Chapter 17 Erryn
ERRYN
The repetitive buzz of my phone woke me to a dark room, where I slowly realized the weight across my middle was Helena’s arm. She stirred, and I silenced the call as I took a moment to piece myself together.
I was not one for sharing my bed. I had not meant to share my bed. But I had spent hours teasing orgasm after orgasm from the exhausted woman beside me until we had both collapsed in a heap in the haphazardly strewn bedding and must have fallen asleep.
My phone lit up again, vibrating my hand, and I squinted at the screen.
Artemis.
I swore under my breath, slipping out of bed and grabbing a dressing gown, shivering in the cool air as I hurried into the lounge to take the call.
I was still fully dressed. I hadn’t allowed Helena to touch me in return, not that she hadn’t tried.
I had just tied her to the bed so I could enjoy my slow, delicious exploration of her body with my tongue in relative peace.
I shivered again, my feet cold on what should have been heated flooring, and I frowned, crossing to the home control screen on the wall, brushing it awake as I clicked accept.
“Loxley,” I said, my voice cracked from sleep.
“We have a critical problem with the Vanguard integration,” Artemis said.
My blood went cold when the home screen flickered as it loaded. The layout was stripped back, the systems offline.
“Define critical, I’m not in front of my computer.”
“There has been a permissions realignment within the central architecture,” Artemis replied. “At 0512hrs, the Vanguard integration assumed primary administrative authority.”
I glanced at the time. 0617hrs, and I was only just hearing about this.
“Triarchy credentials are no longer recognized as root-level,” Artemis said evenly. “We retain access to surface systems, communications, and basic monitoring. But core controls are restricted.”
I attempted a manual override on the home system, and the screen lagged before giving the same response. “Are we looking at a breach?”
“There is no external intrusion signature. The shift was executed as an authorized internal update.”
“Can you roll it back?” I asked urgently.
“We are attempting to isolate the Vanguard integration from the legacy framework,” Artemis said. “However, it has embedded itself into the authentication protocols. It is not overriding us by force. The system is simply prioritizing their credentials.”
I stared at the greyed-out controls. “They haven’t locked us out,” I said quietly.
“No.”
“It’s given Vanguard authority override.”
There was a brief pause as she spoke to someone in the room with her, voices conversing that I couldn’t quite make out.
“It would appear so,” Artemis said finally.
“I will be in shortly,” I said. “Do not escalate outside of your closed lines. Maintain the appearance of stability until we understand the scope.”
“Understood.”
The line disconnected, and I brought up my contacts, checking I still had access to the internal communications. Everything else seemed to be running as normal. I scrolled past my personal contacts and paused on Claire’s number.
It was past 0600hrs. She should have already been here and alerted me to the smart system being offline. I strode to the kitchen and poked my head in. It was still dark, and the first time Claire had been late in a decade.
“Lox.” Helena appeared in the doorway, her hair loose, wearing just a sports bra and hastily pulled on trousers, her belt still undone, and a blade in her hand. She passed an eye over me before turning and taking off down the hall.
I flicked the light switch in the kitchen, cursing as it didn’t turn on, and stepped into the darkness. Feeling my way around the shelving to my right, I pulled the latch to a hidden weapons compartment and retrieved my gun before trailing after Helena.
She was by the front door, an ear pressed to it as I reached her, and handed me her phone. It showed much the same as the home smart system, with a red alert indicating the new security deadbolt system had been triggered.
“I can’t tell if it’s been triggered from the mainframe going down or if there was a breach,” she murmured. “And I can’t access the security cameras to check.”
I nodded, angling myself to cover her as she silently hit the override to release the deadbolt and pulled the door back a fraction.
Silence.
The foyer beyond was dark, and I couldn’t hear any movement. There were no internal windows here; the only light in this part of the house was from the faint dawn light just starting to reach us down the hall.
Helena slipped through the doorway first, blade low, body angled.
I followed, gun steady, covering her flank as we moved.
The emergency strips along the skirting boards hadn’t activated, and the main chandelier hung dead above us, its black form stark against the grey ceiling.
Only the thin wash of dawn bleeding through the open door behind gave us shape and shadow.
The elevator at the far end of the foyer stood open. Helena saw it at the same time I did and shifted direction, but I could smell what we were going to find. An odor I knew far too well, metallic and thick.
Claire was crumpled half out of the lift, her hands still reaching as she had tried to drag herself out of it, trying desperately to get into the house.
Her throat was cut in two places, the second deep enough to have severed the carotid artery, her mouth open as if she had been trying to scream for help.
Blood soaked the front of her blouse and pooled across the brushed steel floor and tracked out onto the marble in thin, dark rivers.
For a moment, everything inside me went completely, terrifyingly still.
Ten years.
Ten fucking years this woman had been a quiet presence in my life. Someone I only just now realized was so crucial to my feeling of comfort. Of home. And now her blood was on my hands. My heart turned to ice.
Helena stepped into the elevator first, bending to lay a hand against Claire’s skin in the detached professional way I should be right now.
“Still warm,” she murmured.
My jaw locked so tight it hurt. I had been asleep, cozy in my bed behind a locked door while Claire suffered. But I didn’t have time to let myself grieve. Helena was already moving toward the stairs to access the lower level.
The ground floor opened in three directions: the east wing offices, west lounge and dining, and the lower stairwell down to the laundry.
Helena signaled down. I covered her flank as we took the stairs slowly, backs to opposite walls as we moved on silent feet.
Halfway down, we heard the faintest clink against metal and a low, barely audible male voice.
Helena paused for a long moment before glancing back at me and mouthing, two. I raised a brow, straining my ears, but couldn’t hear a second, and slid my questioning gaze back to her.
She mimed walking with her fingers, raising two fingers again, and I nodded, adjusting my grip on the gun as a faint light flashed toward the base of the stairs. Torchlight. And the door to the lower hall stood ajar.
Helena moved first, pushing the door wider with her foot. The corridor beyond opened toward the laundry, directly below my bedroom. Two men had their backs half-turned toward us, one crouched at the junction box ripped from the wall, the other threading a coil of metal piping up the laundry chute.
My bullet took the first one clean in the lower spine and he dropped hard, his shocked scream cut short as his face hit tile.
The second man moved to spin at the sound, but Helena was already on him. Her blade flashed toward his throat, but he jerked her back, slamming her arm against the wall and sending it skittering to the floor.
I tried to find a shot, but they were too close; one wrong angle and I’d hit Helena.
He drove forward, shoving her into me, his hand fumbling for the sidearm at his hip.
“Helena—”
She didn’t need the warning. There was a flash of silver and a thunk as a shuriken embedded neatly in the wall behind him. Pushing off me, she surged forward, wrapping her hand around his neck and shoving him into a protruding point with a grunt.
The impact was dull and wet, his body going limp as the shuriken was forced into his skull. She let him go, his body slumping to the ground, smearing crimson on the wall behind.
She moved to the other man, checking his pulse with quick efficiency.
“Alive,” she said. “Do you want him for questioning?”
“Yes, but not here,” I said, pulling my phone out and hitting Ben’s number. “I’ll call in a clean-up crew to move him to base. The entire system is down across the board.”
Helena swore under her breath, moving past me to clear the other rooms as I searched the two men for any indication of who they were.
The line rang. And rang.
I paused, my gaze sliding to the screen as the ringing continued.
And then it went to voicemail.
Fuck.