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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 computer, 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.
