Page 69 of Never the Same

“Sure they tried.” Ryder grimaced. “They’re taking Big Brother to another level.”

Tell me about it. “Where’d Trevor go? Chase? Eden?” We’d had a full house when I went out back.

“Decided to take them to the park while we took this call. Didn’t want Chase hearing anything that could be unsettling,” Alex shared before Audrey returned with Hollis a few seconds later.

Her hair was a little messy, as if she’d been running her fingers through it.

“What’d Gideon want?” I couldn’t help but ask as she made eye contact with me.

She crossed the kitchen and held out her cell phone. “He asked you to destroy this and get me a new burner. I forgot and, um, mentioned Tristan over text. Julian’s scrubbing the messages and data, but Gideon doesn’t want to take any chances. He wants a hammer taken to it.”

I took the phone from her, careful to avoid touching her, then set it on the counter and placed some distance between us. I could never seem to think straight when she was close enough for me to breathe in the smell of my body wash on her skin.

“After warning me to never mention Tristan over the phone again, he hung up so he could destroy his own device.”

“We really need to find out who the hell your brother is. You know, for real.” Alex pulled out a chair for Audrey, and once she sat, he rested his hands on the back of her chair.

As Seraphina and Hollis took a seat next, I found myself staring in a daze at the fourth empty chair, my thoughts drifting to Hollis’s dream of our family. Part of me wanted to order that fifth chair, and that thought alone was enough reason to send me over the edge.

But for now, I had to hang on for dear life and get through this call.

“Unmuting Constantine. You ready?” Ryder asked Hollis.

Hollis stole a look back at him, then hesitantly nodded before her eyes found mine. There was a story there. An entire saga sitting between us I had no idea how to explain away.

“We’re all here now,” Ryder said, holding out his phone.

“I think I got a lead. Well, my teenage son did, actually.” Constantine’s light Italian accent cut through the line. “He heard about a rave that happened the night Hollis went missing.”

Was Constantine really comfortable letting his teenage son get in the middle of this mess? Not my call to question him, but damn.

“A rich kid took over the basement of a fifteenth-century library for it. Rumor has it, shots were fired, cutting the night short. Though no police reports were filed. If anyone was hurt or killed, there’s nothing in the system.”

“Wait . . . a library?” Hollis sat taller, shoulders arching back, and I knew exactly where her mind had wandered. To the book. To my dad.

I stiffened, keying in on the cross around Alex’s neck, and a prayer sat on the edge of my mind that I couldn’t seem to let loose.

“They cut the alarms and shut down the cameras inside even before the rest of the city’s footage was screwed with,” Constantine went on. “I took a look around myself. There was evidence of gunfire, but no shells left behind. It was clean.”

Because I was full of bright ideas lately, I rounded the table so I could check Hollis’s reaction to all this.

There was a flicker of something in her eyes. It was quick and sharp, like a memory was there waiting to resurface, but she couldn’t pin it down.

“I called in a favor to Gwen before I went there to see if anything stood out about the library, including any rumors about something being sold or traded that night.” He spoke directly to Hollis next. “Gwen couldn’t find anything, but criminals are getting smarter these days about leaving a digital footprint.” He paused for a brief moment. “But Gwen did discover there’s a system of underground tunnels down there. Found one secret door behind a bookshelf so far. One set of footprints, too. My guess? A woman’s. European size 39. They stopped outside a crawl space that led to the Museo e Cripta dei Cappuccini. The Capuchin Crypt.”

The only Capuchin-anything I’d ever heard of was a monkey. I highly doubted there was a secret burial place for monkeys beneath Rome. After Constantine gave us the quick explanation, I was almost offended that even with all my knowledge, I didn’t know about this place. Monk bones. Really?

“The trail went cold once inside. Concrete pathway. But there are stairs that lead to a store above. It’s possible she ran out that way.” He was back to speaking as though Hollis wasn’t the subject of our conversation.

At this point, since Hollis had no memory of ever being there, she probably didn’t feel tied to the “she” of his story, either.

“I tracked down the kid who threw the rave, and he’s working on a list of who he invited to the party so I can personally question everyone to see if anyone can confirm if you were there. He denied seeing you, but he was also rolling on E.”

“You believe him?” I asked.

“About the drugs? Yeah. About not seeing Hollis? No.” A deep breath curled through the line in a low hiss. “His father is Benjamin Putcheski. He’s a businessman from Eastern Europe. Doesn’t have the nicest of friends. It’s possible if Hollis was at that rave, she wasn’t there for a book, but for someone tied to the Putcheski family.”

The weight of his words landed hard. Thank the Lord. Now we were getting somewhere.