Chapter 34
Eric
By morning, the whole house felt wound tight.
Not frantic. Not panicked. Just like we were all bracing for impact.
Dad moved through the kitchen with that quiet, deliberate focus he reserved for cases right before they turned serious.
Becket sat at the table with two laptops open and enough printouts spread across the wood grain to qualify as a mobile command center.
Even Asher, who usually stomped around like the floor personally offended him, carried himself with a simmering, coiled stillness.
And Harmony…
She sat at the kitchen island wrapped in one of Mom’s old knit cardigans, fingers curled around a mug she hadn’t taken more than two sips from.
Her eyes were swollen from lack of sleep, but what scared me more was the way she kept staring at nothing, as if it was some internal threat only she could see.
I’d already told Dad I wasn’t leaving her today.
Elise covered the orchard store. Angela and Dominic handled the bakery.
The brewery and festival crowd kept Phoenix’s world running, and Dad had added officers to the property overnight.
Maple Valley drew bigger numbers this time of year with families, tourists, and the early fall crowd swarming the brewery lawn.
It gave the illusion of safety. But it was also the perfect cover for someone who didn’t want to be noticed.
Harmony looked up when I came down the hallway, her eyes flicking toward me like she wasn’t sure she was allowed to look relieved. I crossed the room in a few long strides and pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head. She let out a shaky breath that stabbed straight through my ribs.
“How’re you feeling?” I whispered.
“Like I ran a marathon in my sleep,” she murmured.
“You didn’t sleep,” I reminded her gently.
Her lips twitched. “Semantics.”
I slid onto the stool beside her and rested a hand on the back of her neck, brushing slow circles with my thumb. She leaned into it just enough to tell me she was still trying to be stronger than she felt.
Dad cleared his throat. “Becket traced what footage he could from last night. There’s nothing on the cameras leading toward the property. Whoever followed you turned off the road before the ridge.”
Harmony straightened, clutching her mug tighter. “So, they didn’t follow me all the way here.”
“No,” Dad said. “But they wanted you to think they did.”
A thin shiver moved under my hand.
“I lost visual at the turnoff,” she said quietly. “That’s when they cut their headlights…”
Becket’s tone was low and controlled. “Cutting headlights while pursuing someone isn’t amateur behavior.”
Harmony swallowed hard. “So they’re trained.”
“Or they grew up around people who were,” Becket said before Dad shot him a warning look.
But Harmony didn’t flinch. She just nodded once, like she’d reached that conclusion alone at three in the morning, while trying not to shake the bed.
I leaned closer. “Sunshine… you don’t have to spiral right now. We’re on this.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I just hate waiting for the next move.”
Dad set down his mug. “Waiting doesn’t mean nothing is happening. I made calls this morning. There’s a cruiser stationed at the entrance to the property. Another looping Main Street until closing. The festival crowd gives us cover to increase patrols without raising questions.”
Harmony blinked. “Does Sandy know?”
“I told her we’re running rounds because of the festival weekend,” Dad said with steady reassurance. “She doesn’t need more than that.”
Becket didn’t look up from his screen. “I’ve been in contact with Poirier, my friend in Montreal. He’s checking on Marcel’s appeal status and watching court filings. Nothing new yet, but he’ll call as soon as something shifts.”
Harmony’s jaw tightened. “So we’re… in a holding pattern.”
“Not exactly,” Becket said, tapping a key. “Your old channels are still active. Not sending anything, but awake. Whoever used your relay hasn’t repeated the activity, but that silence is just as calculated.”
Harmony inhaled sharply; eyes fixed on the counter.
Dad reached for a new file. “We’re tightening the perimeter here. I don’t want you alone anywhere on the property. You stay with one of us. If you need to go into town, we handle that too.”
She nodded, even though I knew she hated it.
And then her gaze drifted. It was just a flicker.
Barely a second. But she looked toward Becket’s open laptop where the relay diagrams and code maps were dancing across the screen.
