Page 48 of Broken Love

Hopefully, sneaking out with Caleb in the middle of the night isn’t on that list.

I lean over her a little more, as close to her ear as possible. “Caleb—”

She shoots up in her cot. I lay my hand over her mouth and put a finger against my lips with my other hand, urging her to keep quiet.

“Shh…” I whisper.

She mimics my soft volume. “Carson, what are you doing?”

I nudge my head back, signaling for her to follow me outside. She stares at me for several moments, blinking with confusion, until finally reaching down to grab her boots from beneath the cot. I slide back and throw my bag over my shoulder while I wait. She rises, nods, and we silently drift between the sleeping soldiers into the darkness outside.

Caleb follows me through the camp. I keep to the shadows, avoiding the paths of the patrol guards.

“We don’t have to slink around like this,” she says at normal volume. “This isn’t a prison.”

“I know… but it’s fun.”

We reach the jeeps parked at the far side. I open the backseat door to the last one in line — the one farthest away from prying lights.

“Also,” I say, “there’s something I want to show you and I’d rather do it privately.”

She pauses, her bright eyes flicking between me and the backseat. Finally, she climbs inside and I follow her in after doing a quick scan of the area to make sure no one sees us.

I sit down on the seat next to her and pull my laptop from my bag. She slides away from me on purpose, putting as much distance as she can between us until her back hits the door on the other side.

“What is it?” she asks.

“I’ve been looking into that house,” I begin. “You know, the one in France I told you about?” She nods. “It’s weird, but… it’s like it doesn’t exist at all.”

Caleb tilts her neck to get a better look at the map on my laptop screen. “How so?”

“I mean, there’s nothing in public records. There’s no documented history of it ever being built. Even satellites show an empty lot.”

“How is that possible?”

“It’s not,” I answer. “Which means that someone very powerful went through a lot of trouble to keep it hidden… and I think I know who.” I scroll through my notes, flying by various bits of information and saved photographs. “The only mention of that land’s ownership is in a very redacted document buried deep in the Parisian archives. A man named Marlow Black bought the land in 1952 and that’s where the history ends. However—”

“Carson.”

Her eyes go soft on me, but I keep going.

“I dug through the Black family tree and found out that he had a daughter in 1965.”

“What are you doing?”

I stop scrolling on her face and turn the computer in Caleb’s direction. “Marilyn Black. Born in 1965. Died young in 1988. But I met her last month at that house in Paris.”

Caleb lingers on the woman’s photo for a few moments before she shakes her head. “She could have had a daughter…”

“No, I checked that. Marilyn Black didn’t have a daughter, but she did have a son. He died in 2004 at age nineteen — but how much you wanna bet he’s still walking around out there, too? And get this—”

“Carson…” She sighs. “You need to let this go.”

“Why?” Adrenaline pounds in my chest. “There’s something going on here, Caleb. Something bad.”

“And you escaped it,” she says. “The last thing you should be doing is digging back in. This obsession is just going to get you killed.”

“I’m not obsessed. I’m curious,” I say. “And you should be, too.”

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