Page 39 of Forgotten Promise

Benjamin pulled out his phone to make arrangements as John navigated the morning commute traffic. Kailani looked out the window, and though she knew this was the same Pacific Ocean that surrounded her island, it was a cold and cool gray-blue that made her miss the bright blue water of home.

Chapter Ten

Boston

Seventeen hours since the kidnapping

* * *

His head throbbed, but luckily his heart had gone numb.

Franco stared at his hands as he sat on the couch in the hotel suite that was their base of operations. Not their temporary headquarters. No, that was now somewhere on Oahu. The keyholders were one of dozens of different charters, backup plans, rules, and protocols that existed within the Trinity Masters, most of which were secret even from the general membership. Maybe some were forgotten rather than secret. Since joining and taking it upon himself to catalog and uncover every scrap of information, Franco had uncovered more lost, forgotten things.

Learning those secrets, decoding the clues, had been fun and felt so important before yesterday.

Now all Franco wanted was his husband and wife back.

Out of habit, he went to run his hands through his hair. Colum grabbed his wrist before he could. The Irishman, who’d been an academic pen pal before yesterday, had seemingly appointed himself as Franco’s companion and nurse. His duties included stopping Franco from touching the lump on his head.

Everyone else was dealing with something, handling something.

Franco had no background in security or investigation; he had no skills that would help find the two people he loved more than life itself.

“Follow that line of investigation,” Lachlan was saying. The Warrior Scholar had taken command of the investigation, using a combination of his fellow soldiers-turned-academics, Bennett security employees, and other members who had the kind of dangerous skills they needed right now.

Sebastian looked nearly as bad as Franco felt, his face grim as he scanned security footage. They’d already had both live people and analysis software go over all the security tapes they’d gathered, trying to track where Juliette and Devon had been taken. Now Sebastian was watching to see if he recognized anyone. Lachlan had said they needed to strongly consider this was an inside job, that someone within the society had betrayed them. Since no digital membership roster existed, they couldn’t just run facial recognition software to compare the faces of every member against the videos. But Sebastian had memorized the membership, had studied most of them.

Franco stood, unable to sit any longer. The doctor who’d come and put staples in his head had forbidden Rose from giving him any more tranquilizers, since it was risky with the head wound.

Right now, exhaustion was doing the work of numbing his emotions. They’d been up all night, and it was now lunchtime. Seventeen hours since Juliette and Devon had been taken.

Seventeen hours was a long time.

Franco walked over to the window, looking down on the streets of Boston. A storm had blown in about four a.m., and rain lashed the streets. The sky to the east was an angry, roiling gray. It matched his mood.

Even with the rain, there were people on the streets, huddled in raincoats since it was too windy for umbrellas. The people were going about as if the world hadn’t just ended. As if it was acceptable to walk and talk and smile while somewhere out there, Franco’s spouses were being hurt. Tortured. Killed.

Franco slammed the side of his fist into the glass so hard it shuddered.

Lachlan’s voice stopped for a moment, but it was Colum who put a hand on Franco’s shoulder, pulling him away from the window.

“Ye won’t be helping anyone doing that,” he said, his thick accent oddly soothing. “Sure won’t you have a cup of tea?”

“No,” Franco said softly.

“Just one in the hand.”

Franco shook his head.

“Sure didn’t the lord himself stop for a cup of tea on his way to the cross.”

Franco blinked and looked up. “What?”

Colum handed him a cup of tea. “Drink.”

“Did you just imply that Christ stopped for a cup of tea on the way to his crucifixion?”

When Colum grinned, Franco laughed. It was rusty, and flirted with the line of being hysterical, but it stopped him from imagining Juliette beaten and bloody, Devon dead with a bullet in his chest, or alive but with fingers missing from torture.

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