Chapter 10
Ten
Magnus couldn’t stop watching the clock.
Seventy-two hours. That’s what they had left before Lars’s deadline turned Oliver from leverage into a lesson.
Every minute Grace spent prepping felt like a minute stolen from his son, even though Magnus knew they couldn’t rush this.
Rushing got people killed. He’d learned that on fire lines, where the crews that panicked were the crews that burned.
But knowing that and feeling it were two different things.
The holographic table cast the command center in shimmering blue as the Patroclus facility rotated slowly above it.
Guard posts, sensor arrays, volcanic exhaust ports venting superheated steam into the Hawaiian night, all rendered in perfect clarity.
It should have felt like progress. Instead, it just made the fortress look more impossible.
“This is our entry point.” Grace zoomed in on a narrow shaft on the eastern face.
“Geothermal exhaust port seventeen. It vents every six hours to prevent pressure buildup in the volcanic chambers below. We fly a reconnaissance drone through between venting cycles to map the interior approach before we commit bodies.”
Her voice carried that same steady calm she defaulted to when she was working, like she was reading a weather forecast rather than proposing they breach one of the most secure facilities on the Pacific Rim. Magnus envied that calm. His own nerves felt like exposed wire.
“And you want to fly a drone through superheated steam?” Gunnar didn’t bother hiding his doubt. “Into a facility crawling with Marines?”
“Not through the steam. Between cycles.” Grace pulled up thermal readings, pressure graphs, and timing sequences.
“We have a forty-three-minute window after each venting when the temperature drops to survivable levels. The drone goes in, maps the route, confirms the entry, and gets out before the next cycle. When we retrieve the Aegis, we want the 0430 cycle. Guard density bottoms out at the shift change, and we’ll get better coverage than if we go in during the day. ”
The plan made sense. They needed eyes inside before committing to the lava tube approach.
But something about it nagged at Magnus, a low hum of wrongness he couldn’t pin down.
It was too exposed, too dependent on perfect timing, and too clean.
Magnus had watched plans like it come apart the second reality showed up.
“What about their sensor grid?” Astryde leaned forward. “A drone’s going to light up their screens like a Christmas tree.”
“Not this one.” Grace switched displays, showing specs that made even Rafe whistle through the speakers. “Radar-absorbing materials, thermal masking. It mimics the heat signature of volcanic gases. To their sensors, it looks like residual venting.”
“Where exactly did you get military hardware?” Davis asked.
Grace’s expression didn’t change. “I have resources.”
Magnus caught the deflection and filed it away. Another question she wouldn’t answer, another locked door in the maze of who Grace Carter really was. The list was getting long.
“The approach vector concerns me,” Bj?rn said. “You’re threading a needle through some of the most monitored airspace in the Pacific.”
“Which is why we launch from here.” Grace highlighted a cove sixteen miles from the target.
“Below radar the whole way. The drone hugs the coastline, enters through the connecting lava tube into the exhaust system.” She paused, meeting each of their eyes.
“It’s risky, but the intelligence we gain could be the difference between getting Oliver out and walking into a trap. ”
Oliver’s name landed in the room like a stone in still water. Grace didn’t use it often, Magnus had noticed. Like saying it cost her something she couldn’t afford to spend.
“I can pilot it,” she said quietly. “I’ve done it before.”
“Do it,” Gunnar said. “But at the first sign of detection, you abort. We can’t afford to tip them off.”
Grace was already turning to her workstation. “Thirty minutes to prep the launch sequence.”
She moved into the work the way Magnus had watched veteran sawyers move into a fire line, no wasted motion, every action feeding the next.
Whatever else was true about her, whatever lies she’d told and was probably still telling, this was where she lived.
Not the bakery. Not the small-town life she’d built as camouflage.
This dark room full of glowing screens and impossible problems was Grace Carter’s native ground, and watching her operate on it made Magnus feel the distance between them like a physical gap.
“Magnus, I need you to monitor the thermal readings.” She didn’t look up. “If the vent cycle shifts even slightly, I need to know immediately.”
He settled into the chair beside her. Close enough to catch the lavender of her shampoo, the same scent from Montana that still ambushed him at odd moments. Close enough to see the tension in her jaw, the way she held everything tight while her hands moved with loose precision across the controls.
“Drone is armed and ready,” Davis announced.
The main screen shifted to night-vision. The cove stretched out before them, black water lapping at volcanic rock. Honolulu glowed on the far horizon like a false promise of normalcy.
“Launching,” Grace said, and the room drew closer, everyone pulled toward the screen.
The drone’s perspective rushed forward, skimming feet above the water.
The coastline blurred past, jagged rocks, patches of beach, vegetation so thick it seemed to reach for the camera.
Grace adjusted altitude by inches, banked around obstacles before Magnus saw them coming.
He wondered how many times she’d done this. For whom. Under what circumstances.
More locked doors.
“Entering the lava tube.”
The screen went dark, then filled with the claustrophobic view of glistening rock walls. The tunnel twisted through solid volcanic basalt, barely wider than the drone’s wingspan. One miscalculation and they’d lose their only eyes.
Magnus watched the thermal readings climb. “Temp at a hundred and four. You’ve got twenty minutes before the next venting cycle.”
“Copy.”
Her concentration was absolute, her world narrowed to the screen and the controls. Sweat beaded on her forehead despite the command center’s aggressive air conditioning. Magnus realized he was holding his breath and forced himself to exhale.
