by Mari Carr
“I’m going after her,” Lancelot said.
“Lancelot!” Sylvia called out, starting to rise from the floor.
Lancelot shook his head, gestured for her to remain low. “Hold her, Hugo. And stay here.”
Sebastian hesitated, and it was obvious he was torn between following or protecting his leader. Lancelot took the decision away. “You too, Sebastian. You’re the only other person with a gun. If she circles around or takes me out, you’re their only defense.”
“I’ll protect them.” Sebastian was looking at Juliette as he spoke, even though the woman’s eyes were glued to her husband’s face.
Lancelot slid along the wall, toward the doorway that led to the foyer. He paused and looked at Hugo.
“Don’t go,” Hugo said. “It’s too dangerous.”
“This is my job.”
“The American police are coming. They will catch her.”
Lancelot shook his head. “This is why I’m here,” he said again.
He was a knight. It was his duty to protect, to defend. And Hugo didn’t want him to go. This mission had seemed straightforward, if not simple.
Find Alicia.
It had turned into so much more. The time he’d spent with Sylvia and Lancelot had changed him. Changed all of them.
“Stay together,” Lancelot said, some of that darkness leaving his eyes. He looked at them with fierce longing. “Protect her.”
“Don’t go out there!” Sylvia pleaded. “She’s too dangerous.”
“We’re still talking about your English teacher, right?” Oscar asked. “That’s who’s dangerous? Your…English teacher?”
Lancelot slipped out of the parlor. Instead of turning left toward the front door, he turned right, heading toward the back of the house. A moment later there was the faint sound of a door opening and closing. Hugo held his breath, waiting for the sound of more gunfire, but there was only silence.
Sylvia reached for him, and he drew her trembling body into his embrace. “He’s going to be fine,” Hugo assured her, praying it wasn’t a lie. “He’ll be fine.”
“We can’t lose him. We can’t!”
Sebastian quickly stepped in front of the window and fired twice, before ducking back behind the wall. There was no return fire.
The silence was deafening.
Lancelot chose to take his life in his hands and go after Alicia, while Walt continued working on Franco. He’d stopped CPR. Did that mean Franco had a heartbeat again? Or was he beyond hope?
Langston had managed to shove the medical kit across the floor. Walt yanked a plastic bag full of finger splints out of the pack. He yanked the package open, but it was the plastic he needed, not the splints, so he dumped those onto the floor. He slapped the plastic over the wound in Franco’s chest.
“His heart is beating again, but his left lung has collapsed and he’s losing blood.” Walt’s tone was tense, but not panicked.
“Save him,” Juliette demanded.
“If we can get him into an OR in the next twenty minutes, he has a chance. Hold this. You have to press down. You’re forming a seal with the plastic.”
Juliette did as he instructed and Walt reached into his bag once more, pulling out several large surgical clamps.
“Hold him down,” Walt said, taking over the duty of holding the plastic bag over the wound. “He’s probably in shock, but he may feel this.”
Before anyone could ask “feel what?” Walt yanked the plastic up, shoved two fingers into the bullet hole, then plunged the clamp in. Franco’s body arched up, Juliette’s hands on his shoulders the only thing keeping him in place.
“Gross,” Langston breathed, leaning forward to get a better look at what Walt was doing. His phone was to his ear. He was still talking to 9-1-1. “My brother is a doctor. He’s working on the guy who was shot,” he told the operator. Then he looked at Walt. “The ambulance and cops are four minutes out.”
Somewhere out there, Lancelot was in pursuit of a madwoman. A murderer.
Sylvia’s words continued to play in Hugo’s mind.
We can’t lose him.
* * *
LANCELOT ROUNDED the house and paused. There were two ways he could do this. He could attempt to follow her, using the trees for cover, or he could make an educated guess as to where she was going and opt for speed rather than stealth.
He opted for speed.
