Page 11 of Never the Same

Lies. Betrayal. Secrets. People she loved in danger. Yeah, I got it.

“I need to hear you say that you’ll do whatever it takes to bring her back to us,” she whispered.

“I promise we won’t come back without her.” I did my best to smile. “Besides, you know your best friend. She’s a stubborn pain in the ass. She won’t let anyone knock her down. If someone did take her”—I lightly squeezed her shoulder—“she’s probably driven them so nuts they’ve already let her go.”

Chapter Four

Reed

Rome, Italy

From inside Hollis’s hotel suite, I removed the gold cap of the perfume bottle and raised it to my nose, inhaling the scent of Baccarat Rouge 540, clearly losing my damn mind. I wasn’t Ranger. I couldn’t track her that way. But I knew this fragrance; I’d smelled it before. She’d been wearing it the night she dropped by with bourbon.

I capped the bottle, returned it to the marble vanity, and surveyed the rest of the bathroom. The suite she’d checked in to was upscale. Modern, but with an old-world feel. Fitting for Hollis’s bank account and way outside the capabilities of my own.

“Anything in here?” Ryder’s voice caught me off guard, and I quickly spun away from the shower and toward my team leader.

“More of her stuff left behind, like she planned to come back. And no aftershave, cologne, or sign of any dude staying with her.”

Ryder remained in the doorway, arms crossed. “Her weapons’ case was in the living room closet. Gideon knew the code. It was empty.” He motioned with his head, a silent command to exit the bathroom.

I followed him into the bedroom I’d already checked out and glanced at the king-sized bed. Hollis’s designer clothes and lingerie were haphazardly thrown on top of it. Her suitcase was open and sitting on the bench at the end of the bed. A knife had been taken to it.

I nudged the bag, doing my best to stay in operator mode to combat the worry piling up inside me, but it was becoming harder and harder to act unaffected about her disappearance. “They were looking for secret compartments.” This was all the evidence we needed that Hollis didn’t go dark on purpose. Gone was any hope I’d clung to that she’d gone off-grid on purpose. “Someone clearly beat us here. Either Hollis told them where to find whatever it is they were looking for, which is doubtful—”

“Or she’s on the run, so they can’t ask her themselves,” Ryder interrupted.

“She’s resourceful. She’d have made contact somehow if she managed to get away from whoever had her.” I dragged the back of my hand up and down my jawline as I ran through scenarios in my head, none of them good. All of them ended with me losing my mind.

Realizing I was staring in a daze at a black silk bra on top of the pile of clothes, I turned toward the doorway, finding Gideon now joining us.

He seemed far too okay, given his sister was missing. It irritated me to no end how unbothered he seemed to be. Ryder would be losing his mind if Audrey had gone off-grid.

“Anything?” I asked when Gideon remained scrutinizing me as if I’d been the one to butcher the Prada.

He straightened, hands sliding into his slacks pockets. Because why wouldn’t he wear a suit on a mission? Why wouldn’t he continue to act like he was going to attend a board meeting instead of rescuing his sister?

Did I care more about this woman than he did, even though she drove me crazy? Or was this family incapable of showing their emotions? Did it get bred out of their DNA?

He finally spoke up. “Not much. She was scheduled to check out tomorrow. I just talked to the hotel manager. She remembers her since she’d checked in to their best room. She said she’d been alone and didn’t recall ever seeing anyone with her in the time she’d been here.”

“I assume you’re having the manager discreetly ask more of the staff about her, too?” I followed up.

Gideon nodded. “My brother also checked hotels throughout the rest of Italy. No rooms booked anywhere else under her name or any of her aliases. It appears Rome was her only scheduled stop.” He gestured to the living room, and Ryder and I followed him out.

Alex and Julian were the only other two in there. Gideon had ordered his cousins, along with Trevor, to chase down leads in the city—talking to contacts their family personally knew.

Julian was tapping away at his wireless keyboard like he was casually cracking into the Pentagon. I mean, hell, maybe he was.

I went to the open balcony doors as my phone buzzed in my pocket. I didn’t know why, but I found myself stupidly hoping it’d be Hollis.

Not her. A group text from Ryder.

I looked up at him sitting on the burgundy velvet couch, and he gave me a subtle nod.

Ryder: Got the dossiers from C. Sending the decrypted files now.

Ryder had put in a request to Secretary Chandler to have Gideon’s and Julian’s operator files sent to us so we’d know a little more about who’d have our sixes out here.