CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Mylene hadn’t left her house since Pham had been arrested. The outside world was terrifying. She didn’t know what to expect or who she’d see. Everyone hated her and what they had done. No one would ever believe what had happened. Pham had explained that so many times. Mylene was the reason Mark and Tabby were dead.
Now, they had forced her out of her home. She didn’t know where they were bringing her or why.
“I’m not supposed to leave,” she tried again.
They didn’t listen.
They never listened.
She missed her house—and her husband and sister. Mylene hated seeing them and couldn’t look them in the eye. But when she was home, they were still with her. Almost to keep her safe as much as to punish her.
Their faces had been Pham’s idea. Their images were how he kept her in the house because she’d have to face them if she wanted to escape, and she never would.
But now that she had left and didn’t know where she was going… Mylene needed them. They held up the walls and kept her safe.
“Can you take me back?” Tears slipped down her cheeks. The truth about what she’d done was so much more evident when there was nowhere to hide. Mylene pleaded, “Take me back home.”
Sawyer paced the hotel lobby. Since the moment Parker had seen the video, sent it to the Feds, and told them to stand down and wait for Brock to arrive, Sawyer had been unable to sit still. That mind-fuck of a house would haunt his dreams. Angela had gone very quiet and stayed in her hotel room while Sawyer awaited Brock’s arrival.
The hotel manager appeared for the thousandth time. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“I’m good.” Wasn’t his laundry list of supplies enough to make her think he was a crazy man? Cases of soda. Cutlery. Cookie sheets from their commercial kitchen. Duct tape. A football helmet—well, that she hadn’t been able to locate.
She kept pace along his side. “Tea? A complimentary massage—”
“Look—” Did he look as though he needed a massage? “I’m waiting for someone.”
The hotel lobby doors whooshed open. She took a step back. By the look on her face, Brock and whomever else he’d brought with him had arrived.
She skedaddled. Brock’s all-business scowl matched those of the two men following close behind. They weren’t from Sawyer’s team, but they were Titan. That was all that mattered.
Angela’s hotel room was as clean and organized as it could be after Sawyer had made a huge mess in his effort to protect her from unknown, nonexistent threats. She smelled like grape cola and felt almost as sticky. With her earbuds in and Amanda on the phone, Angela didn’t know what more she could do to see herself busy. There were only so many times she could look at herself in the mirror or rehash the tale of Mylene’s house of hell to Amanda. “I feel sick.”
“I can’t imagine,” Amanda repeated.
“Yeah, you can. How are you feeling these days?”
Amanda snorted. “Better than Chelsea.”
“You two will be through the worst of it soon.” Angela didn’t like to keep her girlfriends at arm’s length from her recent drama, but with two pregnant best friends, she didn’t want to bother them when they were both operating on ginger ale and saltine crackers. Then again, she needed to share and hadn’t been able to connect with Jane. “You know what? Sawyer’s ability to compartmentalize is borderline scary.”
Amanda chortled. “Why’s that?”
“Well, he’s all but locked me in a tower like I’m Rapunzel.” Though this Disney Princess looked more like Humpty Dumpty crossed with the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz .
“Bad example. The witch gets in, doesn’t she?” Amanda asked.
Angela ignored her. “While he’s downstairs, more or less unaffected.” And not wearing a homemade, semi-bulletproof vest.
“I doubt that.”
“Well, I’m stuck in my hotel room while he waits for Brock in the lobby.”
“He doesn’t want you in public. He has a reason to be overprotective. It’s his job.”
Angela looked at herself in the mirror and shook her head. “He might be going overboard at the moment.”
“Why’s that?”
Would Angela give away her relationship with Sawyer if she explained the list of rules he’d put in place when leaving her alone for under fifteen minutes? Not to mention how he’d duct-taped silverware to flattened soda cans, sandwiched them between commercial-kitchen cookie sheets, and called the result her makeshift chainmail suit.
“Sawyer cares for you,” Amanda offered carefully.
Angela’s cheeks flushed. “He’s got a good heart. That’s for sure.”
“Have you ever thought about seeing him outside of work?”
“Seeing him?”
“Yes, Angela,” Amanda said as though rolling her eyes. “As in dating. Seeing him outside of work.”
Flames erupted at the back of her neck. “There is no such thing as outside of work. We live and breathe and work together around the clock.”
