Chapter 17
Victor
I push through Owen’s office door without knocking, my shirt still wrinkled from carrying Harper’s unconscious body.
The others are already here, scattered around the room looking just as stressed as I am.
Owen sits hunched over his keyboard, fingers flying across keys.
Matteo leans against the wall, arms crossed, jaw tight.
Luke occupies the chair across from Owen’s desk, a legal pad balanced on his knee.
“Harper’s stable,” I say before anyone can ask. “Amarjit is keeping tabs on her for us, but it definitely looks like some kind of drug overdose.”
Owen doesn’t divert his attention from his screens. “How the fuck did she get drugs? We stripped that room clean.”
“That’s what we need to figure out.” I close the door behind me and lean against it. The lock clicks. “Along with everything else that’s gone to shit in the last twenty-four hours.”
Matteo pushes off the wall. “Let’s go through the timeline. My gut says Phineas wasn’t behind what happened today since we’ve had him locked in our warehouse for the past thirty-six hours, but I’m not sure about anything anymore.”
Luke tears a sheet from his legal pad and pins it to the corkboard on Owen’s wall. He’s drawn a rough timeline in his neat handwriting, dates and events connected by arrows. “Start with what we know for certain.”
Owen pulls up a new window, fingers tapping commands. “Malware first appeared on Grace’s phone approximately three months ago. Dormant until recently.”
“Grace starts receiving flowers,” I add, moving closer to Luke’s timeline. “Days before her car breaks down outside that nightclub Sabrina dragged her to.”
“You met Lili that night at work,” Matteo says. “But again, I don’t understand how that could be connected.”
Matteo’s right, Grace’s stalker seems like a separate thing from all the other trouble we’ve been having. “Grace’s tires get slashed. More flowers. Trinity gets shot helping Lili file for divorce. We can put that on a separate timeline since it didn’t involve Grace.”
Owen’s fingers pause over the keyboard. “I discovered the malware on Grace’s phone. Traced it back to Harper, brought her in for questioning.”
“Been holding her here ever since,” Luke adds. “Until tonight. That’s what? Forty-eight hours we’ve had her in our custody?”
I drag a hand through my hair. It’s still damp with sweat from the desert heat, from carrying Harper’s limp body. “Lili visits Trinity and gets kidnapped by Phineas. We rescue her, bring everyone here for safety. Question is, how did the bomber find out where we were?”
“Someone plants a bomb in Sabrina’s car,” Matteo continues. “Designed to lure Grace outside.”
Owen calls up a new screen, code scrolling past in green text. “Malware is found on Sabrina’s phone. We disarm the bomb. Grace stays safe inside.”
“And then I find Harper nearly dead from an overdose.” The words taste bitter.
“While we’re all focused on external threats, someone gets to her right under our noses.
With the way the vomit was dried on her face, my guess is it happened sometime before we all got here, and it’s only luck that she’s alive. ”
The room went quiet except for the hum of Owen’s computers and air conditioner. The weight of the timeline settles on my shoulders. We can’t see where it ends, or even who all the players are.
Matteo breaks the silence. “Phineas is locked in our warehouse. Has been since we rescued Lili.”
“With round-the-clock surveillance,” Luke adds. “No communication in or out.”
Owen nods, pulling up security feeds from the warehouse. “He’s been secured the entire time. No contact with the outside world.”
I study the feeds showing Phineas zip-tied to a chair, head hanging forward. “So, he’s not orchestrating the bomb or Harper’s overdose.”
“Which means we’re dealing with multiple threats,” Matteo says. “Phineas wanted to destroy us, tear down everything we’ve built. Grace’s stalker situation is separate.”
Luke taps his pen against the legal pad. “Different motivation. Different methods.”
“Grace’s stalker knows her personally,” I say, thinking about the flowers, the nickname Gracie in the texts. “Someone from her past.”
“But why involve Sabrina?” Matteo asks. “What’s the connection there?”
“Grace’s roommate,” I say. “Easy access to Grace’s apartment, her routine. Perfect way to plant malware on a secondary target.”
Luke underlines something on his paper. “We have Phineas gunning for the four of us specifically. Separate from that, someone with a personal grudge against Grace. And we’re fairly sure that person is Kara Lindon.”
“Two different wars,” Matteo says. “Running parallel.”
I lean against Owen’s desk, watching the security feeds cycle through different areas of the club. Somewhere out there, Grace is trying to hold herself together while threats circle us from multiple directions. The thought makes my chest tight.
“Harper’s overdose could be connected to either,” I say. “Someone wanted to silence her before she gave us more information about the malware. Or...”
“Or what?” Owen asks.
“Or it’s completely separate. Could be she had a stash we missed. What if the pressure got to her, and she wanted to check out?”
Owen shakes his head. “I searched that room myself. Multiple times. There were no drugs.”
“Then someone got them to her,” Luke says. “Which means our security has a hole.”
The implications settle over us. If someone can get drugs to Harper while she’s supposedly secure in our club, what else can they get past our defenses? What other vulnerabilities are we missing?
Matteo moves to stand over Luke’s shoulder, studying his handwriting. “We need to separate these threats. Handle them individually instead of assuming they’re connected.”
