Touch Me Not (Book 1 of Sanctuary & Sin)

Chapter 14 – Hold

Headlights smeared white across the rain, sweeping the front windows like searchlights at sea. Two black SUVs idled nose-to-nose at the curb, exhaust fogging in slow ghosts. Doors opened in unison. Men stepped out in slate jackets that would read as private security if you didn’t know the difference—clean boots, gloved hands, compact rifles angled low. No shouting. No sirens. Quiet work.

Inside, the house breathed—a low mechanical hum under the drywall, the shutters sealed and the deadbolts driven. The system pulsed once along the hallway trim—wag—then again—growl—and the living room lights dipped to a dim, steady wash.

“Positions,” Ren said, already moving.

He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. We’d rehearsed this in hallways and kitchens until muscle memory replaced the brittle edge of fear. Ren took the front angle—the cutout by the entry where the wall jogged a foot and a half, giving him hard cover and a diagonal shooting lane that didn’t cross the stairs. Sandro slid to the dining room arch with a chair flipped on its side for concealment, eyes bright, shoulders loose. Kael knelt at the console tucked behind the couch, hands hovering over the bundle of cables and the small black box he’d clipped there like an organ transplant. I took the center line—not in the window, never in the window—one step left of the sofa, one step back of the coffee table, where I could move forward or fall left without tripping on our lives.

“Four outside,” Ren murmured, peeking the corner with a glance so quick it didn’t cast a shadow. “Two advance, two hold.” He lifted the pistol Kael had given him, suppressor snug, muzzle steady at belly-button height—no theatrics, just the work.

“Electromagnetic handshake on their comms,” Kael said, voice low, eyes on the small spectrum analyzer he’d dragged from a pocket. “Encrypted, but they’re beaconing on fifty-second intervals. Assault team, not police.”

“I hate their jackets,” Sandro whispered. “So smug.”

“They’re wearing the jackets because they know we’re looking,” Ren said. “Breathe.”

We breathed.

Outside, a shape peeled off from the SUV and jogged along the hedge to the side gate. The latch rapped once, then went still. Another man took the porch step slow, foot placed near the hinge where wood is strongest. He leaned in, shoulder to the panel, testing. A third stayed at the hood of the front vehicle, scanning up and down the street with a handset held low, antenna tucked, the kind of caution you only buy with years.

Kael’s hands moved. He clipped a lead into the control hub under the console and tapped a sequence like a pianist practicing scales. The hallway camera’s green LED blinked twice. The wag pulsed through the baseboards again, softer this time.

“Your house is running two languages,” Kael said, not looking up. “Your son’s override is on top. Maeve’s implant is underneath it, sleeping unless woken by a specific tone. I’m keeping the kid’s script in the foreground.”

“Good,” I said, and meant more than the word could hold.

A rap at the front door. Not a police knock. The measured, soft insistence of men who have all night.

Ren didn’t speak. He put two fingers against the doorjamb at shoulder level and held them just there, as if he were touching the day before it decided what it wanted to be. “They try the knob in three,” he whispered. “Two. One.”

The handle turned. The deadbolt did not. The man outside didn’t rattle. He listened. Rain drummed. The second man shifted his weight on the porch; I pictured the smear of water his boot would leave on the hemboard. Utility, not memory.

A small whir from the side yard—electric motor, slow gear. “Gate,” Kael breathed. “They brought a compact ram.”

“Backline,” Ren said. “Sandro.”

“On it.” Sandro’s grin flashed and was gone. He slipped through the dining arch toward the mudroom like smoke, rolling his shoulders once to stay loose.

Glass scratched somewhere beyond the kitchen—the threaded squeal of a pry bar violating wood grain—and the house growled, a low-thrum ripple through the outlets and sensor tiles, the kind of warning that turns cats into lines and dogs into statues. I felt it in my teeth.

“Stay with me,” Kael said softly, though he hadn’t moved. It took half a second to register he wasn’t talking about body position. I looked at his hands—steady; his eyes—clear. He held my gaze for a beat, anchoring me while his fingers kept working the system. “If she pops your cameras, I’ll blind them—might take your lights for a breath. Don’t flinch.”