Her gaze held longer than she realized. Her fingers tightened on her mug.
A subtle, familiar focus slid behind her eyes.
A kind of alertness she hadn’t shown since the night she told me about what she’d done years ago.
I felt her tense under my hand.
“Harmony,” I murmured.
She blinked quickly and looked away. But the moment was enough to solidify the fact something inside her had shifted. It wasn’t fear, panic, or resolve. I knew before she even said a word, we weren’t going to be able to keep her away from whatever digital trail was hunting her.
Harmony didn’t say anything for a long moment, she just kept staring into her mug, like answers might surface if she willed them hard enough.
The morning light coming through the kitchen windows caught the faint shadows beneath her eyes, the tension in her jaw, the stiffness in her shoulders.
She’d been strong for so long, too long, and every instinct in me screamed to pull her close and promise none of this would touch her again.
But I couldn’t make that promise, and we both knew it.
Dad slipped on his jacket. “I’m heading to the festival grounds. Patrol rotation changed at eight. I want to walk the perimeter myself.”
Harmony sat up straighter. “Pierre, you don’t have to.”
“Yes,” Dad said calmly but firmly, “I do.”
He gave her a softer look, one that wasn’t often seen by the general public. “You stay here with Eric for a few hours. I’ll be back by noon.”
When he left, the door shut with a finality that made the kitchen go still again.
Asher poured himself coffee, muttering, “And I’m heading to the center. Morning class is at nine.”
Harmony blinked. “You have morning classes now?”
He shrugged, as if the fact he’d somehow become the unofficial MMA coach for half the teens in town wasn’t newsworthy. “Kids keep showing up early. Might as well use the time. They’re good kids. Some of them need… something steady.”
“Like you?” she asked, offering a small smile.
He snorted. “They’re in trouble if that’s the case.” Then, quieter, “But yeah. Maybe.”
He grabbed his keys and paused near her chair. “You heading in today?”
Harmony hesitated. “Maybe later this evening. Sandy said she can manage the morning rush at the flower shop, and I plan to just hang around here all day.”
“Solid plan, but if you go, text me. I’ll sweep the area.”
“Thanks, Asher.”
He nodded once at her, then at me. “Keep her inside for a bit.”
Then he was out the door too, boots crunching on gravel until the truck rumbled to life.
And then it was just me, Harmony, and Becket immersed in three different kinds of silence.
Becket was the first to break it. “Eric, can you bring me the ethernet cable from the hall closet? The five-meter one.”
He didn’t look up. He didn’t have to. The request was deliberate, and the second I stood to get it, Harmony let out a slow breath, relief or tension, I couldn’t tell.
By the time I returned with the cable, she had moved to stand behind Becket, eyes scanning the lines of code and bouncing relay visuals on his screen.
Becket didn’t acknowledge her at first, letting her hover. Letting her look.
I set the cable down. “Becket.”
“What?” he muttered.
“Are you doing this on purpose? You see she can’t stop staring at your screen.” I didn’t like that my brother was baiting Harmony.
He kept typing for another few seconds, then sighed, “Sorry.”
Harmony blinked. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” he said, leaning back in his chair, he looked at Harmony not me, “if someone is using your old relay, my contact and I need your brain to understand how they’re moving through it. And it also means if I tell you that, Eric will snap me in half.”
Harmony looked between us. “I don’t want to cause trouble between you guys, but your brother is right, Eric.”
I didn’t like those words but I knew they were right. We needed answers and Harmony was a missing link.
Her jaw tensed.
“Harmony, you’re smart. Faster than most. You built those back doors when you were a kid. Whoever’s using them knows your patterns. My friend can trace their steps, but you know the origin,” Becket explained.
Her breathing hitched. She looked at me, almost like she was asking permission. She had walked away from that life and tried her best to stay away, and yet somehow it was following her whether she liked it or not.
I shook my head instantly. “We said we’d keep you out of this.”
Her eyes softened, not with agreement but with resolve. “Eric… someone is using something I created.”
