Dramatics weren’t my thing. Being capable was. But when my fingers went to work and I couldn’t figure out how someone could have deleted the security footage, I went down another path. Carlos. The things I found chilled my blood, and it didn’t take long before I knew I was in way over my head.

I was a realist. Bad people were everywhere. Evil existed. And even knowing this, I was still a naive, trusting idiot, and I’d stumbled into the crosshairs of something I wasn’t equipped to handle on my own.

Cyber threats? No problem.

Cocky hackers? I could handle that.

A man standing over me close enough to kill me while inside a secured estate? Um, nope. It turned out I couldn’t handle that all by myself once I figured out who had sent him.

I might have been naive, but I wasn’t stupid. As soon as I discovered what I’d walked into, I knew I had to tell Rhett. I probably could have worded my text better so as not to send him into a panic, but I needed to get him here as quickly as possible, and apparently, that worked.

I looked around the safe room, thankful it was well-appointed. It had been another huge draw when I’d selected this house from Erik and Esme’s list. Whoever had built it must have been a security nut. It was a dream setup, and the price of the rental had reflected that.

The room was upscale—white plaster walls covering eighteen-inch concrete walls reinforced with thick steel sheets. If someone just stumbled into it through the master bedroom closet, it would be easy to assume it was a luxurious dressing room, given the ornate cabinets lining two walls, the island in the center topped with a slab of fancy granite, and the massive leather sofas.

That was, until you locked the door and engaged the hydraulics, and the whole place gave itself a little makeover. The cabinets pulled away to reveal a security center with dedicated landlines separate from the rest of the house, and a cell-signal amplifier strong enough to penetrate the walls.

This was the second main access point to the security system, with the first being in the garage with Carver. I’d hooked up my laptop and gotten to work. Instead of using my cell, which I wasn’t entirely sure was safe, I set my number to work through a secured VOIP connection.

I’d texted Rhett through another secure channel, and decided to keep Carver unaware until I knew whether he could be trusted.

Now, I was set up with my laptop on the luxurious queen-sized bed that had transformed from one sofa when the hydraulics kicked on. I’d helped myself to a bottle of water from the fridge and a package of Oreos from the pantry—both stocked for the apocalypse.

As I twisted the cookies apart and ate the creamy filling, I focused on what I knew as I waited for Rhett.

The things I thought were true, weren’t. Which made me an idiot for not digging deeper into Carlos’s background from the beginning. But he’d given me no reason to. A fellow tech-lover, he’d talked about rebelling against his family’s expectations when he’d gone to Berkeley and graduated a few years before me.

It hadn’t occurred to me that I should have checked his records to make sure he’d really gone there. Brace for the spoiler—he hadn’t. No, Carlos had had an education of a very different sort.

Part of me hated getting Rhett involved in this, especially if it put him in danger, but I didn’t see that I had any choice in the matter. Besides, if they touched a single hair on his head, I would use every skill and resource I had to burn them to the ground.

I wouldn’t let Rhett suffer for my bad judgment.

I wouldn’t.