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“Dammit, Hugo. I told you—”
“I know what you told me, but I’m not going to sit in the car like some damsel in distress. I know how to fire a gun. You go in the front. I’ll approach from the back and wait there. You can search the ground floor on your way to the back door, then let me in. After that, we can go upstairs and search the rest of the house together.”
It appeared Lancelot hadn’t been the only one mapping out a plan during the drive here. He wasn’t crazy about the idea, but at least he’d have the opportunity to enter the house on his own. He was typically very good at sensing whether or not someone was lying in wait, his sixth sense strong.
He hoped that fact remained true tonight because he wouldn’t just be risking his life. He’d be putting Hugo in danger as well.
He simply nodded his assent, then slowly made his way to the front door. Unlike Sylvia’s ranch-style house, this place was a genuine estate situated on a large plot of land. It boasted a large front parlor, a kitchen that was bigger than Lancelot’s entire flat, two bedrooms on the first floor, with four more upstairs.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Hugo skirting the perimeter of the yard, using the maple trees along the edge as cover.
The door was closed and locked. He punched in the code, then slid the door open. Lancelot waited for the report of gunfire, but only silence greeted him. Slipping inside, he moved slowly, with purpose, around corners, searching each room on the ground floor.
The house was still, quiet. Lancelot felt fairly certain whoever had been here was now gone. Even so, he continued on. He unlatched the back door. Hugo, true to his word, had been waiting for him.
Keeping to the shadows, they climbed the stairs, doing a room-by-room search until they were both satisfied they were indeed alone in the house.
Lancelot led the way back to the front room, switching on a light. He went to each of the trail cameras he’d set up—which took stills of any movement in the room—to retrieve the SD cards. He was used to more high tech cameras back home, but these were the best he could find in Charleston and he’d decided they’d do in a pinch.
He opened his laptop and inserted them one after another. “This is why we kept the weapons and all our intel with us in the car. If they were searching for something, they didn’t find it because it wasn’t here.”
Opening the first card, they slowly clicked through a series of still-frame, grainy photos. They revealed a person—most likely male—in a ski mask, searching the house. Lancelot had set up cameras in each of their bedrooms and the front room. From the time stamp on the photos, it was evident the intruder had searched the entire home because there were ten minutes unaccounted for between the man’s presence in the front room and their bedrooms.
Lancelot was nearly through the last set of photos—these taken in the room Hugo was occupying—when something caught his eye.
The intruder was holding a book.
“What’s that?”
One look at Hugo’s face told him they were fucked. The professor had gone white, his eyes suddenly wide. “Merde. Lancelot.”
“What’s that book, Hugo?”
“Poems. Sylvia’s.”
“Jesus fooking Christ!”
“I packed it because I knew there was a chance we might need to speak to her,” Hugo hastened to explain. “I hadn’t read it in a couple of years, and I thought it might be wise to re-familiarize myself with her work.”
Lancelot slammed the lid of his laptop closed. “So basically you just turned on a big fucking neon sign to tell the Trinity Masters we’re talking to Sylvia.”
Hugo looked around the empty house. “Do you think they’ve gone to see her?”
“We gotta get back to her place.”
The two of them raced back to the car, and Lancelot spun tires as he turned the vehicle around in the yard.
He reached for his phone. “I’m calling her.”
Hugo nodded. “If they’ve gone there…if they’ve told her who they are…who we are…”
Lancelot didn’t want to consider the fact that they’d lost her. And not just as their lead, as someone they needed to help them succeed in their mission.
He didn’t want to lose her.
If the Trinity Masters got to her, explained who they were, then issued her an invitation to join…
The thought of Sylvia being placed in an arranged ménage marriage with two bloody American blokes sent his blood pressure spiking, which was a ridiculous response. She wasn’t theirs. She never could be. Yet that didn’t stop him from wanting it.
