Honor’s Revenge: Masters’ Admiralty, book 4

by Mari Carr

  “We’ve never met you,” Walt said quietly. “So why does it matter that they might have been planning to talk to us?”

  Another good question.

  Sylvia looked at Hugo. She couldn’t look at Lancelot without twisting around. Hugo’s face was marked with dread, as if he were waiting for the other shoe to fall.

  What was going on? A week ago, she’d been living an uneventful life, consisting of nothing more than poetry and art, sweet tea and Sunday dinners with her family. And now, in the course of a few days, she’d met and fallen for not one, but two sexy-as-sin Europeans, who were members of a secret society. She’d been kidnapped, drugged, nearly drowned. She’d had the best sex of her life, a fantasy come true, and suddenly this beautiful blonde named Juliette was here, telling them about another secret society, and now…now she could tell that shit was about to get really weird.

  “Sylvia, Oscar, Langston, and Walt.” Juliette looked at them as she said their names. “This is not how I would have chosen to tell you or approach you.”

  “Tell us what?” Oscar looked ready to flip a table.

  “We want you to join us. To become members of the Trinity Masters.”

  Heavy silence greeted the statement. Sylvia was shocked, though probably not as shocked as her brothers, who hadn’t even known such a thing existed twenty minutes ago.

  “Fuck,” she murmured under her breath.

  “Why?” Walt asked Juliette.

  “Because you’re brilliant. Our society members are artists and scientists, inventors and leaders. The whole reason for the creation of the Trinity Masters was to shelter and nurture the best among us. It’s how the U.S. has stayed at the forefront of technological and scientific development. Why we have a thriving, diverse culture of artists, when history tells us a country as young as ours should still be focused on merely surviving. We search for the best and the brightest the nation has to offer. Membership is offered to only a select few.”

  “And what do we get out of it?” Langston asked.

  “Access,” Juliette said simply. “Access to people and resources that would otherwise be closed to you. The owner of Nexus Six is one of our members.”

  “Carly Kenan?” Oscar asked, whistling appreciatively. “Her work with AI is out of this world.”

  Juliette smiled, pleased to have impressed Oscar. “Caden Anderson is a successful venture capitalist, who could help you get the funding needed to develop your PDRS, to create and build your own company.”

  “Seriously,” Sebastian muttered. “Caden is one of your carrots?”

  Juliette shot her associate a dirty look, but ignored his comment. “We have multiple members who are high-ranking military officers. You would get access to them. You could put your portable X-ray machine into the hands of the soldiers who need it. You could change battlefield medicine forever.”

  The shocked silence that followed Juliette’s statement had several levels. First of all, this woman knew about the PDRS. Though it was Walt’s baby, all three of her brothers had worked on the project.

  Secondly, what she was talking about—helping them build a company, getting the machine into the hands of the military, was their dream. Her brothers wanted to change the world, though Sylvia doubted they’d put it in such lofty terms. Juliette was offering to make that dream a reality.

  “And you,” Juliette said to Sylvia, “are already a wonderful poet. Already successful. But tell me, given access to nearly unlimited power, what else would you do? How would you use your words to change the world?”

  “Poetry as self-expression and therapy for at-risk youth,” Sylvia said immediately. “I’ve submitted proposals to get grants to run a program, but I haven’t gotten one yet.”

  “You don’t just need money. Money isn’t the problem.” Juliette waved that away. “You need access to education systems. As a member, you would have that.”

  This was a dream coming true. Sylvia couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her face. She glanced at Hugo, wanting to share the moment with him.

  He looked grim.

  “This is what I have to offer you,” Juliette continued quietly. “I’m making an exception to every one of our rules, telling you all of this now, before a membership invitation has been officially extended, but the situation forced events to unfold this way.”

  The situation. Hugo. Lancelot.

  “Wait,” Oscar said, “you’re missing a connection. What does this have to do with them?” He jabbed a thumb at Lancelot.

  Juliette’s eyes were like ice. “As I said, one condition of their being here was that they didn’t approach anyone associated with the Trinity Masters.”

