Chapter 3 - Total BlackoutThe crystal chandelier overhead died with a dull electrical pop. Outside the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, the manicured gardens of the Whitmore estate vanished into the torrential rainstorm that had suddenly broken over the Long Island Sound.
Adrien’s grip on her wrist didn't loosen; if anything, he pulled her slightly closer as the emergency generators hummed to life, bathing the room in a sickly, amber backup glow.
"That's not a normal power outage," Adrien muttered, his eyes scanning the darkened perimeter. "The estate runs on a triple-redundant grid. Even a hurricane shouldn't trip the main bus."
"It's not a weather anomaly," Maya said, her voice steady in the dim light. She slipped her wrist smoothly out of his grasp—not with a struggle, but with a trained precision that made him narrow his eyes. "The gate security codes were overridden three minutes ago from the master terminal in the security annex."
Adrien stared at her through the amber shadows. "The annex requires my biometric iris scan and a twelve-digit rolling encryption key. How do you know the codes were overridden?"
"Because," Maya said, walking past him toward the heavy mahogany sideboard where a silver service tray rested, "I’m the one who set up the secondary bypass last month when the maintenance team was compromised."
Adrien froze. Every instinct honed by a decade of corporate warfare screamed at him. He reached inside his jacket, his hand closing around the cold steel of the Sig Sauer P365 he kept concealed for emergencies.
"Who do you work for, Maya?" he asked, the words dropping like lead weights between them. "Is it the board? Is it Sterling Capital? Or are you working for the people digging up the 1998 deeds?"
May you like
Instead of answering, Maya picked up the heavy silver tray, flipped it over with a sharp clang, and used it to deflect a high-velocity crossbow bolt that hissed out of the darkness and buried itself deep into the mahogany dining table right where Adrien’s chest had been a second before.
"Neither," Maya said coolly, drawing a sleek, suppressed Glock from the holster hidden beneath her immaculate uniform skirt. "I work for the people who are going to help you survive the next ten minutes."
