guys. We have private channels for a reason,” someone quipped, amusement threading through the comms.
Noah’s face flamed crimson as laughter crackled through the channel.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“Don’t be sorry, baby. Idolook hot. They’re all just jealous.” Adam’s smug lilt was audible even over the static.
Before Noah could come up with a retort, Beverly burst from the second-floor room, barreling for the main staircase. August stepped out of the shadows at the top landing, his Batman silhouette framed by the mansion’s soft, golden light.
“Going somewhere?” he asked pleasantly, but there was nothing gentle in his stance.
Beverly screamed, pivoted, and bolted the other way, straight into Jericho, whose Winter Soldier costume did nothing to blunt the lethal stillness in his eyes.
“I’d suggest the north wing,” Jericho said, his tone calm and razor-edged. “Better lighting. More dramatic.”
