Page 81 of Justice for Francesca

“Oisin McCabe is plain poison. He’ll come guns blazing, and I mean plural. You’ll see two or three, but there are more. Trust nothing he says. Everything is a lie, and don’t count on things being opposite of what he says. Just know it’s a lie.”

“I hate to ask what your mother was like,” Cruz muttered.

“Nicest woman on the planet until you bad-mouthed one of her boys. Well, except Michael. She found him to be useless, tainted by me. You don’t want to know what she thought of her daughter.”

“The holidays had to be a real treat.”

“You have no idea.”

All of a sudden, the elevator doors opened, and they brought their weapons up, ready to shoot. The black maw of the shaft was empty other than the machinery.

“What the fuck?” Cruz whispered.

Francesca held a finger up to her lips and pointed upward. He nodded.

An alarm began to sound. One of her brothers had likely tripped it on purpose as a decoy, just like hot-wiring the elevator doors. They must have been hoping one of them would duck their head into the elevator shaft so they could surprise them from above, maybe even below. The last thing they needed was for one of them to become a hostage, especially Francesca since she appeared to be their target.

Tripoli’s head whipped around, his hand going out to halt either Francesca or Cruz from moving. She frowned, confused as to what she had heard. Tripoli looked at her and mouthed “window” to clue her in.

Inside her head, Francesca was swearing. They should have split up rather than gathered together at the elevator. With four of them working together, she should have known better. Now they were essentially trapped. There was very little chance of them getting out of this unscathed.

Tripoli signaled he was going to go check it out. He pointed to Cruz, then to Francesca, then pointed to the sliding patio windows. Cruz had just been assigned to protect her and get her out of the building.

“Please,” he mouthed.

With a silent huff, she glared at him. She realized that out there must have been a way for him to get back into Elysium unseen on the day Jessa’s murder was discovered. Probably a hidden fire ladder. Hopefully, Rory was the one sneaking in the window. If Tripoli could incapacitate him, it might give them all a head start to get to it and get down to the ground. It went against everything within Francesca to run, but she recognized that there was prudence in running today, fighting tomorrow. She also knew it was risky, but it might be their only chance to get out of the building.

Francesca motioned to Cruz to go back-to-back with her, which would have him covering the elevator shaft and hercovering the patio doors. Luckily, they had not closed the curtains for the night. It didn’t mean someone wasn’t out there lying in wait. With the power out, they had no lights, and it was near impossible to see anything beyond the doors, but it also had anyone outside at a disadvantage for the same reasons. It was a chance they were going to have to take as it was doubtful her family would be aware of the hidden escape ladder.

Tripoli flashed her a quick, final look. “Be careful,” he mouthed. “Love you.”

Her smile was tense, but the nod she gave him let him know she felt the same.

He moved down the hallway toward the bedrooms, where the noise they’d heard had been a window opening. That, too, could be a decoy to lure them out to the patio, but again, it was a chance they’d have to take.

She tapped Cruz’s thigh to signal they were on the move, and as one unit, the two of them moved in the direction of the patio door. She tapped Cruz on the thigh one more time, her fingers forming the letter “U” in ASL and moved them to the left. She then did the letters “M” and “E” and moved her fingers to the right. Hopefully, he understood that she wanted him to go out the door and cover the left side.

He reached behind to give her a thumbs-up. Good. He’d understood. Francesca slid the lock to the open position as quietly as she could, then the door. In the quiet, anyone on the patio would hear it, but it couldn’t be helped. They popped through the doorway in the appropriate directions, then both turned upward to make sure Rory wasn’t above them hiding. No one.

Now that they were outside, it was easier to see in the shadows. No one was there either.

She led Cruz to the shrubbery. Both positioned themselves, and on his count of three, they pushed through the undersideto clear the wall of the building. No one clung to the side of the building, and no one waited below on the ground.

“We’re going to have to move fast,” Francesca whispered. “The ladder will make a shit ton of noise, which will bring people running. Hope you’re good at sliding on the rails because there won’t be time to climb down. You go first. I’ll wait three seconds, then follow, so when you get to the bottom, get out of the way and cover me.”

“We’re not waiting for Tripoli?”

She shook her head. “By now he’s cleared the rooms and should be on his way to us. If someone were inside, we’d have heard a scuffle by now.”

Cruz pushed himself through the shrubbery and gripped the concrete with his arms. Before he slid down, he warned her, “No sneaking back in there. He hung with the Raiders. He’s fine.”

The man knew her too well. If Tripoli didn’t show up by the time she was to go down the ladder, she would have done exactly as Cruz ordered her not to. Probably still would.

Francesca released the ladder, and the screeching metal and whistle of the sections extending rang through the air. Everyone in the near vicinity would hear it, including her family. Cruz grabbed the outside of the ladder and hugged it with his knees, sliding down the outer rails.

A series of crashing noises came from inside. Tripoli had found someone. Likely Rory. Cruz was going to be pissed as hell, but there was no way she was leaving Tripoli alone with one of her brothers. There was a single retort of a rifle shot coming from the building across the street. Hubble, Cosmos’ sniper, had targeted someone. Turning on her heel, Francesca slowly sidestepped her way back to the patio door. She wasn’t going to leave Tripoli, but she wasn’t going to make the mistake of rushing and potentially being ambushed.

When she reached the door, she heard a plopping noise and looked to her feet. A coil of rope. At the same time, the air filled with what sounded like the sound of a zipper being pulled. She barely had time to register that someone was arriving from the old smokestack above before an arm wrapped around her mouth to quell any sound, and another wrapped around her waist, pinning her arms to her side.

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