  “And they’re not associated,” Lancelot said.

  “But they are,” Sebastian said. “And you knew it. Somehow, you knew Sylvia was on our recruitment list. If you hadn’t known that, you would have put her name on the list of people you planned to question.”

  “He didn’t know,” Hugo said. “I didn’t tell him about her. I never wanted to involve her.” Hugo turned to her. “Sylvia, I didn’t. I never wanted to hurt you.”

  Something inside her had gone cold. “You knew they wanted to recruit me?”

  “Don’t answer that,” Lancelot barked.

  “And you knew about them, about the Trinity Masters?” She didn’t give him time to respond. “Last night, you said you’d told me everything. But you didn’t tell me about them?”

  “We told you about the Masters’ Admiralty,” Hugo said quickly, his accent thicker than it had been. “We told you about us.”

  “But you said you told me everything.”

  “They couldn’t,” Juliette said. “The Trinity Masters wasn’t their secret to tell. Doing so would have cost them their lives.”

  “I’m sorry,” Hugo said.

  The woman’s explanation was reasonable, and yet she still felt betrayed by her lovers, still felt on the outside of this circle.

  All at once, everyone decided it was time to talk.

  “I’m having trouble believing any of this,” Walt said reasonably.

  “What does any of this have to do with Sylvia’s English teacher being nuttier than a five-pound fruitcake?” Langston asked.

  “If they’re here only with your permission, can you make them leave?” Oscar asked.

  “I’m not leaving,” Lancelot said.

  “You will if she tells you to,” Sebastian said coolly.

  “Actually, can we get back to the part about Sylvia thinking you had two husbands?” Langston said.

  Sylvia rolled her eyes. Langston was brilliant, creative, and deadly if necessary. He was also hornier than a two-dicked billy goat.

  “That’s part of the membership,” Franco said. “Everyone is in an arranged ménage marriage.”

  “Arranged?” Walt asked.

  “Ménage?” Oscar yelped.

  Langston smiled. “Hell, yeah.”

  Juliette ignored their outbursts, probably used to the shock factor of that membership requirement. “As for you two,” she said to Hugo and Lancelot, “I think this would be a good time for us to part ways.”

  “I told you,” Lancelot said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

  “Oh my God,” Sylvia said, throwing her good hand in the air, her patience in tatters. “Stop already. This chess game will go on forever if neither one of you takes your hand off your damn piece!”

  Juliette and Franco shared a grin, no doubt over her drawn-out dayum. She was aware that her Southern accent got stronger when she was pissed off, and she was used to Northerners finding it amusing.

  She didn’t care. She was tired of the secret spy games and one-upmanship. “Lancelot and Hugo need to find Alicia. She’s working for a dangerous man, one who wants to destroy—”

  “Sylvia,” Lancelot interrupted.

  “No more secrets!” she snapped.

  Hugo stood, crossing to kneel in front of Sylvia. Langston and Oscar both shifted closer to her. She tried to push t
hem back, but her brothers weren’t moving. Stubborn assholes. There was too much testosterone in the room.

  “Sylvia, you don’t fully understand. The history between our two societies is complicated.”

  Franco snorted. “That’s a word for it. Another might be contentious. Of course,” he said, almost to himself, “so much of that anger is based on things that happened decades, even centuries ago.” Franco smiled, and it was the easygoing smile of a man who didn’t take life too seriously, or perhaps it was the smile of a man who knew how to appreciate what was good. He looked at Sylvia, that smile focused on her, and it made the uneasiness inside her calm a bit. “Do you like libraries? I bet you do. And old books?”

  “Of course,” Sylvia said.

  “You’re going to love our headquarters. And I have special clearance at the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian…” He leaned forward. “I’m setting up a lab for desiccant and thermal vacuum-freeze drying and preservation.” He winked like he’d told her where to find good moonshine. “I’ll let you play with it if you—”

  A loud crack pierced the air.

