Chapter 3 Kian
KIAN
Lokan stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows of Kian's office, arms crossed over his chest, staring out at the village below. "Losham knows I defected. He's not going to answer."
"He will answer out of curiosity and to gloat." Kian swiveled his chair to face him. "You said so yourself. He'll want to know what you're up to and let you know that he's in charge now."
"Perhaps." Lokan returned to the conference table and sat next to Toven. "It's fifty-fifty. Suspicion will wage war with curiosity and pride, and I pray that the latter two will prevail."
Toven shook his head. "I think he will answer, but he might hang up as soon as he hears my voice instead of yours. I will need to hit him with compulsion before he has time to think."
Kian leaned forward. "What do you intend to say?"
"I'll say, 'Listen to me, Losham. Don't hang up.
'" Toven's voice took on the resonant quality that accompanied compulsion, and Kian felt the pull of the command even though it hadn't been directed at him.
"I'll pour everything I have into the opening words.
" Toven reached for Mia's hand and turned to face her.
"With you enhancing my power, we're invincible.
" He shifted his gaze back to Kian. "Thankfully, we know that Losham is not immune because Navuh had him under his complete control. "
"I'm not sure about that," Lokan said. "Losham is clever, and he could've been pretending to be controlled while doing his own thing. I know that he was accumulating wealth outside the Brotherhood, but I want to believe that he had just found loopholes to exploit in Navuh's compulsion."
Kian hoped Lokan was right about that. Their entire operation rested on the assumption that they could compel Losham to stop trying to breach the enclosure in Navuh's basement, so he wouldn't trigger the booby traps before they had a chance to disarm them and remove Khiann and his companions from the mausoleum that Navuh had built for them.
He glanced at his watch, wondering what was keeping William.
It was ten minutes after five in the afternoon in Los Angeles, which meant it was ten minutes after six in the morning on the island. It should be early enough to catch Losham alone, before he left his house, so there would be no witnesses to the phone call.
"Where is William?" Lokan asked. "We were supposed to call Losham at six in the morning island time."
"He'll be here," Toven said. "A few minutes won't make a difference."
They'd timed the call for when it was reasonable for Losham to be awake, but still too early for him to start his workday.
If they miscalculated, and he was already at the office, he might have company, which would make the call suspicious and reveal their hand.
He might also be trying to breach that glass enclosure and trigger those damn booby traps.
When the door opened, and William rushed in, breathless and clutching a briefcase under his arm, a communal sigh of relief was released.
"Sorry." He dropped into the nearest chair and put his leather bag on the table. "I couldn't find the damn thing."
"What damn thing?" Lokan asked.
"An old Brotherhood phone. I remembered we had several of those that belonged to Doomers we captured.
" William opened his bag and pulled out the device.
"I knew I'd kept them somewhere, but I couldn't remember where.
I spent most of the afternoon digging through storage bins before I finally tracked them down.
" He activated the phone. "Reprogramming it so it would seem to be your phone didn't take long at all. "
"Are you sure?" Lokan asked. "It has to be more complicated than just programming it with the number of my Brotherhood's phone."
"That should actually do it." William slid the phone across the table toward Lokan. "As far as Losham's device is concerned, this call will be coming from your original Brotherhood number. Same encryption protocols and same identity credentials. Their system is not nearly as sophisticated as ours."
Lokan picked up the phone and turned it over in his hands. "I had to ditch mine when Carol and I escaped from China. I was afraid my father would track us through it."
"You did the right thing," William said. "But Losham might wonder why you're suddenly calling after months of silence, and from a phone that you shouldn't have."
"The time for speculation is over," Kian said. "Let's do this and let the chips fall as they will."
Lokan entered the number and held the phone out to Toven.
He took the phone while holding on to Mia's hand. Her ability to enhance Toven's already formidable compulsion had been proven many times over, and hopefully, it would make it strong enough to reach through the phone connection and take hold of Losham's mind.
As Toven pressed the call button, everyone held their collective breaths.
Kian counted the rings. One. Two. Three. Each one felt like an eternity.
Four rings. Five.
Kian's stomach churned. Losham wasn't going to—
A click. The sound of the call connecting.
"Lokan. What impeccable timing." The voice was dripping with sarcasm. "Did you get the alert?"
The greeting was strange, unexpected. What did Losham mean by that?
For a fraction of a second, Toven hesitated, thrown off by the odd response, but then he shook his head. "Listen and obey my instructions, Losham. Don't hang up!" His voice rang out sharp and commanding.
There was a long silence on the other end of the line.
"Who are you?" Losham finally asked, sounding wary.
Before Toven could respond, Lokan leaned toward the device. "A friend. Hello, Losham."
Kian shot him a look. That wasn't the plan. Lokan was supposed to stay silent and let Toven maintain control of the conversation. But the words were already out, hanging in the air between him and Losham.
More silence stretched across the connection, and Kian's pulse thudded in his temples. Was the compulsion working? Was Losham fighting it? Was he about to hang up?
"What do you want, Lokan? Are you coming back to investigate?"
Lokan arched a brow but refrained from engaging.
The conversation was taking on a strange direction, but at least Losham was still on the line and still talking. That was something. His voice had an edge to it, but that was understandable given the circumstances.
Lokan nodded at Toven, indicating that he should continue.
"Stop any and all attempts to break into the glass enclosure in the basement of Navuh's mansion," Toven commanded, his voice layered with compulsion.
Another long silence.
Then laughter that sounded manic, teetering on the edge of hysteria.
"You are too late," Losham's voice crackled through the speaker. "I already did."
The blood froze in Kian's veins.
"What do you mean?" The question tore out of him before he could stop himself.
"Who's that?" Losham asked sharply. "Who else is on this call? Lokan, what is this?"