“I won’t,” I said, and heard that it was true.

On the porch, a soft clack: door cam being probed. Ren clicked the hall switch down with two knuckles—dark between front door and stair—then reopened the living room lamp to a low candle of light. His silhouette vanished against the wall. He waited.

The first breach was not the front. It was the back—mudroom door kicked near the lock, frame heaving, latch splintering, the deadbolt holding on the first hit and then failing on the second with a crack like ice. Sandro was already three feet off that axis, crouched behind the washer with the mop bucket in his hands. As the door blew in and the lead man stepped through, Sandro slung the bucket low into his shin, not to injure but to break rhythm, then hit him in the throat with the edge of his forearm—short, economical, ugly-perfect. The man choked, stumbled forward into the pantry, rifle nose down. Sandro wrenched the sling, twisted the barrel away, stomped the inside of the man’s foot, and drove him into the cabinets with a clatter of Tupperware and breath. The second man shoved through behind him; Sandro released and fell back along the wall, drawing the first into the second so their lines collided. No spinning, no flair—just a knee, a shove, a slap to the earpiece that sent a burst of white noise into their heads at the moment they needed orders most.

“Two inside rear,” Sandro hissed into his mic. “Line fouled.”

“Copy,” Ren returned, already turning his attention front.

The porch man pressed the door again, testing the hinges. Then he stepped back. The third man—by the SUV—made a hand motion Ren could have drawn for you blindfolded. Ren motioned me behind the couch, palm flat, and brought the pistol up one-handed, suppressor shadowing the sight.

“Breach,” Kael said, just as the battering plug hit.

The slab jumped against the chain, wood biting metal. The second strike took the chain. The door banged wide and a figure came through in a half-crouch, rifle angled—muzzle down, then up—and in that micro-beat when the barrel traveled through dead space, Ren put two rounds low and left—thigh and hip—snapping the man out of his stance and into the jamb. He didn’t scream; pros seldom do. He didn’t fire; discipline held, even on the floor. Ren slid two steps right, reduced his profile, re-aimed. The second man surged through to cover the first, saw the angle wasn’t clean, and went wide toward the wall—just enough for Ren to stay dark behind his cover and hold his shot.

“She wants them living,” Kael said. “Insurance.”

“Noted,” Ren answered.

In the kitchen, the second rear operative cleared the tangle Sandro had created, recovered his rifle into a ready you only get from thousands of hours, and chose the hall. He swung into the sightline, scanning high—always high first—so he missed the rolling stool Sandro shoved into his lead foot. The man stumbled, corrected, caught his rhythm again—and met Sandro’s elbow. The blow turned his head, not enough to stop him, enough to make his shot go wild when his finger twitched. The round hit the tile, skipped, died against the baseboard. Sandro ducked into the powder room and jammed the door. The man fired twice into the lock. The door held—solid core, we’d replaced it after a tantrum year—then cracked just short of the latch.

“Kael,” Ren said. “Lights now.”

“Three, two, one,” Kael murmured, and the living room dropped into a half-second of darkness as the entire system blinked.

The men on the porch tried to own the beat like they’d rehearsed for it; Ren had rehearsed more. He fired two more—one to the second man’s chest plate to knock him off the line, one to the arm that was bringing the barrel back up. The impact thudded dull against armor and muscle. The man grunted, lost his lane, recovered. The light came back at a lower level. Ren moved again, not far, just enough to force a fresh acquisition for any shooter who’d sighted on the last muzzle flash.

“Mudroom,” Sandro breathed. “Door’s going.”

The powder room door gave on the next pair of shots. The shooter stepped in, tight, rifle chest-high. He saw empty—Sandro already at his back. Sandro looped the sling with his left hand, clamped it to the man’s shoulder, and punched the charging handle with his right to jam the rifle out of battery. The man twisted hard, elbow striking back, catching Sandro’s ribs. Sandro exhaled sharp, adjusted, hooked a foot behind the man’s ankle, and dumped him into the tub. The rifle clanged porcelain; Sandro kicked it, sent it skittering. The second rear man shouted once into his comm, scrambled for a sidearm that wasn’t there—pros often drop the second weapon to speed climbing fences—and took a shampoo bottle to the eye instead. Sandro laughed once, breathy. “Apologies,” he said. “It’s a two-in-one.”

