Sapphire Flames

Chapter 9

I woke up because the little black dog licked my nose. I hugged her to me, turned on my side, and tried to steal more sleep, but my alarm went off and dragged me out of bed.

The little dog spun in circles at my feet, ridiculously excited that I was conscious. I took a step toward the bathroom and my foot landed in a puddle of cold pee. Awesome.

I hopped to the bathroom on one foot.

Looking at all the male Primes yesterday had gotten me nothing except a pounding headache. I would’ve accomplished more cold-calling random Houses and demanding to know if their Primes had sired any bastards with freaky powers.

After I finished my fruitless search, I spent an hour researching Alessandro. I learned the same things I already knew. Italian count, Antistasi Prime, old family, wealthy, handsome, three broken engagements, no long-term relationships. The shield he presented to the public was bulletproof.

I would’ve searched more, but the documents from Sabrian landed in my inbox. The good news was that Sabrian was confident that Celia’s attack would be classified by the authorities as House warfare or a metamorphosis mage going berserk. The bad news was that the House unit of Houston PD wasn’t staffed with idiots. The moment our packet of documents hit, the cops would realize that Celia attacked me while I was in a car with a man matching the description of the guy who had knifed Conway.

I spent the next few hours carefully reading the documents and then writing two versions of a detailed statement, one with Alessandro in it and the other without. In version number two, I was driving “a vehicle” all by my lonesome. I emailed everything back to Sabrian and instructed her to use her discretion. She told me she would sit on it until she had no choice.

All of that had taken me the entire afternoon and most of the evening. By the time I finished, the sun had set and the little dog had declared victory over the rubber hamburger. Just before dinner I went up to my room “for a minute” because I needed to clear my head, collapsed on my bed, and passed out. And my family apparently let me sleep the whole time because I was still wearing my T-shirt and sweatpants from yesterday. My career as a respected and admired, all-important Head of the House was clearly on the upswing. Not.

I looked like death. My hip hurt. And the worst part of all of this, I had slept for thirteen hours and I was still tired.

I washed my foot in the sink and lifted my shirt and pulled down my sweatpants to look at my hip.

Oh God.

My whole side from the waist down all the way to mid-thigh was black and blue. I poked my thigh and jerked my finger away. Ouch. The bruising was real, and not just a funny prank perpetrated while I was asleep.

The great detective Catalina Baylor. When confronted with undeniable empirical evidence, perform a field test anyway.

I took the little dog outside, where she sat on her butt and stared at me adoringly for ten minutes. Clearly, she had no pee left because she’d emptied her bladder on my floor. I let her back inside, zombie-staggered into the kitchen, mumbled good morning at Mom, made myself a cup of tea, and escaped into my office.

My inbox presented me with an email from Sabrian acknowledging the receipt of the documents I had couriered over yesterday. The rest was bills. I drank my tea and stared at them in the hopes they would disappear.

Day three of the investigation, and still no Halle.

I dialed Bug’s number.

Bug answered on the first ring. “I lost him yesterday and I don’t have him yet.”

“Never mind Alessandro. I need another favor, but it’s complicated, so it might be better if I explain in person. Can I visit you?”

There was a slight pause. I had planned to call him about this yesterday, but too many things had happened. Face-planting on my bed was so not the plan. I hadn’t even taken any of the doggie things to my room.

I should feed the dog. She was probably starving. I got up and filled a dish with dog food. How much food would a dog of this size need . . .

“Bug?”

“Yeah.”

Yeah what? Yeah, you can visit, or yeah, I’m still here and thinking about it?

I set the dish down and the dog dove into it. Apparently, she needed all the food.

Bug still hadn’t said anything. “When would be a good time?”

“Now would be okay.”

“Are you at Rogan’s?”

“Kind of.”

“What do you mean ‘kind of’?”

There was another pause.

Bug sighed. “I’m at the old HQ across the street.”

Wait, what? “Across the street from me?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be right there.”

I grabbed my phone and went to the door. The black dog licked her empty bowl, picked up her rubber hamburger, and followed me.

“I’m going to call you Shadow.”

Shadow wagged her tail.

I walked into bright sunshine, and Shadow and I crossed the street to the old industrial building. Three years ago, when Nevada and Rogan were in the middle of trying to save Houston, my paranoid brother-in-law bought all the buildings around the warehouse in an effort to make us safe. We had since bought some of them back from him, but this one was still his. It housed a secondary HQ, and when Nevada and Rogan came to visit us, they stayed in the apartment on the top floor.

The metal door was unlocked. I crossed the empty bottom floor, which once served as the motor pool for Rogan’s private army, climbed the metal staircase, heroically trying not to wince and failing, and emerged on the second floor. A massive computer station dominated the space, a gathering of servers and workstations, connected to nine large monitors arranged in a three-by-three grid on a wire cage. Behind the screens lay a small living space, with two couches on the right and a kitchen on the left. A tower of pizza boxes flanked by a brigade of empty Mello Yello bottles filled the kitchen island.

In front of the screens, perched in a rolling chair, sat Bug. Thin and wiry, Bug was never still, so much so that he seemed to almost vibrate, as if his body was struggling to contain the nervous energy within. Bug had enlisted in the Air Force as soon as he turned eighteen, and while he was in, the military offered him a deal: they would pay him an outrageous bonus and in return he would allow them to augment him. A specialist mage had reached into the arcane realm, pulled out a swarm of magical insects, and implanted them into Bug.

Nobody understood how swarms worked or the exact nature of their implantation. Most people didn’t survive the procedure. Those who did gained an ability to process visual information and sometimes computer code at superhuman speeds. They burned bright and died fast. The normal life expectancy for a swarmer was about two years. That’s why the military offered them a truckload of money. It was essentially a delayed suicide.

Somehow Bug survived. When Nevada first met him, he was an obsessed, manic wreck. Rogan was able to steady him through a cocktail of carefully curated medication and a stable environment, and usually he could almost pass for a normal person.

Right now, there was nothing normal about him. His brown hair stuck out at odd angles. His rumpled T-shirt, decorated with pizza stains of various shapes and ages, hung on his slight frame. His movements were quick and jittery, the agitation rolling off him in spasmodic waves.

“How long have you been here?”

Bug glanced at the kitchen island. “Four days.”

“Did you have to count the pizza boxes?”

“Yes.”

He had been here since Rogan and Nevada left for New York before traveling on to Spain for the funeral.

“Why didn’t you stay on base?”

Rogan’s estate contained a fully functional compound, complete with a barracks, commissary, gym, and everything else a small army would need to stay sharp. He used to just run everything from his enormous house, but after getting married, he and Nevada wanted privacy.

“There’s nobody on base,” Bug said. “It’s the holidays. With the Major gone, there’s only a skeleton crew protecting the house. I got lonely. And your security sucks. I’ve been here for half a week and they didn’t notice. People deliver pizza to the door downstairs and nobody asked why.”

For a second, I didn’t know what I wanted more, to hug Bug or to scream in Abarca’s face.

“No more pizza,” I told him.

“What are you, the pizza police?”

“You’re going to come home with me and you’re going to have a normal dinner. With vegetables.”

“I have mushrooms and tomato sauce on pizza. Add the meat, bread, and cheese and you’ve got all the food groups.”

“Tomato is a berry, mushrooms are a fungus, and that isn’t cheese, it’s a cheese product. I don’t even know if it can be classified as dairy. You’re going to have a nice dinner, and you’re going to bring your laundry, and you’re going to take a long shower.”

Bug tried to sniff his armpit and jerked his head away. He looked at me. “There will be people there.”

“You know everybody, and everybody likes you. You and Bern are friends. The only new people are Runa and Ragnar, and they’re nice.”

Bug pondered it.

“You can play with my new dog.”

Bug looked at Shadow. Shadow wagged her tail.

“Is it too soon?” Bug asked.

It was clearly a rhetorical question, so I didn’t answer. Bug’s old French bulldog mix, Napoleon, had died a year ago. Bug had rescued him off the street, and Napoleon enjoyed a spoiled, carefree life until time took its inevitable toll.

Bug dug in the desk drawer and fished out an ancient dog biscuit.

“How old is that thing?”

“It’s a Milk Bone. They’re like Twinkies, they don’t go bad.”

Shadow took the bone from his fingers and hid under the couch.

“I’ll come to dinner,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“What do you need?”

I brought him up to speed on Diatheke, Benedict, and the missing two million dollars.

“I need you to go back to Sunday on CCTV and see if you can spot Sigourney leaving Diatheke. Assuming Diatheke didn’t send a hit squad after her to steal the money back, I want to know what she did with it.”

Bug’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “What kind of name is Diatheke anyway?”

“It’s ancient Greek. According to biblical scholars it means a contract, specifically the last disposition of all earthly possessions after death, or a covenant.”

“So like a will?”

“Kind of. It can also mean a business agreement between two parties.”

