Chapter 5 Flickering Shadows
Flickering Shadows
David watched Lena from the corner of his eye, the glow of his screen casting a feeble blue light over the shadows clinging to the elevator walls. The metallic tang of stale air mixed with something else—the floral sweetness of her perfume, now barely detectable beneath the acrid scent of her fear.
She looked small, too small, folded up on the floor with her arms strangling her shins, her forehead resting on her knees.
Her platinum hair hung down, shielding her face, a few silky strands clinging to her temple with sweat.
From this angle, she looked less like the keen, sarcastic woman who ran the front desk like a battlefield with a smile, and more like the girl she must have once been. Alone. Scared of being forgotten.
Right now, her hands shook.
The tremors rippled through her fingers where they gripped her legs, visible despite the dim light. Each breath she took was shallow: measured in that brittle way that meant she was fighting to keep it under control. As if she let go for a second, the panic would swallow her whole.
Shit.
David’s jaw tightened, teeth grinding together as his lungs constricted with something uncomfortably close to protectiveness.
His fingers moved over the tablet, but his mind wouldn’t stay on the network diagrams and system diagnostics.
It kept drifting to her—smart, fierce, snarky Lena Harris—reduced to muteness in a tiny metal tomb of flickering shadows and old air.
He could almost feel the anxiety humming off her, hear it in the too-careful rhythm of her breathing.
The elevator swayed, and she flinched—a quick tightening of her shoulders, but he caught it. Of course he caught it. He’d been watching her too closely not to.
No system was worth that.
No secret was worth that.
He leaned his head against the wall, the cool veneer a stark contrast to the heat building under his skin—part frustration, part determination, part something else he wasn’t ready to name.
Closing his eyes, he let the physical world dissolve into a lattice of light and code. The familiar crackle of energy washed over him as he slipped into another layer of reality, his consciousness expanding beyond flesh and bone into something vast and electric.
Rivers of data flowed by like neon streams, pulsing with information in colors that didn’t exist in the ordinary spectrum. Blues that sang, reds that whispered secrets, greens that hummed with potential. The rhythmic beat of packet transfers lured him further in, a siren song only he heard.
He slipped into the network, sliding past its defenses like smoke through a crack.
This was his element. Here, he was sharp.
Certain. The building opened beneath his awareness—lines of power unfolding in clean, luminous threads.
Clarity hit instantly. The elevators were frozen.
The system wasn’t responding. But the power was still live.
Someone had locked it. His digital presence recoiled at the discovery.
Sabotage. Not mechanical failure. Someone shut the controller down intentionally.
The knowledge sent a cold spike of anger through him, even in this formless state. Someone trapped them—trapped her—on purpose. Grim satisfaction welled up, followed by resolve. Whoever did it hadn’t accounted for him.
The why could wait. Right now, he had work to do.
David sank deeper, tearing through encryption like wet tissue.
Firewalls crumbled at his touch, security protocols parting before him like water around a blade.
No time to sift through event logs now—he could do that later, when he had time to trace back every digital fingerprint and find out who dared to weaponize his hotel’s infrastructure.
Now? Reactivate systems, bring Lena peace.
He followed the disruption to its source, splitting his focus without hesitation. Threads of control snapped back into place under his direction. Systems that had stalled now responded. Power shifted where it needed to go. One by one, the locks opened.
Movement tickled through the floor beneath his feet, vibrating up through his body and pulling him back toward physicality.
He withdrew from the system with practiced precision. Re-entry was the hard part. It always took a second for his pulse to remember which world he was in.
Reality snapped back in layers—color, sound, gravity. His body felt too tight, too small, after the endless sprawl of the network. He blinked, dragging his vision back into focus. The elevator’s emergency lights felt dim, washed-out.
Lena was staring at him. Brows drawn tight. Turquoise eyes clear now—confusion cutting through the exhaustion that had pinned her moments ago. Her cheek still rested against her knee, but her attention was sharp. Locked on him.
How long had she been watching?
He swallowed. He must have gone too deep. Too still. When he dropped into the network, his body shut down. Breath slowed. Pulse quieted. Eyes lost focus.
The first time Nick had seen it, he’d thought David had coded himself into cardiac arrest.
He pushed to his feet, too fast. The world tilted—just a fraction. His muscles protested after sitting motionless.
He forced a grin. “We’re back in business.” His voice sounded steady. Good. “I set ours to restore last,” he added, offering her a hand. “That means the others are already running. Everyone else should be fine.”
Her skin was cold, damp with nerves, and delicate against his palm in a way that made him acutely aware of every point of contact.
She lingered for half a second longer than necessary before standing, using his grip to pull herself up.
Her laugh sounded shaky, almost like it had escaped by accident—too raw, too real to be the polished version she usually deployed.
“Thank god, I don’t think I could have taken much more of that.
” Her voice broke in places as she tried to patch it with breath and sarcasm, her armor not quite fitting right yet.
She gestured at the ceiling, where the ancient ventilation fan continued its ominous rattling.
“That fan sounds like the whisper of the Grim Reaper.”
