I pulled out my phone and dialed. Miraculously, Luis answered on the second ring. “What the hell is wrong?” he asked, obviously barely awake.
“Call off the plan. Right now. We don’t need it. We’ve got something better,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm.
“What? Hang on.” There was a rustling as Luis probably sat up in bed. “What are you talking about?”
“Maddy’s birth mother. She just gave us the fucking mother load. We don’t have to do a blind breach on these houses.” I looked down at the pile of information. “I’ve got pictures of the safe houses, pictures of Maddy’s parents and Abi. Shit, man, her father was moved to a different house. We didn’t even fucking know that. There are three houses, for Christ’s sake.”
“Holy shit, are you serious? A third safe house? I… sonofabitch… what else is there?” Luis sounded fully awake and greedy for intel.
“There’s schematics for each house, bypass codes for all the security systems at each house?—”
“Fuck me, Nico,” Felipe said, holding up a piece of paper. “Look at this shit. How the hell did she get this?”
The paper he handed me had a list of addresses. It was easy to see they were the three safe houses. Below each address wasa list of names with times beside them. The times were for ten-hour increments. It took a second for me to realize what I was looking at. “Oh damn. Hot damn.”
“What? What the hell is it?” Luis screeched.
“It’s the security team’s schedule. The times they’re on duty, off duty, on break, and their fucking names!”
“You’re shitting me,” Luis said, sounding as stunned as I felt. “Do we think it’s legit? Is this good intel?”
“Listen, I have no way of knowing how the hell she got this stuff, but there’s no reason for her to lie. No reason she’d give us all this only to send us to our deaths. All this woman has done since the moment she got pregnant with Maddy was to keep her safe and out of the hands of the royals. We have to believe this is accurate, but we need to move soon. Who knows how long these schedules or security codes will stay up to date.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll let the guys know the original plan is off. Do you want me to head back home right away?”
“Yeah, get back here. I need to think about this before we start planning something new. Once you get back here, we’ll make a plan.”
We hung up, and Felipe had all the items stuffed back into the envelope. One more check around the house, and we were out the door. I was exhausted, both physically and mentally, as we started walking back to my car. When we got to the end of the driveway, we heard a voice call out of the darkness.
“Protect my daughter. Protect her because I can’t anymore.”
Felipe and I whirled in the direction of the sound. She’d called out from a pretty good way off, and the voice had been quieted by the surrounding trees and distance. If it hadn’t been almost four in the morning, we probably never would have heard her. There was a moment where I thought about bolting, shifting, and trying to chase her down. Corner her and get realanswers. At the back of my mind, though, I knew she’d have planned for that. She’d be gone before I ever got there.
64
MADDY
The sound of closing doors and voices woke me up. I lay in bed for several seconds, trying to figure out what was going on. It sounded like a dozen people were downstairs. Had something happened? No one was screaming or yelling, but the voices sounded urgent and perhaps excited.
I dressed as quickly as I could and made my way downstairs. My feet froze halfway down the steps. There really were abouta dozen people all over the house. Nico’s dad and brothers were running around, several of them on phones. Felipe and Sebastian were at the kitchen island, standing over a pile of what looked like papers and printouts. Nico and his friends looked terrible. All three of them had deep dark circles under their eyes. Had none of them gone to sleep last night?
A few other members of the pack were bringing in large takeout containers of food. None of this made any sense. My anxiety started to escalate. This much activity had to mean something had happened. Something big.
Mateo walked by with a phone to his ear. I only caught half of what he was saying. “You tell him to figure it out. I don’t care…” His voice trailed off as he moved through the house.
Nico glanced up mid-sentence and saw me. He gestured me over. When I got there, he dug out a food container from one of the bags. “Here, I ordered breakfast for everyone. No time to cook, and we all need the energy.”
He sat me down and opened the container. It held an omelet, bacon, and a few slices of toast. “Nico, what the hell is going on?” I asked, ignoring the food.
“I promise, I’ll explain, but you do need to eat. All of us do.”
Grudgingly, I set about eating breakfast. I wasn’t actually hungry, but something about Nico's demeanor told me I should follow orders. Around me, the pack continued moving about. The entire house had the feeling of a stock-market trading floor. Everyone was moving at a speed of a million miles an hour. The food passed my lips and went down my throat, but I couldn’t have told anyone what it tasted like if my life depended on it.
Once I was done, I stood and walked over to Nico. “Okay, what the fuck is going on? This is madness,” I said, sweeping my hand across the room, gesturing to everyone.
“Okay.” Nico pulled me aside into his massive pantry. “Yesterday at the bar? You remember when we left?”
My brow furrowed as I squinted at him. “Of course. What about it?”