“Umm. Their name means make your final arrangements, and Sigourney was a poison Prime, and she worked for them . . .”

I raised my hand. “I know what you’re thinking. I’m thinking it too, but I have no proof and I don’t want to jump to any conclusions.”

Bug shrugged and turned to his screens. I went to the kitchen, pulled up the sleeves of my sweatshirt, and attacked the mess on the island.

It took me twenty minutes to bring the kitchen to a state of cleanliness that didn’t send shivers of horror down my spine. I took out three bags of trash and filled the recycling bin halfway. How someone could exist on pizza and Mello Yello alone, I would never know. Once I cleaned up, I settled on the couch with my phone and Shadow.

“Got her,” Bug said finally.

I walked over to stand by him. On the central screen, Sigourney Etterson stood frozen in the process of walking into Diatheke, Ltd. The image was slightly out of focus, but I’d know that red hair anywhere. Judging by the angle, the footage was recorded from across the street.

“Apartment building?”

“Yeah. It’s under construction and the construction crews always have good surveillance. Helps to cut down on material theft. 10:00 a.m. on the dot.” Bug pressed a key and the grainy picture sped up. “She walks in and seventeen minutes later, she’s out.”

On the screen Sigourney emerged into the street, pulling a wheeled suitcase behind her.

“What’s in the bag?!” Bug screamed dramatically.

“Probably the money.”

“I was quoting a movie.”

“You were misquoting a movie.” The movie referenced a box.

“Whatever.”

Sigourney walked to the parking lot and loaded the suitcase into a blue BMW SUV. She climbed into the driver’s seat and drove offscreen.

The eight monitors around the central screen ignited, showing the images of Sigourney’s SUV from various angles and cameras.

“X6 M,” Bug said. “A hundred K, before modifications. Clearly, whatever she did for them paid well.”

“Where is she going?”

“You’ll see.”

The video sped up, changing on the screens as different cameras tracked the SUV through the streets. Finally, it came to a stop before a metal gate. Beyond the gate stretched a long rectangular building with bright yellow doors.

“CubeSmart Self Storage,” Bug said. “They’re all over Houston.”

The view switched, showing a shot of Sigourney’s vehicle from the driver’s side. She rolled down the window, punched a code into the box by the gate, the gate swung open, and she drove in.

“She rented the unit in advance,” I thought out loud.

“Yep. She leaves six minutes later. I can’t see it, but I assume the bag is no longer in the car.”

“Thank you. You’re a wizard.”

Bug turned to me, his eyes shining. “But wait. There’s more.”

The video feed turned blurry as the images flew by.

“Wait for it . . .”

“How can you possibly keep track of anything at that speed?”

“Magic. There it is.”

He pressed a key and the recording slowed to normal speed. A white Jeep Renegade pulled up to the gate. The driver’s-side window slid down and Alessandro’s shockingly handsome face came into view.

“Son of a bitch!” I leaned closer to the screen.

“I know, right? This must be his blend-in-with-the-locals car. I guess his Italian wheels were too flashy. How can that ass clown look so good on a damn surveillance camera? The guy flew in from Sydney, eighteen hours in the air, drove straight from the airport here, and he looks like a million bucks. Two million to be precise.”

“When did he get in?”

“Monday at 8:42 a.m.”

Sigourney was already dead then. A weight dropped off me. It wasn’t that I suspected Alessandro murdered her, but I hadn’t been able to discount that possibility until now.

Bug turned to me. “I have been chasing that shit monkey all over the fucking city. He destroyed three of my drones. He mocked me.”

The top right screen showed a view from above, clearly from a drone. The screen shuddered, the view plunged to the ground, and rose again as someone picked up the fallen drone. Alessandro appeared in the camera, grinned, gave us a thumbs-up, and the screen went black.

“Do you see what I’ve had to put up with? But now, I have redeemed myself. And there is still more.”

Bug dramatically paused.

“Tell me before I explode from anticipation.”

Bug reached over and held his finger above the keyboard. The finger descended in slow motion.

I would strangle him. I swear, the court would understand.

“Bug!”

The finger kept dropping. Bug finally touched the keyboard. The image of the white Jeep Renegade filled the monitor, the nine screens presenting a single picture, like a mosaic.

The street by the Jeep looked eerily familiar.

Oh my God. “Is that our oak?”

“Yes, it is. He’s parked it here, under the carport across from this building, every night since Monday. I checked the feed from your cameras while you waited. He swapped the plates with the cleaning crew truck, and your idiot toy soldiers have been letting him in because the license number is on their approved list. Yesterday he brought them coffee.” Bug opened his eyes as wide as he could. “The calls are coming from inside the house, Catalina!”

I took off running.

The Jeep sat in the carport, its windows so tinted, they bordered on illegal. I peered through the windshield.

Empty.

I tried the doors. Locked.

I crossed the street and headed around the warehouse to Grandma Frida’s motor pool. Shadow trotted after me.

Grandma poked her head out of a familiar-looking Guardian. Its twin sat on the left, with its doors open. I walked to the tool bench, grabbed the largest flathead screwdriver on it, took the reciprocating saw from the wall, and walked out.

“Safety glasses, Catalina!”

I did a one-eighty, snagged the safety goggles off a peg on the tool wall, and kept going.

“Catalina,” Grandma Frida called out behind me. “When you’re done cutting up the body, call me. I’ll help you hide it.”

I turned and looked at her.

Grandma flexed her arm. “Ride or die.”

I squinted at her. “I’m still mad at you for ratting me out.”

“You looked like death warmed over,” Grandma said. “You may be the Head of House Baylor, but you’re still my granddaughter and I won’t be taking any of your bullshit.”

“How is my sweater coming along, Grandma? Have you knitted more than two inches yet?”

Grandma Frida gave me the Look of Death.

I walked back to the Jeep and stabbed the two tires on the driver’s side. The sound of the air hissing out was very satisfying. Shadow jumped back and hid behind the low stone wall bordering the oak. I put the safety glasses on and jammed the screwdriver into the driver’s-side window. It cracked with a loud crunch but held. That’s what I thought. Laminated glass.

Car windows came in two types, tempered and laminated. Tempered glass shattered into dull pieces. Laminated glass was made by sandwiching a layer of plastic between two panes of glass. Traditional escape tools did nothing to it. The Jeep was new enough to have all its windows laminated.

I pictured Alessandro’s smirking face and stabbed the crack in the window. Stab, stab, stab. The glass finally gave, and I slid the blade of the saw into the small hole I had made.

Abarca came out of the mess hall down the street and zeroed in on me.

Keep going. Don’t see me, don’t talk to me. I have a screwdriver, and I’m not afraid to use it.

I turned the saw on. The blade chewed through glass and plastic. Abarca wandered over and stood next to me.

“Would you like some help?”

Yes, I’d like some help. I’d like you to help me understand how an Antistasi Prime has been driving in and out of our territory, parking his car fifty feet from our front door, and your elite security force, which had this place locked down so tight “not even a squirrel” could get through, has been letting him in and out and accepting his coffee. Help me understand that. “No.”

Shadow poked her head from behind the wall and barked. For a small dog, she sounded surprisingly fierce.

Abarca ignored her. “I realize this might not be the best time to discuss this, but it can’t wait.”

“I’m listening.” Ask me why I’m cutting the window out of this car. Ask me whose car this is. Go ahead, I dare you.

He raised his voice, trying to be heard over the dry grinding of the saw. “As you know, we had to let Lopez and Walton go. It was a difficult decision, but ultimately it was for the best.”

He seemed to have forgotten that I was in the room when Mom told him to fire those two or pack his bags. He didn’t have to make any decisions, just follow orders.

“We need to fill those two open slots as soon as possible. I submitted a list of candidates to Pen, but we don’t seem to be on the same page.”

Same page? He and Mom weren’t even on the same bookshelf.

“The two individuals I’ve chosen have spotless track records, and I have no doubt they would make fine additions to the team.”

The team which would be replaced tomorrow night.

Abarca fell silent, clearly anticipating some sort of response. He was trying to go over Mom’s head to get his guys hired.

“I’m confused. What exactly would you like me to do?”

Abarca smiled at me. “I value your opinion.”

Since when?

“I’d like you to review the candidates.”

“All security matters must go through my mother.”

“But you’re the Head of the House.”

I turned the saw off and faced him. “I am the Head of the House and I’m telling you that all security matters must go through and be approved by my mother. If she wants my opinion, she’ll consult me. Was there anything else?”

Abarca opened his mouth, hesitated, then said, “No. That’s it.”

“I’m glad we cleared that up.” I turned the saw back on and continued my slow cutting.

Abarca walked away. If I wasn’t hacking at Alessandro’s car, I would almost feel sorry for him. It wasn’t altogether his fault. He was trying to do a job that he wasn’t qualified for, but we were the ones who hired him for that job in the first place. I didn’t blame him for taking the position. He’d needed the work in the worst way, from what Mom had said. And I didn’t blame Mom for hiring him. She was trying to help a friend and keep us safe. But I was really glad Heart was on his way.

