“Forgive me, Triumph,” she said quietly to the empty room.
She’d told him to do his NSA shit. Now it was time for her to do her CIA shit.
THE NSA SHIT
Triumph
“I’m solucky you were mine, and I loved being yours.”
Something about that sentence was wrong. Her voice was wrong. The questions and answers were wrong. Everything was just… wrong.
Quickly, he swiped his screen over to his security program. He’d installed everyone’s system and had retained access in case of repairs or emergencies. When the login window popped up, he hastily typed in his credentials and clicked into Tripoli’s feed.
“Come on!” He urged the system to work faster than it already was as twelve thumbnails popped up, each a different room or area of Tripoli’s penthouse.
At first, he couldn’t find her. Then she suddenly appeared, as if she’d come out of a bathroom. She was dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. One of his motorcycle shirts, he thought.
And she was checking the magazine and chamber of a gun—the one they’d carried with them from her attacker in Argentina.
Why did she need it? A quick survey of all the screens showed him that no one was present in the apartment or in the lobby other than her. What was she doing?
She exited the thumbnail from the guest room, and he picked her back up in the living room. She picked something up off the coffee table. Her phone. She began to dial.
When she held it up to her ear, he expected his phone to ring. It didn’t.
Looking over to his two friends, neither Tripoli’s or Cosmos’ phones rang either.
Who was she calling?
Whoever she called, she finished speaking, hung up, and walked out of sight again.
Almost immediately, she was back in the frame with something in her hand. Whatever it was, she set it in the middle of the dining room table, placed her phone next to it, then walked over to the right.
He zoomed in on the table.
The sonogram.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! His eyes shifted at movement on the cameras. She was in front of the elevator, pressing the button to call the carriage. He’d locked it so no one could go up, but he hadn’t locked it to prevent it from going down because she needed avenues of escape in case of fire.
He’d been so concerned about keeping people out of her space that he hadn’t stopped to think about her going out of that space. He’d told her not to. She listened to him. She trusted him. She knew this was a rule.
But the message was clear. Another daughter would not be deprived of the mother she needed. Hailey was not going to grow up without her mother, a mother who loved her.
For that, Glennon would break his rule.
She had traded herself for Francesca.
Like a shot, he was out of the chair and headed for the door. “Cosmos! I have to get back to Elysium now!”
“What’s going on?” Tripoli asked. His eyes were bloodshot, his clothing askew.
Over his shoulder, he shouted, “Glennon! She just called someone, and it wasn’t one of us. I think she called Guillermo. She’s drawing him away from Francesca.”
He was out the door and running down the fire stairs rather than waiting for the elevator. He swung a leg over his bike, but before he could start it, a hand grabbed his arm.
Cosmos.
“You need to stop for a second,” the man growled.
