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“Make sure you tell him who has it,” Annie said, tone grim.“Dodge is a computer guy, so maybe he somehow tracked us online to figure out we were looking for the same thing he was.And…”

“What?”Colum asked when she hesitated.

“Dodge…he has a big audience of idiots who would love to hear he’s learned about some hidden secret society conspiracy.”

“The fool probably thinks it’s fiction,” Xavier added.

Annie grimaced.“Which may be the only thing saving the Masters’ Admiralty from being hunted and exposed by a legion of tech and crypto bros.”

ChapterSixteen

Franco: We should start a podcast.

Franco: A PODCAST ABOUT SECRET SOCIETIES.

Colum: Is this a sex thing?You want Juliette to punish you?

Franco: It wasn’t.But it is now.

Colum walked down to his flat beneath the archive to call Eric.If Annie and Xavier thought it strange that he wanted privacy, they didn’t say.Obviously, they knew what he was going to tell Eric regarding the investigation.

However, there was something else he needed to say that he didn’t want them to overhear.

Once he was in the flat, he walked over to his rarely used couch.Since he spent most of his waking hours in the actual archive, the furniture here still looked like new.Well, used-new, considering he’d bought it all from a secondhand store.

He FaceTimed Eric and while he waited for the other man to answer, he mentally prepared himself for the coming conversation.The topic he planned to bring up would shove the two of them into that realm of emotions they were both so careful to avoid.

“You okay?”Eric asked gruffly, the question his standard greeting whenever Colum called.Probably because Colum hated talking on the phone, so he only did it when there was a problem or because it was necessary.

Eric was in his office at Triskelion Castle, seated at his desk.Colum glanced at the window behind him and saw the sheets of rain trickling down the glass.

“Another lovely day on the Isle of Man, I see,” he mused.

Eric didn’t spare a look behind him, shrugging.“If it was sunny, I’d have to do cardio.”

“Don’t you have a treadmill?”

“Shhh, or Regina will hear you.”

The tips of Colum’s lips twitched upward.He knew Eric was trying to make him laugh, make him smile.

“Did you just call to talk about the weather?”

Colum shook his head.

“Are you sitting in your flat?”Eric asked.“Where are the other two?”

“I left them up in the archive working.We’re back in Dublin,” he said, though he knew Eric was already aware of that.There were still Spartan Guards protecting the archive, and they reported back to the fleet admiral regularly.

“Since you’re calling, can I assume you’ve found another part of the manuscript?”

“We did,” Colum replied.Annie and Xavier were currently re-reading it, just in case they’d missed something or were wrong about where the next—and hopefully, final—piece was.“Xavier had a hunch that part of the manuscript might be with Wilde’s first love and trinity wife, Florence Balcombe, and he was right.”

“A hunch, huh?Sounds like solid investigating.”

This time, Colum’s grin was full-fledged.“Xavier thinks like Oscar.”

Eric smirked.“Like some sort of tortured soul mind meld?”