Page 83 of Forgotten Promise

Instead, he’d crawled around in the ceiling and found the waihona. John would put money on it not being wholly an accident. He’d gone up into the ceiling space. And while the top of the steel container that was the inner part of the waihona wasn’t immediately visible, if you poked around, you’d notice it. Mark may have seen that and wondered what it was. When he couldn’t get in through the steel plate, he probably hunted around until he found a bit of ceiling he could punch through.

He made a hole, saw the gold, and when he actually dropped down into the room, he saw the inner vault door, and started picturing dollar signs. Mark started smuggling out the gold bars one or two at a time, but then Liam finished his work. Mark wanted the rest of the gold, but more than that, he wanted to get into the main vault. So he borrowed his cousin’s truck and showed up every day like he’s one of the crew, smuggling out gold in between attempts to break into the vault.

What John didn’t know was how Mark had known that Kailani had entered the waihona. His best guess was that Mark may have actually heard or seen her and closed the trap door. The idea of someone in the ceiling looking down on Kailani, possibly wondering if he should grab her, hurt her, silence her, made John’s blood run cold.

“Let me go talk to…some people.” He’d almost said “the D.A.,” which was what he would have said if this were a normal interrogation and he could list possible charges as a pressure point.

John walked out into the hall where Makani was waiting, standing guard in front of the large cage where they’d stuck Mark, who was trussed to a chair. The cage was actually a secure storage area for the construction crew, meant for tools and materials. It was a great makeshift cell.

John studied the man, who Lachlan had gagged with a few pieces of tape over his mouth.

“Was he in on it?” Makani asked, with a nod to the door John had just come in through.

“Willfully ignorant. He knew, but desperately pretended it wasn’t happening.”

Makani nodded and lowered his voice. “You think there’s any connection to our society?”

“No, I think this is a weird, dangerous coincidence.” John looked toward the plastic-sheeting doorway, as if he could see through it to the old hotel, to the meeting room where Lachlan said everyone was gathering. John wanted to be there, to know what was going on. It was odd for him to want to walk away in the middle of a case like this, especially when he’d reached his favorite part—fitting the final pieces of the puzzle into place.

But he wanted to be with them, to stand with Kailani and Benjamin as they dealt with whatever came next.

John shook his head, trying to dismiss the need to go find them, and went to question Mark.

Chapter Nineteen

Kailani held a notebook, jotting down everything Preston said as they explored the inner room of the waihona, grateful her task was simple.

Preston had taken charge of the inventory, cataloging and counting what was there, then dictating it for her to write down. They had some of the big work lights from earlier, but even with those, the room was full of long shadows, thanks to the contents. Roughly six by six, the steel box that was the heart of the waihona was hot, the air so stale that they hadn’t been able to enter when they first opened it. They’d propped the door open while they had that meeting, which had improved the air quality somewhat, but the air in the outer room and stairwell wasn’t exactly fresh. Used to a constant gentle ocean breeze, the stale stillness was making Kailani feel ill.

Or maybe that feeling had nothing to do with the air.

The largest thing in the vault was a vintage paper storage cabinet. Preston said it was called a cabinet letter file. Apparently someone in his family had one of these, and it was now a valuable antique. Rather than large drawers where papers were inserted vertically, like a modern filing cabinet, this one had shallow, horizontal drawers, each slightly wider than a piece of paper. Pages were placed flat in the drawers.

This cabinet was massive—nearly as tall as the doorway, with three columns, each with seventeen drawers. There were library card-catalog-style brass label holders and pulls on each drawer. If they’d ever had labels, the ink had faded, the paper brittle and yellow.

Besides that, the vault contained a few heavy chests that absolutely looked like they held pirate treasure, several modern hard-sided silver briefcases, one large cardboard moving box that was completely out of place and, weirdly, three chairs. The chairs were ladder-backed, simple things. The fabric and thread on the upholstered seats had been mostly leeched of color, but the embroidered pattern was visible—a hand-stitched triquetra.

Given the air quality, and the space issues—there wasn’t much room to move—they’d decided one person would investigate while the other took notes. Kailani hadn’t protested when Preston stepped into the vault. Normally, her curiosity would be driving her crazy, but right now…

Simply recording what he said was the limit of her abilities at the moment.

Because she was numb.

Completely numb.

Selene had dissolved the trinity, announcing it in the middle of what was essentially a war council, as if it was just one more item ticked off her new to-do list as Grand Master.

The moment Selene had made the pronouncement, Kailani had looked across the table at Benjamin, expecting—hoping?—that he would speak up.

But he didn’t.

He didn’t say a word, which…confused her. But more than that, she’d been surprised by how much it hurt.

She hadn’t been certain that he still wanted the trinity dissolved. Though perhaps that was just wishful thinking on her part.

After all, he’d been the one to ask for it.

God. She couldn’t put the blame for that on him. It had been her behavior, her insistence that the marriage would be in name only that had prompted his request, which was why she’d really expected him to speak out against Selene’s proclamation.

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