So the four of us share what we learned while we were out, and Dad pales when we gets to the bit about Cecelia.
”That’s horrible. The poor girl. Nobody deserves that. She was obviously a product of her upbringing,” Nana voices. “If her family doesn’t come forward to claim her body, we’ll take care of her funeral expenses.”
“Well, it’s not like theycancome forward, is it? Both her mother and sister are wanted for kidnapping,” Oli points out.
“We can worry about that later,” I tell them, trying to get them back on track.
“Dad, why don’t you have a look for that book that Dragos gave you? I, for one, would like to know what’s actually in it,” Holden says to Dad.
“Yeah, okay, I’m pretty sure it’s exactly where I left it in my bookshelf. Give me a moment.” Dad heads back through the hallway to his office.
“I’ll come with you... just in case,” Chuck says, following after my father. He’s right that it’s probably not a good idea to split up.
Declan has his arm wrapped around Jazzy’s shoulder as he whispers back and forth with her. Oliver and Holden are taking comfort from one another, and Melinda, Nana, Poppy, and Ben are all drinking coffee and talking quietly. Unlike them, I’m feeling twitchy and restless, and I can’t fucking stand here. I need to do something. I’m just about to leave, wanting to see if Thomas and Jake have found anything, when Dad returns, a little black book in his hand.
“This is it.” He flicks through it, and a couple of pieces of paper fall out with ripped edges.
I bend down and pick them up. Scanning them, it looks like letters and numbers. ”What are these?”
FR — 71419703, 01062021 , 70300205
CO — 61590321, 55432190, 7 7654309
RO — 88895437, 44456321, 00512389
IT — 77704361, 67812345, 22212129
CH — AB5678TS, JJJ90765, GHD6654
US — 5318008
KY — 19752601, 28195301,
RU — 77553311, 6931512,
GR — 6000213 , 5778000
Poppy, Dad, and Chuck peer over my shoulders at the papers in my hands.
“These look like country codes.” Poppy points to the letters on the left side. “But I have no clue about anything else.”
“Well, if the letters are country codes, then it’s safe to guess the US is the States, especially since that’s the code for all the safes in the house. We can probably assume the rest are codes to safes or safety deposit boxes or account numbers in all the other places the twins have inherited.” Whereas the code made my brothers and I smile before, right now, it does nothing for me. I can’t laugh at something juvenile like that while our woman is gone.
“Do you think these pages were ripped out of his father’s book?” Chuck says to Dad before he sits back down with Melinda again.
Dad’s phone rings. He hands me the rest of the book, and he answers it. “Hi, Miles, what can I do for you?” He frowns as he listens to him. “Hewhat?” He starts toward the front of the house, and Chuck, my brothers, and Jacinta follow, hearing the urgency in his voice. “I’ll call you back in a moment.”
Dad goes into his office and enters the code to one of the gun safes. He starts pulling out weapons and passing them to each of us.
“That was Miles McCallister. He said Parker went over to the site earlier to get started, but some brunette woman turned him away with a bullshit excuse. She told him she was Harlow’s PA. He thought it sounded a little weird, and so did his brothers when he asked them about it after he got back to the B&B.”
“Raquel!” Jacinta gasps. “That means they’re over there now.”
“Yup, Thomas and Jake may need back-up, so we’re going to go. I don’t want to take the security in case they somehow get around us and come here. Jake’s team is fifteen minutes out. They got caught up in traffic, and we can’t wait. You stay here with Nana, Poppy, Melinda, and Ben,” he tells our sister. I can see her getting ready to argue, but then she thinks better of it and returns to the living area to tell the others what’s going on.
My heart races at the thought that Harlow might still be there, that shewasthere as we drove past. Fuck, we should have gone with Thomas and Jake. We were thoughtless, and now we can only hope our brother and girlfriend don’t pay the price for our carelessness.
When we get over there, we can see Jake’s car parked on the drawbridge. The door is wide open, and there’s no sign of Thomas or Jake.