"Doesn't matter," Toven said, reasserting control with another push of compulsion. "Were the booby traps triggered?"
"How do you know about the booby traps?" Suspicion bled through Losham's highly agitated tone.
"Doesn't matter. Answer my question."
"The booby traps were triggered earlier this morning.
" The manic tone had given way to something hollower.
"And that brings me back to your impeccable timing, Lokan.
How did you know? Did Father include you in the global alert to all of his sons?
Did he forget to remove the traitor from the list?
" Another hysterical laugh. "That's not like him, but neither is everything else he's been doing lately. "
"Tell me what happened, Losham," Toven commanded.
"The entire section of the basement collapsed. It killed the human crew, and there is a crater in the backyard now. It will take weeks to dig out whatever was buried in there."
Kian couldn't breathe. The room seemed to shrink around him, the walls pressing inward, the air growing thick and heavy. He looked at the others and saw his own devastation reflected in their faces.
"Lokan." Losham's voice crackled through the speaker. "Are you still there?"
"Yes." Lokan's voice was steady despite the anxious expression on his face. "I'm here."
"How did you know about the booby traps? How did you know about the enclosure? Did Father tell you about it?"
Lokan looked at Kian, his eyebrows raised.
Kian shook his head. They couldn't reveal that they had Navuh.
"I have my ways," Lokan said cryptically.
"Your ways." Losham snorted. "Of course. You always had your 'ways,' didn't you?"
Lokan was a weak compeller and a dream walker.
Losham knew about Lokan's compulsion ability, but no one on the island knew what Lokan's other paranormal talent was.
Still, Losham must have noticed that Lokan had access to information he could not have obtained by regular means and therefore suspected that his brother either had spies everywhere or some additional talents he was keeping secret.
Kian shook his head again, indicating that Lokan shouldn't engage, and then nodded at Toven.
The god leaned toward the phone. "You will always answer calls from this number, Losham. When you see this number, you will find a private place to talk. Say 'yes, I understand.'"
The compulsion was impossible to resist.
"Yes, I understand," Losham repeated, the words coming out flat and automatic. "Can I talk with Lokan now?" That came out more animated.
Lokan looked at Kian, who shook his head. They didn't have time for this now.
"We will talk soon," Lokan said. "That's a promise."
Toven ended the call, and the silence that followed was suffocating.
"Fates," William breathed. "We missed by hours. If we'd moved faster—"
"Don't," Kian said. "There's no point in playing that game."
But he was playing it himself, running through the timeline in his head, calculating all the moments where a different decision might have changed the outcome.
If they'd called Lokan sooner. If William had found the phone faster.
If they'd attempted the compulsion as soon as the idea had been born, instead of waiting for morning on the island.
They'd assumed Losham had been asleep.
Had he been working on the enclosure through the night?
"What do we do now?" Mia asked quietly.
Kian forced himself to think past the shock. There would be time for that later.
"We need more information," he said. "According to Losham, the enclosure collapsed, but that doesn't necessarily mean everything inside was destroyed. The chests might have survived. The bodies might still be intact. They were too valuable to Navuh to take chances with."
"Or they might not," Lokan said. "If Navuh wanted to destroy whatever was in that enclosure rather than let it fall into anyone else's hands, he would make sure that it was destroyed."
"But did he want that?" Toven asked. "Navuh intended to hide his bargaining chip in that enclosure. Why would he create traps that would destroy what he hoped to trade for his freedom?"
"To keep it out of enemy hands," Lokan said. "Better to destroy something valuable than let it fall to your opponents."
"That's one possibility." Toven stroked his chin thoughtfully.
"But there's another. Navuh might have designed the traps to appear destructive without actually destroying the contents.
A bluff, essentially. Make potential thieves believe they've ruined everything, when in fact the treasure remains intact beneath the rubble. "
Hope flickered in Kian's chest. "How likely is that?"
"With Navuh? Anything is possible. He has been playing games for five thousand years. He's a master of misdirection." Toven looked at Lokan. "You know him better than any of us. What do you think?"
"Navuh is arrogant," Lokan said. "Convinced of his own superiority.
He believes that no one can outsmart him.
But he's also paranoid. He plans for every contingency, including the possibility that his plans might fail.
Why build a glass enclosure that would make everyone wonder what's inside?
It's like he wanted to create a misdirection.
I wouldn't be surprised if he never had those chests buried under that sand, and if he had, he might have built a backup in case the enclosure could be breached without triggering the traps.
Something to protect his investment even if the primary defenses failed. "
Lokan smiled weakly. "I wouldn't bet my life on this theory. But it's possible."
It wasn't much, but it was something to hold on to.
"I need to tell my mother," Kian said. The words felt like lead in his mouth.
"What are you going to tell her?" William asked. "We don't know if Khiann survived. We don't know if there's any hope left. How do you deliver news like that?"
"Honestly." Kian pushed to his feet. "I'll tell her what we know—that the booby traps were triggered, that the enclosure collapsed, but that there's still a chance, however small, that Khiann might have survived."
"What about the rest of the plan?" William asked. "Are we still going through with it?"
Kian nodded. "I need to speak with Turner and make some adjustments.
The mission's parameters have shifted. Instead of focusing on breaching the enclosure without triggering the booby traps, we now have to sift through a lot of rubble, hoping to either find the chests still intact or to find none at all in that location. "
William released a breath. "I can't even imagine how we might do that."
"We don't," Toven said. "We have Losham do that for us. He will search for the chests, and once he finds them, he will hold them for us somewhere safe."
That sounded so deceptively simple that Kian was tempted to dismiss it. But the more he thought about it, the more sense it made.
Having Losham at their beck and call was a huge advantage that they hadn't had before.