Chapter six

Chapter Six

Luca hadn't slept in two nights, and it showed.

He stood over the war-room table with both fists planted on the map of the borderlands. Red pins marked every road, river crossing, and border town between the eastern wall and the mountains.

"Nothing," Garrett said.

"Nothing is not a report."

"Then here is a report." Garrett's scarred face gave away nothing. "Her tracks end at the hospital wing. The cameras show her walking in at six yesterday evening. They never show her walking out."

"Someone helped her."

"Possibly."

"Helen."

"Helen says Lady Adele came in with a headache and left an hour later." Garrett's eyes were flat. "I've questioned her twice. She says the same thing both times."

Luca dragged a hand down his face. The wolf inside him gave a low, restless whine, and his ribs ached where it clawed.

"Send patrols east and south," he said. "Every border town. Every inn. Every clinic. Show her picture."

"And the north road?"

"Why would she go north? There's nothing north but Blackthorn land."

"Exactly, Alpha." Garrett kept his voice even. "Nobody would run toward an enemy. Which is why a smart woman might."

Luca stared at him. Garrett held his gaze without blinking.

"Fine," Luca said at last. "North first. Then the rest."

"Understood."

The door opened. Lyra drifted in with, a glass in her hand and a concerned simile.

"Darling, you haven't eaten. Or slept. I can see it from here." She held out the glass. "Drink."

"Not now."

"Luca." She said his name softly, the way you'd coax a skittish horse. "Your hands are shaking."

He looked down. They were.

He took the glass. It was cool and faintly bitter, with a flavor he couldn't place. He drank it in three gulps.

Within a minute, the pressure behind his ribs eased. The wolf's whine thinned to a murmur. The raw pain simply... retreated, like a tide going out.

He exhaled.

"Better?" Lyra asked.

"Yes."

"I told you." She patted his cheek. "You need someone who looks after you."

Garrett's jaw tightened. He studied the empty glass a moment too long.

"I'm sure she's miles away by now," Lyra went on, settling onto the arm of Luca's chair. She traced the map with one lacquered nail. "If I were her, I'd have used the old maintenance tunnel under the hospital. It comes out past the eastern fence. She'd be in the borderlands before dawn."

The room went very quiet.

"What tunnel?" Luca asked.

"Hm?"

"The tunnel. Under the hospital."

Lyra's nail stopped moving. It lasted less than a heartbeat. Then she laughed, light and easy.

"Oh, Father mentioned it. Years ago, I think. Some old estate plans."

"Thomas has never seen those plans," Luca said. "They were drawn after you left. Adele commissioned them."Garrett did not move. He did not even breathe. "Then I must have seen them on the table when I arrived," Lyra said, completely at ease. "Honestly, Luca. Does it matter? I'm trying to help."Luca looked at her. "It doesn't matter," Luca said.

"Good." She kissed his temple. "Now eat something."

Garrett saluted stiffly and left.

In the corridor, he finally let out his breath. The tunnel plans had been drawn after Lyra left. Four people had seen them. She was not one of the four.

---

Lyra stood in the middle of the glass corner office and turned in a slow circle.

"Gloomy," she announced.

A junior clerk hovered by the door. "Ma'am, Lady Adele always kept the ledgers sorted by supplier. If you'd like me to show you--"

"Sort them by whatever I say."

She picked up the green desk lamp, the one Adele had bought with her own pocket money, weighed it in her palm, and dropped it into the wastebasket.

"Repaint this room. White. And burn the old files. I want none of her handwriting."

---

The data center was cold, bright, and smelled of overheated plastic. Mira Voss sat in the corner with three monitors and a half-eaten sandwich, scrolling so fast that her eyes looked like they were vibrating.

"You're not supposed to be here after eight," Garrett said.

"I'm not supposed to do a lot of things." She didn't look up. "Close the door." He did."Captain, can I ask you something? Hypothetically."

"Go on."

"If a person noticed that numbers didn't add up, and told her boss, and her boss said it was fine. Should that person stop looking?"

"Depends on the numbers."

"These are small." Mira spun a monitor toward him. "Four thousand here, Six thousand there, Every Thursday Different accounts, different vendors, all invoices that look perfectly legitimate. But when you follow them back, they all land at the same place."

Garrett leaned in. A long column of figures scrolled up the screen. "Shell company," he said. "Called Harrow Grain Supply. No warehouse. No employees. No grain." Mira bit her lip. "Three hundred and four transfers over three years. Over four million, all told."

"Who signs the transfers?"

"The credentials say Lady Adele."Garrett's whole body went still. "But," Mira said quickly, "she never signed them. I checked. Every Thursday at seven in the morning, her credentials fire. And every Thursday at seven in the morning, she's at the hospital doing rounds. The badge logs prove it."

"Meaning that somebody copied her access."

"Somebody with a lot of patience. Someone who knew exactly when she'd be busy." Mira swallowed. "I took it to Lady Lyra yesterday. First thing, right after she took over. I thought she'd want to know."

"And?"

"She said it was historical bookkeeping. Nothing to worry about. She told me to leave it alone."

"Did she look at it?" Mira frowned. "No. Not really. She barely glanced at the screen." Garrett straightened slowly.

He thought of Lyra's nail stopping on the map. Of a tunnel she shouldn't have known about. "Mira."

"Yes, Captain?"

"Copy everything. Every transfer, every log, every file. Put it on a drive that isn't on the network. And tell no one."

"Not even the Alpha?"

"Especially not yet." His voice dropped. "If I'm wrong, we've wasted a day. If I'm right, we need proof that can't be deleted."Mira's eyes widened. Then she nodded, once, and her fingers began flying across the keyboard.

---

Night fell over the estate.

Luca sat in the Alpha suite alone with a dim lamp and a glass of dark wine Lyra had poured herself before leaving, brushing a kiss across his cheek the room felt too large.

Adele's ring sat on the vanity where she'd left it, a small, pale circle against the dark wood. He hadn't touched it. He hadn't been able to move it.

He lifted the wine and drank.

The warmth spread slowly, softening his shoulders, loosening his hands. The wolf didn't snarl. It didn't thrash. It simply lay down. Good, he thought dimly. He set the glass down, picked up the contract from the desk read the line again and again

*The bride to be delivered by her father.*

Delivered. Not offered.

Once, the first winter, he had woken from a nightmare with her hand on his forehead, cool and steady. He had pushed it away and told her to sleep elsewhere. She had gone without a word.

He tried remembering her face the night of the wedding but he’d been too angry that he’d barely looked at her. What color was her dress? The memory wouldn't come.

He tried to remember her laugh. Had she ever laughed in front of him?

The thought sat strangely in his chest because there ought to have been something there maybe a pool or the tug of a thread he had felt every day for three years, a thread he had resented.

He reached for it but Nothing.

Not pain not anger not even absence just smooth, silent blankness, as though someone had wiped a window clean.

He sat in the lamplight, heart beating slowly, and he felt something else instead. A small, cold unease, like a man who wakes in a familiar house and realizes someone has moved all the furniture.

The door opened softly.

"I couldn't sleep either," Lyra whispered from the threshold, in a silk robe, her hair loose around her shoulders. "May I sit with you?"

Luca looked at her then he looked at the glass at his elbow and the ring on the vanity then the contract in his hand he thought of Garrett's flat eyes and Helen's steady lie, and he could not make himself care.

"Not tonight, Lyra," he said. Her smile didn't fall she only inclined her head, gracefully

"Of course, darling," she said. "Whatever you need."

The door closed behind her.

Luca stayed in the lamplight a long time, staring at the pale circle of platinum on the vanity.

He didn't pour a second glass tonight.