Fiery Surrender

by Mari Carr

  Rich scowled. “Seriously, Langston?”

  “That’s my sister’s ringtone.”

  “The one in the Masters’ Admiralty.” It wasn’t a question, and Rich sounded more alert than he should have, given what they’d just been through.

  “Answer it,” Mina said.

  Langston rifled through his jeans pockets, pulling out his cell.

  “Sylvie?” Langston answered.

  “Hey, Langston? Is this a bad time?”

  “Uh. No.” He was aware he still sounded a bit breathless. “Just got back from a run.”

  Mina snort-laughed, so Rich covered her mouth with his hand.

  “Listen, Arthur, the admiral of England, asked me to call you.”

  “Arthur?” Langston had heard of Arthur, but he’d never met the man. His sister had explained that Arthur was her territory’s admiral. He’d wanted to know more, but apparently she shouldn’t even have shared that much. “Why did he want you to call me?”

  “Apparently you switched your tablet with someone else’s?”

  Langston glanced at Rich and Mina, who’d gone quiet, their faces curious. “Hang on, Sylvie. Can I put you on speakerphone? I’m with…” Shit. He hadn’t had time to tell his sister he’d been called to the altar and bound to his spouses. If he did that now, he’d never find out what Arthur wanted her to tell him. “I’m with a couple of friends, who’ve been trying to help me track down my tablet. I think maybe they should hear what you have to say.”

  “Langston, this is Masters’—”

  “They’re part of the Trinity Masters, and they know all about your secret society over there. Okay?”

  “Oh. Okay.” Langston hit the speaker button. “You’re talking to Rich and Mina.” He looked at his spouses. “And this is my kid sister, Sylvia.”

  “Hello, Sylvia. Langston’s told us a lot about you,” Rich drawled.

  “Oooo. From Texas?” his sister asked. “Damn, I miss American accents.”

  “What did Arthur want you to tell me?” Langston prodded, perfectly aware of Sylvia’s tendency to chase squirrels rather than focus.

  “It appears you switched your tablet with someone named Luca Campisi.”

  “The bomb expert we met in Italy,” Rich said. That confirmed what Mina had suspected. She’d shoved Rich’s hand away and was grimacing.

  “Oh yeah, by the way, big bro, thanks a lot for not telling me you were in Italy. You realize I could have flown over to see you, right? It’s only a two-and-half-hour flight.”

  Langston had hoped to see her as well, but everything had gone to shit in Italy too damn fast. “There wasn’t time. I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you soon, I promise.”

  “You better. Anyway, apparently this Luca guy wants his tablet back. He left Italy and flew to Charleston. On his own. Not under the direction of the Masters’ Admiralty. He’s not even a member of the Masters’ Admiralty. That’s the part Arthur wanted me to stress. Seems like he kind of followed you, but the Masters’ Admiralty didn’t even know the guy had left Italy until y’all reported the tablets had been switched.”

  And if the Masters’ Admiralty hadn’t realized Luca was out of the country, did that also mean they didn’t know about the bomb he’d designed?

  He had a bad feeling, and the fact that Sylvia had called him, rather than Arthur calling the Grand Master, wasn’t helping. Did the Masters’ Admiralty really not know what their bomb expert had been doing, or were they trying to cover it up, and using his sister to help?

  “Sylvie, I need to get off.”

  “You know what to do with this information, right, Langston?” she asked.

  “I do.” Langston thought about the bomb and hated—as he’d done every single day since she’d left—that his sister was so far away and he was helpless to protect her. “I love you. Stay safe, okay?”

  He could hear the smile in her voice when she said, “I will. Love you, too. Give Oscar a kiss from me. You know he’ll hate it.”

  “Consider it done.”

  He disconnected the call, watching as Mina rose from the bed.

  “Quick showers,” she said. “And then we have to call the Grand Master. Again.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Levi handed them each a paper-wrapped breakfast sandwich.

  Rich stared down at it in disgust. “We need room service.”

