“What the bloody hell, Seph?” Ben’s gaze bounced between Sephora and Padraig wildly, like a ball kicked between two teenage futbol players. “Someone blew up the girl’s house? How did no one hear about this?”

Their waitress swooped over with a towel to clean up the mess. Ben snatched the towel from her hand. “We’ve got it,” he snapped her. “Bring me another in five minutes and make yourself unseen until then.”

The girl went white and retreated. Sephora winced and reached for the towel.

“You didn’t need to—”

He relinquished the towel but not his anger. “Why didn’t it hit the newsnets?”

“Who the hell knows,” Padraig growled, glaring at his own glass for a moment before he watched Ben mop up the mess of whiskey and shattered glass from the tabletop. “Far be it for me to say, but probably conglom suppression.”

“Is she still here?” Ben asked, freezing in the midst of cleaning up the mess. “Is she somewhere safe?”

Sephora glanced at Padraig, brow arching in question. Padraig exhaled quietly, leaning back in his chair.

“She left on a transport for E-557 last week.”

“The Foundation? You must be desperate.”

Sephora put her hand on her estranged husband’s arm. “They may have finally gotten things right, Ben. They might be our only hope—the last refuge of the lost and desperate, of the ones who have nothing left to believe in.”

Stay tuned next week for the continuation of Chapter 43…