The Sunstone Brooch : Time Travel Romance by Katherine Logan (i am reading a book TXT) 📕

minute later, David and Paul entered through the stainless steel and white kitchen, which looked too sanitized for Elliott’s taste.

“Dr. Fraser,” Paul said. “I just told David that JC’s not here. He was supposed to call you and Ms. Montgomery. I guess he didn’t.”

“We need to talk. Let’s go into his office.” Elliott led the way and sat down in the desk chair but didn’t pull it up to the desk. He casually straightened the knife-edge crease on his trousers. “Have a seat, please.”

Paul showed no fear or alarm. He sat and crossed his legs while David propped a hip on the edge of the desk. Tavis positioned himself between Paul and the door. That didn’t seem to bother Paul, either. Elliott sensed Paul had been expecting them, or at the very least, he wasn’t surprised they were there.

So what’s the game?

“Where’s James Cullen?” Elliott asked.

“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me where he was going.”

“If ye don’t know where he is, what do ye know about his whereabouts?”

“He went on a reenactment of some sort. He asked me to find clothes from the late nineteenth century. I did, and this morning I dropped him off at the stables in Maryland. He was taking Mercury with him.”

“Where was the reenactment?”

“He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.”

“Was he riding to the reenactment on horseback?” David asked.

“No, he had a friend with a horse trailer picking him up.”

“JC has a horse trailer. Why didn’t he take his?” Tavis asked.

Paul turned and looked at Tavis. “His trailer carries only one horse.”

“We know James Cullen went to Cambridge,” Elliott said. “How’d he get there?”

Paul swiveled in his chair, directing his answer to Elliott. “He flew up and back.”

“Did he drive to the airport, or did ye take him?” David asked.

This time, Paul didn’t take his gaze off Elliott. “I took him and picked him up.”

“How many conversations did you have with JC between the time you picked him up from the airport until you dropped him off at the stables?” Tavis asked.

Paul shot his cuffs but didn’t look back at Tavis. Instead, he looked at Elliott. “I had three brief conversations with JC after he returned from an overnight in Cambridge. I picked him up from the airport yesterday morning around ten o’clock and brought him here. We had another conversation later in the day before I went to the computer lab at Georgetown. Our last conversation was this morning when I took him to the stables.”

“What’d he do when he got home yesterday?” Tavis asked.

Paul continued focusing his attention on Elliott. “He worked in here for a while and then went to the office. You should call Becky to find out if he said anything to her. I know he had several reports to write.”

“Reports about what and to whom?” Elliott asked.

“He traveled to Asia for a client, and he had to write a summary of the trip, plus he was behind in writing status reports for other cases.”

Elliott looked down and picked at his thumbnail.

So James Cullen went to Asia. Did he learn something about the brooches that scared him? Unlikely, but possible. Or maybe he found a brooch.

If his son had picked up information about the stones or the Illuminati, it made sense that he didn’t want to involve the family. Hadn’t Elliott just done the same thing?

He looked up, glared at Paul, then tempered it with a slight smile. “Lad, we don’t have time to screw around. I have to find James Cullen now. I believe he’s in serious trouble, and I believe ye know where he is. I’ll give ye sixty seconds to tell us.”

“Are you threatening me?” Paul asked.

“We’ll do whatever we have to do,” David said.

“James Cullen wouldn’t like coming home to a blood-splattered office,” Paul said in a cocky tone. Then he spread his arms, palms up, and raised his eyebrow in a gesture of openness. “Here’s the deal—”

“No deal,” David said in a growly voice.

Paul didn’t react.

Elliott had never seen anyone seemingly so relaxed around David when he cloaked himself in his Major McBain attitude. If Paul was in the CIA, too, then he knew how to handle himself during interrogations.

Elliott’s frustration pulsed through him, sharpening his movements when he shot to his feet and slapped both palms on top of the desk, “Where the hell is my son?”

The fierceness of Elliott’s demand didn’t seem to rattle Paul. He calmly said, “JC didn’t tell me where he was going. If he wanted me to know, he would have. Otherwise, I don’t press him for information. That’s our arrangement.”

At that moment, a memory pinged in Elliott’s brain, and he recalled a morning years earlier when James Cullen discovered a Morse code message hidden in a portrait of Aunt Kit. The painting hung in the Welcome Center at Montgomery Winery in Napa.

Finding that message sent the entire family on a dangerous rescue mission. Ever since then, James Cullen had challenged his family to find hidden messages in the simplest of things. A picture out of place, a clock set to the wrong time, bric-a-brac upside down. The clues had become more subtle and harder to find as he grew up, but he continued to leave at least one every time he came home for a visit.

Wherever he is, he would have left clues to his whereabouts. I’m sure of it.

“Since James Cullen was a teenager, he’s left clues for us in the placement of items or bric-a-brac, or by turning an item upside down or sideways. If I’m going to find my son, I have to know what clues he left behind. The clues aren’t for ye, Paul. They’re for me.”

Paul’s eyebrow lifted along with one side of his mouth. “I found five. Do you mind if I stand?”

Elliott gestured his permission.

Paul walked over to the bookcase. “When I returned from the stables, I came in here to see if JC left me any instructions to take care of business while he was gone. I noticed four