Gun in hand, Lancelot raced down the paved driveway. If she’d doubled back, or paused to take up a defensive position, he was an easy target, moving fast but out in the open. Thinking about that, anticipating the thud and burn of getting shot, would only slow him down, so he took those feelings and that fear, put them inside a little box, and shoved it to the back of his mind.
While he was compartmentalizing, he took his feelings for Sylvia and Hugo, put them into another box and shoved them down deep.
His legs pumped, his breathing deepened. He added speed, pushing himself. It was only a hundred meters, and within seconds he could see the waist-high decorative iron fence that surrounded the property. He was getting closer. His goal was to beat her to her car, catch her when she got there, or, if she’d already gotten there, stop her from getting away.
There was a flash of something to his left. Alicia, her pale hair catching a ray of sunlight. Was it stupidity or arrogance that made her not bother with a cap or balaclava?
Arrogance, because she wasn’t stupid.
Lancelot veered off the driveway, into the trees, trying his best to keep her in his sights. He caught sight of her again and realized he had another advantage. He’d been right. She was carrying a rifle, not a handgun. It looked like a semi-automatic, but not an assault weapon. There wasn’t a high-capacity magazine that he could see, but there was a scope mounted on the barrel.
Her husband had been a sniper, and it looked like she’d picked up a few things. But a sniper rifle without a magazine had space for probably four bullets. She’d fired five times, which meant she must have reloaded.
Three bullets left, if he was right.
If she had the time to stop, brace herself and the gun, aim, and fire, he would be in serious trouble. However, he wasn’t going to give her that chance. He tucked his handgun into his pants, wanting his hands free.
She paused at the iron fence at the front property line and threw one leg over. He could hear her breathing hard. It was probably the sound of her own labored breaths that stopped her from hearing his approach.
Lancelot waited until her right leg was thrown over, then leapt. He slammed one hand onto her thigh and grabbed her gun with the other.
She screamed as he impaled her leg on the iron fence. The tips of the decorative arrow points weren’t exactly sharp, and being impaled by something blunt hurt far worse than something razor sharp.
That had to hurt.
Good. She deserved to hurt.
Her eyes were wide as she grabbed at her leg, looking back over her shoulder at him.
Lancelot hooked his arm around her neck, placing her in a choke hold. He could hear sirens. Langston had been talking to the police when he’d left. When they arrived, they’d search for the shooter. If they found her, she’d end up in the custody of the U.S. authorities, charged with the murder of Franco. Considering that he was the husband of the leader of the Trinity Masters, it was very unlikely Alicia would ever be a free woman.
That also meant the Masters’ Admiralty would never get to question her.
Lancelot grabbed her right knee, yanking her leg up and off the spikes. On the opposite side of the fence, parked half on the footpath, was an innocuous gray four-door car. No doubt her vehicle. He needed to get her away from the house, somewhere the police wouldn’t find her. Somewhere he could question her.
Somewhere he could be Charlie, not Lancelot.
That thought made him go cold. A bone-deep cold.
It was time to be Charlie. He wasn’t a knight. Wasn’t Lancelot.
It didn’t matter that being Lancel
ot had felt good, felt right. It wasn’t who he was. Wasn’t what the Masters’ Admiralty needed him to be.
Charlie was a thorough man. Those first nights, when they’d been fruitlessly searching her house for clues, he’d stayed up and searched through property records, looking not for clues as to where she might be, but locations he could use once he found her.
Alicia gurgled as he hauled her away from the fence. He hooked his finger under the strap of the gun and lifted it off her, briefly having to release the choke hold as he did. She whirled and tried to fight him, but she was no match for him physically.
Charlie reached down, stabbing his fingers into the open wound on the back of her thigh.
Alicia—a lovely, mature woman, with her hair still neatly coiffed despite their flight through the trees—fainted.