  Glass shattered and Sylvia’s world went topsy-turvy as Hugo roughly dragged her to the floor, her brothers diving on top of her. Where before they’d treated her like she was made of glass, careful of her injuries, this time, they reacted without thought to her broken hand, tossing her to the ground roughly, quickly. She felt like the player with the football, just tackled, the poor son of a bitch at the bottom of the pile of bodies.

  Seconds later, she heard Juliette scream.

  “No! Oh my God! No!”

  Sylvia tried to break free, but her brothers and Hugo weren’t yielding.

  “Stay down!” Langston demanded as another gunshot sounded, then another.

  “No, no, no!” Juliette continued to cry.

  Sylvia could hear the change, recognized that this woman—who only moments before had been confident, powerful—was broken, devastated.

  “Franco!”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Hugo watched as Walt pushed away from Sylvia, crawling across the floor toward Juliette, Sebastian, and the blood-soaked Franco. Sebastian had dragged Franco off to the side, where he couldn’t be seen through the now-shattered window. Juliette was kneeling, blood-covered hands pressed to the bullet wound in Franco’s chest. There were tears streaming down her face, panic rife in her voice as she called her husband’s name.

  Franco was awake, at least his eyes were open, and the lines of his face were tight with pain.

  The sound of the shot, of the glass breaking, had been loud, but now everything was quiet. His own breath was pounding in his ears, but not as loudly as the wet, rattling sound of Franco’s breathing.

  When Walt reached Juliette, Sebastian stood, a gun seeming to magically appear in his hands.

  “Do you have eyes on the shooter?” Sebastian asked.

  “It’s Alicia,” Lancelot said.

  Hugo had been so worried about Sylvia, he hadn’t had a chance to see where Lancelot was, if he was okay.

  Lancelot and Sebastian were standing on either side of the broken window, their backs against the wall as they each chanced quick glances outside. They both held guns at the ready.

  “How do you know?” Sebastian asked.

  “I just caught a glimpse of her. She’s at eleven o’clock, behind the maple tree twenty yards out.”

  “Help him. Please! Help him,” Juliette begged Walt. There was blood—God, so much blood—pooling around his chest, head, and shoulders. Blood streaked the floor, a trail leading from the spot where he’d fallen to where he now lay, Juliette and Walt hovering over him.

  Walt had ripped open Franco’s shirt. “My bag…” Walt glanced around the room.

  “The bullet…did it go through his heart?” Juliette asked.

  “You are my heart. Do not…become too dark.” Franco’s words were reedy, barely audible.

  “No, Franco, you do not leave me. You cannot leave me! Without you, Devon and I are a mess.”

  “This is very true.” Franco’s smile turned into a grimace as Walt worked on him. “My only regret is that…” His voice trailed off as his face went white.

  “Franco!”

  Walt was working quickly, doing something to Franco that Hugo couldn’t quite see.

  Franco’s eyes opened when Juliette grabbed the sides of his face, holding his head steady. “Don’t you leave me.”

  Franco smiled, but the movement was slow, as if it took everything he had. When he started to speak once again, it was no longer English, but American Spanish. It was close enough to Castilian that Hugo understood most of it.

  “I only regret that I didn’t love you longer.”

  Juliette’s eyes closed, tears streaming down her face. She replied in the same language. “Please stay with me.”

  “If I can, I will, my love. But I don’t think it’s my choice to make.”

  “I love you. I love you.”

  “And I love you, and Devon. You’ll tell him I love him. You don’t forget that you have each other. Love each—”

  Franco’s words cut off on a hiss of pain.

  And then his eyes closed.

  “Franco!”

  Hugo’s attention moved from Walt and Juliette to Lancelot and Sebastian as he hugged Sylvia closer to his side. His own parents hadn’t shared a great love. They were a marriage arranged for power and security, which wasn’t abnormal among members of the Masters’ Admiralty. But Hugo knew there were trinities who fell deeply in love, a kind of rich, complex love people with only one partner would never know.

  It was clear that Juliette Adams was in such a trinity, and watching her lose one of her husbands was more than Hugo could stand to witness. The intimacy of it made him feel like a voyeur, and though only a moment ago, he would have said she was, if not exactly his enemy, certainly the antagonist in his and Lancelot’s mission, right now she was just a woman kneeling over her dying husband.