“Hagan and I manage…”
Angela could not go there. She couldn’t share how deeply she wanted more from Sawyer and wouldn’t betray his trust. They had no future other than as co-workers and friends, and if Angela imagined the possibilities too many more times, she would have to walk away from her life at Titan.
A knot in her throat ached. Angela cleared it and changed the subject. “Do you think they killed Mylene?”
“Hm,” Amanda offered, noting the abrupt change to the conversation with a knowing tone. “I don’t know.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. “They’d stripped her personal effects and wiped the place down.”
“That’s what you said.” Amanda sounded as if she knew precisely why Angela didn’t want to discuss Sawyer.
“I don’t think there’s a stray hair or fingerprint for the Feds to find—I wonder what my mom thinks of all this.”
“Do you think she knows?”
Angela scoffed. “What doesn’t she know?”
Had her mom foreseen Sawyer before Angela had? Was that why she’d sent John Patterson? Did everyone have suspicions? Angela prayed Amanda wouldn’t return to the possibility of her and Sawyer because they both saw how relationships could work in their world. If anything, they thrived. Hagan and Amanda. Chance and Jane. Liam and Chelsea. They were the gold standard of couples.
Amanda would never know that Sawyer had been a married father whose world was stolen. Angela would never press him to risk unfathomable pain again because of how much she loved him. That kind of selfishness wasn’t fair. She swallowed hard. “They might have killed Mylene.”
The line remained silent. Amanda certainly heard the rawness in Angela’s voice. Finally, Amanda said, “I don’t know. Mylene seems too valuable at this point to get rid of her.”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe they would have a few years ago, but given what we know now…”
Parker had updated Angela and Sawyer on the way back to the hotel: Mylene had been working for Pham. The cyber component of modern warfare was focused on civilians. Information wars. Deepfake videos. Bots and trolls that instigated fear. Angela was shocked and couldn’t wrap her head around how a former army intelligence and communication specialist could go from serving her country to assisting enemy organizations.
She stared out her window. Pine trees surrounded the parking lot. Most of the parking spaces had been taken. People went about their everyday lives while so much ugliness existed. “You know that I first met Chelsea when Pham had her taken.”
“I know.”
“I remember telling her that everything would be all right. The food was great. I was never bored. No one bothered me, and when Pham came to visit, he was more like a sad grandpa than a scary terrorist. I even called him Gramps in my head sometimes.”
“The mind can bend backward to make sense of the senseless.”
She bit her lip. “Maybe that’s what happened to Mylene. Maybe that’s why she does what she does. Like a Patty Hearst situation.”
“Maybe,” Amanda said neutrally. “The questions will keep coming until someone finds her.”
A knock sounded on her door. A muffled voice called, “Housekeeping.”
Angela turned from the window. “No, thank you.”
Housekeeping knocked again. Sawyer had said not to open the door. Had he also said not to say anything? Probably.
“What’s going on?” Amanda asked.
“Housekeeping knocked.” Angela peeked out the peephole. On the other side, an older woman was reading a clipboard beside a housekeeping cart. “I thought we’d hung the Do Not Disturb door hanger on my door.”
“What time is it there? Angela, wait—”
She peeked through the hole again. The old lady looked harmless, but Angela’s intuition issued a warning. She backed away from the door. “Maybe I should call Sawyer—”
Pain exploded in her chest. She lay on her back, unable to take a breath, and tried to sit up. Bullets splintered through the door as though the woman on the other side was aiming for the floor. Angela kicked herself back, still not catching her breath.
The locking mechanism clicked. One at a time, the lock tumblers fell into place. The door cracked open—and caught. The metal door latch caught. The metallic clang echoed in Angela’s head. The woman tried the door one more time. It wouldn’t move beyond the slight opening.
A thin string threaded onto the latch bar and looped around the bar’s backside against the door jamb. Angela tried to sit up again. Pain rocketed through her ribs.
The string tightened around the base of the latch. The door shut.
She scooted back.
The string tightened. The latch jerked. The string tightened again.
The latch lifted and smacked free of the catch.
Angela dragged herself into the bathroom and locked the door. Her earbuds had fallen out. She had no phone and no weapon. She had nothing to save her except for the makeshift vest that Sawyer insisted she wear. But that wouldn’t matter in a moment. She was a fish in a bucket.