If only I knew where we could find the money to pay him.

The saw tasted air. I had cut a ragged rectangle in the window. I turned it off and hit the window with the handle of the screwdriver. It fell in onto the driver’s seat.

I popped the lock and opened the hatchback. The back was empty, except for a folded blanket, a rain poncho, and a garment bag. I unzipped the bag. A tuxedo, good quality. Typical.

I opened the back doors and went about searching the car.

I climbed the ladder to my loft, carrying the dog pillow, my arms filled with dog shampoo and puppy pads. Shadow bounded up the steps ahead of me and sprinted into my room.

The Jeep yielded no clues. I found no hidden stashes of weapons or gold coins, no fake IDs or passports, no rental agreement, no paperwork of any kind, not even a fast-food receipt. For some reason Sigourney Etterson had paid Alessandro two million dollars and I had no idea why.

I’d returned the tools to Grandma. Bug was watching the Jeep, so we would know the moment Alessandro reappeared. At least he would be in for a hell of a surprise when he came back to the car. I would actually raid our overstretched budget and pay good money to see the look on his face.

My hip hurt. I would put the dog pillow down for Shadow, then I would wash my hands and go down to eat some lunch, during which I would sit across from Runa and Ragnar and have to think of some way to explain why I hadn’t found their sister yet. Ugh.

I walked into my loft.

Alessandro Sagredo lounged on my bed. He lay propped on one elbow, his large, muscular frame taking up the entire space. He couldn’t be real; he had to be a painting made to tempt women; masculine, handsome, erotic, from the broad spread of his shoulders and his flat stomach to his long legs.

Shadow lay next to him, chewing on some yellow rectangular thing.

Alessandro raised his head. His amber eyes lit up and he smiled a slow, lazy smile, like a wolf cornering a doe.

He was holding the pink frame with his picture in it, which I had left on my nightstand.

The enormity of it hit me all at once. I wanted to fall through the floor, strangle him, grab my dog, and scream at the same time. My brain took those conflicting urges and compromised. I dropped the dog pillow and hurled the pack of puppy pads at his head.

Alessandro caught the pack one-handed and tossed it to the floor. He didn’t even move, the son of a bitch. Just raised his hand, caught the pack, and went back to looking at the picture.

He turned the frame, so I could see his picture in it. “Smoochie poo?”

“It’s Italian for ass clown. What are you doing in my room?”

“Admiring your taste in arts and crafts?” He tilted the frame. “The application of glitter could use some work.”

“Shadow, come here.”

Shadow wagged her tail and stayed exactly where she was.

“What is she eating?”

“A Himalayan yak treat. Unlike you, your dog can be reasoned with.”

“Yak what? What part of the yak?”

“Relax. It’s made of cheese.” He tilted the photograph toward me, so the light caught the pink glitter. “Can we postpone the topic of dog treats and go back to the fact that you have my picture in a pink frame on your nightstand?”

“It came with the frame.”

He grinned.

If I had a gun, I would’ve shot him. I did have a gun. It was locked in the nightstand. Getting it would mean risking being within his reach, and he was very fast.

“I took some pics in Sydney last week, on the beach. With my shirt off. I can send a few to your phone, if you’d like.”

How dare . . . “No, I wouldn’t like.”

Alessandro raised his eyebrows. “Are you sure? Judging by the condition of my car, you have a lot of pent-up anger.”

He’d watched me take apart his Jeep. Probably while searching my room. It was good that humans couldn’t spontaneously explode, because otherwise I would have disintegrated.

“What does my anger have to do with your selfies?”

“You might find having a hot pic of me by your bed relaxing.”

He did not just imply what I thought he implied.

Yes, yes, he did.

“If I wanted a hot pic by my bed for relaxation, it wouldn’t be yours.” There.

“You’re right. Why settle for a picture when you can have the real thing?” He spread his arms. “I’m right here.”

Oh my God.

“In your bed. Waiting.”

Yes . . . No. No!

He was looking at me as if I was naked.

It was my most secret fantasy. He was in my room. On my bed. Looking at me. Smiling at me like he wanted me. Everything I’d ever dreamed of was right there.

My heart pounded in my chest at a million beats per minute. My cheeks grew warm. I gathered all my will into a steel fist. Do not blush. Do NOT blush. Why was this happening to me? He wasn’t even doing anything. He was just looking at me and talking.

Alessandro studied me, and when he spoke, his tone sent tiny shivers down my neck. It was intimate and seductive, and it promised me all the things I wanted and couldn’t have. “Is it because your family is downstairs? Don’t worry, we can be very quiet.”

The temptation to cross the room and touch him was almost too much. I could . . . No, I couldn’t. He was mocking me. He saw the picture, put two and two together, and now he was taunting me with it.

The entire floor of my bedroom was a single arcane circle. I had drawn it with soap on the floorboards to trap a possible intruder. If I activated it, all his jokes would dry up real fast.

If I activated the circle, I would lose all my work, and it would turn our conversation into combat. Using my wings would get us there even faster. There would be no coming back from that, and I needed Alessandro. I needed the information locked in his head.

Oh, how I would love to wipe that smug grin off his face.

I forced myself to relax. It was like trying to stretch a really wide rubber band. My body resisted. Every cell I had wanted to keep focusing on him. On his hands. On his face. On his amber eyes . . .

“What do you want? Make it quick, Alessandro, I’m busy.”

He sat up. “That’s not typically a request I get.”

So funny, so clever. Jackass.

I folded my arms across my chest. “Today.”

He reached over and patted Shadow on her fuzzy head. “After our fun trip to the mall, I asked myself if you would ever see reason and walk away from this mess. Would you like to know my conclusion?”

“No.”

“I believe you won’t, and I’ll tell you why. You are the kind of woman who stops in the middle of fighting hired killers to rescue a small, foul-smelling, doglike creature.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

He swung himself into a sitting position. “Please hold all questions until the end of the speech. Runa Etterson did your family a favor during your sister’s wedding by removing poison from the wedding cake. She’s your friend, probably your only friend.”

“I have tons of friends.”

“And I have access to a computer and your social media profiles. Your younger sister has tons of friends. Your Instagram has five followers, all of whom are related to you, and your most popular post is a book review of The Geometry of Arcane Circles, where you called the author an ‘epic idiot.’”

I gave him my Tremaine sneer. If I had been an ice mage, the air between us would’ve frozen. “Prime Sagredo, my House is none of your business. My sisters, my cousins, my grandmother, and their social media are none of your business. You have now repeatedly violated the sovereign domain of my family. Get to the point and get out.”

“That’s new,” Alessandro observed. “I like.”

What wouldn’t I give to brain him with something heavy . . . “I’m so pleased.”

“May I finish, Dread Mistress?”

“I wish you would.”

“The point is, you can’t abandon Runa. You’re going to turn yourself inside out to help her. It is literally who you are.”

Alessandro set the pink frame back on the nightstand. All humor drained from his face. Only cold menace remained, sharpened by intelligence and resolve.

“Unfortunately, you are in over your head. That leaves me with two choices. I can watch you die in a nasty way or I can throw you a rope.”

Was he trying to con me? Did he need information from me? Trusting him was a mistake, I was sure of it. I’d cyberstalked him, I had researched his family, and I could name his favorite car, wine, and band, but I knew exactly zip about who he actually was. If he told me the sun was shining, I’d run outside to double-check.

But Halle was still missing. If he knew anything about it, I had to get it out of him. He kept thinking of me as a dilettante. He wouldn’t tell me anything until he saw me as an equal.

“Keep your rope. I want to know what you did with the two million dollars Sigourney paid you.”

He came off the bed in a single spring-loaded movement, covering the distance between us in a fraction of a second. Suddenly he was too close.

My heart sped up, and I didn’t know if it was from fear or excitement.

Alessandro’s eyes measured me. He moved to the side, light on his feet, a deadly human predator, like a gladiator looking for an opportunity to close in for a kill. I was being hunted.

“Be careful,” I warned him, turning to keep him in my view.

He tilted his head, his tawny eyes sharp. “Planning to fight me?”

“If you force me to.” Big talker, that’s me.

The air between us vibrated with tension. Magic nipped at my fingertips, ready to punch the arcane circle under my feet.

“You want to find Halle,” he said. “I need to identify Sigourney’s killer. Two roads going to the same place.”

He was right. Whoever killed Sigourney likely had her daughter. “Why do you need to find Sigourney’s murderer?”

“Because she paid me to kill them.”

“How did she know to hire you? She didn’t pick your name out of a hat. Why did she think that you could kill an assassin?”

“Some people know I’m good at killing.”

The planet stopped. My mind struggled to process it. He was a professional killer. No different than the people who’d come after me in the mall. No different than the person who killed Runa’s mother.

The little hopeless dream I carried inside me died.

Why? He had everything going for him. Why?

