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Saint winced. "We put off Gabe for now. But you will be in protective custody if you need to be."
My eyes went wide. "Son of a bitch."
"Yeah. But you got a temporary reprieve, so let's enjoy it. We should get back. Let the nurse poke Gemma some more and then we can all make some decisions about what we're going to do."
Gemma gave me another squeeze. "All right, go. Come back and then tell me what the fuck is going on, yeah?"
"Apparently, my mother took something important from someone and hid it somewhere only I could possibly know about. I have to go through her papers to see if I can determine where that is."
"Oh, I'm your partner in crime in this. I should be coming with you."
"I know. But I think I narrowly escaped this place myself. You might have to stay until you're fully checked out. And then until you agree to some kind of protective security detail."
Gemma smirked at the man in the corner. "Yeah, I'm not entirely opposed to my current security detail."
I laughed with a snort. "Oh God, same old Gemma. I love you. I'll see you later, okay?"
She kept checking out her guard, who wasn't quite sure what to do with that. He just stared at her bemusedly.
It took another thirty minutes to leave the freaking compound, security checkpoints, eye scanners, face scanners, they had all my information. I couldn't even argue with them because they'd taken half of it while I was knocked the fuck out. By the time we returned back to the penthouse, I was completely knackered. I knew it was important to look for information, but all I wanted to do was crawl into bed.
With Saint.
Hell, I didn't even know if that was on the table right now. I'd negotiated to come and get the papers, but we needed to go through them and we had no time.
Saint didn't even break his stride, just marched toward the kitchen. "I'll put coffee on."
"Oh my God, you're a life saver."
"I like to pride myself in knowing what you need."
My thighs clenched together as my core pulsed.
Oh, he knows what you need.
Going through the papers wastedious. There were all these little notes and tags in the margins, but I didn't understand what any of them meant. And for that matter, neither did Saint. It wasn't some kind of like encryption code or something that was central to Rogues. It was something else.
Finally, in the corner of one of the pages, there was a photo I didn't recognize. This was something we'd done when I was a kid. Cut out photos of all the places in the world we wanted to visit. Some places we had, and some places we didn’t make it to before she disappeared.
There were all kinds of places that had been highlighted for her. One was Jamaica. That's where her dad was from. The other had been Ghana, where her mother was from. We’d gone to both when I was very young, but she wanted to take me back to those places so badly. I frowned when I noticed there was a photo of Zagreb, photos of Scotland, Toronto, and Cape Town. Some of these places we'd been to, but as I examined the photo from Ghana, I noticed in the corner of the paper there was a set of numbers.
"Hey, do you know what these numbers mean?"
Saint leaned over my shoulder, and the scent of sandalwood cocooned me, tempting me, drawing me in, and I just wanted to nuzzle. But now was not the time for nuzzling. "I don't know for sure, but they look like coordinates. Hold on, let's put them in."
Saint pulled out his phone and typed in them quickly. Thanks to Google Maps, we got the exact location. A house in the core of Ghana. In the Countenance neighborhood. I’d seen photos of that place before. Where had I seen those photos? "I haven't been there, but I've seen pictures of that place. What is it?"
Saint peered at his phone. "From the looks of it, it's just a house. It's in a residential area from what I can tell. This doesn't look like a business."
The lullaby Magda sang pricked in the back of my mind.
For the girl to shine, even she must be pruned. For even a diamond began as coal.
When it's time to go home, you will know. When it's time to go home, you will know. And then you will be returned home with open arms.
I thought it meant the house in Zagreb where she'd clearly wanted me to go. She’d bought the house for me. But what if she meant this place? I checked the photo of Jamaica to see if there were any coordinates on the back. Then I checked the one from Zagreb. No. Just the one of Ghana. "I think I might know where that puzzle box is."
CHAPTER 38
