Page 27 of Override

Humans are deeply disappointing creatures.

Declan Murphy—the head of Gallagher security—meets me in the foyer already sweating through the collar of his dress shirt despite the cold rain outside. Mid-forties. Former contractor. The kind of man who mistakes volume for authority and expensive security systems for actual intelligence.

He shakes my hand too hard while explaining the failures from last night in increasingly irritated circles as we move through the main hall.

“Every interior feed started looping around twelve-thirteen,” he says while motioning toward one of the wall panels. “Then we started getting motion desyncs, lock failures, alert delays. We need to know if someone breached the system.”

Someone definitely did.

I hum thoughtfully while crouching beside the first exposed panel, glasses slipping slightly lower down my nose as I pretend to examine hardware manually.

Meanwhile, three hidden windows run silently across my tablet screen.

One maps the estate network in real time. One monitors internal security chatter. One keeps a live feed on Murphy’s private phone communications because apparently the man uses the same password format for everything like a complete psychopath.

I almost respect the confidence.

“Cloud redundancy?” I ask casually while reconnecting wires I personally broke eight hours ago.

“Dual redundancy.”

“Local mirror backup?”

“Yeah.”

“Mm.”

The estate security system spreads through the house like veins beneath skin, every hallway and doorway feeding back into a centralized monitoring hub downstairs. Expensive setup. Sophisticated enough to impress rich men who think throwing money at technology automatically makes them protected.

Unfortunately for them, every system still has a human being behind it eventually.

And human beings are almost always the weak point.

Murphy continues walking me room to room while I map camera placement, access points, and internal blind spots in my head. By the time we reach the second floor, I already know more about the Gallagher estate than half the men currently employed to protect it.

That’s usually the part where I start getting bored. Except the farther upstairs we go, the worse the camera placement becomes. Not sloppy. Intentional.

Main hallway. Secondary hall. Library staircase. Upper landing.

Too many cameras. Far too many interior sightlines for a house supposedly protecting against external threats.

My attention stays carefully neutral while Murphy keeps talking, but something colder starts pooling low in my stomach with every step deeper into the second floor.

Because exterior protection makes sense. Tracking movement inside your own house does not.

“These all recent installs?” I ask while crouching beside another panel near the west hallway.

Murphy glances up from his phone distractedly. “Mr. Gallagher expanded interior coverage after the wedding.”

Wedding. Not break-in. Not threat escalation. Not attempted hit. Wedding.

My fingers still briefly against the wiring beneath the panel.

Interesting. Very fucking interesting.

“How long ago was that?” I ask without looking up.

“Six months.”