“Work with me and we’ll get this done together,” he said.

Working with him would be a nightmare.

This wasn’t an emotional problem. My feelings didn’t matter. I had to look at this rationally. All I had was the money and that trail ended with him. If I refused to work with him, he would continue his search on his own and we would keep tripping over each other. I would rather have him on our side than competing with me. Two was better than one.

“If I work with you, will you share what you know about Sigourney’s death?”

“Yes.”

“Prove it. Tell me what you know about Diatheke and Benedict De Lacy.”

He leaned forward half an inch. It was a small movement, but it felt like he had pounced on me.

I held still and stared back at him. No, you’re not getting an inch. I’m going to stay right where I am.

Alessandro studied me. “When I first met you, I thought you were a shy, innocent, honest girl who was overwhelmed by her sudden rise. But you’re not, are you?”

Not anymore.

“You’re smart, ruthless, and calculating. Conniving even.”

Conniving was going too far.

He flashed a grin, a quick baring of teeth. “I love it.”

“I changed my mind. I don’t need your help.”

“How fortunate for me that it’s not up to you.” He looked over my shoulder. “Why don’t we ask your friend if she wants me to help you find her sister?”

I wasn’t about to turn my back to him. “Runa, are you behind me?”

“Yes.”

Crap.

“My condolences on your loss, Prime Etterson,” Alessandro said.

“Did you kill my mother?”

I’d heard that brittle edge in her voice just before Conway started sprouting black fuzz. Alarm pulsed through me. I spun to face her, putting myself between her and Alessandro. Runa’s face had gone so white, it looked bloodless.

“No,” Alessandro and I said at the same time.

“He was in Australia at the time of her murder,” I added. “I’ve verified this.”

“I have useful information,” he said. “I’m willing to help Catalina find Halle, but this is a one-time offer. Once I leave here, that’s it. Make a decision.”

I knew exactly what she would say before she even opened her mouth.

“I accept,” Runa said.

Whatever little negotiating power I’d had just evaporated. I had to salvage what I could. “Give us some information as a show of good faith and we have a deal.”

Alessandro flicked his fingers and tossed a black flash drive to Runa. “Your mother was a professional assassin. This is a record of her sins.”

Runa looked at the flash drive in her hand like it was a snake. “Find my sister. That’s all that matters now.”

She turned and walked down the stairs.

The skin on the back of my neck prickled. Alessandro was right behind me, so close, I felt the heat of his body.

“You tried to save me,” the wolf’s voice said inches from my ear. “I’m so touched.”

The small hairs on the back of my neck stood up. In my head, he leaned in and kissed me, his lips scorching hot on my skin. Having him near me was excruciating, and I’d just tied myself to him for however long the investigation would take. This was so messed up. So, so messed up.

Slowly, deliberately, I turned around. “Don’t read too much into it. Do you think Benedict killed Sigourney?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “The body was too burned. I do know that he either did it himself or had it done. When I spoke to Sigourney, she told me Diatheke would be targeting her.”

“Then Diatheke has Halle.”

“It appears so.” Alessandro grimaced. “The more pressing issue is that Benedict will retaliate, and soon. He lost one crystal elephant, two Guardians, eighteen killers, and a metamorphosis mage. Reputation is everything in his business.”

“What exactly is his business?”

Alessandro tilted his head. “Does this often work for you?”

“What?”

“Pretending you don’t know things you have already figured out.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. “Why don’t you answer my question and I’ll tell you.”

“Let me put it to you this way: everyone you met inside that building is a trained killer. Any account managers you met, they are killers. Their managers are killers. If you met a custodian, he’s a killer. The nice receptionist who greeted you, killer.”

That’s what I’d suspected. “They’re an assassin firm.”

He nodded.

Assassin firms were the magical elite’s dirty secret. Not every House had combat Primes, but most prominent magical dynasties had money and a willingness to settle their private feuds through murder. The assassin firms operated in the shadows, selling their services to the highest bidder. Somehow, I never thought I would run across one in Houston.

“This is a specific type of industry, where reputation is very important,” Alessandro said. “Diatheke is in the middle of a rapid expansion. A year ago, they were still a small firm. Now they’re in the top eight worldwide. Benedict can afford anything he wants, except looking weak. He’ll hit back to save face and to silence.”

“Silence me?”

“You, Runa, your family, anyone who works for you. Anyone who can expose them for what they are.”

The Herald was full of Prime fanfic involving sexy assassins who were secretly bastard sons and daughters of the rich and powerful and went on to have edgy adventures. The reality was uglier and much more brutal. Nobody wanted the assassin firms to exist. People who had engaged their services wanted to silence them to tie up loose ends. Combat Primes wanted to eliminate them to maintain their power. Law enforcement wanted them gone because murder for hire was illegal and difficult to solve. The few times assassin firms had been discovered, the authorities broke them up with the assistance of the local Assemblies. I knew of four cases in the last fifty years and every one of them had ended in a slaughter. The loss of human life on both sides was catastrophic.

“Do you understand now?” Alessandro asked softly.

The enormity of the can of worms I had opened finally hit home. Benedict would do everything he could to keep from being discovered. He had a building full of killers at his disposal and he would just keep sending them after us until we were all dead. And if we went to the authorities with what we knew, we would sign Halle’s death warrant. They would slit her throat in retaliation.

This would end in blood.

What do I do? How do we prepare to fight this? How did I blunder so badly? Thoughts raced and collided in my head, too fast to make sense.

Alessandro dipped his head to look me in the eyes. “We’re going to be best friends from now on, you and me. We’re going to do everything together.”

I managed to pin a thought down and made my mouth move. “Where are you staying?”

“In the building across the street on the left of the big tree. I like to keep an eye on you. Your security is shit.”

I was getting really tired of people telling me that.

Arrosa always said, “When backed into a corner, handle it with grace.” I scrounged up some grace. I had to look very hard for it.

“How much do you know about the assassins Diatheke employs?”

“Enough.”

“I have a recording of Sigourney’s death.”

He came to life like a shark smelling blood in the water. “Show me.”

“I’ll bring it over. First, rules. One, do not attack or endanger my family. Two, share. If I find out that you discovered something and took off without telling me, the deal is off. And three, don’t give snacks to my dog without asking me first.”

“Agreed.” He winked at me.

“House Baylor is delighted to offer our hospitality to you, Mr. Sagredo. Dinner will be tonight at six. I’ll bring the recording by shortly.”

He bowed with an exaggerated flourish, went to my window, opened it, and jumped out.

I ran downstairs and burst into the media room. It was empty. I turned and sprinted into the kitchen. Empty. Where the hell was everybody?

I tore through the warehouse to the office and all but flew through the door.

Bern, Runa, and Ragnar sat at the table in the conference room with two laptops, a tablet, and notebooks with scribbled notes. In the corner Mom rested in her favorite chair, scrolling through her tablet. The four of them raised their heads and looked at me.

“Where is everybody?”

“Leon is passed out in his room, because he hasn’t slept for two days,” Bern said. “Grandma Frida is in the motor pool still working on the Guardians.”

“Where is Arabella?”

“She said she had an errand,” Mom said.

I pulled out my phone and texted Arabella. Where are you?

No answer.

I dialed her number. It went to voice mail. Would it kill her to charge her phone? Half of the time her phone was dead and the rest it was dying, because she was always on it. Argh.

“Something bad happened,” Runa guessed.

“Diatheke is an assassin firm. They ordered the hit on your mother.”

Mom sat up straight. “How sure are you?”

“Pretty damn sure. We’re putting them at risk of exposure.”

Ragnar tilted his head as if he was considering a thorny logical problem. When he finally recovered from the magic drain and his emotions returned, there would be hell to pay. “We should notify the authorities.”

Runa’s face went white again. “We can’t.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because they have your sister,” Bern said. “They’ll kill her.”

Runa clenched her hands together. “Not if I get them first.”

“You would never get to her in time,” Mom said.

“We don’t know where they’re holding her,” I told her. “Diatheke’s building downtown is a fortress. Everything requires a keycard. Once you’re in the lobby, they can drop the grate over the front door and shoot you remotely. You won’t get the chance to kill anyone or to ask any questions.”

“So we just sit here. Again.”

“No,” Mom said. “We prepare.”

“They’ll hit us, sooner rather than later,” Bern told her. “If we can, we need to take some of them alive, so we can bargain. If we get ahold of someone valuable enough, we can trade them to Diatheke for your sister.”

Runa stood up. “I need some air.” She walked out of the room.

“Stay close to the warehouse,” Mom called.

“I’ll keep an eye on her.” Bern got up and followed her out.

I looked at Mom. Bern had voluntarily left the warehouse. Again. Since graduating from college, Bern did his best to impersonate a mushroom: he parked himself in the Hut of Evil with his servers and basked in the glow of the monitors, escaping only to use the bathroom and consume food. Going outside wasn’t in his repertoire.

