‘Something’s fucked,’ Kade says, running out of the Watch and grabbing a radio along the way.‘All teams, all teams, get to the basement.’
‘Heard.’
Kade’s almost to the ground floor when he feels the vibration through concrete, hairs on the back of his neck standing on edge and the lights go out again,only this time it’s different.He sprints the rest of the way.
His radio is dead when he tries it, no signal, no static, nothing.
The air tastessour.The lights flicker after about ten seconds, coming back on.He knows the radio will take longer if it is what he thinks.An EMP.
‘Fuck, fuck,fuck.’He’s running full tilt down to the basement, but he can already hear the panicked yells, knows what’s happening.
TheDrowneris flooding.
The doors are stuck.
He skids around the last corner, sees six people trying to open the steel door.The lights are still flickering.Kade starts counting in his head.Instead of talking, he scans around, throat thick, chest tight.
The doors won’t open duringflood,so he needs to stop it.
He needs to kill the flood to open the doors.
Water pumps, isolated flow, engine room.
Kade runs inside, yelling over his shoulder for one of them to get the AED ready just in case.Inside the engine room, it’s a flash-fried mess but Kade helped design most of these elements.He finds the water pump valve, twists it tight, watching the pressure gauge drop slowly.Once it gets low enough, the doors can be opened manually.Kade activates thedrainfunction and runs back to the Drowner.‘Come on, come on,come on,’ he wheezes, desperately impatient.From inside, he hears a faintthud-hissas the mechanism releases.‘That’s it!Jam it open.’
Using pry bars, they manage to open the door.
The room wasn’t quitedrainedyet, so a surge of water floods out, knocking Kade down but he recovers fast, squeezes into the room through the gap they managed to pry open.
‘Riley!’
His boss is conscious and breathing, but Lachlan is free.
He has Riley by the throat, seems to have pulled himself out of the bolted chair because he’s still wearing it around his ankles, but both hands are free.
Lachlan’s eyes are only for Kade, his gentle expression belied by the fingers digging cruelly into Riley’s throat.
‘Let him go,’ Kade warns.‘Don’t you dare hurt him.’
‘Jules, I need you to just—’
‘LET HIM GO!’
‘Iwill!’Lachlan barks, gripping harder, throttling Riley once for emphasis.The boss of Iron Star has always needed a bodyguard, and this is the second time tonight Kade has fucked up.‘But first, let me show you something.’
CHAPTER FOUR
Ten Years Ago
It’s raining the day he signs the contract.
Lachlan Tanner hears crows cawing every step of the way towards the Penhalyx Estate.The place is far bigger than he expected, and much older too.Dark stone, towering windows, gothic spires blackened with age.Dense woodland presses close around the grounds, but not close enough to threaten the sightlines from the upper floors.Lachlan maps distance, elevation, vantage points.He notes the long, isolated approach that brought him here from the drop-off point.Not remotely walkable without being spotted a dozen times on the admittedly outdated cameras he clocks.Whoever built the Estate had some understanding of defensibility.His first impression from the outside is that it’s massive, old and ugly.Hard to breach but not impossible.
Lachlan walks through the rain to sign away five years of his life in exchange for more money than anyone has ever offered him at twenty-three years old (twenty-four in May).Three days ago, he’d asked his cousin to read the contract for him being that she’s an actual lawyer.Margot Maple warned Lachlan not to sign unless they accepted the amendments she’d drafted for him, all twenty of them, but she’d also admitted the contract itself was solid, if undeniably draconian.She didn’t offer to go with him.
He would never ask.
Alistair Penhalyx, billionaire founder of Helixx, whose private medical breakthroughs remain inaccessible to almost anyone unable to afford them, isn’t there.Lachlan hasn’t spoken to him yet.
