I looked at Margaret. Her phone was sitting face down on her lap, her hand hidden beneath the edge of the table.

“Stop her,” I said.

Before anyone could move, the heavy oak doors of the boardroom swung open with a loud click.

Marcus, the estate’s head of security, stood in the doorway.

He held a black tablet in his left hand and a ring of heavy brass keys in his right.

“The signal is coming from the carriage house,” Marcus said, his voice level. “Someone connected a secondary router to the main terminal down there.”

Daniel did not look up from his keyboard.

“I’ve got the IP address locked,” Daniel said, his fingers hitting the keys in a rapid, rhythmic pattern. “It’s a localized brute-force attack on our directory. They’re trying to corrupt the partition tables.”

I looked at Margaret.

She did not flinch, but her fingers tightened around the leather strap of her handbag.

“Marcus, go to the carriage house,” I said. “Unplug everything.”

“Already done, Ms. Hart,” Marcus said. “I cut the physical line ten seconds ago. The remote connection just died.”