16 Asher #2
Water flies everywhere as Roman, Declan, and I sprint toward the house.
The second I cross the threshold, I know something is wrong.
The metallic smell hits me first. My feet skid to a stop, Hannah is lying on the floor just inside the living room doorway.
Covered in blood, for a split second I don't recognize her.
“Oh fuck,” Roman breathes.
“Call 911,” Declan snaps. “And get Bennett here now. He may be closer.”
Grant is already on his knees beside her. Blood covers his hands and his clothes and the hardwood floor beneath her.
“She's alive,” Grant says. “Barely.”
Declan drops beside him and pushes him aside to begin a rapid assessment. His expression gets darker with every passing second.
“Single gunshot wound lower abdomen,” he says. “No exit wound.”
“How the hell did anyone get in here?” Roman asks.
Because the question none of us want to ask is far worse. Who shot her and where are Scarlett and Harper? My heart drops into my stomach.
“Scarlett!”
I take off running.
“Harper!”
Nothing. I tear through the kitchen, hallway and dining room. Every room is empty.
“SCARLETT!”
Silence.
Cold dread settles into my chest.
“Did you find them?” Roman yells from upstairs, he checked upstairs as I was checking down here.
“No!”
My voice sounds wrong. “FUCK!”
Back in the living room, Grant is trying to keep pressure on Hannah’s wound while Declan tears open medical supplies.
“The phones are down!” Roman shouts from the office doorway. “All of them. I can't get a signal.”
Every head turns.
“What?” Grant asks.
“Nothing. No service. No outgoing calls. No internet.”
My blood turns to ice. That's not an outage, that's an attack. Someone hit our systems and they must know exactly what they're doing. Declan gently lifts Hannah into his arms. For the first time since I've known him, he looks genuinely furious. The kind of rage that gets people killed.
“Grant,” he growls, “grab the trauma kit under the sink.” Grant is already moving.
“You drive. I'll work on keeping her alive.”
Grant nods once.
“Roman, get surveillance back online.” Roman is already running.
“I’m on it.”
Then Declan looks at me.
One look. That's all it takes. We are thinking the same thing.
Scarlett is gone. I take the stairs two at a time.
By the time I hit my room, every ounce of calm I've spent years building is gone.
I rip open the closet and start throwing on tactical gear.
I strap on my gun’s holsters, every knife I own and extra magazines.
I grab a total of five guns and place them in different holsters.
Then I grab the rifle. My hands move automatically.
Years of training taking over, but my mind is somewhere else entirely.
Scarlett, please God, let her be okay. Whoever took her just made the biggest mistake of their lives.
“Asher!” Roman yells from down the hall. I immediately head toward the office. He’s sitting in front of the main surveillance system, fingers flying across the keyboard.
“I don't understand what the hell happened,” he growls. “It's like someone wiped everything. Cameras, communications, system access. The entire network went dark about fifteen minutes ago.” My stomach twists.
“Can you get it back?”
“I'm rebooting the entire mainframe now. If the hardware wasn't compromised, we should be able to restore something.” The seconds feel like hours. Every moment we're standing here is another moment Scarlett is out there somewhere. Roman pushes away from the desk.
“Keep an eye on it. I'm gearing up.” He disappears down the hallway. A minute later he returns looking just as ready for war as I am. Neither of us says a word as we wait. The system suddenly flickers. One monitor comes online. Then another.
“Come on,” Roman mutters. The internet connection restores, then the server status indicators begin turning green one by one.
“Finally.”
Roman immediately opens Teams and starts a call, the screen rings once.
Then Cipher appears, his dark eyes immediately narrow when he sees us.
“What happened?” My temper finally snaps.
“What happened?” I bark. “You tell me what happened. Our communications are down, our security system got hit, someone got onto our property, Hannah was shot, and Scarlett is gone.”
Cipher's expression instantly hardens; his easygoing attitude is gone. Now he looks exactly like the genius who built our entire infrastructure.
“Start from the beginning.”
“Someone disabled everything,” Roman says. “All communications. Every camera. Every access point, our cell phones”
Cipher is already typing. Multiple monitors reflect in his glasses.
“Okay. Give me a minute.”
“A minute is a luxury we don't have.”
“Then stop talking and let me work.”
“I’m giving you two minutes before; I’m having someone come in there and put a bullet in between your eyes for fucking up.”
