She didn’t argue, but the faint tug of amusement lingered on her face.
I grabbed the notebook I’d left by the console. “How was Sabine? Pain in the ass?”
She gave a low chuckle. “Not bad. Needs that bandage redone, though. I know you’ll handle it, doc.”
We walked out together into the great room. The space opened wide behind the stairs, larger than the house suggested from outside. Couches sat angled in the middle, a wall lined with weapons racks and another with maps pinned under neat rows of notes. Tall windows gave a view of the yard, framed with heavy curtains.
Cam moved with the same quiet vigilance as always, scanning the corners without breaking stride. Different temperaments, different styles, but the work kept us aligned.
The afternoon stretched into a steady rhythm. I worked through the system logs, checking timestamps, scanning the feeds again for anything Kara might pick at later. Once or twice I touched base with her over comms, her voice clipped as she circled the perimeter. Nothing unusual reported, nothing that called for more than a note.
The house stayed locked down, every door sealed, every window latched. Cam took her turn on the outside sweep while Alex kept to the trees, moving like a shadow. Inside, I kept to the command room and the great room, my attention pulled from screen to window to door in a constant circuit. Dull work, but the kind that carried its own weight.
The quiet was never quite comfortable. Every sound seemed sharper, every silence heavier. We moved through it with the ease of routine, but the charge beneath it never let go. The threat was out there, whether it showed itself today or not.
When evening crept close, I left the monitors and headed for the kitchen. Dinner fell to me, and I kept it practical. A pot of rice, chicken cooked in the cast iron, vegetables thrown in more for balance than taste. Nothing fancy, nothing wasted. By the time the food was ready the others would come in to eat, another day passed without incident, but never without the reminder that incident was always possible.
I balanced the dinner tray in one hand as I climbed the stairs, the heft of it steady against my palm. Sabine had been quiet most of the day, the monitorshowing her stretched across her bed with a book, so I expected to find her in the same place now. Her room door stood closed, but when I nudged it open the bed was empty.
A soft thump sounded from farther down the hall. I followed it and stopped at the open double doors of the library.
She was perched in a velvet chair near the center of the room, a heavy book spread across her lap. Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, crammed with old volumes that smelled of dust and leather. The curtains were pulled wide, letting the last threads of daylight catch in the glass. Two more velvet chairs sat angled near the fireplace, the whole space steeped in a stillness that felt older than the rest of the house. She had chosen the room deliberately. It was full, alive, not the barren confinement of her bedroom.
“You shouldn’t be walking on that ankle,” I said, my voice carrying sharper than I intended.
Her eyes flicked up from the page, and she tipped her chin toward the crutches leaning against the chair. “That’s what those are for.”
I set the tray on a side table and crouched in front of her, reaching for her foot. She shifted but didn’t pull away as I checked the wound. The swelling had gone down considerably. “Getting better,” I muttered, inspecting the skin. "We'll get it rewrapped before you go to bed, but its good for it to air out some."
“The hot bath earlier probably helped,” she added.
I raised a brow. Her mouth tightened, and she rushed to add, “Cam helped me in and out. I didn’t walk on it.”
A short laugh escaped me, cutting the tension. “You’re settling in, aren’t you?”
Her glare sharpened. “I’m not. This situation sucks.”
I rose to my feet. “Seems like you’re making the best of it anyway.” My tone carried no mockery. It was simple fact, and she knew it.
The words were barely out of my mouth when the house shuddered with sound. The alarm tore through the quiet, sharp and violent, cutting off any reply she might have had. The shriek rattled the glass panes and knifed down the hallway, loud and sudden.
I was already moving. My body knew the rhythm before my mind caught up. Sharp noise meant breach, and breach meant motion.
Sabine jolted in the chair, the book tumbling to the carpet. Her eyes went wide, her hands clutching the arms of the velvet seat. I didn’t waste time on her expression. Fear was natural. What mattered was positioning.
“Stay here,” I snapped, my voice low enough to cut through the alarm. I didn’t wait for her answer. The room had changed in an instant. What had been stillness filled with books and dust was now the mouth of a funnel, every sense aimed outward toward the perimeter.
I moved fast, boots hitting the floor with a bass rhythm. Downstairs I could already hear the shift in the house, the scrape of chairs pushed back, the slam of a door swinging open. The calm routine of the evening collapsed in on itself, replaced by the crackle of crisis.
The alarm did its work, stripping away everything unnecessary. No more irritation about Kara, no thoughts of quiet meals or swelling ankles. Just the sharp pivot of a system honed for this.
I took the stairs two at a time, the vibration of the alarm carrying through the wood. Ahead of me, Alex vanished into the command room without a word.
The side door banged open, a draft curling across the hall as Cam stepped in from the courtyard. Her head was on a swivel, dark eyes cutting toward the command center. “What’s going on?” she asked, her voice pitched low but carrying.
Before I could answer, Kara came out with a rifle in hand, the strap snug across her chest, her other hand lifting to adjust her earpiece. “South gate alarm triggered,” she said, her voice clipped and precise. “I’m going out to check on it.”
“I’m coming,” Cam answered.
