Page 13 of Never the Same

“What language is that?” Because I had a damn-good ear for languages and didn’t recognize it.

Gideon’s scowl, or whatever the hell broody look he’d outmastered me at—which was saying a lot—landed hard. “Aramaic.”

“I thought that language was dead.” Alex scrutinized me, waiting for answers I happened to have.

“It’s a Galilean dialect. Mostly replaced by Arabic over the centuries, but it’s still in use. Borderline extinct, though.” I really did know a little too much about way too much.

Maybe I didn’t need puzzles after all since my brain was already fairly active with how much reading I’d done all my life. Or maybe my genes would get the best of me no matter what, so there was truly no magical prevention to keep my memory intact as I aged.

“Care to share why you were speaking in that language, and, from the sounds of it, so passionately?” Ryder stood, swiveling his hat backward as if ready to throw down if he heard something he didn’t like.

The look exchanged between Julian and Gideon, followed by their rapid back-and-forth in Aramaic again, didn’t exactly do wonders for building trust.

“We’re here to help. We can’t do that if you don’t tell us what’s going on,” Alex reminded them.

“Someone rewrote Rome’s digital history from the moment Hollis left the airport after her arrival up until two hours after her tracker went dark,” Julian shared in a hesitant tone.

“Remember what I said back in Charleston?” Gideon asked, eyes on me. “Some things that die stay dead. Well, someone nuked half of Rome’s CCTV grid. Wiped it totally out, and it’s not coming back. Including the feeds from the hotel.” He let that information sit for a few seconds before continuing. “Then they patched in archived footage to mask the loss, probably before anyone knew it was missing.”

I had no idea how they even knew that or could verify it, but they clearly weren’t guessing. “And who could pull that off?”

“Only two people on the planet,” Julian said grimly. “You’re looking at one, and a thief who stole my source code is the other.”

“I assume you have enough firewalls on your laptop to make the Pentagon jealous,” Alex said, and that was undoubtedly not an exaggeration. “So how’d they steal it?”

“There’s no way anyone hacked my hardware to get to my program. It’s just not possible. Someone had to have gotten close enough to my laptop to mirror it with some pretty powerful tech. A device more advanced than anything MI6 or the CIA have.”

“Since it seems much of the world thinks you’re dead,” Alex spoke up, “I take it you don’t hang out with the living all that often.”

“I keep my friend circle the size of a dot. Family and a few other teammates only. Even that’s pushing it, which means someone I trust mirrored my laptop.”

“Someone you trust,” I said bitterly. “The kind of person that’d know about your trackers and the chain.”

Gideon kept his eyes tight on his brother. “I can think of someone who was at your place in Singapore last month that has the ability to do this.”

“Not possible,” Julian shot back. “He’d never hurt Hollis, and you know that.”

“Who the hell are you talking about?” I demanded.

Julian’s eyes slowly cut my way as he revealed, “Tristan.” He shook his head while tacking on, “Our half brother.”

Another brother? I immediately pivoted, attention shooting to Ryder in question. How come we don’t know about him? We’d been operating under the assumption there were just the four siblings: Hollis, Julian, Gideon, and Lyra.

Now I couldn’t help but think back to Gideon’s comment from yesterday in Charleston. He’d said younger brother when referring to Julian. Most people didn’t add qualifiers unless they had more than one, and it hadn’t dawned on me until this very moment.

“Hollis never told Audrey about a third brother,” Alex said, breaking through the quiet. “And there’s no mention of a Tristan in our files.”

I didn’t miss the daggers Gideon was shooting Julian. We weren’t part of their secret society, so he clearly wasn’t a fan of us knowing about their fifth sibling. Too late now.

“We didn’t know he was our brother until later in life.” Gideon peered at Ryder, clearly knowing his backstory with his sister, assuming he could relate.

Doubtful the circumstances were remotely the same.

“What if Tristan was the one Hollis was meeting up with, and she lied to Audrey because Audrey doesn’t know about this half brother yet?” Alex suggested when everyone remained quiet—but that wouldn’t explain why Tristan would steal Julian’s program and use it to alter the CCTV footage in Rome.

“Do you think it’s possible Hollis was working with Tristan?” I asked.

Before I could continue with my theory, Julian yanked the laptop toward him. “Her tracker just went active.”