Chapter 26
Perimeter alarm. Northwest corner of the manor grounds. Security light malfunctioned on the western corner of the manor.
Just when I thought it had been an anomaly, a second perimeter alarm went off in the woods behind Savannah and Finn”s cottage. Ten seconds later, a text from Finn hit my screen. Their security lights were flashing on and off at all corners of the cottage. As far as they could see, there was nothing out there. I texted back, telling them to stay put and away from the windows.
Fuck.Unless there was an army after us, this didn”t make sense. The cottage and the northwest corner of the Manor grounds were too far apart to be the same person. I shot off the couch and crossed to the folding table where I’d left my laptop, pulling up the cameras. There was no one there. Fuck.
I put in the earpiece I’d left by my laptop.
“Report,” I said the second I was connected.
“I split the team,” Kane answered. “They can’t find who set off the alarms. There”s no one out there.”
The hammock rustled, and I glanced over to see Quinn sitting up, blinking, dark hair sliding away from her cheeks. If it was any other situation, I’d bring her to the house, stash her with everyone else, and go out with the team. But I couldn’t do that to her. Not after everything she’d told me. She was too raw. Too vulnerable. I wouldn’t take her there. Not now.
For a second, I thought about having someone stay with her. And again, if it had been anyone else, I would have put a guard on her and headed out to join my team. But this wasn’t anyone else. It was Quinn. And I wasn’t leaving her.
I didn”t have time to think about why or what that meant. Another perimeter alarm went off. This time, the pool house. I flicked to the cameras; glad we’d wired everything tight. I could see almost every inch of the acres surrounding the Manor. The cameras’ night vision was so clear it might have been noon, and there was nothing fucking there.
Not a chipmunk, not a deer, nothing that moved on two legs. So what was setting off the fucking alarms?
“Check for a malfunction,” I said.
“Already on it,” Kane said, “but I don”t know how it could be. One camera or light might make sense, but not like this.”
From my folding table in the gatehouse, I could see Heartstone Manor through the front windows. The security lights on the roofline flashed in a discordant pattern, lighting the surrounding lawn and blinking out over and over. Another perimeter alarm went off, this time between the gatehouse and the front gate. I knew with the number of trees between us and the gate, I wouldn’t be able to see anything if I looked outside, but the proximity left me uneasy. If this was the man after Quinn, did he know she was here?
I caught the rustle of the hammock and the soft thump of Leo jumping down, the heavier thump of Quinn doing the same.
“Hawk,” Quinn said from behind me. I turned to see her leaning on her crutches. “What”s going on?”
“I don”t know. The perimeter alarms are going off, and the lights are going nuts. But as far as we can tell, no one”s out there.”
“Is there a problem with the system?” Quinn asked.
I shook my head. “Don”t know. Kane’s checking for a malfunction, but he hasn’t found anything yet.”
“I”m okay if you need to go,” she said.
“No,” I said, eyes locked on the screen. I watched part of my team converge on the site of the last perimeter breach. Nothing there.
“Hawk, really, I can?—”
“No fucking way,” I said. “I”m not bringing you to the house, and I”m not fucking leaving you.”
Quinn let out a huff of air that I’d swear hid relief. “Do you want a cup of coffee?” she asked. I started to say no and realized I did want coffee. And maybe she needed to get me one, to have something to do while we waited to see what was coming next.
I didn”t have time to think about that as the proximity alarm by the gate started pinging over and over as if someone was running back and forth through the invisible beam. The camera showed nothing, but the lights on the front gate were going off with each alert.
I directed my team through the woods, over the grounds, chasing down every ping on the system. The lights were going wild. The Sawyers in the Manor were on lockdown, under guard. And no matter where we looked, there was no one fucking out there.
Which meant that someone was fucking with us. What I didn’t know was how.
“Drink this,” Quinn said, setting a steaming cup of coffee in front of me.
