Page 69 of Forgotten Promise

“Wait, what if the rest of it is inside the inner room?” Selene asked.

According to what Preston had been told, it should all be together in the first room, but he stayed silent, waiting to see what Kailani said.

“I think…I think the vault was robbed.” Kailani looked at them. “Recently.”

“Shit,” Preston breathed.

“The day I got the call, I ran up here to grab the letter with your names. There’s a hidden compartment. I didn’t really look around. But these stacks… You’re right. There should be way more gold. The day I came for the letter, I must not have noticed that these stacks aren’t as tall as they should be.”

Selene crouched and ran her fingertips along the floor just inside the door. She held up her hand, rubbing her thumb along her fingers. “Gritty dust.”

“These rooms aren’t totally airtight,” Kailani said slowly. “I sweep, when I oil the locks, but…”

Selene reached out with her other hand, touching the top of the nearest brick. “No dust.”

“The vault has been robbed.” Kailani’s tone was somewhere between horrified and disbelieving.

“Out,” Selene said. “We need to get out of here.”

Preston agreed. He’d had a chance to talk at length with Makani about the arson, about the timing of that event. He looked at the wooden walls of the stairwell and had a vivid mental image of being trapped here as they burned around him.

Less than a minute later, he, Kailani, and Selene dashed out into the hallway; the normal lighting and sign for the restrooms feeling both incongruously normal and safe.

Rose and Lachlan waited there. “Well?” Rose asked with a raised brow. “Which of you is it?”

Preston looked at the others, then to Rose, and said, “We have a problem.”

* * *

Fifteen people crowded into the meeting room. For a while, the hotel had tried to draw in business clients and had converted some oddly sized and unused space on the first floor of the old hotel into a small meeting room. With the door facing the new hotel, rather than either the picturesque grounds or the ocean, the space had originally been storage, then a conference room, and was now storage again. One of the interior walls was shared with the large kitchen for the two restaurants in the building. The room had its own bathroom, and if she’d been able to walk through walls, she could have gone from this bathroom, through to the elegant main bathrooms, and into the hall where she’d been moments ago.

One wall was lined with stacks of chairs just waiting to be set up on the grass for a wedding ceremony, but the large conference table and plush office chairs were still here.

Kailani felt slightly numb with shock as she dropped down into a chair. She wanted to sit somewhere by herself and just process everything that had happened, but she didn’t have time for that. She looked at John and Benjamin, who sat down as well, flanking her. Protectively? Possessively? Or maybe that was wishful thinking on her part and they—like her—were just too tired to stand for long.

John reached over and took her hand, giving it a squeeze of encouragement.

Benjamin’s knee kept brushing against hers every now and then, though she couldn’t tell if it was accidental or intentional. They were in the middle of a dumpster fire, their society under attack, and everything—everything except the physical attraction she, John, and Benjamin shared—was a complete unknown, up in the air.

The worst part was, she didn’t have time to even think about them, or her feelings, because all fifteen people filing into this room were looking at her.

“Please take a seat,” Kailani said, her manners and a lifetime of being in hospitality taking over.

Everyone sat, except Lachlan and the man he’d called to join them, Tate. A second man, Levi, was standing guard outside the door.

Preston sat between his wife and husband, as did Selene. Selene had reacted with surprise when she saw Tate, asking about her cousin. Tate, who was apparently married to Selene’s cousin, had seemed cold toward Selene and her trinity, but that was probably because he was working as their security. Rose took the seat at the far end of the table, exactly opposite Kailani. Makani sat near her, his brow furrowed with worry.

Kailani took a breath, braced herself, and spoke. “The waihona has been robbed.”

There were murmurings around the room, and Makani shoved to his feet, his arms tense as he braced himself on the table.

John muttered, “I knew this felt like a robbery.”

“There should be ninety-nine bars of gold. I’d never counted them, but they line the wall, stacked higher than my knees.” Kailani had to swallow hard before she could go on. “Two days ago, when I went to retrieve the identities of the other keyholders, I didn’t really pay attention to anything other than getting the names. Looking back…looking back, I think maybe some of the gold was missing then. I don’t know exactly how much. Today… Today,” she was repeating herself, her brain sluggishly trying to work, “as soon as Preston pointed it out, I realized how wrong it looked.”

“How and why do you know how much gold there should be?” Rose asked Preston.

Preston and Selene took over, explaining first Preston’s family knowledge about the gold, then Selene explained her finding about the lack of dust.

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