Page 37 of The Bodyguard

“That’s first-rate bullshit, Angela. What do you believe?”

She leveled with Jared. “I am one hundred percent certain that woman is out there.” Angela closed her eyes and remembered the woman’s haunted eyes and listless body. “Do you think she’s the person over whom Pham wants to negotiate?”

“I don’t want theories yet. I want intel.” Jared reached over and lifted the handset from her office phone. He punched a few numbers and waited for an answer. “Yeah, it’s me,” he said into the phone. “We’re about to unload one hell of a puzzle for your genius brain to tear apart.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Treadmills whirled. The sound mixed with the heavy footsteps of grown men running to nowhere. The monotonous rumble surrounded Sawyer and thundered in his head. He’d thought the run would clear his mind of the memory of Angela under his arm, of the way she leaned against him, and how he kissed the top of her head. It didn’t, and now he had a headache that pounded in time with the pace of his run.

Boss Man walked into the gym and stopped in front of the row of treadmills. He ignored the men flanking Sawyer’s sides and threw him a look that hit Sawyer like a grenade. Something was wrong. Sawyer smacked the stop button and hopped off the machine before the belt finished revolving.

“Let’s go,” Boss Man barked over his shoulder, not waiting for him to catch up.

Sawyer pulled off his shirt and toweled the sweat from his face, hustling to meet Boss Man’s pace. “Gimme a second.”

“No.”

Sawyer’s gut churned. His pulse jumped and drummed in his ears.

“Good luck,” Hagan called as he passed.

Sawyer needed it. This had to do with Angela and everything that spiraled from the moment Pham’s bullshit had shown up in Abu Dhabi.

The private gym was on the far west side of the same floor as Titan’s office suite. Usually, Sawyer didn’t head toward Boss Man’s office in athletic shorts with only a sweat-drenched shirt wrapped around his neck, but nothing had been normal this week.

Air conditioning and uncertainty poured over him. The hair on his arms stood on end. The silent, sterile hallway closed in around Sawyer. Boss Man wasn’t exactly known for his manners,but that he’d hightailed out of the gym with only an order to keep up gave Sawyer heartburn.

Jared’s office door had been left ajar. Sawyer strode in to find Boss Man behind his desk. Parker was on the big screen facing a different screen in his lair, clacking away on a keyboard.

As Angela sat across from Jared, her lips parted. “Guess I know where Boss Man found you.” Her gaze flitted to his chest then jerked toward Parker.

“All right.” Jared cracked his knuckles. “Let’s go over this again. This time for Sawyer’s benefit.”

Angela sat with a ramrod-straight spine. Her ankles were crossed underneath her chair. She didn’t have a hair out of place. Her simple white blouse was starched. A slender black skirt covered her knees. Rocking the uptight librarian getup, she didn’t appear any different than usual, except her face made it look like she might shatter.

Parker turned from the other screen and greeted Sawyer with a chin lift. “This is what we know.”

Sawyer kept Angela in his peripheral vision. He wasn’t sure she was breathing.

“Mylene Hathaway,” Parker said as the screen switched to a headshot of a woman in a U.S. Army uniform. “She was a communications analyst coordinating with the National Intelligence Office, acting as a principal advisor to the director. She played a crucial role in Operation Red Gold, where Pham’s daughter Quy Long was killed.”

“Mylene Hathaway. That’s who Pham has?” Sawyer looked from the headshot to Jared and back again. “And no one knew?” He scowled. Mylene Hathaway sounded like someone who would be on the army’s shortlist of missing people. She was young and beautiful—a poster child for a public-relations nightmare if the public knew she was AWOL. “How is that possible?”

“You know how Pham operates,” Jared growled. “He doesn’t kill the people he wants to hurt.”

“Yeah.” Sawyer nodded. “He inflicts suffering when he kills their loved ones.”

Jared nodded. “The sadistic fuck.”

Parker reappeared on the screen. “We have a mile-long list of people who he has ordered killed in the name of retribution. Most of them… It took years to figure out they were Pham’s victims.”

“Pham did that to Mylene Hathaway?” Sawyer asked.

Parker crossed his arms. “Maybe.”

Maybewasn’t a very Parker-like answer. He was likelier to mention statistical deviations and binomial distributions. Sawyer glanced at Jared and Angela. “Maybe?”

Jared pursed his lips, and after a century-long second that was answer enough, he confirmed that they didn’t know shit. “Maybe.” He tilted his head to one side, cracking his neck, then the other. “Parker, explain.”

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