Chapter Forty-Two Reed
Chapter Forty-Two
Reed
Julian reentered the suite, his eyes sharp as he swept the room like he could taste the tension in the air. “What’s going on?”
Ryder filled him in while Gwen’s fingers raced over her keyboard.
I forced myself to take a moment to breathe. I’d already gone down the wrong road once with Gideon, assuming guilt before proof. I couldn’t make the same mistake with Kylo.
“We don’t know anything yet,” I said out loud, more so to try to convince myself to chill out. “Kylo may have also been manipulated. He’d know about your tracker, right?”
Hollis nodded, her body remaining stiff as she stared at me.
“If he was your shadow and always with you, he’d have figured out you were after the book,” Alex commented, and I wasn’t sure if that helped or hurt Kylo’s case for innocence.
“I wouldn’t have suspected he had the book if I let him come to the rave, right? I must’ve believed it was someone else betraying us. I doubt I’d ever accuse anyone on my team without proof. That has to be why I went to Rome without my family.”
“You stumbled into something you weren’t meant to find.” All because you were trying to help my dad. I didn’t voice the rest, but she knew.
“My identity was wiped clean while my brothers’ memories were only punched with holes. I was too close to the truth because I was chasing the very thing someone was using to control us.”
Julian slid into the chair beside Gwen with his laptop. “We’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise.”
“You talk to Gideon? Mum and the others?”
Julian glanced back at Hollis. “Gideon feels horrible that someone was able to control him like that, but he says that’s the only thing that makes sense.
You know he’d never . . . I, uh, shouldn’t have doubted him.
I’m mad at myself that I did.” He faced his screen again.
“Mum, Dad, and Lyra are still in Surrey. Heavily secured and protected. They’re safe.
Mum doesn’t believe Tristan has anything to do with this, but I don’t blame her for not wanting to accept it.
I still don’t.” He pulled out his phone.
“Giving them a heads-up now about our protectors, too.”
“Gideon mentioned your protectors were flying back tonight. Do we know where they are now? Were all of them in Peru when you two visited?” Ryder asked, remaining standing on the other side of the eight-person table.
“We only spoke to Kylo’s parents. We didn’t do a head count, no.” Julian grimaced, pocketing his phone. “And their flight isn’t due back to London for another hour.”
Ryder turned toward Carter and Sebastian, who were hanging back, letting our team take the lead since this was our op. “We should split up. Maybe go to Gideon and have him give you a list of names for the protectors to run through facial ID while Julian focuses on the source code?”
“Go easy on him, please,” Hollis said softly. “Not his fault.”
Carter tipped his head as a silent okay, then he flicked his wrist, gesturing to Easton to roll out with him, and Sebastian quietly left as well.
Ryder slapped my shoulder twice, then he and Alex also decided to take off to run down more leads and prep for, well, whatever was going to happen next. Who the hell knew at this point. The situation was fluid and changing by the second.
I shifted closer to Hollis, standing behind where both Gwen and Julian worked as if racing with each other to see who could type faster without burning up their keyboards.
“I’ve got the raw footage from the vault in Florence,” Gwen shared a few moments later. “Oh, hell.” She shifted her laptop around so we could all view it.
The screen filled with grainy black-and-white footage, time-stamped Thursday, 05:14.
“That’s more than enough time to go from Rome to Florence,” I noted.
At the sight of Hollis appearing on the screen, my stomach turned. Two masked men were surrounding her, each gripping an arm like she was a broken marionette. Her head lolled, her steps dragging, but she was awake.
My emotions hit hard, pulling like barbed wire wound through my lungs. “They clearly drugged you with something.”
“My eyes are open, but I’m gone. How do I not remember I was there if they gave me the identity-wipe drug before that?”
“It’s probably equivalent to when someone roofies a drink. Conscious, but don’t recall what happened during the time. Maybe my memories and Gideon’s weren’t wiped after we were controlled—we were just roofied,” Julian suggested.
One man let go of her and quickly drew his sidearm, verbally fighting with the other one, from the looks of it, though the ski masks covered their mouths.
The first guy raised his weapon at Hollis, and the other one shoved Hollis behind him, putting himself between her and the gun.
A scuffle followed, fast and messy. The original asshole who’d tried to shoot Hollis went down. I wasn’t sure whether he was dead or just knocked out, but he was dragged over to the SUV and thrown into the back while Hollis stood like a statue, watching the scene unfold.
The man returned to Hollis’s side and pricked her with a needle.
She slowly collapsed, and he caught her in his arms and gently placed her inside the back seat of the SUV before closing the door.
Then he rounded the vehicle and stopped by the driver’s side, setting his eyes on the camera positioned above the garage.
He brought three gloved fingers to his temple and offered a slight salute as if sending someone on the other side of the screen a message.
Hollis spoke her thoughts out loud as Gwen rewound the footage so we could watch it again. “I don’t understand. If he helped take me from Rome and set up Gideon, why’d he just protect me?”
“A double-cross?” Gwen suggested. “He had to have been the one that took your chain off so your tracker would go back online. Left you in the Czech Republic so we could find you. But in doing so, he also—”
“Saved my life,” Hollis responded.
“Any chance you recognize the three-finger salute?” Gwen asked Julian.
“No,” he responded, “but maybe Gideon might?”
“Let me call Carter to see if he’ll bring him up here.” Gwen shot Julian a polite smile. “Better chance he’ll listen to me than you.”
We waited for Gwen to make the call, and within a few minutes, Carter returned to the room with Gideon.
Gideon’s dark eyes were fixed with regret on Hollis as she approached him.
“I know you didn’t mean to do it.” She crushed herself against him, forcing a hug, but he didn’t return the gesture. He was full of guilt and shame, eyes pointed at me over her shoulder.
“Hug me back,” Hollis cry-ordered as Carter gave them space and came over to the table.
“Here.” Carter slid a half sheet of paper over alongside Gwen. “Gideon gave me a list of his family’s protectors.”
Gwen poked Carter’s side. “Maybe you could stop giving me more errands before I catch up on the ones I already have?” she teased him.
I reached for the paper. “I can look into them for you,” I offered as Gideon and Hollis came back over to the table.
Gideon braced against the back of his brother’s chair and studied Gwen’s screen.
“The hand gesture . . .” He cursed low under his breath.
“That signal wasn’t for whoever he’s working with.
That was for me.” He let go of the chair.
“He must have assumed Julian would find a way to undo the footage and I’d see this. ”
“What are you saying?” Hollis asked him, voice soft.
“That’s my protector, Kylo’s brother.” Gideon closed his eyes. “I know that sign. It means traitor among you.”