Mom shrugged.

Ragnar got up. “I’m going to the kitchen to get snacks. Please don’t worry. I won’t go outside, and I’ll try very hard to not kill anyone.”

He left. It was just me and Mom.

“It won’t work,” I told her. “They’ll never trade Halle. She’s a potential witness.”

“I know,” she said. “We have to bleed them. We have to make it so expensive that they’ll drop it. They’re a business.”

“We’re gambling with her life.” Anxiety churned inside me.

“It’s not about Halle now,” Mom said. “It’s about keeping that wild wrecking ball and her brother alive.”

My stomach dropped. “I’m going to try, Mom. Halle’s still alive. There is still a chance.”

“Then you go and try. Heart and his people will be here tonight. That should give you some freedom of movement.” Mom sighed. “I miss doing small, quiet jobs. Insurance fraud. Cheating spouses.”

“I miss them too,” I told her. “But we are who we are. There’s no going back.”

Alessandro had taken the top floor in the three-story brick building that used to be a fire station years ago. Rogan purchased it but never did anything with it, and eventually we bought it from him.

I had walked through this building before when we purchased it. The first floor, with an unusually high ceiling, served as the garage for the fire trucks. The second, accessible by an iron staircase, housed the offices, and the third contained the rec room, sleeping quarters, and a big kitchen once capable of serving food to an entire fire team.

I climbed the iron stairs, with my hip screaming at me the entire way. I had left Shadow in the warehouse. She seemed susceptible to his bribes, and I had no idea what sort of bizarre thing he would try to feed her this time.

The original plan was to turn the fire station into barracks, but the building proved to be too old. Fixing it up would be more expensive than building a brand-new structure. Rogan let it go for next to nothing. At some point, Leon, obsessed with the fire pole, had tried to convince Bern to move there with him and turn it into a “hip bro cave.” That plan died when they realized rewiring the place was out of their budget.

The stairs brought me to a wide-open door. I stepped through and ended up in the rec room, flooded with daylight from huge windows. Someone had swept the concrete floor. On the right a large pack of bottled water waited on the counter of a kitchen right out of the seventies, complete with wooden paneling. Straight ahead, in the corner, an inflatable mattress rested on the floor. Between me and the mattress stood two plastic fold-out tables filled with weapons and equipment. A high-tech-looking laptop, parts of a drone, six, no, nine guns, including a BFR, four knives, two daggers, a machete, a garrote, and a compound bow. The assassin’s tool kit.

The assassin himself was nowhere to be seen. I walked to the tables. Whatever his faults were, Alessandro had excellent taste in blades. Everything was functional, sharp, and sturdy. And generic. No custom-made pieces, no family heirlooms. Nothing irreplaceable or that could be traced.

I reached for the Ka-Bar and tested the balance. Seven-inch straight blade angled at the tip. Heavy.

I turned to get better light. Alessandro sat on the kitchen counter, one leg bent, the other hanging free. I almost threw the Ka-Bar.

“Adorable,” Alessandro said. “Do that little jump again.”

I put the Ka-Bar down before the temptation got the better of me. “I brought you the recording.” I held up the thumb drive.

He jumped off the counter and stalked toward me.

I circled the tables, looking at his collection and keeping the furniture between us. “You seem to know a lot about Benedict.”

“Mhm.”

“What is he?”

“You were with him. What do you think he is? What did you feel?”

“Revulsion and fear. His magic manifested as dark phantom serpents. He opened himself, and a nest of ghost snakes slithered out wanting to bite me.”

“That’s why he calls himself the Adder,” he said.

“The Adder? Really?”

“It goes with the territory. Nobody wants to hire a Mr. De Lacy or Madame Laurent. They want to hire the Adder or Mort Noire.”

“Please tell me there isn’t an assassin calling herself the Black Death?”

“More than one.”

It seemed so childish except people were dying. “So, what’s your nickname? Instagram Famous? Playboy Killer?”

“Are you teasing me, you sexy beast?”

The careful train of my thoughts derailed, flipped over in the air, and burst on fire. Think of a witty comeback, come on . . . How did he keep short-circuiting my brain?

He laughed. “If looks could kill.”

I resumed our dance around the tables. “Benedict is a psionic, isn’t he? Probably a phobic subtype.”

Psionic mages affected survival emotions. Fear, disgust, rage, anxiety, shame. The primal, powerful urges that kept humans breathing thousands of years before tools and weapons came along. Psionics induced these emotions in their targets. Phobics specialized in fear. They had an innate ability to find your worst phobia and project it into your mind, dragging you into paralyzing madness. I’d dealt with a phobic before, although she wasn’t a Prime. Benedict’s magic elicited that same instinctual punch of revulsion and terror.

“Close,” Alessandro said. “His mother is a phobic. His father is a mind cutter.”

A menincissor mage. A particularly nasty branch of mental magic that attacked consciousness. Mind cutters punctured mental shields and induced pain and the inability to think. They weren’t lethal on their own, but they excelled at disabling their target.

“Are you running away from me?” Alessandro asked.

“No.” We had come full circle around the tables.

“Yes, you are. Are you afraid of what I’ll do if I catch you?” He raised his eyebrows at me. “Or are you scared of what you might do?”

I stopped. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

He vaulted over a table and landed next to me. I tilted my head and looked at him. Magic roiled just under his skin. His amber eyes all but glowed.

Kiss me.

“When a phobic and a mind cutter have a child . . .” He spoke softly, his voice warm and low, meant just for me. When he told someone he loved them, he might sound just like that. “. . . they have a one in a quarter chance of producing a crime against nature called a mind ripper. Benedict can penetrate mental defenses like his father and then scramble the mind, inducing panic like his mother. Benedict didn’t just happen; he was a planned project by a mind cutter House. They wanted a dark horse to handle their dirty deeds.”

He was standing way too close. Looking at him made it difficult to concentrate. “What happened?”

“They had a difference of opinion. Now House Weber is no more.”

I held out the USB drive. He took it from my hand. His long fingers brushed mine.

Alessandro opened the laptop and plugged the drive in. Sigourney appeared on the screen.

I crossed my arms on my chest and leaned against the wall by the window. If Alessandro ever kissed me, I wouldn’t want him to stop. When he came to see me that time after the trials, asking me to go for a ride, I wanted him so much, it took all of my will to not open my wings and make him love me. In that moment, it didn’t matter that it wouldn’t be real. Being loved by him was all I had cared about.

I got so scared that I would lose control, I called the police and asked them to make him leave. I did it because my magic would take away his free will and chain him to me. I didn’t want that for him. I wanted him to have a long, happy life with whoever he chose. I had to let him go.

The more I looked at his Instagram over the years, the less happy he seemed. Now I knew—the Instagram Alessandro was bullshit. He had created a fantasy and held it up to the world like a shield. This Alessandro, the one in front of me staring at the laptop with the single-minded focus of a predator; this was the real man. Knowing this should have freed me, but I only wanted him more.

My phone chimed. An Instagram alert for Alessandro’s account. On my phone Alessandro surfed, a crystal blue wave curling around him. His wet hair flared around his face. Muscle corded his body under bronze skin. I looked at the tag and held the phone out to him. “Maui, really?”

“Mhm. I’m currently in Hawaii. Did you see his hand when he reached over her?” He paused the recording just before Sigourney’s killer turned off the PC.

“I did. I digitally enhanced it.” I hadn’t mentioned it, because I wanted to know if he would notice it too.

He glanced at me. All the flirting had evaporated. His eyes were clear and cold. He had seen his target.

Alessandro the killer. And if I let my mind wander, it would drift off into imagining the glide of his fingertips against my skin, the warm heat of his lips on mine, the power of his arms around me . . . It would construct impossible scenarios where somehow he fell in love with me and stopped being an assassin and we lived happily ever after.

I was morally bankrupt.

He must’ve seen it in my face because humor sparked in his eyes.

“Can I see the enhanced image? Or will you make me beg?”

“It’s the second file on the drive. You know, you don’t have to pretend to flirt with me. I said I would work with you and I meant it.”

He smiled at me. It wasn’t his dazzling bachelor-of-the-year grin, it was a simple quick smile. “I never pretend with you. Tease you, maybe. Flirt, yes. But never that.”

I wished he hadn’t said that to me. Not helping, Alessandro. Not even a little bit.

“These fingers have claws,” he told me.

“And the knuckles of the hand are abnormally large and oddly shaped. If this was a normal person, he or she would have advanced arthritis. Doesn’t seem like a desirable trait in an assassin.”

He frowned. “If this is arthritis, he wouldn’t be able to open a door. No, I think this is reinforcement to account for the additional finger weight and length of the claws.”

“Yes. The distal phalanges are wider and longer as well. The whole hand appears stronger.”

He leaned back from the laptop. “The warped can’t do magic by definition.”

“Yet here we are. It looks like she had a massive stroke with catastrophic bleeding. Is this a carnifex mage?”