“Agreed,” I say. “Phineas is contained for now. We interrogate him, get what information we can, then decide his fate.”
“And Grace’s stalker?” Owen asks.
I think about the TikTok videos I found, Kara Lindon’s face in the profile picture.
The timeline of her appearances in Las Vegas.
The way the bomb threat landed as personal.
“We start with Kara Lindon.” I pull out my phone, showing them the screenshot of her profile.
“She’s been in Vegas. Frequently. For months.
Owen’s already on that trail. I pulled up her socials because I was going to see if Harper recognized her. ”
Owen takes my phone and types Kara’s username from the screenshot.
Kara’s profile appears on his main monitor, larger and clearer.
“I’ve mainly focused on financials and the PI she hired.
I’ll do a full workup of her movements around the city using her social media tags.
Doesn’t read like she’s trying to hide from anyone. ”
“Do it fast,” I say. “And quietly. I don’t want Grace to know we suspect Kara until we’re certain.”
Matteo frowns. “We’re about as certain as we can be. You’re still going to keep this from her?”
“I’m protecting her,” I snap, then force my voice back to level. “Grace has enough to worry about without adding her ex-boyfriend’s psychotic widow to the list.”
“She has a right to know,” Luke says quietly.
“She has a right to be safe.” I stand, pacing the length of the room. “If we’re wrong about Kara, we’ve caused Grace unnecessary pain. If we’re right, knowing too early could put her in more danger.”
Owen’s fingers resume their dancing across the keyboard. “I’ll know more in a few hours. I’m going to see if I can trace the malware back to her as well. Her family is in tech, so it’s possible she got help from someone.”
“Good.” I check my watch. Nearly midnight. Grace will be wondering where I am, worried about Harper, about Lili, about all of us. “I’m going back to the girls. Keep me updated on everything.”
I leave them to their investigation and head back toward the main dungeon, toward Grace and Lili. The timeline is clearer now, the threats more defined. But the solutions seem further away than ever.
Owen’s voice stops me at the door. “Victor. Check this out.”
I turn back, watching him pull up split screens showing lines of code. The malware signatures side by side, one from Grace’s phone, one from Sabrina’s. Even to my untrained eye, the similarities are obvious.
“Same code family,” Owen says, highlighting sections that match across both screens. “Not just similar behaviors. Identical structure, just re-targeted for different devices.”
Luke leans forward in his chair. “Meaning?”
“Meaning whoever hit Grace’s phone also hit Sabrina’s. Same author, same methods, different goals.” Owen’s fingers fly across the keyboard, bringing up additional analysis windows. “I compared the phishing emails that delivered the payloads.”
Two email screenshots appear on his monitors. Both designed to seem like routine notifications, one from the university to Grace, one from Sabrina’s bank. But the underlying code structure says they’re connected.
“Professional work,” Owen continues. “Not some kid throwing together malware from online tutorials or ChatGPT. This is complex code, targeted specifically for their devices and usage patterns. Tyson’s contact will hopefully be able to ID the hacker for us.”
Matteo moves closer to the screens. “How long would it take to build something like this?”
“Weeks. Months if you’re being careful about it.” Owen pulls up metadata from the files. “And expensive. This isn’t amateur hour. My guess is Kara or whoever is behind it paid the hacker to deploy it, and he or she used something already in their arsenal.”
I study the code, thinking about the timeline we just mapped out. “So, Grace’s stalker has resources.”
Owen nods, switching to a new screen showing network traffic analysis. “The interesting thing is the deployment pattern. Grace’s malware has been dormant for three months. Just collecting data, learning her patterns.”
“And Sabrina’s?”
“Activated immediately. Designed for a single-use attack. The bomb threat. It means whoever she’s working with, wasn’t a one time transaction. That could be useful in my search.”
The pattern is becoming clearer. Someone spent months studying Grace, learning her routines, her relationships, her vulnerabilities. That means if it is Kara, she began targeting Grace as soon as her husband committed suicide.
Owen pulls up the financial analysis he’s been running in the background. “Preliminary data supports that theory. Large cash withdrawals over the past six months. Travel to Vegas coinciding with incidents involving Grace.”
The pieces fit. Kara Lindon, grieving widow, blames Grace for her husband’s suicide. Months of planning, professional-grade surveillance, escalating attacks. It lines up in a way that makes my stomach clench.
“But Harper’s overdose,” Luke says. “How does that connect?”
Owen shakes his head. “I’m not sure. Someone tried to delete security footage from whoever came to see Harper at work, so I’m combing through my backups to see if I can figure out what they don’t want us to see.
But it’s going to take time. Let’s hope there’s something from the last few days as well. ”
I head for the door again, mind racing through possibilities.
Kara Lindon targeting Grace through sophisticated malware attacks.
Someone inside our system drugging Harper.
Multiple threats, multiple betrayals, all converging on the people I care about most. “Find me when you have something useful. I’m going to check on Grace and Lili and ask the doctor for an update on Harper. ”
The hallway seems different now, knowing that someone has access to our inner sanctum. It seems less safe keeping everyone here, but moving is just as risky.
The stakes keep climbing, the threats multiplying. Failure isn’t an option. Not when Grace and Lili are counting on me to keep them safe in a world that seems determined to tear us apart.