Hidden Tracks | ✓

34 | fresh page on the desk

Now that we knew who Isabella Hill and the man with her really were, our next task was to get them as swiftly as possible.

I still couldn't make sense of why Caldwell and Beaumont would do this, why they'd adopt fake identities and deceive us like this. I didn't understand how they got out of the safe house, or what had really happened at Bon Appétit that fateful night.

The drug deal and smuggling which Caldwell had witnessed didn't fit into the whole narrative, now that we knew Mason and Amélie had been right under our noses all along. The pieces somehow weren't quite fitting to create the perfect picture.

TIA had deployed other agents all over Europe to look for the disguised versions of Caldwell and Beaumont, but so far, they'd found no one. I'd tried calling Isabella's phone but she hadn't picked up.

Miranda held a meeting with Soler, Gupta, Turner and me in the kitchen one day to discuss what we could do.

"Agents, we need to keep on looking for clues in this house. Remember, this is the place Caldwell and Beaumont escaped from. There's a high chance they left something, some kind of giveaway here, which might help us find something. So don't stop searching. Even if it's something tiny, bring it to me."

Gupta and Turner nodded and returned to the room where Kirk and Asimov were being kept. They would take turns searching while the other guarded the two dealers.

I returned to Amélie's room to search once again. I was reminded of the first time I'd stepped into this room, when things had been so different. Little did we know Caldwell and Beaumont would turn out to be completely the opposite of what we'd thought them to be.

Suddenly, I recalled how I'd found Isabella's number stitched into Amélie's trench coat. Why would she stitch her own fake identity's contact into her trench coat? That just didn't make sense.

In a flash, I also remembered something else from my first visit to this room.

The notebook.

Amélie had kept a notebook on the desk, which I'd discovered back then. But it had been blank, so I'd kept it with me but not inspected it any further.

I rushed back to my room to get the notebook from the depths of my bag. I pulled it out after searching for a few seconds and flipped through the pages again.

No, nothing. There was nothing written anywhere.

Disappointed, I headed down to the kitchen to get some snacks. I was starving. Suddenly, Miranda walked in.

"Kaia," she acknowledged me, "Did you find anything?"

I shook my head dejectedly. "No, not yet at least."

She noticed the notebook in my hand. "What's that?"

I looked down at it. "Oh, this is Amélie's notebook. She'd left it on her desk and I'd found it on my first visit to the room all those days back, but it doesn't contain anything. No writing."

She frowned and held out her hand. "Let me see."

I passed it over to her, and she flipped through the pages too, her frown deepening.

She looked up at me. "Why would she randomly leave her notebook on her desk before leaving? She and Caldwell didn't leave much when they got out of this house."

I nodded. "I know, I have the same questions. Also, it's weird that she'd stay in the safe house for so many weeks yet not write a single thing in her notebook. And that too keep it on her desk as if she used it frequently."

Miranda turned the notebook around in her hands. "I just feel there's more here than what meets the eye. Kaia, have you tried security ink?"

I blinked. I hadn't thought of that.