The drone emerged into a larger chamber, and Bj?rn sucked in a sharp breath behind them. The exhaust port loomed above, massive, steam wisping from its edges, residual heat making the air shimmer like a mirage.
“Beginning ascent.”
They rose through darkness. This was it. Their first look inside Patroclus, the facility that held the key to getting Oliver back and destroying the man who’d taken him.
The drone cleared the shaft and entered a mechanical room filled with turbines and cooling systems. Grace began a systematic scan, the camera capturing door positions, camera mounts, and ventilation grates large enough for human passage.
Every detail was a piece of the puzzle they’d need to solve in person, in the dark, under the clock.
“Beautiful,” Rafe murmured from his monitor. “This is exactly what we needed.”
Magnus had to agree. The intelligence was perfect.
Too perfect.
The thought had barely formed when the alarm tore through the speakers.
Red lights across every screen. A piercing digital wail that made everyone flinch. On the main display, a warning blazed: INTRUSION DETECTED.
“Get it out! Now!” Gunnar bellowed.
Grace wrenched the drone back toward the exhaust port, her hands a blur across the controls. On screen, the view lurched and spun. A security shutter descended over the opening with mechanical inevitability, closing like a jaw.
“Come on,” Grace whispered. “Come on.”
They made it through with inches to spare, the shutter slamming shut behind them with a resonance Magnus swore he could feel through the floor. The drone raced back through the lava tube in a barely controlled plummet, Grace fighting the walls on every turn.
She got it to the cove. Initiated self-destruct. The feed cut to black.
For a long moment, no one moved. The silence pressed in after the chaos of the alarm, heavy and ringing.
Then Gunnar rounded on Grace, his face livid. “What was that?”
“I didn’t—”
“You said their sensors wouldn’t detect it. You said you could get in and out clean.” His finger stabbed the air.
“She compromised the entire operation,” Astryde said, her voice cold enough to frost glass. “They’ll triple security now. Change every protocol.”
Bj?rn slammed his tablet on a console. “We just lost our only element of surprise. What’s the contingency, Grace? Or was alerting them the plan all along?”
Magnus watched Grace recoil from the assault, the color draining from her face. Her hands clenched at her sides, trembling.
But underneath the fear, just for a second, he caught something else. A flicker behind her eyes that didn’t match the rest of her body language. Not panic. Something cooler. More deliberate.
It was gone before he could be sure.
“Enough.” The word came out quietly, but it carried. His siblings hesitated, the way they’d always hesitated when their father used that tone to cut through chaos. Even Gunnar, still vibrating with fury, took a step back.
Magnus didn’t defend Grace. Didn’t excuse the failure. He just ended the immediate conflict before it could tear apart the only team Oliver had.
“I need air,” Gunnar muttered. He gave Grace one last look that promised this wasn’t over, then stalked out.
The others followed, leaving Magnus and Grace alone with thirty dead screens and the fading echo of an alarm.
Grace sat frozen, staring at nothing.
“I screwed up,” she whispered.
Magnus leaned against a console and let the silence stretch. His mind worked through the sequence like a post-fire debrief, pulling apart every moment. The flawless approach. The perfectly timed alarm. The narrow, cinematic escape.
The facility was on high alert now, yes. But the lava tube entry remained secret. The drone had self-destructed before revealing their true approach. And his siblings’ fury would keep Grace under constant surveillance, every move watched, every decision questioned.
Right where she wanted them.
Magnus didn’t have the tech skills to prove it.
But he’d spent enough years reading fire behavior to recognize when something looked natural but wasn’t.
A fire that seemed to jump randomly but was actually following hidden fuel lines underground.
A collapse that appeared accidental but was structurally inevitable.
Grace had orchestrated this. He was almost sure of it.
“I need a minute.” She stood, her chair scraping against the floor, and walked toward the far corridor with controlled steps.
He waited. Counted to fifteen.
Then followed.
The corridor branched into equipment rooms and storage areas. He tracked the sound of her footsteps until they stopped. A door opened, then closed.
Through the server room’s cracked door, Magnus could see her silhouette against the glow of equipment lights.
Her shoulders shook. Her hand pressed against her mouth, muffling breathing that came too fast, too shallow.
The composure she’d maintained in front of his family was coming apart in private, where she thought no one could see.
He started to push the door open to offer something, he didn’t even know what. Comfort felt wrong. Confrontation felt worse.
Then Grace straightened. She physically hauled herself back together, shoulders back, deep breath, hands unclenching. She wiped her face roughly, erasing the evidence, and when she turned toward the door, her expression was smooth and blank.
Magnus stepped into an alcove just before she emerged.
She paused in the doorway, knuckles white on the frame, and took one more steadying breath. Then she let go and walked back toward the command center, her footsteps measured and even in the empty corridor.
Magnus stayed in the alcove, listening to those footsteps fade.
The vulnerability had been real. He’d stake his life on that.
No one faked the kind of breathing he’d heard through that door, the ragged, desperate gulping of someone trying not to drown.
But so was the calculation he’d glimpsed in the command center.
So was the composure she’d snapped back into like armor.
Magnus pushed off the wall and headed back. He didn’t know if the woman he’d just watched pull herself together was someone he could trust or someone who was going to get them all killed.
But he knew what he’d heard through that door. And it was the sound of someone who was terrified, not for herself, but for a little boy she’d loved enough to walk away from.
That, Magnus understood. That, he could work with.