“A butcher? It’s possible, but they typically target the heart. It’s a guaranteed kill. Going for the brain is a lot harder. You would really have to know what you were doing.”

I shook my head. “He couldn’t go for the heart. He needed her breathing so she could die of smoke inhalation.”

His fingers tapped the keyboard. A carousel of portraits appeared, each on its own card, listing name and power. Benedict’s handsome face looked at me with glacier eyes. The card said “Kurt Weber, Ratiocissor, Prime.”

Alessandro swiped across the track pad, and the ring of portraits turned, presenting us with the next face, a Hispanic woman in her late fifties. “Alba Gonzales, Telekinetic, Prime.” The following card showed a black man in his mid-twenties. “Kendrell Cooper, Aerokinetic, Prime.”

How many Primes did Diatheke have? If they were a House, they would be unstoppable.

Alessandro kept swiping, the faces moving too fast for me to register them. He hardly looked at the screen. He must’ve memorized them and was now going through them just to reassure himself.

I counted eighteen cards. The last one said “Average” so they weren’t all Primes. Still. That many killers under one roof would give anyone pause.

Finally, Alessandro straightened. “There are no butchers in their roster.”

“How complete are your records?”

“Complete enough.” He locked his jaw.

“Maybe he’s a recent hire?”

Alessandro shook his head. “Etterson was an experienced assassin. They wouldn’t send a rookie after her.”

He stared at the laptop, his expression dark. How did he get those files? More importantly, why? This went beyond any due diligence one would do to research his competitors. It would have taken months, possibly years to compile this database. Alessandro was hunting Diatheke.

“My turn to ask questions,” I said.

He smiled. “Go.”

“Are you trying to take out a competitor? Is there another assassin firm pulling your strings?”

“I don’t work for a firm. I’m here to kill Sigourney’s murderer.”

I raised my eyebrows and nodded at his laptop. “And so you threw this together on the fly?”

“Fair enough.” Alessandro leaned back against the table and crossed his arms. “Benedict has been on my radar for a while. I need to ask him some questions on an unrelated matter. It has nothing to do with House Etterson.”

“How important are those questions to you?”

“If it’s a choice between the Etterson contract and his life, I’ll kill him. I can find my answers in another way.”

“How did Sigourney hire you, what are the terms of your contract, what do you know about Halle?”

“She hired me through an intermediary. She was in the business, and she was aware of my particular job requirements.”

“Which are?”

“Privileged.”

“Alessandro, she’d been out of the game for almost ten years. How did she even know about you? You would’ve been in your teens when she quit. Have you been doing this since you were fifteen?”

His face shut down. “I have a certain reputation.”

“What kind of reputation?”

“The kind people like Sigourney make a point to note.”

What the hell did that mean?

“The intermediary arranged a call,” he continued, “during which Sigourney told me that her old firm was coming after her. She indicated they had pressured her to come out of retirement for a high-profile job, which she declined. She didn’t tell me who the target was, said we would discuss it in person. She didn’t think Diatheke would move on her immediately. She expected them to come back with a higher offer, which she also intended to reject.”

“Clearly she was wrong.”

“Yes.”

I thought out loud. “For them to insist that she come out of retirement after so many years means the target was someone she had access to and they didn’t.”

“Or they didn’t want it traced to them.”

“Did she say why she wouldn’t do it?”

Alessandro grimaced. “She said that if she didn’t kill him, she would be in danger. If she did kill him, her entire family would be done. I got the feeling that she wasn’t sure she could complete the job. It was a no-win situation. One way or the other, someone would die.”

“So a dangerous, high-profile target. Male. Someone she knew.” We would have to go through Sigourney’s files again.

“Someone who scared her,” Alessandro added.

“I don’t understand why Diatheke let her walk into their building and take out the money. They knew they were going to kill her.” That had to be some conversation.

“Two separate things. She earned the money, and if they didn’t pay her, nobody else would work with them. The greatest sin in this business is to withhold money earned.” His voice dripped with disgust. “They have no problem killing a parent in front of their kids or blowing up a car full of charity workers; but if they don’t get paid, they lose their shit.”

For a hired killer, he had a lot of disdain for the profession. And he didn’t say we. He said they.

He made sense though. It probably wasn’t the best idea to cheat an assassin out of their paycheck.

“She didn’t think her children would be in danger.”

“Normally, they wouldn’t be.” Alessandro shrugged.

“Professional courtesy?” I couldn’t quite keep the skepticism out of my voice.

“There’s no such thing. If you must eliminate an assassin and things go sour, leaking the fact that they were a hired killer douses the heat. Nobody extends sympathy to murderers. But if a minor is killed, there is an elevated risk of public outcry and pressure to solve it. Halle should’ve been safe.”

“It has to be her magic,” I said. What else was there? Halle was too dangerous to sell or contain.

Alessandro met my gaze. “They bothered with this elaborate ruse because they need her alive. Catalina, we’ll find her. I promise you. We’ll get her back.”

He said it like he meant every word.

“Thank you for leveling with me.” I moved to the door.

He got there ahead of me and leaned on the door frame. “Leaving so soon?”

“Things to do.”

“What if I asked you to stay? What if I said, ‘Don’t go, Catalina. I’ll be lonely without you.’”

If he actually said that and was serious, I might move into this room with him. “I have to go.”

“Stay,” he said. “We can compare notes on murderers. It will be fun.”

His voice pulled me in, and for a second, I didn’t know which one of us was the siren.

“No. I have to go.” If I kept repeating it, I might actually believe it. “I have to look through Sigourney’s files and make dinner.”

“Or you could bring your laptop over here. We could order Chinese takeout and wash it down with some bad American wine.”

His eyes were so warm and inviting. It would be so easy just to stay here with him.

“I’ll tell you funny stories,” he offered.

I would give anything to spend an evening here, figuring out what made him laugh. “I have to go.”

He gave me a resigned smile and invited me to exit with an elegant sweep of his hand.

I had to leave. I said I would. I insisted on it. I walked through the doorway.

“If you think of anything else,” I said.

“I know where you live.”

I was going to say text me. A sudden thought hit me like a bolt of lightning. “Alessandro, one last thing. Stay out of my room.”

“Not a chance,” he told me.

Thirty seconds after I finished putting dinner into the oven and invited Runa into my office to brief her, Shadow started sniffing my office floor and running around in circles. Runa and I had to grab her and sprint outside.

Grass was in short supply and the only tree, the massive oak across the road, was protected by a stone wall four feet high. I would have to drop her over it and then somehow scoop her out. I imagined loading Shadow into a bucket and lowering her to the roots of the oak with a rope. In my little fantasy Shadow wore a yellow mining helmet with a round light.

Clearly, I’d been staring at the computer for too long.

We took Shadow to the area behind the motor pool instead. Grandma Frida had set up a picnic table to the right, and we landed there, deposited the little dog on the pavement, and chorused, “Go potty!” in encouraging voices.

Shadow looked at us and wagged her little black tail.

“Whatever is cooking in the kitchen smells amazing. What are we having?” Runa asked.

“Lemon roasted chicken with rosemary baked potatoes, chive butter, kale and Brussels sprout salad with tahini maple dressing, and an apple pithivier.”

Runa gave me a long look.

“I cook when I’m stressed out. It sounds more complicated than it is. In reality, it’s mostly season things, dump them in a baking pan, and stick them in the oven.”

The little dog wandered off.

“What’s a PTVA?”

“It’s a French pie-cake made with puff pastry. The traditional version uses rum and almonds, but nobody likes rum, so I make mine with apples.”

Shadow trotted around, periodically paused to sniff at some random spot of asphalt, carefully considered it, then moved on. Apparently, selecting the perfect place to pee was vitally important.

“I need to catch you up on what we have so far.” I summarized the last few days for her; Diatheke, Celia, Benedict, Keystone, the chase, and Alessandro’s involvement. I kept the information about his database private. I didn’t know what it meant yet in the big picture.

She rubbed her face with both hands. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”

“It’s my job.” But yeah, it sucked. “I’m sorry we haven’t found Halle. But so far the evidence seems to point to kidnapping, not murder.”

Professionally I knew that we were doing everything we could. Personally, the guilt drowned me. No matter how many times I warned myself, I thought of Runa as my friend. I desperately needed to fix this for her, and this case was a quicksand trap. Just when I thought I was on my way up, I sank deeper in. It was driving me up the wall.

“So where do we go from here?” Runa asked.

“Well, first things first. We’re now in the crosshairs of an assassin firm, so we’ll get attacked. It’s not an ‘if,’ it’s a ‘when.’ I called Matilda’s aunt. Unfortunately, she’s out of town, but she said a friend will be coming by to pick her up. Would you like to send Ragnar with them?”

“No.” She didn’t even pause. “Right now, the last thing he remembers is getting off the plane and he’s so calm, it’s borderline freaky. I don’t know how long this will last, but if his memory and emotions come back, I don’t want him climbing onto another roof. I need to be there to steady him.”

