Page 9 of Gilded Locks

* * *

Get down here. Now.

* * *

Hunter’s response materialized instantly.

* * *

What’s wrong?

* * *

There wasn’t time to explain in detail. Showing them would be easier.

* * *

Surveillance room. Now. Bring Ash.

* * *

Stone poured fresh vodka while he waited, keeping one eye on the monitor displaying the sleeping intruder and the other on the door. She’d curled on her side with one hand tucked beneath her cheek.

In sleep, she appeared fragile, breakable in ways that had nothing to do with physical strength. But he knew better. There was untapped strength inside of her, the kind borne of will and suffering more than muscle.

His fingers tightened around the crystal tumbler as heavy footsteps announced Hunter’s approach. In the last second of having her to himself, he grieved and accepted that she would never be solely his.

“What is it?” His older brother filled the doorway like a flesh-and-blood natural disaster.

Dark hair tousled from working out, sweat still slick on his bare chest, and black cotton pants that slung low enough to display the roadmap of scars across his torso. Each mark told a story of violence survived and lessons learned in blood.

“We have a visitor.”

“Someone dies tonight,” Hunter growled in Russian, scanning for threats across the machines.

“Not yet.” Stone gestured toward the monitor watching his bedroom. “There.”

Ash materialized behind Hunter, his characteristic silence intact. Stone didn’t need to see him to know he was there. He sensed him like a shift in atmospheric pressure that drops the temperature and kills the wind. Where Hunter was brute force and volcanic fury, Ash was controlled violence wrapped in deceptive calm. Ash moved with surgical precision disguised as meditation.

Glancing back to read his brothers’ expressions, he took in Ash’s dark jeans and a thermal shirt that outlined every muscle. His alert ice-blue eyes zeroed in on the screen despite the ungodly hour. “Is it a child?”

“No.”

“A woman,” Hunter said matter-of-factly.

Stone watched Ash’s expression transform as comprehension dawned. “How did she penetrate the island?”

“Boat.” Stone indicated the harbor camera. “She climbed up from the dock approximately ninety minutes ago.”

“She? You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

Hunter’s low growl dropped to a register that made smart people reconsider their life choices. “And you waited ninety minutes to alert us?”

“I had a handle on the situation.”

Hunter approached the central monitor with predatory focus, the one displaying Stone’s bedroom. The brand on his back, right shoulder glinted under the dim blue lights of the security feed. “That little thief broke into our house?”