“You were a kid,” I reminded her.
“And now someone is twisting what I did,” she whispered.
Becket sat forward, elbows on his knees. “Look, neither of us wants Harmony diving into a live relay. But we do need her insight. Just the structure. Architecture. Nothing active.”
Harmony nodded slowly but I saw it. The shift. The slipping of fear into focus. The sharpening of something inside her I hadn’t seen since the night she told me how she built the encrypted channel that helped put her father away.
She wasn’t spiraling. She was preparing to do what needed to be done. She wasn’t the type of woman to back away from a challenge, life had taught her to face her battles head-on, and it scared the hell out of me.
I exhaled through my nose. “Fine. But I stay with you the entire time.”
“You’re not hovering behind her breathing like a bear,” Becket muttered.
“Try and stop me.”
Harmony gave a small laugh and the sound loosened something painful in my chest. Becket rotated the laptop slightly so she could see better. “These are the relays that were activated when the message came through two nights ago. No new traffic yet. But the silence is… calculated.”
Harmony murmured, “They’re testing. Waiting for movement.”
Becket nodded. “Exactly.”
She leaned in, eyes scanning the pattern diagram. She shook her head. “This fork isn’t mine.”
“That’s what I thought,” Becket said. “New code. Not yours.”
“But….” Her brow furrowed. “This one is.” She pointed at a branching node. “That’s an old fail-safe. I added it so the system wouldn’t lock if I bailed mid-route.”
Becket snapped upright. “You didn’t tell me there were fail-safes.”
“I didn’t remember until now,” she whispered. “I haven’t seen this system in years.”
Becket rubbed both hands over his face. “Damn. Okay. That changes things.”
I stepped closer, unable to keep still. “Explain.”
Becket pointed at a blinking node. “If this is Harmony’s fail-safe… it means the intruder didn’t replicate her work. They accessed it.”
Harmony’s face went pale. “Meaning?”
“They had your original passwords at some point,” Becket said. “Or watched you enter them. Or someone who did gave them access.”
Her knees buckled slightly. I wrapped my arm around her waist instantly.
“Sunshine?”
Her voice was paper-thin. “There were only three people who ever saw me use those channels. My father. Olivier. And Nico, once, when he stole my laptop.”
The air in the room changed.
Becket’s brows pulled tight. “Olivier saw you use the system?”
Harmony nodded slowly. “He thought it was a game. He thought it was funny I could break into Dad’s encrypted files.” Her breath trembled. “Then he realized I wasn’t playing.”
I felt rage coil hot in my stomach.
Becket swore under his breath. “If Olivier had even partial access… if he remembered enough to recreate a fork…”
Harmony whispered, “He could move through it like I did.”
The room went silent, the kind that was bone chilling.
Finally, Becket pushed back from the table. “I need another hour. Maybe two. Stay put. Do not touch anything yet, Harmony. I mean it.”
“I won’t,” she said.
He didn’t look convinced, but he grabbed both laptops and moved to the dining room, muttering to himself, then he was on the phone talking code replication and stored encryption paths.
As soon as he was gone, Harmony sagged into the stool. “Eric…”
I cupped her face gently. “I’m here. I’m not leaving.”
Her eyes glimmered with the kind of exhausted and overwhelmed look that came from realizing the threat circling her wasn’t random. It was personal. Deeply personal.
“I didn’t want you involved in my messed-up life, my crazy family,” she whispered.
I pulled her against me, holding her tight. “I’m in deep. This information doesn’t change anything.”
She buried her face in my chest. “I think I need to see it. The code. The relay. I won’t do anything. I just… I need to see it.”
I inhaled slowly. “We’ll talk to Becket. The second he says it’s safe.”
She nodded, but the tension in her shoulders told me she wasn’t waiting.
She already had a plan forming. She wasn’t going to sit on the sidelines while someone used her own creation to torment her.
And no matter how badly I wanted to protect her from all of it…
I knew better. Harmony wasn’t breakable. She was preparing to fight.