Chapter 370
I ignored Brandon and honed in on the conversation that had caught my attention right before I headed over. It all unfolded in front of me. I could clearly see what happened, and a different sort of tingle shot up my arms as I realized I knew where Holland had been hiding.
“All right, everyone, let’s go ahead and get started.” Aaron has a way of quieting a crowd, and since most of the people present probably had no idea he was fixed, the room went silent instantaneously.
I glanced around the table, seeing who had snuck in that I had missed and realized I was standing in front of Jamie’s chair. I muttered an apology and scooted over, but he just patted me on the shoulder and sat down next to me as I slid my papers over one spot and had a seat next to Brandon. On his other side was Christian and then Aurora and Meagan. Alex was sitting on the far end across from Aaron, which meant he had inadvertently displaced Hannah, who was now sitting next to Elliott. My sister was across from Jamie, and she was chewing her cuticle, something she did when she was worried. I would’ve kicked her under the table to get her to stop if my legs were a little longer.
“What are all of those papers?” Christian asked me. I couldn’t blame him for being curious. The whole thing was such a mess. This close to Aaron’s papers—which were stacked neatly in front of him, unlike my mess—it looked like a copier room had exploded.
“We’ll get to that,” Aaron replied calmly. It was so nice to see him back to his former state. “This meeting is probably going to be a bit longer than usual. We have a lot to talk about, and there are a lot of moving parts Cadence and I are trying to keep straight, so if you guys will just bear with us, we’ll tackle one situation at a time and decide what our next best step is.”
“Does that mean we’re taking another step soon?” Aurora asked. We all turned and looked at her for a moment; it wasn’t like her to be rude. Her face went a shade slightly lighter than her hair, and she realized she’d messed up. “Sorry.”
“No, that’s okay,” Aaron replied. “I know we’ve been dragging our feet a little bit—I’ve been dragging my feet a lot lately. Yes, that’s about to be remedied.” He gave her a reassuring smile, and Aurora nodded, probably still wishing she hadn’t said anything, but at least he hadn’t yelled at her. He might’ve if he still had that gunk around his brain. “Cass, do you want to explain what you’ve got in front of you?”
I hadn’t expected to go first, so I wasn’t prepared. In fact, I wasn’t sure I was going to be doing anything other than transporting the papers to Aaron, but maybe he’d noticed I was on to something. He’s very observant like that. “Well,” I began, my eyes locked on the notes in front of me. “I have Mom’s data, and I think it’s pretty obvious what we missed.”
I glanced up and saw that everyone was slightly confused, like they had no idea why my mom had data.
“Communication logs and a map from Melbourne,” Aaron briefly explained, and there were some nods around the table, though plenty of pairs of eyes still looked like they weren’t caught up.
“What is it?” Elliott asked.
I wasn’t sure if he was asking what the logs were or what it was that I’d discovered. Since I didn’t feel like describing what my mom had been working on for the last several hours, I decided it would be better to just tell him what I’d figured out. “If you check back through the communication log, you can see that Becky and Patsy are about to clear a place called Larundel at 2:17, but as soon as Becky makes the call over the IAC, Jeb transmits to her and Patsy that he and Steph had already cleared it.” I was talking super-fast, and I wasn’t sure everyone was keeping up. But Aaron and Cadence nodded at me, and they were the only two that mattered.
“But when you go back over Jeb and Steph’s log,” I continued, “they never noted that they cleared this place. It’s not mentioned at all, and in fact, they are on the other end of the search zone from Larundel. So....” I paused, not quite sure how to word what I thought had happened.
My sister jumped in. “You don’t think they actually searched it at all.”
I shook my head. That’s exactly what I thought—no one had searched it.
“But why would they say they’d done so if they hadn’t?” Alex’s voice caught me off guard, and I turned my eyes in his direction, not sure what to say. I didn’t know what he was aware of concerning Holland or if he knew how she was capable of interfering with our communications.
While I was still trying to formulate a complete sentence, Jamie replied. “Our IACs have been wacky. We know Holland can mess with them. So I think Cass is saying she thinks that message didn’t actually come from Jeb.”
That was exactly what I was trying to say. Eventually, my mouth was working again. “Right. I think that was Holland messing with the IACs, and I think it hasn’t come back up again because Jeb and Steph don’t even know that Becky and Patsy thought they’d cleared it.”
“And if fake Jeb told her it had been cleared already, did Becky even bother to tell them she and Patsy were not going in after all?” Hannah asked me from the far end of the table.
I shook my head. “No, she just said, ‘Affirmative,’ and there’s a good chance Jeb didn’t receive that transmission if Holland was intentionally screwing around with them. So, whatever that place is, I think we need to look at it.”
There was another round of nods before Christian’s annoying voice cut through my reverie of being correct. “You don’t know what it is?”
I turned to look across Brandon at him and thought his eyes looked a little more beady than usual. “Should I?” I asked, pressing my lips together so more didn’t come out. I didn’t need to embarrass myself by getting into it with Christian—again.
A snarky smile spread across his face. “I would’ve thought you’d checked, what with your dream and all.”
Taking a deep breath, I attempted to turn my attitude down, though when I opened my mouth, some of it still came out. “Well, I went through this stuff a minute ago and haven’t had much of a chance to do anything else.” I flashed him a fake smile that did not show my fangs, even though I wouldn’t have minded if they’d popped out, and felt Jamie’s foot nudge against mine beneath the table. “What is it?” That sounded like a calm inquiry—I decided.
