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Fred approached the priest, taking soft steps on the tiled floor. He hated the sound of his heels hitting the tile. The echoing of heels on tiled floors only brought terrible memories for him. It reminded him of the hospital his mother died in.

“May I help you?” asked the man.

“I’m not sure you can do anything, Father, but if you’ll allow me to hide here while I call for help, that would be wonderful.”

“Oh, dear,” he said, staring at him. “Are you in danger? Should I call the police?”

“I’m not sure that I can trust the police, sir. I just need a phone that I can call my father and perhaps someone else who might help.”

“Of course, right this way,” he said, waving toward his office. He nodded at the old desk phone and smiled. “I guess some things are good to hold onto.”

Fred nodded, dialing the number that he’d memorized for Tillie. He wasn’t sure who she really was or who the men were that came to rescue her, but he knew for certain they could help. She didn’t answer, so he left a voicemail and then called his father.

“Father? Yes, I’m alright.”

He spoke to his father for nearly twenty minutes and then turned to see the priest standing nervously at the door.

“Is everything alright?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. There are several men upstairs asking about you. When I said you weren’t here, they insisted that you were and said to tell you that Tillie sent them.”

He pushed past the priest, taking a chance that it was Tillie’s friends. When he peeked into the church, he was relieved to see the faces of Mav, Saint, Pax, Brax, and Leo, along with a few other men.

“Oh, my goodness,” he said with relief. “I’m so happy that it’s really you.”

“We need to get you out of here,” said Leo. “We know that someone is looking for you, and we’re trying to figure out who it might be.”

“What about Jewel and Gemma?” he asked, following the men.

“We’re trying to figure it out now. When we landed, we discovered that Jewel contacted your father. We have no idea where Gemma is located. What happened?” asked Saint, pushing him toward the door.

“I just knew that someone was following me, and I started to panic. Tillie and I spoke, and I knew that the Gemma and Jewel were missing, or I thought they were. The only thing I could think of was coming here. It’s the church that my father was baptized in as a child before he and his parents returned to Germany. ”

“It was smart of you to come in here. Fred,” smirked Leo.

“Oh. So, you know that I’m not Brad,” he smiled.

“We know,” said Mav. “We wish we would have known sooner. Our team leaders have spoken to your father, and he’ll be anxious to hear that you’re okay.”

“He asked me not to go on this last part of the trip. He said he just had a feeling,” he said, shaking his head. “I thought he was being an old man. Dramatic. I guess he knew something might happen.”

“Any clue who was following you?” asked Pax.

“None. I just knew that every time I turned around, someone was there in a denim jacket. That wouldn’t have alerted me, except that it’s ninety degrees outside today. Who wears a denim jacket walking around the city in ninety-degree weather?”

“That’s a good question,” said Mav. He opened the door to the church and looked up and down the street.

He didn’t see anyone, especially not anyone in a denim jacket.

They pushed him toward the vehicle, surrounding him as they shoved him into the backseat.

When they pulled away from the church, he smiled at the men.

“I guess I can assume that you’re not just regular friends of Tillie’s.”

“You can assume that,” nodded Leo. “Tillie and I are dating. Hopefully, we’ll be married soon. We all work together and run a security agency.”

“Definitely making more sense now,” he said, nodding.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” said Pax, “is there something you’ve been working on or something that you saw while overseas that might cause someone to come after you?”

“The obvious is my father’s wealth.”

“Not yours?” asked Mav, looking in the rear-view mirror.

“The wealth is technically my father’s until he passes.

I mean, I have my own money, my own wealth, but the titles, the property, the home is my father’s for right now.

As for seeing something while working in the field, it could have been anything.

I’d been working in Laos for five months before this assignment.

“My father wasn’t happy about me wanting to do this, but I just felt as though I needed to contribute to the world beyond just funds. Plus, if I was supposed to take over the agency one day, I wanted to know what it was like to be a volunteer.”

“I think that’s admirable,” said Leo. He looked at the others, then back at Fred. “Laos can be a dangerous place. What were you doing there?”

“Oh, I was actually working at Vat Phou. There was asanctuaryon the site dating all the way back to prehistoric times. The first megalithic stone structures had been built probably as early as the second centuryBCE. There are these two stone cells with carvings of a crocodile, serpent stairs, and several platforms that we think were used as offering platforms.”

“Well, as fascinating as that sounds,” grinned Brax, “why were you there?”

“Oh, sorry. We were working on restoration and archaeology digs. Our agency provides funding and dig-site help for archaeological digs. It’s really exciting. Several key pieces from the site went missing recently, so we were hoping to prevent that from happening in the future.”

“How?” frowned Leo.

“I’m not sure. I wasn’t part of the security team. I was just digging,” he smiled. “You’d be surprised how therapeutic a good dig in the dirt can be.”

“Oh, we know,” grinned Pax. “If you were enjoying the work, why did you choose to leave and go to Botswana?”

“They closed down the site for volunteers. They were only going to use government-appointed volunteers. So, I asked my father to find me something new, and he did.” Leo turned to face Fred, then looked at the others.

“Fred, I’m not sure what you saw there or what was discovered, but I think you found something that others didn’t want you to see.”