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It took me a second to slow my brain enough to speak. “An hour ago, Prince Berezin showed up at the Compound asking to see me. I told Patricia to let him in. He was wearing this man’s face.”
Runa glanced at the screen. “Who is he?”
“Trofim Smirnov. He is Arkan’s Bernard.”
I had studied Arkan’s inner circle and I knew most of them by sight. But I had concentrated on combat operatives, people who were a threat if you spotted them in the crowd. Smirnov was a pattern cybermage. He was at his most dangerous behind a keyboard. He had been low priority. I had no idea how many lives my mistake would cost us.
They stared at me. Bern whipped his phone out and began making calls.
“Right now, Arkan thinks that his oldest friend betrayed him and defected to the Wardens, and we have him in our house. Smirnov knows too much. Arkan can’t let him live. He will retaliate.”
Konstantin had set us up. Arkan would stop at nothing to get his hands on Smirnov.
“Our phones are compromised,” Bern announced.
“How?” Runa asked.
He shook his head. He looked ready to rip someone apart with his bare hands.
“If Arkan can capture any of us and trade us for Smirnov, it would solve all his problems,” I said. “Everyone outside the Compound is a potential hostage or casualty.”
“Shit,” Runa said. “We can’t stay here.”
Runa was dangerous as hell, but all of the automated defenses were down, and none of the guards were above Average on the magic scale. If Arkan sent several heavy hitters and they attacked from different sides, there would be casualties.
We had to go. Now.
Bern turned to the Warden guard. “Get your people packed. Five minutes.”
I dialed Alessandro.
The guard looked at me. They answered only to the Office of the Warden.
“Do as he says,” I told him.
The guard double-timed it out of the room.
“Your call has been forwarded . . .”
Bern gently pushed me out of the way and bent over the desktop. His fingers flew over the keyboard. “Baby, I need the two laptops from the vault.”
Runa turned around and ran down the stairs.
I tried Alessandro again. Straight to voice mail. Text was my only option.
Konstantin put on Smirnov’s face and walked into our house.
Nothing else needed to be said. He would understand. I texted Leon, trying to explain the same thing as fast as I could.
Cornelius shook his head. “My phone is affected as well.”
The computer screen blinked, and Bug appeared on-screen. Connor’s surveillance specialist, lean, wiry, pale, and looking like he was taking care of ten things at once. “What do you want, weirdo?”
“Arkan hacked us,” Bern said. “Phones are down, network is down, we need to warn the Compound an attack is coming.”
The distracted expression evaporated from Bug’s face. “On it.”
Bern shut down the call, opened a new window, and started typing code.
Runa emerged from the vault carrying two laptops, Linus’ black one and Bern’s silver. Bern waved her on and she took off out the door.
I finished the text to Leon. I had no idea if it would even make it through. “Can you get the security system online?”
“I can trigger an emergency override, which is what I’m doing.” Bern’s gaze was fixed on the screen.
“What does that mean?”
“It means the vault will lock and the siege protocol will be reinstated without exceptions. We’ll have three minutes to get out. If you need anything, grab it now, because nobody is getting back in. If Linus dies, we’ll have to fight our way inside.”
He was right. It was our best option.
A phone rang somewhere in the room. Bern and I froze for a desperate second, trying to pinpoint it.
Another muffled ring.
Inside the desk.
Bern jerked open the middle drawer. Locked. Bern grit his teeth and yanked it. Wood snapped, the drawer came free, and I grabbed the cell phone. Unlocked. I answered the call.
“Catalina!” Arabella yelled into my ear.
“How are you calling me? Whose phone is it?”
“I’m calling from a burner Connor’s people brought. That phone is my emergency phone.”
“Why do you have an emergency phone at Linus’ house?”
“He bought it for me to use when I come over because my phone is always dead.”
Of course he had.
“Anyway, not important. Mom is out.”
“What?”
“She left to identify Pete’s body. She took a security detail with her, three guards. We can’t reach them.”
“Why did she go in person?”
“Pete’s son is there. Someone had to go and explain why Pete died.”
Crap. Pete had been taken to a private morgue at the Woman’s Hospital of Texas. Twenty-five minutes from us.
“I’ll get her.”
An electric crackle split the air on the other end.
“Got to go,” my sister said and hung up.
I shoved the phone into my pocket.
Bern yanked the cords out of the back of the tower and picked it up.
The three of us took off for the front door. The security team was piling into an armored personnel carrier. Jean, the tall olive-skinned woman in charge, looked at me from the front passenger seat, her window down, waiting for instructions.