“Okay.” It was her decision. “The next step is to identify your mother’s target. We know he’s male, powerful, and his death would cause an uproar. Diatheke wants him dead, but they don’t want the heat that will come with it.”

Runa shook her head. “No clue. Mom didn’t socialize. Sometimes she didn’t leave the house for weeks.”

“I looked at your mother’s social calendar. The last ten years are backed up. How much do you know about the Texas Assembly?”

Runa sighed. “Just what everyone knows. It’s a legislative body that governs the Houses in Texas. Each House has one voting seat. If you are a Prime or a Significant, you are entitled to view the sessions but only the designated House representative can vote. Most people don’t go to the sessions unless something important happens. Mom usually went. She liked to know what was happening in the political world.”

I nodded. “The Texas Assembly has two main political factions: the Civil Majority and the Stewards. The Civil Majority thinks Houses have enough power and want to keep to themselves. The Stewards want to rule everyone and everything. Every three years the Assembly elects a Speaker. The winning party receives the Gold Staff and the loser is given the Silver Staff. Nine years ago, when the Civil Majority was in power, your mother served as the Gold Staff.”

Runa frowned. “I think I remember that. Isn’t it mostly ceremonial? She would bring the staff out and bang it onto the floor at the start and end of each Assembly session.”

“It is. But it also means that she met most of the Assembly’s members and knew all of the major players.”

Runa groaned. “It could literally be any member of any House in the state.”

“Yep.”

The political undercurrents within the Assembly were so complex it would take a supercomputer to sort them out. I made a note of everyone Sigourney was in office with, starting with the former Speaker Linus Duncan. Linus would take my call. He’d served as a witness to the formation of our House. Whether he’d tell me anything was a different question entirely.

We watched Shadow wander about. Arabella was still MIA and worry gnawed at me. My sister could handle herself, but Diatheke’s roster of killers was nothing to sneeze at.

“My brother is an emotional zombie, my sister is missing, and I found out that my mom was a hit woman.” Runa sighed.

“I’m sorry.”

“I suspected. The math just wasn’t adding up. She didn’t make enough from her forensic work to cover our bills. I mean, it wouldn’t even pay my tuition. When you asked me to go through her bank statements, I went back to the beginning of her records twelve years ago. You know what I found? Large deposits for consulting work. A hundred grand, two hundred grand. One was for half a million. Half a million, Catalina.”

“Must have been a high-risk target.”

“At least she was good at her job, right?” Runa gave a short laugh. “It’s one consulting fee after another, and then eight years ago everything just stopped. This was right about the time she told me that she wanted to spend more time with us. She must have stopped ‘consulting.’”

“I’m sorry,” I told her again.

“I can’t ask her any questions. I can’t say, ‘How could you do this?’ or ‘What were you thinking?’ So I went to my house yesterday. I talked to the ash and then I cried. I might be losing it.”

“No,” I said. “You’re keeping it together just fine. Better than I would.”

Runa shook her head. “I looked at the files on the flash drive. I thought maybe she was a kind of Robin Hood, who only killed bad people. She wasn’t. She killed whoever they paid her to kill.”

In the real world, there was no honor among thieves and no Robin Hood assassins.

She turned to me. “Ragnar can never find out. He wouldn’t understand. I can rationalize it somewhat. We were in debt, we were about to lose the house, we would go hungry. I don’t condone it, but all my mom knew was how to be a mother, a wife, and a superb poisoner. She was an amazing assassin. I don’t even know how she did half of the stuff on that flash drive. So, I’ll deal with it. I have no choice. But my brother can never be told. Promise me.”

“I promise,” I said.

Shadow squatted and peed at a random spot.

I clapped my hands and crooned in a high-pitched voice, “Good girl, good girl.”

Runa whistled and made “woo” noises.

Shadow kicked her back legs, trying to scour the pavement, and strutted off.

“About Alessandro,” Runa said. “I shouldn’t have made the decision to work with him without talking to you. He was there, and he asked me, and I answered honestly. Brain wasn’t engaged.”

“Don’t worry about it. I was just trying to squeeze more information out of him. Your mother hired him to kill her assassin. He isn’t going away until he nukes them, so we can either work together or we can keep bumping into each other with unpredictable consequences.”

Runa raised her eyebrows. “Are you sure you don’t want to keep bumping into him, just a little bit?”

I gave her the Look of Death. “No. I found out that Alessandro has been staying across the street, so I disassembled his car window and then walked into my bedroom and found him posing on my bed like some sort of erotic poster.”

“He was posing on your bed? Was he naked?”

“No.” I wish. “But he was holding the picture I had left on the nightstand.”

Runa frowned. “Wait, the picture? The pink, glitter heart picture?”

I nodded. “Yep. That’s the one. I took it to my room. And now he knows about my kid crush and he’s mocking me.”

“Well fuck,” Runa said.

“Fuck” was a good way to put it.

“Look on the bright side,” Runa said. “If he steps out of line, I can poison him, so blood will come out of both ends simultaneously and continuously.”

“Thank you, I think.”

“You must think I’m crazy.” The smile slid off Runa’s face. “Joking while my mother is dead, and my sister is missing. Maybe I am, a little, and if I was by myself, things might be different. But I have my brother. I’m trying my best to not freak the fuck out. I’m trying to be positive and hopeful, and pretending that everything will be okay. But I know nothing is okay and sometimes I just want to scream myself hoarse.”

I hugged her. “Runa, you don’t owe me or anyone an explanation or an apology. Terrible things have happened to both of you, and you do whatever you need to do to get through it. If you want to strip naked and dance in the street throwing glitter in the air, nobody would blink an eye. It’s your grief. You own it.”

She wiped her eyes.

The door of Rogan’s HQ opened, and Bug emerged into the light of the streetlamp. He wore a clean khaki T-shirt and a pair of dark pants. His face was clean, and his hair was damp and brushed.

“That’s my cue to go inside,” I told Runa. “This is Bug, Rogan’s surveillance guy I told you about. He doesn’t do well with strangers.”

“No sudden moves?”

“No, he’s okay with sudden moves. Just don’t expect him to do small talk.”

Runa was right. The lemon roasted chicken did smell amazing.

The entire family had gathered for dinner, all except Arabella. She’d finally charged her phone and replied to my seven texts with “I’m okay, keep your panties on.” I composed an eloquent reply rich with four-letter words, sent it to her, and hadn’t heard anything back.

The table was full. Mom and Grandma talked quietly; Runa was making eyes at the chicken; Bern and Bug carried on a conversation in low voices. Matilda took the bread rolls off the baking pan and arranged them in a basket. Ragnar volunteered to distribute forks, knives, and napkins. Just a normal Baylor dinner.

Leon, wearing oven mitts, pulled the enormous roasting pan filled with potatoes out of the oven and held it while I scooped them into a pretty white dish.

“Grandma, Aunt Penelope, me and Bern, Bug, Runa and Ragnar, Matilda, and you,” Leon said. “Nine people, but ten plates. Who is the extra plate for?”

“We might have a guest for dinner.” I put the salad dressing on the table.

“Like who?” He put the pan onto the stove and pulled the oven mitts off.

I opened my mouth to answer. The doorbell rang, echoing through all of our cell phones. Leon tapped his phone. His eyes sparked with indignation. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

I went to answer the door.

The icy assassin who killed the strike team and then stalked me in my own room was gone. Instead, Instagram Alessandro stood in the doorway, carrying a bottle of wine. He wore impeccably tailored brown pants and an indigo blue dress shirt with the sleeves casually rolled up to his elbows and the top two buttons open, just enough to give a great view of his muscular neck. His boots, leather, ankle-high, and expensive, matched the outfit. His brushed then artfully tousled hair framed his face. He’d shaved, and the masculine perfection of his features was on full display; the sharp angles of his cheekbones, the strong, clean line of his jaw, his sensual mouth . . .

My brain did that thing again, the one where I lost all ability to reason and form complete sentences.

Say something. Something smart.

Our stares connected. His eyes were still the same; calculating, lupine, and heated by amber magic from within.

“You’re late,” I told him. Yes! Brilliant. I said a thing and it made sense. It had a subject and a verb and they went together. Catalina Baylor one, Instagram Alessandro a big fat zero.

“Beauty takes time.”

“Oh, get over yourself.” I stepped aside.

He stepped through. “Permesso.”

I almost answered, Avanti, but caught myself. He didn’t need to know how much Italian I understood. Instead, I locked the door behind him, and we walked deeper into the house, through the office, through the hallway, and into the kitchen.

Nobody had started eating yet, but people were passing dishes and fixing their plates. They saw Alessandro.

Everything stopped.

He smiled at them, a dazzling, charming smile, warm and happy and a touch shy. When they said a smile could launch a thousand ships, this was the smile they had imagined.

Grandma Frida put down the salad bowl, raised her phone, and snapped a pic.

