“Did you all get a video clip?” Rad asked, and three heads bobbed in sync.
“Should we open them?” Margo asked, her heart hammering.
“Yes,” Rad said.
Margo’s mouth went dry as she opened it.
The latest Hidden Truths episode came up, but not the way Margo had last seen it. This version had been altered. And real faces had been aligned with the avatars. Each one of them were familiar faces eerily covering the correct narrating avatar.
For one long, awful second, Margo forgot how to breathe.
“What the…” she breathed when her lungs started to complain.
Margo looked up.
Willa was staring at her phone as though it had turned venomous in her hand. Ace had gone completely still. Rad’s expression had hardened in that particular way it did when he was furious and trying not to show the full extent of it.
Then the back door opened. Margo nearly jumped out of her skin as all four of them turned toward it.
Rad and Ace moved first, not dramatically, but with enough speed and readiness to tell her exactly how quickly this room could become something else if it needed to. Willa’s hand closed around the heavy skillet she had just taken from the cupboard. Margo looked down at the spatula she was still holding and raised it before she could think better of it.
“Stand down,” a familiar male voice said as a tall, imposing figure stepped into the room, and all eyes widened.
Margo felt they all thought the same as she did, not knowing whether to breathe a sigh of relief or run in the opposite direction in fear as his eyes took in the room in one sweep. The skillet in Willa’s hand. Rad’s stance. Ace braced slightly near the door. Margo was standing there in her sweater and bed hair, holding a spatula like she meant business but had not fully decided what sort.
His eyes dropped to the spatula and narrowed as he drawled, “If you’re going to wield that,” one of his brows arched, “you need to know how to do some real damage with it.”
Margo looked at the spatula, felt color rise in her neck, and quickly lowered it.
“What… how did you get in here?” Margo managed to croak.
“With everything going on, Margo dear,” the woman stepped in behind him, “you really should improve your security.” Her eyes assessed the room. “Good, you’re all here.”
“You broke into my house and sent that message to everybody!” Margo accused, her jaw dropping slightly as realization dawned.
“We did.” She nodded.
“You two broke in here and did that?” Willa let out a breath and looked from one of them to the other. “Mom! Really? You scared us all half to death. We thought Margo was in real trouble…”
“She is,” June pointed out.
“You all are,” Holt finished for her.
Another realization hit Margo as she lifted her phone once again and tapped the screen showing the video that had just landed in their messages. “And this?”
“We did that too,” June said. “It’s amazing what AI can do these days.”
“I’m honestly impressed you figured that out.” Willa blinked, then looked at her mother.
“We had a little help,” Holt said, as June stepped aside from blocking the back door.
“That would be me,” Harvey said as he stepped into the kitchen behind her.
Four heads turned toward him at once.
“Harvey!” Willa, Rad, Ace, and Margo said together, the accusation in their voices so united it almost would’ve been funny if Margo’s pulse had not still been racing.
“Traitor,” Ace muttered.