  “No room service.”

  “And cold fast food is better?” Rich demanded.

  Levi folded his arms. “Alive is better. Food that I walked to get for you means you’re alive.”

  Mina sighed and started picking at it. Langston was already half-finished with his. Rich sighed and took a bite.

  Shit, this disgusting-looking thing was actually good. He would never admit it. He’d take that thought to his grave.

  Langston balled up his wrapper and threw it away, returning to the table with a printed copy of what they’d found on the tablet, which they’d left with Juliette. They’d called the Grand Master and left a message to let her know what Langston’s sister had said, before they’d finally passed out.

  As soon as they woke up, Langston had started studying the printed copy of the bomb diagram like he was cramming for finals. He balled up the sheet he’d been making notes on and threw it across the room. It was clearly irritating him that he couldn’t figure it out.

  If it had been up to Rich, he would have found the smartest people, paid them stupid amounts of money and had them figure it out.

  It might still come to that, but right now, he had one of the smartest people. A man who just happened to be his husband.

  Mina went to Langston’s side, bending over the table. She was fearless in so many ways. It seemed that even faced with something she had no reason to comprehend, she could dive in headfirst, asking questions, making Langston explain it to her until she was able to understand. He wondered how much of it was really for her own sake, and how much was her trying to help Langston sort out his thoughts by asking pointed questions.

  Rather than feeling left out, Rich felt…content. He sat back in his chair and watched them, smiling a little.

  This was his trinity. Something he’d been waiting for his whole life had finally happened, and it was better than he’d ever dreamed.

  A knock at the door was like a bucket of ice water dumped over his head. The warmth and peacefulness of the moment was washed away in an instant. Every time the outside world showed up, things went to shit.

  He sat up and swiveled to look at the door. Levi, who had taken up a position by the windows, raised his left hand. He had a gun in his right.

  Silently, Levi made his way to the door. Rich resisted the urge to tell him not to look through the peephole because, as much as he disliked Levi, if he got shot through the door, they would lose their first line of defense.

  With his non-gun hand, Levi motioned for them to move. Rich stood and grabbed Mina and Langston by the shoulders, hauling them toward the bedroom, where they were out of sight from the suite entrance.

  “Should one of us go look? See if it’s Luca?” Mina whispered.

  “I’ll do it,” Langston breathed.

  “Neither of you is going anywhere.” Rich shifted so he was physically blocking them. That wouldn’t stop Langston, but by God, he was going to try to protect his family.

  Levi didn’t look through the peephole. Instead, he stood off to the side and pulled out his phone. He tapped with his left thumb, while the gun remained in his right hand, finger not yet on the trigger. Levi’s face was a hard mask, and Rich recognized that look from one other time when he’d had to have a bodyguard team during some particularly dangerous negotiations. The men had been provided by Price Bennett’s company, and they’d all been ex-military.

  His primary guard, Chase, had been a seemingly easygoing man, who had a laid-back attitude to mask exactly how dangerous he was. It also disguised lingering PTSD.

  Levi’s expression right now—hard and flat—was just like Ch
ase’s, and though Rich still didn’t like the fact that Levi was here, intruding in his space with his spouses, he appreciated the protection he provided.

  Levi stopped tapping his phone, frowned, and then looked over at them.

  Rich tensed, ready to push Mina and Langston into the bedroom and slam the door. Something that would make Levi frown seemed like a very bad thing.

  “Rich, Mina, I want you to move away from Langston.”

  “Why?” Rich asked, not moving.

  “Because that’s not Langston.”

  “Er…yes, I am?” Langston said.

  “No, Langston is outside.” Levi held up the phone. “I’m patched into the hall cameras.” Levi raised the gun. “Or maybe the man outside is the imposter. Both possibilities are bad.”

  Mina snorted, and Rich felt her head hit his shoulder as she leaned into him.

  “Or,” Rich drawled, “that’s one of Langston’s brothers. They’re identical triplets.”

  Levi frowned. “What?”