“Thanks, baby.” I took a sip. “We”re okay,” I said, mostly sure I wasn’t lying.
She nodded, pulling out a folding chair to sit beside me, leaning in to stare at the screen. Calm and curious, not afraid. “Are you sure you don’t need to go?”
“I”m not leaving you. We”re all right, but I”m not taking any chances with you.”
She nodded. I looked down to see Leo sitting beside her. He let out a strident chirp, his golden eyes demanding. I scooped him up, setting him on my lap, scratching his chin absently as I sipped my coffee and watched the security lights flashing, a microsecond delay between the lights flashing through the front windows and those in the screen.
“Is it random or a pattern?” Quinn asked.
I shook my head. “Random so far.”
Kane’s voice sounded in my ear. “Pool house proximity alarm and lights are going off again. Nothing there. Collins scared the shit out of some deer in the woods. That”s the only living thing we”ve seen.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. “Any luck finding a malfunction in the system?”
“So far, it”s clean,” he said, frustration evident in his voice. “Except it can’t be because there”s nothing fucking there.”
“Yeah, I got you,” I agreed. I considered the only conclusion, and I didn’t like it. It was impossible. But given that there wasn’t anyone out there, it was our only answer.
“We”ve been hacked,” I said.
“No way,” came Kane’s immediate response. “No fucking way. Lucas put these programs together. No one hacks Lucas”s shit.”
Normally, I”d agree with Kane. Lucas Jackson was our in-house white hat hacker at Sinclair Security, and he was the best. The fucking best. Kane was right. Nobody hacked Lucas. “I hear you. But as impossible as this is, it”s the only answer that makes sense.” I watched the lights, ignoring Kane”s muttered denial. Something shifted, the random flashes coalescing into something that wasn’t at all random. A pattern.
Quinn leaned in closer, her hand closing on my arm. “Hawk, is that?—”
I nodded. “It”s fucking Morse code,” I said.
I focused on the lights on my screen, catching the flashes, bits and pieces from different areas of the grounds coming together in a defined pattern. The front lights on Savannah and Finn”s cottage went in two short flashes. The front of the Manor gave two long flashes. There was nothing for a long beat. Then a short flash at the pool house followed by two long flashes. A short, then long flash at the gates. A long flash on the front of the gatehouse.
“What does it say?” Quinn asked in a whisper, her eyes flicking from camera to camera on the screen. “My Morse code sucks.”
I checked again, just to be sure.
Fuck.I was right. “It says ‘I”m watching you.’”
In my ear, Kane said, “No fucking way.”
“Our proof is right there,” I said in answer, as the pattern started again at the beginning. “We’ve been hacked.”
“Who the fuck could—” Kane started.
“I don’t know, but we’re going to find out,” I said. “Have the guys check for intrusions in the system, though my guess is you won’t find them. Anybody good enough to get past Lucas”s security isn”t going to leave any tracks.”
“Lucas is going to be pissed,” Kane muttered.
Pissed was putting it mildly. Lucas would go ballistic.
My eyes locked on the screen. I watched three different proximity alarms light up at the same time. The front gate. Quinn’s clearing. The pool house. The sensors fired together in three short flashes. Then, three long flashes. Three final quick flashes, and everything went dark.
“Mayday,” I murmured. Three short, three long, three short. The signal for Mayday.
We waited. Sixty seconds. Nothing. Another minute. Nothing. When it had been quiet for five minutes, I told Kane, “Split the team into three groups and check the front gate, the clearing, and the pool house.”
We waited. Another five minutes passed, and Kane’s voice sounded in my ear. “We may have been hacked, but someone was here. There’s a box in the clearing.”
“A box?” I asked, not expecting that. “What kind of box?”
A picture popped up on my screen of a white gift box sitting in the dirt exactly between the two trees where Quinn usually hung her hammock. The lid was decorated with a blood-red ribbon tied in a bow, resting on top of the box, slightly askew. A brown cardboard tag dangled from brown twine; Quinn written in dark ink.
