“Did your mother use any kind of remote backup?” Bern asked.

“I don’t . . . Wait, yes,” Runa said. “Yes, she did. She used Guardian, Ltd. All the important documents were backed up to a remote server. Her user name is Hemlock. The password is our three names, RunaHalleRagnar. She made me memorize it. I should have checked it. I’m so dumb. I didn’t even think about it.”

“You had a lot going on,” Bern said. His fingers flew over his laptop’s keyboard. “I’m in.”

“Did she leave any letters for me? A message?”

“Not that I can see right away,” he said. “I’ll look.”

The excitement drained from Runa’s face. “Is that all the questions?” she asked quietly.

“For now,” I told her.

“I’m going to go check on my brother. Please tell me if you find anything.”

I waited until the door behind her closed and turned to Mom.

“Abarca?” she asked.

“The access road barrier wasn’t up. We almost got hit by a truck coming from that street. The barricade by the security booth was down also and when I checked with Kelly, he thought the truck thing was funny. Kelly didn’t have a battle buddy.”

My mother rested her elbow on the table and leaned her chin on her fingers. This was her we-have-a-serious-problem pose.

When I agreed to become the Head of our House, I decided that I wouldn’t repeat Nevada’s mistake. I wouldn’t try to do everything myself. I wasn’t as strong as she was, and if I tried to carry it all, I would crumble; so I delegated. Bern oversaw all things digital that were more complex than our regular information searches. Grandma Frida handled our vehicles. Arabella collected payments. Mom took care of our security. That was her sphere, and I mostly stayed out of it. Delegating didn’t mean anything if I questioned every decision she made.

The doorbell chimed. I got up, went to the front door, and checked the camera. Abarca stood on the other side. Lean and bronze-skinned, Abarca was forty-eight years old but looked ten years younger. He had a full head of hair, once black but now going to grey, and a pleasant face with dark eyes and an infectious grin.

As I opened the door, he gave me a bright smile. I smiled back, because it was polite, and shut the door behind him.

Three years ago, Nevada married Connor Rogan, also known by such fun nicknames as Mad Rogan, the Scourge of Mexico, and Huracan. Connor maintained his own private army, and for a while they provided our security.

We were all very naive back then. We actually looked into building a house next to Rogan and Nevada’s, going as far as negotiating the price for the land. The deal fell through when I crunched the numbers and saw how much money we still owed Augustine and how much we would need to survive. Instead we had to concentrate on paying off our debt.

As time went on and we slowly crawled out of our financial hole, we decided to hire our own security team. We did it for two reasons. We didn’t want to be a drain on House Rogan’s resources, and we had to separate ourselves from Connor’s long shadow. Always counting on Nevada and Connor to save us and provide for us wasn’t fair to them. Once I understood that fact, I worked sixty-hour weeks.

When we started, I had no idea how much capital went into maintaining a private security force. We had to house them, feed them, and provide them with equipment. We had to carry insurance and employ an accountant to issue paychecks and file taxes. We had to retain a lawyer to file all the necessary permits. It was like piling money into a heap and setting it on fire twice a month.

Once we gathered enough capital to hire our own security, Mom brought Lieutenant Abarca in to oversee it. They’d served together, and he’d needed a job. Abarca supervised the hiring and the training of our guards, and he seemed competent. He was approachable and friendly, but as time went on, the cracks in our security became more and more apparent.

Abarca dropped into a chair. “Hi Pen.”

Pen was not my mother’s favorite nickname.

“The security barriers weren’t up, George,” she said. “I sent the alert myself. You acknowledged it. And then my daughter almost got hit by a truck that shouldn’t have been on that road.”

“It was Justin’s truck. He delivers groceries to the DFAC, and he has done so for the last eight months. He was not a security risk and we were almost out of coffee. You know an army runs on coffee.” He grinned.

His smile bounced off my mother like rubber bullets off a tank. “This isn’t a joke. You put my children in danger. You put your own people in danger. Why was Kelly alone in the booth?”

“Merriweather’s daughter had a recital,” Abarca said. “These are people, Penelope. They have lives and families, just like you.”

My mom gave him her thousand-yard stare. “Their families don’t employ them, George. We do. And we have the right to demand a certain level of professionalism and discipline. Last night your people let an Illusion Prime roll right through the security checkpoint all the way to our front door.”

“That was an extraordinary case. Nobody could have foreseen that.”

“Really?” My mother leaned forward. “Our security personnel, who are supposed to maintain a log of departures and arrivals, didn’t realize that Catalina was already home or think it odd that she came back in a strange car driven by a chauffeur none of them had ever seen before?”

Abarca’s face took on a patient expression. “People are human. They make mistakes.”

“They can make mistakes on someone else’s dime.” Mom’s face held no mercy. “The two guards who let Montgomery through are fired.”

Abarca stared at her in stunned silence. A moment passed.

“You can’t mean that. Lopez is taking care of her sick mother and Walton has two kids.”

“I have five kids and a mother in this house, and I want to keep them all alive. Mistakes like that get people killed.”

Abarca shook his head. “I won’t do it, Pen. If you want them gone, you’re going to have to tell them yourself.”

He and Mom locked gazes.

“Either you fire them, or you can pack your shit and go with them.”

“We’re not at war anymore,” Abarca said.

“You’re wrong,” I said. “As of today, we are at war.”

“You’re dismissed,” Mom said. “Let me know your decision by tomorrow.”

Abarca looked at me, then at her, then at me again, stood up, and left.

I turned back to my mother.

“I know,” she said. “If we don’t fire him, he’s going to get himself killed and our people too.”

“Then let’s fire him and hire someone else.” We would give him a generous severance package. At this point, I would rather take a financial hit than keep at it. I knew everyone who worked for us. I didn’t want any of them to die because we failed to properly train them. We needed better leadership.

Mom sighed. “It’s not that simple. If we fire him, there is no telling how many of them will quit. They’re loyal to him.”

“Mom, they need to be loyal to us.”

“I know,” Mom said. “But at least they provide some protection. I don’t want to fire him until we have a replacement ready.”

“We could give Abarca a second chance,” Bern said.

Mom’s expression hardened. “We won’t get a second chance, Bernard. We will be dead. Second chances are given when someone is good but makes an honest mistake or their nerves get the better of them. I gave Abarca the authority to hire his own unit. I questioned his choices at the time and he personally vouched for every soldier he brought to the table. It was his responsibility to train them and mold them into a cohesive unit. It’s six months later, and they’re failing at the basic security procedures. That’s not nerves. That’s incompetence. Hiring him was a mistake, my mistake. I wasted our time and money and I put us in danger . . .”

She looked like she was about to walk across hot coals barefoot. Oh, Mom.

“It wasn’t a mistake,” I said. “It just didn’t work out. He looked really good on paper. He has all the qualifications. He’s just . . .”

“He just cares about being liked more than he cares about doing his job,” Mom finished. “I’ll handle it.”

Bern raised his head from his laptop. “Found something,” he said.

I found Runa in the guest bedroom. She sat on the queen bed, next to Ragnar, who was curled up under a blanket. Sleep had softened his face. He looked so young right now.

“Hey,” I said quietly.

“Hey. He’s still asleep,” Runa said. “Is that normal?”

“Yes. It’s normal.”

“Have you actually done this before?”

“Yes.”

Last year one of Rogan’s security people had developed an unhealthy obsession with Arabella and decided to break into our house in the middle of the night. I had fallen asleep in the media room, and he surprised me as he blundered past. He slept for two days, and once he woke up, he was an emotional zombie for a week. Rogan fired him and strongly encouraged him to move out of state. The last we heard, the man was in Alaska.