  Rich marched across the room and shoved Levi’s gun hand down. “Point that at my husband again and we’re going to have a problem.”

  Levi straightened—damn, the fucker was tall. “Yeah, Tex?”

  “Idiots,” Mina muttered. She and Langston had followed him across the room, and she reached past Levi to open the door.

  Oscar was standing in the hall, arms folded, brow furrowed. The intimidating effect was somewhat muted by the fact that he was wearing a backpack, and the straps on his shoulders made him seem like an irritated student.

  Now that Rich knew Langston well, the brothers didn’t look so similar. Their expressions were different. Langston was thoughtful and fun, occasionally hotheaded, but he possessed a zest for life that Oscar lacked.

  “Oscar.” Langston grabbed his brother, pulling him in for a hug.

  Levi made an aggravated noise and closed the door. “You can’t just open the door,” he said to Mina.

  “And yet I did.”

  “Oscar, what are you doing here?” Langston asked. “Is everything okay?”

  “I was worried about you.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, you joined a cult…”

  “It’s not a cult.”

  “Excuse me, sir. I need to verify your identity.” Levi got in between them, forcing Oscar back a step. He raised his phone and took a picture of Oscar.

  “And Sylvia called me,” Oscar said from the other side of Levi.

  Rich and Langston exchanged a glance.

  “What was that?” Oscar demanded, leaning around Levi to see them. “What was that look?”

  “Sylvia shouldn’t have called you.”

  “Oh, right, can’t share cult secrets with outsiders.”

  “What did she say?” Rich asked.

  “She told me everything. I know all about the…” Oscar trailed off, looking smug.

  Langston snorted. “Liar. She didn’t tell you shit.”

  Oscar glared at his brother. “Asshole.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Because Sylvie called me just to chat, and that was suspicious.”

  “You think your sibling calling you is suspicious?” Mina asked.

  “Very.”

  “You have issues,” Langston pointed out.

  Levi sighed. “Facial recognition says you’re Walter Hayden. Picked him up from the military database.”

  “Identical,” Oscar sounded out the words for Levi, “triplets.”

  Rich snorted and walked away from the door.

  “How did you find us?” Levi demanded.

  “I put a tracker in his shoes,” Oscar said, pointing at Langston.

  “What the fuck? That’s rude,” Langston snapped.

  “I swept the room for trackers.” Levi looked ready to shoot Oscar.

  “Not my trackers.”

  “Wait, did you use one of the modified ones I built for you?” Langston asked, as Oscar was suddenly forgiven.

  “Worked like a charm.” Oscar smiled.

  “Awesome. Can I see the data?”

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Levi breathed. “I’m going to… If they have tech I can’t…”

  Rich resumed his seat at the dining room table, watching Levi have a mental breakdown. This was fun.

  Oscar and Langston walked over, Mina trailing behind them, phone in hand. She took a seat next to him while Oscar swung his backpack around to the front and opened it, pulling out yet another tablet.

  “Oh good, another tablet we can possibly misplace or have switched,” Mina said with a sigh. She set her phone down. “I texted the Grand Master…well, Sebastian. He gave me his number for any non-emergency updates, such as the arrival of Oscar.”

  Oscar had paused, tablet halfway to the tabletop. He was staring at the printouts Langston had arranged on one end of the table. He let his electronic device drop and then walked over to look at the papers. Rich tensed, wondering if he should stop the other man, but if what they needed was the smartest people in the room…

  Another Hayden brother was another brilliant mind in play.

  “What is this?” Oscar asked.

  Langston opened his mouth, and then closed it, looking at Rich. There was pleading in his eyes, and Rich realized Langston wasn’t sure what to do, how much he could say.

  “Oscar,” Rich said. “Are you planning to join the Trinity Masters?”

  “No.”

  “Then that is none of your damn business.”

  Oscar looked up, and for a moment, shock and hurt showed on his face before his expression closed down. He snatched up some of the papers, stalking across the room with them.

  “Oscar, don’t be like this,” Langston said.

