Page 109 of Never the Same

Ryder filled him in while Gwen’s fingers raced over her keyboard.

I forced myself to take a moment to breathe. I’d already gone down the wrong road once with Gideon, assuming guilt before proof. I couldn’t make the same mistake with Kylo.

“We don’t know anything yet,” I said out loud, more so to try to convince myself to chill out. “Kylo may have also been manipulated. He’d know about your tracker, right?”

Hollis nodded, her body remaining stiff as she stared at me.

“If he was your shadow and always with you, he’d have figured out you were after the book,” Alex commented, and I wasn’t sure if that helped or hurt Kylo’s case for innocence.

“I wouldn’t have suspected he had the book if I let him come to the rave, right? I must’ve believed it was someone else betraying us. I doubt I’d ever accuse anyone on my team without proof. That has to be why I went to Rome without my family.”

“You stumbled into something you weren’t meant to find.” All because you were trying to help my dad. I didn’t voice the rest, but she knew.

“My identity was wiped clean while my brothers’ memories were only punched with holes. I was too close to the truth because I was chasing the very thing someone was using to control us.”

Julian slid into the chair beside Gwen with his laptop. “We’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise.”

“You talk to Gideon? Mum and the others?”

Julian glanced back at Hollis. “Gideon feels horrible that someone was able to control him like that, but he says that’s the only thing that makes sense. You know he’d never . . . I, uh, shouldn’t have doubted him. I’m mad at myself that I did.” He faced his screen again. “Mum, Dad, and Lyra are still in Surrey. Heavily secured and protected. They’re safe. Mum doesn’t believe Tristan has anything to do with this, but I don’t blame her for not wanting to accept it. I still don’t.” He pulled out his phone. “Giving them a heads-up now about our protectors, too.”

“Gideon mentioned your protectors were flying back tonight. Do we know where they are now? Were all of them in Peru when you two visited?” Ryder asked, remaining standing on the other side of the eight-person table.

“We only spoke to Kylo’s parents. We didn’t do a head count, no.” Julian grimaced, pocketing his phone. “And their flight isn’t due back to London for another hour.”

Ryder turned toward Carter and Sebastian, who were hanging back, letting our team take the lead since this was our op. “We should split up. Maybe go to Gideon and have him give you a list of names for the protectors to run through facial ID while Julian focuses on the source code?”

“Go easy on him, please,” Hollis said softly. “Not his fault.”

Carter tipped his head as a silent okay, then he flicked his wrist, gesturing to Easton to roll out with him, and Sebastian quietly left as well.

Ryder slapped my shoulder twice, then he and Alex also decided to take off to run down more leads and prep for, well, whatever was going to happen next. Who the hell knew at this point. The situation was fluid and changing by the second.

I shifted closer to Hollis, standing behind where both Gwen and Julian worked as if racing with each other to see who could type faster without burning up their keyboards.

“I’ve got the raw footage from the vault in Florence,” Gwen shared a few moments later. “Oh, hell.” She shifted her laptop around so we could all view it.

The screen filled with grainy black-and-white footage, time-stamped Thursday, 05:14.

“That’s more than enough time to go from Rome to Florence,” I noted.

At the sight of Hollis appearing on the screen, my stomach turned. Two masked men were surrounding her, each gripping an arm like she was a broken marionette. Her head lolled, her steps dragging, but she was awake.

My emotions hit hard, pulling like barbed wire wound through my lungs. “They clearly drugged you with something.”

“My eyes are open, but I’m gone. How do I not remember I was there if they gave me the identity-wipe drug before that?”

“It’s probably equivalent to when someone roofies a drink. Conscious, but don’t recall what happened during the time. Maybe my memories and Gideon’s weren’t wiped after we were controlled—we were just roofied,” Julian suggested.

One man let go of her and quickly drew his sidearm, verbally fighting with the other one, from the looks of it, though the ski masks covered their mouths.

The first guy raised his weapon at Hollis, and the other one shoved Hollis behind him, putting himself between her and the gun.

A scuffle followed, fast and messy. The original asshole who’d tried to shoot Hollis went down. I wasn’t sure whether he was dead or just knocked out, but he was dragged over to the SUV and thrown into the back while Hollis stood like a statue, watching the scene unfold.

The man returned to Hollis’s side and pricked her with a needle. She slowly collapsed, and he caught her in his arms and gently placed her inside the back seat of the SUV before closing the door. Then he rounded the vehicle and stopped by the driver’s side, setting his eyes on the camera positioned above the garage. He brought three gloved fingers to his temple and offered a slight salute as if sending someone on the other side of the screen a message.

Hollis spoke her thoughts out loud as Gwen rewound the footage so we could watch it again. “I don’t understand. If he helped take me from Rome and set up Gideon, why’d he just protect me?”