Page 65 of Wired Strong

Sophie swallowed.

Whatever she had expected that Connor would do, it wasn’t anything this violent.Who was he becoming?More than ever, she didn’t know.

Would they pin it on Pim Wat? An army of ninjas would be after her, and they wouldn’t stop until she was dead. All Sophie would need to do was wait for her mother to be killed.

Sophie had to let Marcella and the team know. They could begin drafting the immunity agreement for Connor.

“No, no. No.”

Connor was hunting her mother, and granted, there was good reason for that. But could she be with someone who killed like this? Connor’s list of kills was already long and grim, but this looked like pure, rage-fueled murder.

But who was Sophie to judge? She’d brought down her ex-husband in a scene just as grisly as the one in the photo.

She and Connor were both wounded people, smirched with blood, touched by murder. They had never wanted to be those people, but the facts remained.

Sophie didn’t know what she felt about it, but it wasn’t good.

But Sophie was a mother now.She wanted to spend her days solving interesting puzzles like this latest case and caring for her children, not looking over her shoulder for her assassin mother to leap onto her back and kill her.

She got up and went to the workout area in the corner of her office. She got out the jump rope, and, in her easy movement clothes, flipped the rope.

The rhythm was like a heartbeat, but the weight jumping felt too strenuous on her uterus, so she moved over to the treadmill, set at a steep angle.

She inclined the treadmill to maximum uphill, and walked and walked with long lunging steps until her heart rate evened out, and the queasy surge of horror generated by the photo began to ebb.

Sophie adjusted the treadmill to an even level, and phoned her friend. She didn’t let Marcella even greet her. “Marcella, I have news.”

“Good news, I hope?”

“I don’t know what kind of news it is. He killed the Master. Pim Wat escaped. That’s all I know.”

A short, charged silence. Then, “What can I do? What do you need?”

“I’m not sure I want Connor to have immunity anymore.” Sophie rolled her lips inward and bit them.Where had that come from?

“I will take this back to the team,” Marcella said briskly. “It’s out of your hands now. Don’t worry about it.” She ended the call.

“Foul daughter of a cancerous buffalo!”Sophie swore. This chain of events was out of control—but what about Pim Wat on the loose? She had to warn Armita.

Sophie called her nanny on Kaua`i and briefed her. “I want you to be on high alert. Put Alika on, please.”

She filled her child’s father in on the series of events. “If you can get some extra security out at your house, maybe even take Armita and Momi somewhere off the grid, it might be a good idea for the next few days. I wouldn’t put it past Pim Wat to try to grab our child.”

“That’s some grandma our baby girl has,” Alika said, his voice tight with tension. “I know just the place.”

Sophie was relieved as she ended the call. Hopefully, Pim Wat wouldn’t get far.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Marcella:

Day 10

Marcella carriedan extra-large cup of black coffee into the FBI’s conference room early the next morning. Her SAC, Waxman, was already seated at the head of the conference table with the communication monitor up in front of him. He gave a nod. “Looking ready for action, I see, Agent Scott.”

“Always, sir.” Marcella seated herself at his right hand. In a few moments, agents Pillman and Gundersohn entered. A heaviness of dread and anxiety hit Marcella every time she looked at those two. Gundersohn wasn’t bad, on his own, but when he got together with Pillman, the other man’s deeply negative perspective seemed to rub off on him.

She opened her phone and forwarded the grisly photo of the dead Thai man known as the Master to each of their devices. “This is why I asked for a meeting.”

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