Pied Piper

7. New Plan

The cyber cafe that was in the hotel was smaller than Kora had thought it would be. There was only room for three computer monitors along a gray toned wall; a coffee bar tucked away into a corner off to the side. At the far right sat someone with a bag of chips and headphones, watching some sort of Netflix drama. The middle computer sat empty with the four of them all clustered in front of the computer on the left. Taehyung stood behind Adelaide in the chair with his arms crossed, flanked on either side by Kora and Eve.

"I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to be searching," said Adelaide. "Are you sure that you don't want to be doing this Taehyung?"

"I don't know how to use it," he said. "It'll be faster if you type it in."

"What is the name of the family then?" asked Adelaide.

"Montera," he said as he spelled it out for Adelaide, watching her type it in.

Kora couldn't help but to notice a few people that were at the counter ordering a coffee shooting a glance Taehyung's way to check him out. Taehyung was oblivious though. His eyes were focused on all of the results that Google had just popped up on the screen.

"Lets see..." said Adelaide as she started to scroll through the choices that had popped up. Taehyung paused her scrolling by placing a hand on her shoulder, leaning to point out one of the blue links.

Kora looked at the link that he pointed out.

'Fire Kills Family Of Seven'

Kora looked over at Taehyung to see his face pale as Adelaide clicked the link. As she did, pictures popped up of a family home in the forest that was nothing more than a pile of ash; yellow police tape surrounding it.

"It says that the Montera daughters that lived at the house were all found murdered two years ago," said Adelaide as she began to skim through the article. "No one was able to establish a motive, and police ruled it as an accidental fire that caused their death since they lived so isolated from the rest of the world."

"It doesn't mention anything about six men?"

"No," said Adelaide.

"May I look?"

Adelaide nodded, pushing back from the chair to get up. Taehyung immediately sat in the chair, clicking on the series of crime scene photos attached to the news article. Adelaide moved to stand beside Kora as she watched him carefully studying each of the crime scene photos, obviously looking for something that was overlooked.

"This wasn't an accident," muttered Taehyung under his breath as his eyes scanned the photos.

"What happened then?" asked Kora.

"I'm not sure," he said, "But they shouldn't have been killed. They all had guardians. All of them except the one I was destined to protect of course, but even then the others would have watched out for her."

Kora didn't know what that feeling was that started to blossom in her chest when she heard him say that. She knew he had mentioned that he had someone he was set to protect before, but the thought of him having to protect another woman seemed to make a feeling take up residence inside of her that she couldn't quite place yet.

A sigh of frustration left his lips as he pushed back from the computer, rolling the chair a bit into Adelaide who had stood in his spot. He muttered a quick 'sorry' under his breath as he stood up, pacing out of the cyber cafe and out the door.

"Where's he going?" asked Adelaide.

"I'll go see," said Kora as she moved to leave the room before Eve or Adelaide could say anything.