After that, things began happening. Documents going missing from systems that should have been secure. A driver I'd had for six years suddenly resigning without explanation. Small things, the kind that could each be explained individually. But together, Cade said, together they formed a picture.
She unfolded her arms, folded them again. It was the most uncertainty he'd seen from her. The threats themselves were direct enough. Stop resisting the offer. Transfer the shares or there would be consequences.
And you didn't report any of this? I told my head of security. He said he'd investigate. A hard edge entered her voice. I'm not certain anymore whose side he was on.
Cade sat on the stone hearth with his hands loose between his knees. You have an estate manager, Luther Quaid. Yes. Where is he? He has a cabin on the lower property.
He lives there year round. She looked at Cade. He's been with me 11 years. Okay, Cade said. You don't sound convinced.
I'm not assuming anything yet. He glanced toward the windows. Outside, the storm was fully operational now. The kind of snow that didn't just fall, but accumulated with intent. Here's where we are.
The road is closed. We have heat again. The main system I repaired is running, but no backup power if the grid fails again. We have a fireplace in this room that'll work regardless. and we have someone who cut your generator line while the storm was hitting.
Octavia looked at him. You're not afraid. I'm paying attention, he said. That's more useful. She was quiet for a second.
Then why are you being calm about this? Because one of us is going to need to be. He said it without sharpness. And you've got enough to deal with already. Something crossed her face that wasn't quite gratitude and wasn't quite offense.
Something in between that she seemed to decide to leave alone. " There's food in the kitchen," she said. " The gas range will still work." " Then I'll cook," he said. She blinked. "
You'll cook? Unless you'd rather." The silence stretched out for exactly 2 seconds before something small moved across her expression that might in different circumstances have become a smile. " I don't cook," she said. " I know," he said. "
I've seen your kitchen." This time it actually happened brief, reluctant, but real. They ate canned tomato soup and bread from the pantry, sitting at opposite ends of a kitchen island that probably cost more than Cade's truck. The fire in the sitting room was the only sound in the house beyond the storm, hammering everything outside. Cade asked Octavia about the estate's layout, exits, interior locks, rooms that could be secured from the inside, and she answered precisely, practically without drama.
She was smart. He'd already known that. What surprised him was how methodical she was under pressure. Most people, when frightened, went either rigid or chaotic. Octavia went focused like someone who had decided that feeling the fear was fine as long as it didn't slow the thinking.
He found himself respecting that more than he expected. It was past 9 when Cade went to check the exterior perimeter one more time before the snow got any deeper, and he found them. footprints on the east side of the house, partially filled already by new snow, but still visible bootprints leading from the direction of the equipment shed toward the back courtyard. Two sets coming in, one going back out, and one set that stopped directly below the study window. He stood there in the dark with snow coming down on his shoulders and his breath making short clouds in the air, and he felt something cold move through him that had nothing to do with the weather.
Whoever had cut that fuel line had come back. Cade went inside and found Octavia in the sitting room. He told her what he'd found without softening it. She didn't flinch. She looked at him across the firelit room with those dark composed eyes and said very quietly, "What do we do?"
And Cade, who had been a single father long enough to know that fear was most dangerous when you let it drive, looked back at her and said, "We make the house work for us and we stay ready." He didn't tell her that his hands were completely steady. He didn't tell her that his pulse wasn't. Cade didn't sleep. He'd tried some somewhere around 2:00 in the morning, stretched out on the long leather sofa in the sitting room with his coat folded under his head and his boots still on.
He'd stared at the ceiling for 20 minutes, listening to the storm work itself into something genuinely ugly outside, and decided that horizontal was the best he was going to manage. Octavia had gone upstairs around midnight. He told her to lock the bedroom door and push something heavy in front of it if she felt better doing so. She'd looked at him like that was slightly beneath her, then gone upstairs, and he was fairly certain pushed something in front of the door. He kept the fire going.
Every 40 minutes or so, he'd add another log, then do a slow walk through the ground floor, kitchen, library, back corridor, utility room, checking windows, checking locks, listening. The house settled and creaked in the wind the way old structures do, every joint and beam making small complaints. It took him about an hour to learn which sounds were something the house and which sounds were something else. And after that the night became slightly more manageable. At 4:15 he heard something that was definitely something else.
A single impact sound low muffled coming from the east side of the house. He was off the sofa before he'd made a conscious decision to move. He didn't use the flashlight. He moved through the dark with one hand trailing the corridor wall, going from memory of the floor plan he'd been building all evening. The sound had come from the direction of the storage rooms, a narrow wing off the main corridor that connected to the equipment access at the back of the house.