“Yeah, well.” David stood, wiping his hands on his pants. “Can’t let Marcus win that easily.”
Marcus. The name settled into the room like a cold weight. This wasn’t random sabotage—it was targeted, personal. An attempt to destroy not just the resort but the people Nick and his brothers cared about.
The lights flickered again, stronger this time, and stayed dim for a few seconds before recovering. The storm was still intensifying, still pressing against their defenses. They’d solved one crisis, but the hurricane itself remained.
And underneath it all, that static. That sharp, insistent pressure pushing at the edges of his telepathic awareness. Now that the immediate crisis with the bomb had passed, Nick could feel it more clearly. Something was reaching out, trying to communicate but making no sense. White noise and razor edges and something old—so old it made his teeth ache.
You feel that?David asked telepathically, picking up on Nick’s attention shift.
Yeah. Been feeling it since before you called. Don’t know what it is.
Feedback from the power grid?
No.Nick shook his head slowly.This is… different. It’s not electrical. It’s?—
He didn’t have words for it. The feeling was both foreign and familiar, like a language he’d once known but forgotten. Not a voice. Not even really a presence. Just noise, static, pressure.
“Doesn’t matter right now,” Nick said aloud, pushing the sensation aside. “We need to secure this site, document everything for evidence, and check the rest of the system for additional surprises.”
Already on it.David had his tablet out again, running deep scans of the electrical infrastructure.If there’s one bomb, there might be more. Yo, Zach, I’ll let you handle bomb disposal.
The thought made Nick’s blood run cold, but it was the right call. They’d been lucky to find this one before it detonated. Luck wasn’t a plan.
Zach didn’t respond.
They worked in focused silence, David scanning systems while Nick documented the physical bomb, taking careful photos and notes that would eventually become evidence in whatever legal and extralegal response came next. The hurricane pressed harder against the building, the generator room’s reinforced walls muting but not eliminating the storm’s roar.
Twenty minutes later, David straightened.Clean. Rest of the system’s clear.
“You’re sure?”
As sure as I can be without physically inspecting every panel in both buildings.David’s mental voice carried absolute confidence.And that’s not happening during a hurricane. But the digital architecture reads clean. Nothing else is rigged the way that bomb was.
Nick nodded, accepting it. David’s gift made him virtually infallible when it came to system security. If he said it was clean, it was clean.
The lights steadied overhead, the generators finding their rhythm. Through the security feeds, Nick could see the storm reaching its peak—wind speeds that would tear an unprepared building apart, rain so heavy the cameras could barely penetrate it. But their buildings held. The shutters held. The infrastructure they’d spent months designing and installing was doing its job.
They’d survived Marcus’s attempt to destroy them.
David would fix the linkage problem, so they couldn’t be threatened that way again.
Absence.
He stilled—just for a fraction of a second, his mind rejecting it.
Then it hit.
A sudden, hollow silence where presence should be. His telepathic awareness swept the compound automatically, cataloging minds: security personnel, staff, David right here beside him.
No Emma. No Zach…
“Where’s Zach?” Nick’s voice was carefully controlled, but ice was spreading through his chest. “When did you last hear from him?”
The question hung between them.
“Before you called me down here,” David said slowly. “He checked in maybe… ninety minutes ago? When he handled the groundskeeper.”
Ninety minutes.