Charlie picked her up in a fireman’s carry, leaving her gun on the ground where the police could find it. He stepped over the iron fence, making sure to avoid the blood-coated section, and walked up to the car. Though this was a residential street, given the size of the estate, the neighbors on either side were far enough away that they didn’t have a direct line of sight to the car, especially given the lush plantings along the front property line, many of which hung out over the footpath.
She’d left the keys in the ignition of the car—a good idea in a getaway vehicle. Charlie bent his knees, hit the button for the boot release. Less than ten seconds later, Charlie was in the driver’s seat, an unconscious Alicia in the boot. He pulled away from the curb, driving sedately. The universe was on his side because a blue truck, driven by two teenagers and blasting music, turned onto the street, falling into place behind him. It was much less suspicious than him being the only car on the road. Both he and the blue truck pulled to the side as several police cars, an ambulance, and a fire truck went racing by. He watched in the rearview mirror as the emergency vehicles turned left into the estate.
The part of him that was Lancelot wanted to go back. Forget questioning Alicia, leave her in the boot, and go back to check on Sylvia and Hugo. To hug them and hold them close and lie that everything would be okay, just so they could all feel better for a minute.
But he wasn’t Lancelot right now.
He was Charlie, so he pulled away from the curb. Of the three possible sites he’d selected, one was less than four miles from here. He’d memorized the routes to and from his chosen locations and was able to navigate there without having to stop to check a map.
Not that he had one. His phone and bag were back at the house. All he had was his gun and his hands. He’d done more with less in the past.
Charlie parked around the back of the vacant building. It had been a gym at one point, and the reason he’d selected it was that it had been one of the properties given as an example in an article about how vacant businesses attracted crime. The article was three weeks old, which was probably enough time that whatever superficial heightened patrols of security that had been put in place immediately after the story was published were gone.
There was a shiny new lock on the back door marked “employees only.” When he tugged, the door opened. The lock was in place, but the bolt-plate had been unscrewed and simply wedged into place to make it look like the lock was still functioning.
Charlie opened the door and walked in, scouting his options, before going back to the car. He opened the boot.
Alicia leapt out, swinging with the tire iron she’d grabbed. He was ready for something, and grabbed the tire iron as she swung it, palm smarting from the hard blow. A quick jerk and he yanked it from her.
Alicia, undeterred, scrambled from the trunk. She was moving far too slowly, given her injured thigh. Charlie wondered vaguely if she actually thought she’d get away.
If she did, he corrected her thinking when he swung the tire iron into her stomach, knocking the wind out of her.
Five minutes later, he had her secured in what he thought might have been a manager’s office. It was a small, windowless room near the back of the building. He used a coil of unused wiring he’d found amid some renovation supplies to bind her hands together behind her back. More wire was looped through the bindings and run up and over several cross pieces of the drop ceiling. For now, he’d let her stand up straight, but if she became difficult, he’d put her into a stress position.
Maybe that’s all you’ll have to do. Maybe you won’t have to do anything Lancelot wouldn’t.
Stupid. He was stupid. Being with Hugo and Sylvia had made him soft. Made him want things he wouldn’t, shouldn’t, have. Someday he’d be married, every member was, but people like him were usually married to other people like him—security officers, spies, government officials.
Charlie walked over to her and wiped off the blood on his hand on her pale green sweater. Her dark slacks hid the blood on her leg, and despite everything that had happened, until he started using her sweater to clean his hand, she looked relatively presentable.
Alicia stared him down, her shoulders back, spine straight. “Little boy, you should let me go before you get hurt.”
Charlie walked to the wall, leaning against it casually. “I’m guessing you’re not going to fall for the whole ‘I’ll be your friend if you tell me what I want to know’ bit, are you?”
“Hardly.”
“Then I’ll torture the information out of you.”
“I’m not afraid of pain.”
“Giving it.” Charlie reached for the end of the wire that was connected to her wrists. “I’ve read your file. You’re a sadist. The question is, are you a masochist?” He yanked hard on the wire.