  Lancelot glanced outside, his appearance drawing fire. The bullet hit the bookcases on the wall opposite the window. Splinters of wood and bits of paper rained down like confetti.

  Hugo wrapped an arm around Sylvia’s waist and dragged her closer to the wall, putting a large armchair between them and the window. Oscar was right behind them. Langston was crouched behind the couch, phone to his ear. Hugo leaned to the side, watching Lancelot.

  “How did she find us?” Hugo asked. Inside, part of him was absolutely panicked, but for the most part he felt strangely calm. Of all the things he could have asked—what are we going to do? Is Franco dead? Are we all about to die?—the rather academic question of how it was Alicia had found them was what he went with.

  “Sylvia,” Lancelot asked, “Oscar’s house, is that the house you grew up in?”

  Hugo stared at Lancelot, utterly confused by the question, before glancing at Sylvia.

  “Uh, yes. I mean, all my brothers built places out in the acreage behind the house we grew up in. The house next to Oscar’s is Walt’s. Langston lives in the barn loft.”

  Hugo remembered the multitude of buildings. Another clue that might have tipped them off that there were more brothers.

  “Fook. It’s the house you lived in when she was your teacher? Would she have ever been there?”

  Sylvia’s face couldn’t get any paler, but her eyes widened. “Yes. She was. She dropped me off a few times. We had her over for dinner.”

  Lancelot cursed in a steady rhythm, his accent so thick and his voice so low that Hugo couldn’t even understand the words.

  Lancelot glanced toward him. No—toward Oscar. “I wasn’t thinking. You went to get the equipment from the house, didn’t you?”

  Oscar nodded, his face ashen. “We led her here?”

  “That doesn’t matter right now,” Lancelot said. Given the way Oscar had treated him, Sylvia wouldn’t have blamed him if Lancelot made her brother wallow in guilt, but he didn’t.

  “If I can get to a co
mputer, I can try to pull up the exterior security cameras on this place,” Oscar said in a subdued voice. “I was bored earlier and started to hack into the security system.”

  “She must have staked out their house, followed them here,” Sebastian said.

  “Shit. Shit!” Oscar glanced toward the door. “My computer is on the table in the dining room.”

  “No,” Lancelot commanded. “It has front windows, too. You stay here, and stay down.”

  There was another crack of gunfire, and behind them more books seemed to explode, fragments of wood flying through the air.

  Oscar looked at Lancelot—his big, capable body, his demeanor, more pissed off than scared—and nodded. Lancelot pulled back behind the wall and was crouching down, the gun raised and at the ready. His face seemed calm, relaxed even. His knight training.

  But his eyes were…they were cold. Foreign. Those eyes didn’t belong to the man Hugo had called partner this past week. They belonged to a predator. A killer.

  “That’s a high-caliber bullet,” Sebastian said.

  “Rifle,” Lancelot agreed. “I’m going to lay down suppressive fire. She’s got us pinned.”

  Sebastian nodded. Lancelot popped up and squeezed the trigger—one, two, three. Even, measured shots.

  Hugo marveled at Lancelot’s steady hand, the cold determination in his posture, his courage as he knelt there, head and shoulders exposed, and faced down the danger. After the third shot, he dropped below the level of the windowsill.

  “Is she still there?” Sebastian asked. He glanced at Walt, Juliette, and Franco. Walt was doing CPR.

  Dead. Franco was dead. Another life snuffed out because of Alicia, because of this war the Masters’ Admiralty was fighting.

  “She’s on the move,” Lancelot said. “Heading back toward the road.”

  The house was more of an estate than a house, and it sat on several acres of land. At one time, this would have been a plantation house, and everything around it would have been farmland. Now the town of Charleston crowded in on all sides of the walled grounds. The driveway was nearly fifty yards long, and the land between the house and the road hadn’t been overly landscaped, meaning there were plenty of trees she could use for cover. She’d probably parked just outside the gate for a quick getaway.