The elevator slid to a smooth stop, metal sliding against metal as the doors opened with a gentle chime.
Crisp air wafted in from the hallway, carrying with it the faint scent of the lavender room spray the housekeeping staff used.
The contrast with the stale elevator air was immediate and visceral.
Lena didn’t so much step out as launch herself; her heels clicked on the tile with an uneven rhythm, one foot hitching as if her legs didn’t quite remember how to work. She inhaled like it was her first real breath in an hour, her entire chest expanding with it.
Her shaky exhale sounded like it took more than fear with it—it took memories—of being trapped, of being helpless, of waiting for someone else to show up and not knowing if they would.
He recognized that kind of exhale. He’d made it himself a time or two back when his abilities seemed terrifying instead of useful.
David lingered a beat longer inside the elevator, one hand braced against the wall as he shored up his shaky knees. She didn’t look back, didn’t acknowledge him as she put distance between herself and the machine that had held her captive.
She hadn’t thanked him, not that he expected it. Her panic had been real, visceral. And she’d come back from it—stood up straight, took control again. That resilience… it wasn’t new. He’d caught glimpses of it before, that core of steel under the professional smile and quick wit.
He remembered the first time he’d seen that look—weeks ago. Maybe three. Time blurred when you lived half your life in code.
Kate had arrived exhausted from her book tour, only to discover her guaranteed cottage had been reassigned. The prior Front Office Manager’s sabotage. A brewing disaster.
Lena had handled it with professional calm while the world tilted beneath her feet. They’d stepped in, moved Kate into the Princess Suite, fixed the optics.
But for a moment, Lena had looked responsible. And she’d been terrified. Not dramatic. Not hysterical. The quiet kind.
Later, she’d slipped into the employee hallway and whispered, “I’m totally getting fired.”
He’d heard her.
He could hear everything that was moving through his systems. Usually he let it wash past like background static. That night, he’d been tuned in.
Her voice hadn’t been static. It had cut straight through.
He still remembered that.
Like he still remembered the way her fingers trembled over the keyboard, but never once hit the wrong key.
She’d powered through, never losing her professionalism, showing nothing but calm competence.
Even with her job on the line, even when she thought she was about to lose everything, she’d kept going.
Now, here she was—still standing, still fighting, despite being locked in a tin box dangling ten stories off the ground. Well, not dangling exactly—elevators didn’t work like that—but he suspected that was how it had felt to her.
He followed her out of the elevator, rubbing the strain from his neck. His muscles were still tight from sitting motionless. He slipped his tablet under his arm and gave her these moments to recalibrate. She needed space to rebuild her defenses before they could interact normally again.
Lena raced down the hall, hips swaying with the casual defiance that now lived in his peripheral vision.
Even shaken, fresh from fear, she moved with purpose: spine straight, shoulders back.
If he hadn’t been trapped in that elevator with her, hadn’t seen her folded up and trembling, he never would have suspected anything was wrong.
He didn’t know what to call the thing that pulled him toward her. Admiration? Lust? Curiosity? Maybe all three. He admired her resilience, the way she refused to stay down.
He was definitely attracted to her—that had been undeniable from the first time those stunning turquoise eyes had landed on him, and she’d delivered a perfectly timed sarcastic comment.
The layers beneath her professional facade, the glimpses of vulnerability she tried so hard to hide, fascinated him. He wanted to discover her secrets.
Maybe it was something more dangerous.
Maybe something like caring. Like wanting to protect. Like needing to be the person who ensured she never felt trapped and helpless again.
He followed her down the hall, his long legs catching up to her shorter stride. His sneakers squeaked, a marked difference from the sharp click of her heels. The hallway lay empty—late morning on a weekday meant most guests were out or in their rooms, not wandering the corridors.
He cleared his throat, smirk threading through his voice. “So… still ready for the meeting?”
The question hung between them, deliberately normal, an echo of the lobby. As if they hadn’t been trapped in a metal box together. As if he hadn’t watched her fracture—and rebuild.
Sometimes the kindest thing you could do was pretend you hadn’t seen.
She glanced over her shoulder. The familiar spark flickered in her eyes—not full wattage, but alive. Her chin lifted in that defiant tilt he’d come to recognize as her tell.
Bravery, disguised as attitude.
“Only if there’s coffee and you don’t make it weird.”
He grinned, and this time it wasn’t forced. Relief slid through him, chased by something warmer at the return of her sarcasm.
“Hey, I only make it weird before noon. After that, I’m a delight.”
“It’s morning,” she replied dryly, lips twitching toward a smile. Just like that, the storm in her eyes receded, tucked safely behind sass and turquoise fire. But he’d seen it—the fear beneath the armor—and that changed things.
He couldn’t unsee it.
He wouldn’t let her sit alone in the dark again—figuratively or otherwise.
Not if he could help it. Not when he had the power to bring light with a thought, to dismantle the systems that trapped her, to be the person who showed up when she needed someone.
Not when the thought of her scared and shaking made his chest tight and his hands curl into fists.
Not when somewhere along the way, without quite meaning to, he’d begun to care.