Alicia hadn’t realized exactly how he’d bound her. When he pulled, her bound wrists were yanked up, applying terrible pressure to her shoulders. It took her a moment to react, to bend forward and release some of that tension.
Charlie wrapped the end of the wire around his wrist, holding it taut. “Now then, let’s have a fookin’ chat.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Hugo sat next to Sylvia in a small, private waiting room at the hospital. His arm wrapped around her, Sylvia resting her head on his shoulder. Her brothers were sitting in the opposite corner, speaking quietly.
While Hugo could hear most of their conversation, he and Sylvia made no attempt to enter it, both of them worried about Lancelot. He’d never returned to the house. There’d been no trace of Alicia or their knight. No one had mentioned Lancelot to the cops, but they had given Alicia’s name. There was no point in hiding her identity.
The triplets had managed to cover quite a few topics with each passing hour. So far, they’d discussed the invitation to join the Trinity Masters, Walt’s part in trying to save Franco’s life, the lack of police questioning—no doubt strings had been pulled by the Trinity Masters—and currently, an attempt on Langston’s part to draw his brothers into a discussion on the arranged ménage marriage requirement.
Now that he’d spent some time with them, Hugo found it very easy to tell the identical triplets apart, and he was surprised he’d ever thought Langston was Oscar.
While Walt and Juliette had ridden in the ambulance, Sebastian had brought the rest of them to the hospital. They’d followed the rescue vehicle, Sebastian unwilling to let his Grand Master out of his sight. Once they’d arrived at the hospital, Sebastian had guided them all to this waiting room, instructing them to “stay here” before leaving to be with Juliette. That had been three hours ago.
Hugo wondered about the different structure of their two societies. Juliette was the equivalent of the fleet admiral, yet unlike Eric, she didn’t travel with the American equivalent of the Spartan Guards for protection. Instead, she was accompanied by Sebastian, who seemed more like an advisor than a bodyguard, and her husband Franco, who was no doubt as useless as Hugo when it came to things like defensive ops and wielding weapons more deadly than a pen.
“All I’m saying,” Langston murmured, “is two wives could be pretty hot.”
“What if they hook you up with tw
o guys?” Oscar grumped.
The horror on Langston’s face proved he hadn’t considered that. “They can’t do that, can they?” he asked, shooting a glance in Sylvia’s direction.
Sylvia sighed, then shrugged slightly, letting Hugo know she was eavesdropping as well.
She’d been excited by the Grand Master’s invitation to join the Trinity Masters. Hugo tried not to let himself think about that too much. While she was certainly worthy of the honor, and she would be an asset to the society, it wasn’t only the triplets who’d be married to two partners. Sylvia would be as well.
Hugo had a hard time accepting that, accepting that Sylvia—and Lancelot—would live out their days with other spouses. The idea of an arranged ménage marriage had never bothered him before them.
He’d always assumed that—like his parents—he would forge a relationship with his assigned partners based on mutual respect and support. Love had never entered his mind. Not because he was a cold person or because he didn’t want love, but because that was the nature of the beast. He was a member of the Masters’ Admiralty, and he had accepted that invitation willingly and fully cognizant of what he was sacrificing.
Or so he’d thought.
Until Sylvia and Lancelot, no one had ever touched his heart.
Oh, he’d fancied himself in love with a couple of women while attending university, but now, in hindsight, he could see that neither of those relationships had him questioning his choice to join the Masters’ Admiralty.
Now…now he’d had too many quiet hours to contemplate his future. Without Lancelot and Sylvia.
A door opened and Juliette strode in, slamming the door behind her. Somewhere along the line, she’d changed her clothes. Gone was the blood-stained navy-blue dress, replaced by jeans and a light pink sweater.
Sylvia bounced out of her seat. “How is Franco?”
Juliette had been scowling when she stormed in, clearly furious, on a mission. Sylvia’s concerned tone took her back for a moment, and she broke her stride.