“This wasn't random.”
“We figured that much.”
“No,” Cipher says. “You don't understand. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were targeting.”
“How exactly?” Roman asks. Cipher pulls up a series of logs.
“Because they didn't destroy the system.” He points to the screen.
“They temporarily blinded it.” My pulse pounds.
“Meaning?”
“They were trying to create a window.”
“The cameras went down exactly fifteen minutes before Scarlett disappeared.”
The room falls silent.
“That's not the worst part.”
“Cipher,” I growl and his jaw tightens.
“Whoever did this knew exactly where every blind spot in our system was,” Cipher says, his fingers flying across multiple keyboards.
“This wasn't some random hacker. This was someone on the inside.”
My jaw clenches. Every second we're sitting here is another second Scarlett is out there, another second, she's scared and she's waiting for me.
Roman doesn't look any calmer. He's standing beside me, flipping one of his knives through his fingers.
The movement is smooth, practiced, and dangerous. Then suddenly Cipher freezes.
“Motherfucker. No way.”
“Cipher,” Roman growls.
“Who?” I snap. “Give me a fucking name.”
Cipher looks up from his monitors.
“It's Tyler.”
“Who the fuck is Tyler?”
The way he says the name tells me it should mean something. It doesn't.
“Grant hired him about two years ago,” Cipher explains. “Former military tech specialist. I took a round during an operation and got medically discharged. Smart as hell. Almost as good as me.”
“Almost?” Roman mutters.
“Shut up.”
Cipher turns back to the screens.
“He's been working directly under me. I trained him. I would've bet my life he was loyal.”
The disbelief in his voice is obvious.
“He was grateful to Grant. Said Knightfall gave him purpose again. A second chance.”
“Where is he now?” I ask.
I don't care about his past or his excuses. All I care about is that someone took Scarlett and he helped them do it. Cipher types another command.
“He covered his tracks well. Most of his communications are encrypted. I'm breaking through them now.”
I start pacing. I can't sit here. The girls couldn't have been inside more than five minutes before Grant found Hannah.
Five fucking minutes. That means whoever grabbed Scarlett was watching us.
Watching the property, waiting for the perfect moment.
Today we handed it to them. We got comfortable and distracted.
We let our guard down. My stomach twists violently. If she gets hurt because of me—
No.
I shut that thought down immediately. I am the Phantom. I have survived missions that should have killed me. I have brought people home from impossible situations. I sure as fuck am not losing Scarlett.
Not now.
Not ever.
Cipher suddenly sits forward.
“Got something.”
Roman and I are back to the screen instantly.
“He was communicating with someone calling themselves V.”
“V? Like for Vale” Roman asks.
“That's all I've got so far. They paid Tyler to shut down our systems. Looks like they had leverage on him.”
“What kind of leverage?”
Cipher's expression darkens.
“Juvenile records. Something from before he enlisted. His identity was changed and the records were supposed to be sealed.”
“Blackmail.”
“Looks that way.”
I slam my hand against the desk.
“Can you track V?”
“Already working on it.”
The room fills with silence except for the sound of keyboards clicking.
Then—
“There.”
My heart stops.
Cipher zooms in on a map.
“I've got movement.”
“Where?”
“Location ping is coming from about twenty minutes northeast of your position.”
An aerial image appears on the screen. Nothing but woods and fields. One dirt road leading in and out to one isolated structure that appears to be an old farmhouse.
Roman steps closer.
“You sure?”
“Ninety-eight percent.”
“I'll take those odds.”
Cipher continues typing.
“Your phones should be coming back online any second. Once they do, I'll send coordinates, satellite images, building layouts, everything I can pull.”
“Get a message to Grant and Declan,” I say. “And notify Zariah. I want everyone brought up to speed immediately.”
“You got it.”
My phone vibrates on the desk.
Signal restored. The location appears a second later. I stare at the image of the farmhouse. Twenty minutes away. Twenty minutes between me and Scarlett.
“Roman.”
He grabs his knife off the desk and smoothly slides it back into the sheath strapped to his thigh. The movement is practiced, effortless. Years of training condensed into a single motion. A cold smile spreads across his face.
“Already ready.”
I pick up my gear and head for the door. Whoever took Scarlett thought they were hunting prey. They were wrong. Because now? The hunt was coming for them, and they have become prey.