Nick had shut everything else out the moment David pulled him into the system. That was how they worked—total focus, no distractions.
It meant nothing else got through.
Nick’s hands clenched on his tablet. “He didn’t say anything during—” He gestured at the electrical panel, the now-inert bomb. “During all of that.”
He should have.The thought arrived simultaneously from both of them, sharp with growing alarm.
Zach didn’t miss things like this. Didn’t stay silent during a live threat. Didn’t let other people handle a situation he should be controlling.
Nick had kept the telepathic channel open the entire time—he always did when he worked with one of his brothers. It was automatic, instinctive, like breathing. Zach knew that. If Zach had been aware, if he’d been monitoring their conversation, he would have responded. Would have offered tactical assessment, demanded updates, insisted on being part of the solution.
Maybe he was in the field. Out of range.
The thought lasted less than a second.
Zach didn’t go dark. Not during a crisis. Not during a freaking hurricane.
The silence was wrong. All wrong.
“Try his phone,” Nick said, already knowing what David would find.
David pulled up the communication interface, fingers flying. The call connected—Nick could see the status indicator on David’s screen—but no one answered. It rang once, twice, three times, then went to voicemail.
Zach never let calls go to voicemail. Not during a crisis.
Nick was already moving toward the door, his mind racing through possibilities. Injury? Structural damage? Had Marcus’s plan been more complex than just the bomb, had there been a physical attack component they’d missed?
The assassin. Zach said the groundskeeper wasn’t the crossbow assassin. There’s someone else on the island.
Nick’s mind was already reaching out, trying to find Zach’s presence anywhere on the island. His brother’s consciousness was as familiar as his own—sharp, controlled, always alert. But there was nothing. Just that strange static, stabbing into his mind now, and an absence where Zach should be.
Zach,Nick sent, pushing the thought out with all the force he could muster.If you can hear this, respond.
Nothing.
Nick stretched his telepathic sense as far as it would go, searching for any hint of Zach’s presence. Still nothing. Just that static, that pressure, and now?—
A flash of something. Not thought, not consciousness, but… sensation. Pain. Determination. Fear.
Zach,Nick sent, pouring every ounce of power into the thought.Where are you?
For just a moment, he thought he felt a response. A flicker of recognition, there and gone so fast he couldn’t be sure it was real.
The static crashed back in, louder than before, drowning everything.
Chapter 36
Rising Water
The cave groaned.
It wasn’t a subtle sound—it was deep, guttural, the kind of noise that vibrated through stone and bone alike. Emma’s head snapped up from where she crouched beside Zach, her hands pressed against the makeshift bandage torn from her shirt. Water surged past her knees now, no longer the gentle seepage from earlier but a determined flood driven by the storm surge pushing against the cliffs.
Another groan. Louder this time.
Small rocks tumbled from the ceiling and splashed into the rising water. The cave that had been their shelter was transforming into something else—a trap, closing around them with the inexorable patience of the ocean itself.
“Zach, wake up!” Emma shook his shoulders, careful of his injury.
