Chapter 18 - Preparing for the Storm
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The storm arrived the next evening like a perfectly orchestrated piece of theater.
By eight o’clock, gale-force winds were violently battering the ancient palm trees lining the long Montecito driveway. Sheets of rain slashed sideways against the reinforced glass windows, and thunder rolled over the black ocean, shaking the bones of the old mansion.
It was the perfect cover for a home invasion.
I had given the entire household staff the night off, explicitly telling them to go home and stay safe from the weather—exactly as Preston would have anticipated. The front security gates mysteriously glitched and went offline at nine-thirty, just as Julian’s borrowed, black-market technician had arranged.
To the naked eye, the multi-million-dollar estate looked completely dark, isolated, and incredibly vulnerable.
But nothing could have been further from the truth.
I sat quietly in my father’s massive, wood-paneled office, a glass of ice water in my hand. Resting on the desk was a loaded legal file containing their arrest warrants. Hidden seamlessly in the crown molding, bookshelves, and light fixtures were twelve high-definition, infrared cameras, streaming live to a secure server.
Arthur stood silently behind a concealed bookshelf panel, shoulder-to-shoulder with two armed federal agents and my private security chief. Down at the lower gate, out of sight from the main road, five Santa Barbara sheriff’s cruisers sat idling with their lights killed. An FBI surveillance van had already taken a tactical position on the rear service road.
The original novel had killed Blair in the darkness, surrounded by monsters she thought were her family.
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I fully intended to resurrect her in that same darkness, and let the monsters walk straight into a cage of their own making.
I glanced at the antique grandfather clock in the corner. Ten-fifteen. They were coming.