In the living room, the first porch man had crawled to cover behind the console, reaching for something—tourniquet or radio—and Kael, quiet as water, planted the heel of his shoe on the man’s knuckles. Not hard enough to break, just hard enough to make the hand open. He scooped the radio, thumbed the push-to-talk, and pressed it mute-side to the floor so it transmitted nothing and recorded rain.

“West window,” Ren said, and I moved on instinct—two steps to the sofa arm, drop to a knee, posture low—so when the third man raised outside and aimed for a pane that would never break clean, he found the curtain hard against the glass, shutters already locked in a ribcage behind it. He didn’t fire; he scanned left, deciding whether his muzzle could force a solution through a problem it hadn’t made. He glanced to the SUV. The driver shook his head once. Hold.

“Front team status?” a voice crackled—tinny, annoyed.

Kael keyed the radio to transmit and let the rain hit the mic. A supervisor somewhere made an impatient sound and began to talk over the noise in a rhythm that would sound like orders to anyone listening on a loop and like music to a man who wasn’t. Kael’s mouth tipped in a small, private smile. “We have ten,” he said. “Then they go to plan B.”

“What’s plan B?” I asked.

“Gas,” Ren said. “Or electric.”

I tasted metal. “They’d risk it in a neighborhood?”

“They didn’t risk not showing your house in a ballroom,” Sandro called from the hall. “So yes.”

“Then we make them choose something else,” Kael said, and his fingers danced across the console. “I’m pushing an unscheduled test on the municipal grid for this block—brownout simulation. Smart meters will report draw anomalies. Protocol says utility trucks get priority within fifteen.”

“That’s hypothetical,” Ren said.

Kael shrugged. “Most protocols are until someone obeys them.”

The radio crackled again—“Front team?”—and the first porch man, trying to raise his head, met Ren’s eyes and made a decision. He tapped his partner’s calf twice—signal to pull. The second porch man nodded once, kept his rifle covering the slice of door he couldn’t see through, and began to drag the first backward in short, efficient scoots. Ren did not take the shot. He watched the math change and chose patience.

“Rear?” Kael asked.

Sandro’s breath in our ears; the soft thunk of something heavy obeying gravity. “Rear is a bath,” he said. “One in the tub, one reconsidering career choices.”

“Hands and feet,” Ren said. “Tie if you can. If not, lock them in.”

“I found something festive,” Sandro said, and somewhere tape hissed.

The house wagged again—quick, light—but when I looked at the hallway indicator the blink pattern was wrong: three short, one long. Mateo’s script did two long, one short for wag. The wrongness slid cold over my skin.

“Kael,” I said. “Look.”

He looked. His face didn’t change, but his hands did—speed up a quarter, shoulders tighten by a degree. “She’s waking the implant,” he said. “Not through your hub—through a device you wouldn’t think to suspect.”

“What device?” I asked.

He didn’t answer right away. He closed his eyes for a breath, the way he had with the warehouse keypad, listening beyond the obvious. “Thermostat,” he said. “Or the garage opener. Something cheap and chatty.” He unplugged two things, killed power at the console to a third, then said, almost to himself, “She learned your vocabulary.”

“How?” I asked, but I knew it in my bones. House wagged. Growled. Mateo’s texts. My replies. All the times we named the system in the clear because it felt like magic and not a machine that remembers.

“She watched us teach the house to be a dog,” Kael said softly. “Now she’s the handler.”

Outside, tires shifted on wet pavement—SUV doors, closing again. Ren raised two fingers—listen. Voices low, closer now—front curb, side hedge, the line at the fence where you can look into our kitchen if you stand on the short retaining wall. A hiss from the side yard, not gas—high-voltage taser prongs kissing a padlock.

“Electric,” Ren said. “Side panel first.”

Kael was already moving. “Utility box,” he said. “Laundry—now.”

