Another silence passed.

The monitors continued their slow, mechanical vigil. The wind whispered outside like a warning. And between the two women, a steel thread of understanding formed, sharp, necessary, and borne not of romance, but war.

“They’re coming, Bette,” Nyah said finally. “We either wait for the blow, or we hit first.”

Bette turned back to the screens, her voice like iron. “Then we hit first.”

***

Under the cover of the new moon, the night wrapped itself in the kind of silence and darkness that only predators understood.

Hidden in the dense brush skirting the edge of the compound, three men crouched low to the earth, their bodies camouflaged by shadows. They wore dark, close-fitting clothing, their faces painted in streaks of mud to soften the glint of sweat or skin. Their eyes were fixed on the faint glow emanating from the house.

One of them, a wiry man with binoculars pressed tight to his face, gave a low, amused grunt. “She came back in,” he murmured. “You see that? Ten minutes later, lights are out in the rest of the place except her office. Figures.”

Another chuckled beside him. “Told you. That one’s not made of stone. Always this righteous type, until they’re alone long enough.”

They couldn’t hear what was being said. Couldn’t see the tension, the urgency, the low flickers of anxiety coursing between Nyah and Bette inside. All they could interpret were the movements, the soft closing of the front door, the quiet glide through the hallway, the long pause at the desk where their silhouettes merged for a moment in the backlit haze. It was enough to let their imaginations fill in the blanks.

“They won’t be checking the grounds tonight,” said the third man, a heavier-set figure with a headset nestled behind his ear. He had the look of a man who’d spent too much time waiting in the dark, just long enough to be dangerous. “We’ve got a window.”

They were not fools. These were not impoverished amateurs with dreams of quick riches. They were handpicked, trained for this; men who had done this kind of work on other continents. They knew about the perimeter: the thin, near-invisible filament lines strung between thorn bushes like spider silk, triggering alarms if disturbed. The pressure plates under the gravel on the southern path, concealed beneath what looked like harmless scrub.