Page 18 of Nico

I was getting pretty good at pretending it didn't bother me. Mostly. Isaac stood with his arms crossed over his chest, staring at the bank of glowing monitors. His expression was as unreadable as ever.

He lifted one hand and pointed toward one of the feeds, the camera showed a patch of woods along the northern edge of the filming site. He made that same low sound again.

“Can we get a clearer image?”

I sighed. He'd already asked me the same question yesterday.

“The camera is picking up exactly what it's supposed to pick up,” I explained again. “That's a long-range feed, so the image quality is going to drop at that distance. I can improve the resolution a little, but I can't magically make a camera see through trees.”

His eyebrows drew together slightly. I could practically hear the next question forming.

Before he could ask it, there was a knock on the trailer door, and Fiona stepped inside. Logan's PA gave me a quick smile before turning her attention to Isaac.

“Sorry to interrupt. Do you have a minute?”

Isaac gave a short nod. I turned back to my monitors. Whatever they needed to discuss wasn't my business, and I had no reason to listen. Unfortunately, the trailer wasn't exactly soundproof.

“We need to confirm Logan's schedule for this afternoon,” Fiona said. “He's still in stunt training, so⁠—”

“How long?”

“I don't have an exact time yet. His instructor wants him to finish the sequence before they call it. It shouldn't be much longer.”

“If he's still in training, I need to know when he's leaving the site and where he's going afterward.” There was a sharp edge to Isaac's voice. I winced and tried to concentrate on the camera feeds in front of me.

“His schedule says he has wardrobe and then⁠—”

“Where?”

There was a brief pause, and I could practically feel Fiona's frustration from where I sat. I tried very hard not to listen after that. It didn't work.

The conversation continued for another minute, with Fiona's patience wearing thinner by the second and Isaac becoming increasingly determined to sort everything out himself.

Eventually, he told her he'd handle the arrangements if she couldn't give him the information he needed. Fiona eventually gave up.

The trailer door shut behind her, leaving Isaac standing there with his arms crossed, his jaw still set. He looked completely unbothered by the fact that he'd probably driven Fiona halfway to a nervous breakdown.

Still, I couldn't exactly blame him. Logan was his brother, and from everything I'd seen so far, Isaac took keeping him safe very seriously.

Unfortunately, he apparently had no idea how to do that without making everyone around him want to pull their hair out. I continued checking the camera feeds.

A few seconds later, something strange flickered across one of the screens. The network traffic had jumped. Not by much, but enough to catch my attention.

I pulled up the diagnostic window and watched the numbers for a few seconds. A burst of interference appeared, followed by another, stronger spike.

“That's weird.”

Isaac looked over. “What?”

I pulled up the local network activity and traced the interference. It wasn't coming from any of our equipment. There was another signal bleeding into the production network, and it was moving.

My stomach tightened. “That isn't ours.”

Isaac was beside me almost immediately. “What is it?”

“I think we have a drone.”

His expression hardened. “Where?”