“No phones at the table,” Mom said on autopilot, her gaze fixed on Alessandro.

“I’m not missing this shot, Penelope.”

“Buonasera,” Alessandro crooned. “Thank you so much for inviting me to dinner. I haven’t had a homemade meal in weeks.”

When I’d spoken to him an hour ago, he’d had a mere trace of an accent. Now he sounded like he’d jumped out of a Fellini film onto the red carpet.

Bern crossed his arms. Leon scowled. Bug looked like a surprised hedgehog with all his needles up in the air.

Alessandro pretended not to notice and handed the wine bottle to Leon.

Leon took it, baring his teeth. “Keep your filthy hands off my cousin.”

Alessandro smiled again, his face serene, as if Leon had just complimented him on his choice of wine. “Please forgive me, the selection in the local stores is rather limited, but I was able to find a decent variety of Grenache.”

“You can take that wine and shove—” Leon started.

“Leon,” Mom said.

He clicked his jaw shut and went to get the wineglasses.

“Thank you for the wine,” Mom said. “Please join us.”

Alessandro stepped to my chair and held it out for me. Runa leaned on her elbow, clearly enjoying the show.

Grabbing the chair and hitting him with it was out of the question. I sat and let him scoot it closer to the table for me.

A phone flashed as Grandma took another picture. I clenched my teeth and stared straight ahead.

We passed the food around.

“You’re very pretty,” Matilda observed. “Are you a prince?”

“No,” he told her with another dazzling smile. “Only a conte. A count.”

“Hot damn,” Grandma Frida said.

A quiet thud sounded. My mother had set her glass down with some force.

For a brief time, nobody spoke as everyone dug into the food.

Alessandro ate like a starving wolf. His manners were flawless, but the food disappeared off his plate with staggering speed. He finished it all and went in for seconds.

“This is delicious,” Ragnar said around a mouthful of food.

“The chicken is ottimo,” Alessandro said, looking at my mother. “La cena migliore che abbia mai mangiato. Absolutely wonderful. I could eat this every day until I die.”

The chicken was “delicious,” and it was the “best dinner he had ever eaten.” Give me a break. And so much Italian too. He was laying the charm on thick. Oh, look at me, I’m Alessandro, so handsome, so refined, at such a disadvantage because I don’t speak good English and have to reach for my native tongue. He probably had a better English vocabulary than I did. Ugh.

“I didn’t cook it,” Mom said. “Catalina did.”

Alessandro froze.

Ha! Didn’t expect that, did you?

“That’s nothing,” Runa said. “Just wait until you taste her pithivier. It’s to die for.”

I glared at her. She gave me a look of pure innocence and went back to eating.

Alessandro made a short cough that sounded suspiciously like choking. “There is a pithivier?”

“Yes,” I said.

He put his fork down and faced me, his expression besotted.

Do not blush, do not blush . . .

Alessandro opened his mouth. “Marry me.”

“If she says yes, shoot him,” Bern said to Leon, his face completely serious. “She’ll thank us later.”

Bug stirred in his seat. “Catalina, do not marry this dickfucker. There are better birds in the sea.” He turned to my mom and said, “Pardon my French.”

Matilda leaned forward, looked at Alessandro, then looked at me. “Your children would be very attractive.”

Alessandro winked at Matilda. “Thank you. You are most kind.”

Runa covered her face with her hands and made some whimpering noises.

Okay, no. I had to nip this in the bud. “Matilda, picking a husband is more complicated than just selecting an attractive mate. He has to be smart and kind, and he has to be a good person.”

Alessandro glanced at me. The sharp fire in his eyes sparked and vanished before anyone else noticed.

Runa’s cell rang. She took her hands from her face and looked at my mom.

Mom sighed. “Go ahead.”

Runa answered it and frowned. “Uh, Mr. Moody?”

Sigourney Etterson’s financial adviser.

The table went completely silent. Bern pulled a tablet out of thin air and set it to record.

“So you want me to come to your office, right now?” Runa asked, and held the phone out at arm’s length toward us.

“Yes,” a distant male voice said. “It’s urgent.”

“I understand it’s urgent, Mr. Moody. I just don’t understand why. My mother has been dead for four days, and I’m the executor of the estate. Why do I have to see you in person, now?”

“I can’t discuss this over the phone.”

“Yes, but it’s almost seven o’clock, it’s dark, and your office is across town. Can you come here instead?”

“I have documents I need to show you. They’re of a sensitive nature and cannot leave my office.”

“Why can’t I see the documents tomorrow?”

His voice spiked into exasperation. “If you want to see a cent from your mother’s estate, you need to come here as soon as possible. Tomorrow may be too late.”

The call cut off. Runa put the phone down. “He hung up.”

Bern turned the tablet toward us. On it a white, dark-haired, middle-aged man smiled into the camera. He was the type my mom called the “good ole boy in a suit.” He could have been handsome in high school in an I-love-football way, but time, indulgent diet, and money had softened and thickened his features. He looked like he wore suits to work, drove an expensive car, and practiced trustworthy smiles in the mirror to more effectively separate clients from their money.

“Dennis George Moody II,” Bern announced. “Fifty years old, married twice, adult son from the first marriage, two children from the second. MBA from Baylor. Series 7 license from FINRA, which enables him to sell stocks, bonds, options and futures, in addition to the sale of packaged securities. Never declared bankruptcy. One DUI arrest in college, nothing since. Wife sells real estate. Good credit score and a two-million-dollar house, three quarters paid off.”

“Wow,” Ragnar said. “You found all of that in three minutes?”

“No,” Bern told him. “Catalina ran a background check on Moody because he’s mentioned in your mother’s financial documents. I just pulled up the file.”

“How well do you know him?” I asked Runa.

Runa shrugged. “I’ve seen him at Christmas parties once or twice.”

“He was helping Mom to readjust her portfolio in response to the market slowdown and recession,” Ragnar said. “He’s been our financial adviser for four years. I interviewed him for my economics class essay. He doesn’t belong to any House and he’s proud of being a self-made man, his words.”

“So, he isn’t a friend of the family?” Mom asked.

“No,” Ragnar said. “Mom worked with him closely, but I wouldn’t call him a family friend.”

“This is a trap,” Runa declared.

Leon rolled his eyes. “Of course, it’s a trap, Admiral Ackbar. The relevant question is, is he working for them voluntarily or do they have a gun to his head?”

Grandma Frida wrinkled her nose. “He’s a money guy. They waved a check under his nose and he followed.”

“I can’t believe they would think I’m so gullible,” Runa said.

“Not gullible,” Bernard said. “Impulsive and prone to panic.”

She stared at him, mortally offended. My cousin remained stoic.

“Panic?” Runa asked in the kind of voice one normally proclaimed, Do you know who I am?

“You did poison Conway,” Leon pointed out.

“Oh my God! I poison one guy and now all of Houston thinks I’m a raging idiot.”

“Wait,” Ragnar said. “You poisoned somebody?”

“It’s a long story, I’ll tell you later.”

They wanted Runa to leave the warehouse, which meant she had to stay here. But Moody just designated himself as an excellent lead. He knew something, and I wanted him to share it with me. I wished Arabella hadn’t left. The safest thing to do was to wait until Heart got here, but for all we knew, someone from Diatheke had a gun to Moody’s head, and if we delayed, he’d be a corpse by the time we got there.

“I need your keys,” I told Runa. “It will go smoother if I drive your car.”

“I’m coming with you. He asked to talk to me.”

Leon tapped his plate with his fork and raised his hands like a conductor. “Three, two, one . . .”

“No,” we all chorused.

I caught a glimpse of Alessandro. He leaned back in his chair with a resigned expression. He knew where this would go, and he was waiting for us to get there. He caught me looking and nodded slightly. He wanted in on the Moody thing and I would be an idiot to go there without backup.

“The rule of thumb is, do the opposite of what the bad guys want you to do,” Leon said. “They want you to go to Moody’s office, so you have to stay here.”

“Leon is right,” I said. “If I wanted to kill you, I would try to lure you out of the warehouse. And then, once I figured out that my ruse had failed, I would hit the warehouse as hard as I could. The most prudent thing would be for all of us to stay here. But somebody must either rescue him or ask him some very important questions, like who convinced him to make that phone call. Arabella is gone, so we’re shorthanded until Sergeant Heart and his people get here, which should be in a couple of hours. Until then, you and Leon are our best defenses.”

“Excuse me?” Grandma Frida said.

“You, Leon, Grandma Frida, Bern, Mom, and Matilda are our best defenses. There, did I leave anybody out?”

Ragnar raised his hand.

“I will instruct Zeus,” Matilda promised. “He is excellent at close quarters defense.”

Alessandro cleared his throat. Yes, I know, I know.

I looked straight at Runa. “I’m going to Moody’s office and I need you to stay here and protect the kids. Please give me your keys.”

Runa dug in her pocket and tossed me the rental’s keychain.