Beverly sobbed, spinning again, almost tripping as she sprinted down a side hallway.
Noah tracked her on the monitors, fingers tightening around his stylus. “She’s heading for the conservatory.”
Zane’s jaw flexed beside Felix. He dragged a hand down his face, the movement jagged, brittle. His voice cut through thenoise, clipped and trembling with exhaustion. “I don’t know if I can handle this for an hour.”
Felix’s hand landed softly on his back. “You’re doing great, baby.”
“Yeah, Lois. This ends tonight,” Asa said, clearly not giving a single shit about hot mics.
Felix nodded even though Asa couldn’t see him. “Yeah. I know.”
Noah’s eyes narrowed as Beverly started rattling doorknobs, frantic and disoriented. She’d reached the bowels of the house, the secondary kitchen and the massive storage corridors. The camera feed flickered as she passed under a motion light, her reflection in the polished steel cabinets warped and trembling.
“She’s right over us,” Noah murmured.
When he glanced at Zane, the man’s eyes were locked on the screen, his mother a panicked blur of movement, directly beneath their feet.
The air in the war room grew heavy. Every monitor glow turned cold and sterile. Above, laughter still echoed faintly from the comms, but down here, the only sound was Zane’s uneven breathing and the faint mechanical hum of inevitability closing in.
When Bev realized the doors were locked to her, she started yanking drawers open so hard that some slammed shut with her fingers still inside. The audio feed picked up a strangled noise, half scream, half rage.
Noah was just starting to breathe again when her hand darted into the chef’s desk drawer, one that was rarely used except for grocery lists and supply schedules.
“Adam,” Noah said sharply, leaning toward the monitor. “She just swiped something from one of the drawers and stuffed it in her bra.”
“Are you asking me to strip-search an old lady?” Adam asked, completely deadpan.
Noah rolled his eyes hard enough to hurt. “No, dummy. I think she snagged a keycard.”
There was a brief pause, then Adam hissed, “Shit. Where is she?”
“She’s in the prep kitchen,” Noah said, voice tight. “By the chef’s desk.”
“Roger that. I’ll herd her back toward the gardens for the twins,” Adam said.
“We’re heading that way now,” Avi confirmed through the comms.
On the screens, Adam’s shadowed figure moved—fluid and fast—as he swept out of the library and down the corridor. His Sherlock coat flared like wings, cutting through the mansion’s low light.
Calliope’s cursor flicked over the schematic with practiced precision. The icon for the electrical room pulsed like a heartbeat in the corner of the blueprint. “Bev’s marked at the landing between the conservatory and the east service hall. Movement data shows her pivoting right. She’s breathing like an athlete.”
Noah’s voice went low and flat. “I don’t like this. She’s up to something.”
He could feel it, something sharp and wrong in the pit of his stomach. Bev didn’t run like prey. She ran like someone with a plan.
The feed flickered. Adam was closing in through one hallway while another camera blinked online, one of the utility feeds. The image tilted slightly as the lens auto-adjusted. A narrow silhouette slipped fast across the frame, a flicker of pale hair and motion.
“Oh, shit,” Lola said. “That’s the electrical room.”
Zane sucked in a sharp breath. “What does that mean?”
Bev leaned down, fumbling at her neckline, clearly unwilling to fish the stolen card all the way out. She swiped it with shaky precision. The red door light blinked green.
“Fuck,” Noah snapped. “On your six, boys. She breached the fucking electrical room.”
“What the hell is she gonna do there except accidentally electrocute herself?” Asa asked.
Those were the last words before everything went black.