Fuck.
At least we confirmed what we’d suspected. Quinn was the target. I glanced at her. Her eyes were riveted on the screen.
“Swab it for explosive residue,” I said, knowing the team should have at least one pack of swabs on them.
We watched as one of my men approached, gingerly wiping the outside of the gift box with a white square of papery material. He held it up to the camera, still white.
“No residue,” I murmured for Quinn’s benefit. “Open it,” I ordered.
“Switching you to local video,” Kane said in my ear as a new square popped up on my screen, the gift box filling the space, the bow the color of blood, the inside of the box dark with shadows. Gloved fingers nudged the lid, knocking it to the dirt. Everything froze for a beat, but nothing happened. No explosion, no movement. Nothing. The fingers filled the screen again, reaching in and pulling out a circle of something. I couldn’t see until he turned his hand, the gift inside catching the light with a silvery gleam.
“Is that—” Quinn started to ask, leaning in, squinting at the screen.
“Confirm the contents,” I said, dread turning my guts to ice.
“It looks like a collar,” my man in the clearing said. “Pink. The tag is personalized.”
“What does it say?” I asked.
“Leo. It says, Leo.”
Fuck.The implications of that spilled through my brain.
“He was watching us,” Quinn whispered, sitting back, her face pale. She pulled Leo from my lap to her arms, cuddling him close.
“No one is going to hurt you,” I promised, adding, “Or Leo. No one is going to hurt either of you.”
Quinn nodded, her eyes locked on the screen. “What do we do now?” she asked.
“We wait and see if the show is over,” I said grimly. “And if it is, we go to bed and call West in the morning.”
She nodded again, her eyes still locked on the screen.
“That box is evidence,” I reminded Kane. “Call West first thing tomorrow and fill him in. He can see if he can get any prints off it.”
“Got you, boss,” Kane said, his usual humor falling flat. “The cameras don’t show anyone in the clearing. I went back over the footage, and it’s blank. The box pops on the screen out of nowhere.”
I sighed, by then not surprised. Whoever had done this was good. No, better than good. Better than the best. Which was us.
We waited another half hour, but everything remained quiet. At close to three in the morning, the forest was dark and silent.
I signed off with my team. Quinn sat beside me, sipping her cold coffee. “We’re assuming this is the same man from the woods, right? How could he have hacked into the system?”
I shook my head. “I don”t know, but I”m going to find out. For now, it’s over. We need to get some sleep.”
She stood, dislodging Leo, who let out an annoyed trill. She only made it three steps toward the hammock when I stopped her.
“Not the hammock. We”re sleeping upstairs, away from the windows, where we have a secondary escape route.” The hallway over the drive was locked on both sides, the other wing of the gatehouse secured, and I was the only one with the key. If this side was compromised and we were upstairs, we still had a way out.
Eyes bleary, Quinn didn”t argue. She thumped up the stairs, the boot on her foot, and tumbled into my bed. I carefully unstrapped the boot and eased it off her ankle, setting it on the floor before sliding into bed beside her.
Too tired and too unsettled to fight myself, I gave in to the urge to pull her into my arms and hold her close. “You”re going to be okay, Quinn.”
She nodded against the pillow, settling in and drifting to sleep almost immediately. Leo jumped onto the bed and curled up on top of us, letting out a contented purr.
My arm tightened around Quinn”s waist, and I closed my eyes, alert for the slightest sound. Something inside me knew whoever he was, whatever he wanted, he was done for the night. The picture of that pink collar hovered in my brain, taunting me, exactly—I suspected—as the man in the dark wanted. He’d been watching us. Why?
What was his end game? To scare Quinn? To get her alone? Had he thought I’d leave her undefended while he fucked with our systems? I didn’t know. And I wasn’t going to figure it out by staying awake, staring at the ceiling.
I let myself fall into a light doze.
Tomorrow would be soon enough to figure out the rest.