  “This is a bomb.”

  “Give me back my stuff.”

  Oscar circled around the couch, Langston trailing him. Rich, Mina, and Levi watched. Rich probably could have intervened, but he held still, wanting to know what Oscar would see without giving him explicit permission to look.

  “What is this chemical notation?” Oscar demanded. “You don’t design your own chemical explosives, and this looks like…”

  “What?” Rich demanded.

  Oscar stopped moving, Langston bumping into his back. Oscar turned, holding up the papers. “Where did you get these?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Then tell me the short fucking version, Langston.” Oscar bit off his brother’s name. “Because this looks like…” Oscar’s expression morphed to horror for a moment.

  Langston closed his eyes. “I thought I was wrong. Hoped…”

  Rich sat up. “What are you two talking about?”

  Oscar came back to the table. The mood in the room had shifted as if the walls had shrunken in. Rich had a feeling that everything was about to change, but he didn’t know why he felt like that.

  Langston looked like he was going to be sick, while Oscar looked determined and grim. He took the papers and started arranging them. He paused, and then switched two. Rich, Mina, and Levi all moved to stand behind Oscar and Langston, looking over their shoulders.

  “The electrical trigger system is…complicated,” Langston said softly. “I still haven’t fully figured it out. And the chemical system is… But it can’t be, because look at the dimensions for the casing.”

  “Langston, what are you talking about?” Mina asked. “When you were explaining earlier, you kept stopping. What is it you don’t want to say?”

  Oscar flipped the position of two papers. To Rich, it looked like a massive mess of lines and symbols, but Oscar and Langston both cursed the instant Oscar was done.

  “The diagram was jumbled,” Langston said. “Even though it was encrypted, it was also jumbled.”

  “And Oscar just un-jumbled it?” Rich asked.

  “What aren’t you saying?” Mina asked, her voice sharp and hard. “We already know it’s a small bomb with the ability to take out a city block.”

  Oscar turned to look at
them. “This isn’t the schematic for just a bomb. What we’re looking at is a backpack-sized nuclear bomb. It wouldn’t take out a block or two, it would level the whole city.”

  Mother. Fucker.

  “A fucking what?” Levi breathed.

  “Damn, damn, damn!” Langston hung his head.

  A phone buzzed, breaking into the hushed horror that gripped them.

  Mina fumbled to answer, stepping away from their little group and raising her phone to her ear. “Hello?” Mina’s eyes widened, and then she turned to them. Slowly, she set the phone in the middle of the table and hit the speaker button. “Hello, Grand Master.”

  “I received your message, and the text you just sent. Tell me about the call.”

  Rich and Langston both started to speak, but Mina silenced them with a look. “Last night, Sylvia Hayden called Langston. She had a message from the admiral of England.”

  The Grand Master’s voice was a dangerous purr. “I find that strange, since the admiral knows how to get in touch with me directly.”

  “We agree,” Mina said. They’d left all this information in last night’s voice mail, but it was clear that the Grand Master wasn’t happy, so Mina was playing it safe and repeating everything. “We think this was deliberate, in order to not escalate the situation. According to Sylvia, the man whose tablet we have, Luca Campisi, isn’t a member. He was employed by a Masters’ Admiralty corporation but has no knowledge of the society and wasn’t acting on their orders.”

  “Ah,” the Grand Master said.

  “And there’s something else…about the bomb itself.”

  “Is that why you texted?”

  “Actually,” Mina looked at Oscar, then to the plans, “yes, this is the most pressing issue. We think—”

  “No, we will not discuss it on the phone.”

  “We have information—” Mina stubbornly started again.

  “I said we will not discuss it on the phone. I want all of you in headquarters in the next twenty minutes. I have other people coming in, too. It’s time for a council of war.”

  “Uh, Grand Master?” Langston said. “My brother, Oscar, is here. I think he should come. He’s the one who figured out…stuff.”

  There was a beat of silence. “You brought a nonmember into the conversation?”