I went. It wasn’t bravery. It was route. Mudroom, hard left, laundry closet, push the baskets aside. The panel door protested the way it always does; I forced it back and saw the main breaker row glow in their dumb little plastic caps like a cheap city skyline. Kael skidded in behind me, shirt damp at the collarbone, and took the bottom slot with a tool I didn’t know the name for. He pulled the master hard. The house exhaled—lights dead, hum gone—then relit a heartbeat later under his small, battery-backed brain. “We own essential,” he said. “She owns nothing for now.”

From the front, Ren: “They’re pulling back.”

“Not retreat,” Sandro corrected, reappearing with a strip of silver tape around his wrist like a bracelet and a bruise blooming under his shirt. “Reset.”

“Utility trucks coming,” Kael said, checking his watch like it owed him money. “When the city van turns down the block, Maeve will pick posture over push. She can’t have witnesses if the story is order.”

“Meaning?” I asked.

“Meaning we get five minutes of nobody testing us,” he said. “We use it.”

“How?” Ren asked.

“By making her look away from here,” Kael said, voice steady again. “We give her something she can’t resist tracking.”

Sandro grinned. “A parade?”

“Close,” Kael said. He reached into his case, pulled a thumb drive with a loop of tape around it, and set it on the console like a wafer at a ceremony. “A copy of SpecterNet’s telemetry, doctored to look like you stole it from AV backline. We let it ‘ping’ from three blocks over.”

“She’ll send a car,” Ren said.

“Two,” Kael replied. “And a drone. Which means fewer eyes on your door.”

He glanced at me. “You good?”

I nodded, the fear back but changed—sharp, directional, useful. I stood where I could see Ren and the hall and the console at once. The house purred, the low, even hum Mateo named, and I realized with the clarity of lightning that Maeve would take that word, too, and use it to teach me when to relax.

“No,” I said. “We change the words.”

Kael’s head tilted. “Say more.”

“The pattern. The names. She learned wag and growl from us. We stop using them. We switch the blink code. We make a new language she doesn’t speak.”

Kael’s mouth lifted—a quick flash of approval. “Done.” His fingers ran a command. The hallway LED flickered—a new rhythm. “What do we call it?”

I looked at the green pulse, at the men out front, at the boy who’d given me words that made the house feel kind. “Heartbeat,” I said. “And drum.”

“Heartbeat for safe,” Kael confirmed, half to himself as he changed the script. “Drum for danger.”

“Works,” Ren said. “Call it.”

“Heartbeat,” I answered, and felt the room agree.

Outside, the SUVs idled. Down the block, a city truck turned, orange lights strobing a little mercy. The men in slate drifted toward their doors, not in panic, just adjusting, resetting for a next pass that would look like a service call if you didn’t know the choreography.

Kael tapped the drive. Somewhere three blocks over, a ghost phone woke and pretended to be us. One of the SUVs peeled away, then the second, slow, casual, like it had an appointment. The hedge man hopped the retaining wall backward, vanished into rain.

Ren lowered the pistol for the first time since the door went. He looked at me and then at Kael, and in that brief exchange was the thing I hadn’t known I needed—acknowledgment that none of us had done this alone.

Sandro slumped against the wall, wiped his forearm across his mouth, and winced when his ribs protested. “Two-in-one,” he muttered, eyeing the shampoo-slick tile. “Never again.”

“You did well,” Ren said, which in his language is nearly poetry.

The house held. The heartbeat pulsed clean. The kitchen clock resumed its little tick without amplification. For a moment there was nothing in the room but breath and rain.

Then the thermostat clicked—soft, purposeful, like a throat clearing before a lie—and the living room speaker, which we never used, murmured in a woman’s voice that had never needed to be loud to be heard.

“New words,” Maeve said, almost pleased. “How clever.”

Every hair on my arms lifted. Kael’s hands froze on the console, then moved again, faster.

“She’s not outside,” I heard myself say. The taste of metal came back. “She’s in.”

“In the house?” Sandro asked, straightening.

“In the system,” I said, eyes on the blank black eye of the thermostat, the little ring glowing a color it had never glowed before. “She learned us. She’s speaking through it.”

Kael didn’t argue. He didn’t soothe. He looked at the speaker like a surgeon looks at a tumor and nodded once. “Then we cut her out,” he said, calm as weather. “And we do it now.”