I straightened, the joints in my lower back popping. The dust on my boots was dry and white, leaving small gray prints every place I stepped. I could defend a fence. This had stepped around it.
Someone had used our own access points to send Juliette a picture of her own life being watched. I reached for my mug, the coffee cold and bitter against the back of my throat. The utility roof should have stayed in my head. The sightlines. The Acacia. Instead, her face when I called herWilder.
I’m evidence, Nick. Not luggage.
The irritation sat low behind my ribs. She had seen the choice before I had the nerve to label it. I had built two feet of distance between us in that library because distance gave a man clean lines to defend. If she was an asset, she could be secured. If she was a guest, she could be moved.
Except Juliette Wilder had never once stayed where I put her.
Fucking perfect. She was safer under guard and somehow more dangerous there.
The radio on my shoulder harness squeaked, the volume turned down to a dull hiss. Sarah’s voice came through the static, tight and thin.
"Nick? Ms. Wilder is asking whether you want the guests kept off the east deck."
I unclipped the mic, my thumb heavy on the rubber button. "Ms. Wilder is not running guest movement."
"No," Sarah replied. "But she noticed Graham was about to livestream the transfer board."
A second ticked past on the wall clock.
"Keep them off the east deck," I said.
"That was also her recommendation."
I let the mic drop back against my chest. The woman was currently locked in the library wing under an armed guard, and she was still managing the perimeter better than my front-of-house staff. Her competence had become another risk. People followed calm. They mistook it for safety.
"Eastern boundary," Daniel said. His chair didn't squeak, but his boots shifted on the floorboards. "Camera four-B went dark."
I crossed the small room in two strides, my hand landing on the back of his seat. The monitor showed a gray grid where the riverbed crossing should have been.
"Technical?" I asked.
“Power’s good,” Daniel muttered, tapping through the feed. “No degradation, no brownout. The camera didn’t fail. It got blinded.”
Timing was never innocent twice.
The main radio unit on the desk desynchronized with a harsh, double-tone chirp. It was Mbeki, his voice coming from the mobile unit in the patrol cruiser two kilometers away.
“Station, Alpha. Fresh tracks on the eastern service cut-through. Two light trucks. They brushed the entry, but not well. Turned too wide and clipped the wild olive.”
"Alpha, stand by," I said. I picked up the master handset, the plastic cool against my palm. "Daniel, pull the staging lists for the dawn transfers. Who had clearance for the service track?"
"Nobody," Daniel said, his fingers already moving. “The road team is clearing the mud drifts now. We’ll start vehicle staging in ninety minutes.”
"Mbeki, hold your position," I said into the mouthpiece. "Do not engage. Wait for Bravo team to close the loop from the northern ridge."
"Copy," the radio returned. "We're checking the thicket now. Wait—"
A sharp intake of breath cut the transmission. It wasn't a shout. It was the wet, choked sound of a man taking a hit he hadn't seen coming.
"Alpha? Report," I said.
A different voice came through the speaker—Elias, his breathing heavy and erratic. "Elias here. Mbeki is down."
My hand tightened on the hard plastic of the handset until the housing groaned. “Breathing?”
“Breathing. On his feet. Arm’s open. High-tensile wire caught him in the brush. Not a snare. Coils strung low between the thorn trunks, knee-high in the grass. He walked into one before he saw it.”
