Everyone froze.
Another shot followed.
Then shouting.
Marcus spun toward the stairs.
Daniel’s voice burst over the radio, distorted by panic.
“Contact in the east hall! Two men down! Claire’s not alone!”
Dominic slammed Nathan’s head against the stone once, hard enough to daze him, then shoved him into Marcus’s arms.
“Bind him.”
He ran.
The mansion had changed in the minutes he had been below. Its polished quiet had shattered. Alarms flashed red along the corridors. Guards moved in formation. Smoke curled near the east wing, thin and sharp with the smell of gunpowder.
Dominic reached the main hall as one of his men fell through the library doors, clutching his side.
“Where?” Dominic demanded.
“Service passage,” the man gasped. “They knew the blind spots.”
They knew because Nathan had built them.
Dominic moved toward the west staircase, then stopped.
Harper.
“Mia and the child?” he asked into the radio.
Daniel answered, breathless. “Safe room. Doctor’s with them. I’m outside.”
“Stay there.”
A third gunshot rang out.
Not from the east.
From upstairs.
Dominic’s blood chilled.
“Daniel?”
Static.
“Daniel.”
Nothing.
Dominic ran up the stairs two at a time.
At the second-floor landing, the corridor lights flickered. A guard lay against the wall, alive but unconscious. The safe room door at the far end stood open.
Dominic raised his gun.
Inside, Dr. Bell was on the floor, bleeding from a cut across his temple. Daniel was slumped beside the doorway, his pistol missing.
Mia sat against the wall, one hand pressed to her bruised ribs.
Harper was gone.
For the first time in years, Dominic Vale felt fear so clean and immediate that it burned away everything else.
Mia looked up at him, devastated.
“Claire,” she whispered. “She took her.”
Dominic turned.
On the small monitor beside the safe room door, the security feed showed a woman in a pale coat moving through the rear corridor, dragging Harper by the wrist. Claire Bennett’s blonde hair was pinned perfectly. Her face was calm.
Too calm.
She carried Daniel’s pistol in one hand.