Sapphire Flames

Chapter 3

The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences occupied a nine-story building on Old Spanish Trail. Its blocky lines, rectangular windows, and orange brick practically screamed government agency.

I maneuvered our Honda Element into the parking lot. It used to be our surveillance vehicle, because it blended with traffic, but last year Grandma Frida decided to rebuild it from wheels up. Now the Element sported a new engine, bulletproof windows, B5 armor, and run-flat tires among other fun modifications, which struck a perfect balance between protecting us and letting us get away fast. Unfortunately, even Grandma Frida had her limits, and steering was a bit sluggish. I aimed for a parking spot in the middle row.

“So, what’s with you and Alessandro Sagredo?” Runa asked.

The steering was sluggish, but the brakes worked perfectly. I jerked forward, and my seat belt slammed me back.

“Nothing.”

“Aha.” Runa pulled on her own seat belt. “That’s why we screeched to a stop halfway into the parking space?”

“My foot slipped.” I gently eased forward and brought the Element to a smooth stop.

“So you’re just going to go with ‘nothing’?” Runa asked.

“That’s right.”

“Your sister said you met during your trials.”

Sistercide was not a word, but it would be after today. Well, technically, sororicide was a word, but most people wouldn’t recognize it. When did Runa even have a chance to talk to Arabella?

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes what? Is there a story behind that?”

No. He didn’t follow me on Instagram, and he didn’t take my breath away during the trials. And he definitely didn’t show up under my window trying to convince me to go for a drive.

“We met during the trials, and my sisters haven’t stopped teasing me about it for the last three years. There is absolutely nothing between me and Alessandro Sagredo.”

Strictly speaking, there were 5,561 miles between our warehouse and the Sagredo estate near Venice, Italy. A commercial flight with one connection could get me to Venice in thirteen hours. I could be under Alessandro’s window tomorrow, asking him if he would like to go for a drive.

“You zoned out there for a second,” Runa observed. “Are you imagining there being nothing between you and Alessandro?”

She was trying to distract herself from the horror of never seeing her mother and sister again, but I had to put a stop to it, or I would never get out of the car.

I used my logical, reasonable voice. “Runa, do you see Alessandro in this car? No. He isn’t in this parking lot or in that building either, so he’s a non-issue. Let’s go.”

We started across the parking lot. Cold wind buffeted us.

Runa hugged her arms to herself. She wore a light windbreaker over a green sweater dress. “I should get a coat like yours. Is that Burberry?”

“Yes. I got it on sale last year at half off.”

“Lucky.”

I was wearing a beige mid-length trench coat over a grey sweater and blue jeans tucked into soft boots. The coat had a double-breasted front closure with a row of black buttons on each side. I had left it open. It flattered my figure and looked stylish and expensive enough to belong to a Prime, but most importantly, it hid my knife resting in a special sheath sewn into the lining on the left side.

There were only a handful of ways to conceal a blade long enough to be effective in a fight. You could wear it on your thigh under a loose skirt, which would have you pawing at your skirt to draw it and was impractical in cold weather. You could wear it in a shoulder sheath, but if you took the outer garment off, it was no longer concealed. Hiding it in the coat lining was the best option. Even if I took the coat off out of politeness or necessity, I could carry it so I could draw in an instant. It was highly unlikely that the Forensic Institute would require me to check my coat.

We entered the lobby. The designers of the institute must have been great fans of modern industry, and monochromatic colors. The floor gleamed with white tile, the walls highlighted with pale grey; the ceiling featured stainless-steel beams with long fluorescent lights, and the counters practically glowed with pristine white. