The Threat from Outside

By Thursday evening, a cold routine had formed between us. Rhys ate exactly what I placed on the kitchen counter. He did not like it, and he did not speak during his meals, but he cleared his plate. His training data was already showing a subtle shift; the inflammation in his knee was starting to decrease.

I was in the office next to the kitchen, entering his daily caloric logs into my secure database, when the house went dark.

The digital monitor on my desk shut down. The overhead fixtures died instantly, plunging the entire room into total blackness.

I sat still for three seconds, waiting for the backup generators to kick in. The Kendrick compound was a multimillion-dollar facility with enough security systems to protect a small country. The lights should have been back on within seconds.

Nothing.

The silence of the house suddenly felt different. Heavy. Wrong.

Then a sharp mechanical click echoed from the main entrance hall.

My stomach dropped.

It was the sound of the heavy electronic deadbolts on the front doors releasing. The security system had just defaulted to an open state.

I rose from my desk, my heart slamming against my ribs. I walked out of the office into the kitchen, using the wall to guide my steps. Moving around in complete darkness wasn't exactly easy for me, but I wasn't about to stand there waiting for whoever was outside to walk in.

"Sasha."

Rhys’s voice came out of the dark from the opposite side of the kitchen island. It was low, tense, and completely stripped of its usual arrogance.

"I am here," I whispered. "The power went out. The electronic locks just opened."

"The backup generator line was cut," Rhys said. I heard the faint rustle of his track pants as he moved closer to me. His steps were uneven, his medical brace scraping faintly against the floorboards. "The perimeter fence has an alert system that links to my phone. Someone just tripped the northern boundary line near the private rink."

"Is it your father’s security team?" I asked.

"No. My father’s team would never disable the mainframe. This is someone else."

Before I could answer, a bright beam of light flashed through the massive floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the living room. It swept across the interior walls, searching the space. Then another light appeared from the eastern side of the house.

They were flashlights.

People were outside on the deck, looking inside.

"Paparazzi," Rhys spat. The anger in his voice was raw. "The sports blogs have been hunting for my location since Monday. Someone must have tracked your vehicle delivery or bribed one of the supply drivers."

"If they get inside and photograph that medical brace on your leg, the story will be online in five minutes," I said. "The trade deadline is forty-eight hours away. Your extension contract will be dead by midnight."

"They aren't getting in," Rhys said.

Suddenly, his large hand closed around my forearm. His grip was firm, solid, and surprisingly warm against my skin. He did not pull me, but he used his strength to anchor me as he guided us toward the back hallway, away from the windows.

"The kitchen pantry has a manual security override lever," Rhys whispered, his breath close to my ear. "It drops the physical steel shutters over the glass. Can you find it?"

"Yes," I said.

I moved into the dark pantry, using my memory of the layout. My hip brushed against the lower shelf, but I kept moving until my fingers found the cold metal handle of the emergency switch.

I pulled it down with all my weight.

A loud, heavy grinding sound echoed through the house as the solid security shutters slid down over every window, blocking out the flashlights and sealing us inside. The outside world was shut out, but we were still standing in total darkness.

Then the phone in Rhys’s hand began to vibrate violently. The bright screen illuminated his face, casting harsh shadows over his sharp features.

The caller ID displayed an unknown number from a Chicago area code.

Rhys answered it, pressing the speaker button.

"Who is this?"

"Rhys? It’s Dan Miller from the Chicago Sports Chronicle," a fast, aggressive voice said through the speaker. "We have a team outside your mountain estate right now, Captain. The power grid to your valley just dropped, and our guys saw a woman inside the house before the shutters came down."

Rhys’s posture went completely rigid. He gripped my arm tighter, though he didn't seem to realize he was doing it. "You are trespassing on private property, Dan. Call your people off before I contact the state police."

"You can call whoever you want, Rhys, but we already have the story," the reporter countered, his tone full of corporate confidence. "Our sources inside the front office say you haven't touched a hockey stick in five days. We know about the knee. We are running the headline at midnight: The eighty-million-dollar captain is broken. Unless, of course, you want to give us an exclusive statement to deny it."

My stomach tightened.

If that headline went live, Rhys was screwed. His extension would disappear, his father's patience would run out, and the entire hockey world would know his knee was worse than he had admitted.

Rhys looked down at me in the glow of the phone screen. His eyes were wide, filled with a panic I had never seen on his face before.

For all his money and power, he looked completely trapped.

"The story is wrong, Dan," Rhys said, his voice dropping into a deep, calculated register. He didn't take his eyes off my face.

"Oh yeah?" the reporter laughed. "Then who is the woman living up there with you? The team says you are in medical isolation. If you aren't hurt, why are you hiding in the mountains with a private specialist?"

Rhys swallowed hard.

I watched his face change.

Something was happening behind those eyes, and judging by the look on his face, I was probably not going to like it.

"She isn't a medical specialist," Rhys said clearly into the microphone. "And I'm not hiding."

"Then explain it to me, Rhys. Give me something else, or the injury report goes live."

Rhys reached out and took my hand, pulling me a fraction of an inch closer to him. His voice did not shake when he spoke the next words, but his fingers were trembling against mine.

"The woman inside this house is Sasha Miller," Rhys said into the phone. "She is not my employee. She is my fiancée. We came up here to get away from the media before we announce our marriage to the league."

There was an immediate, dead silence on the other end of the line.

I froze.

My brain stopped working for approximately three seconds.

His fiancée?

I tried to pull my hand away from his grip, but Rhys held on tightly, his eyes practically begging me to stay quiet and let the lie live.

"Your fiancée?" Dan Miller asked, his voice completely stripped of its confidence. "The Kendrick heir is engaged? Since when?"

"Since three months ago," Rhys said coldly. "We wanted privacy. Now, tell your photographers to get off my mountain before I ensure your network loses its press credentials for the entire season."

Rhys ended the call before the reporter could answer. He dropped the phone onto the counter.

The small light disappeared, leaving us in pitch black once again. The only sound in the pantry was the heavy, synchronized rhythm of our breathing.

"What did you just do?" I whispered, my voice trembling with pure rage.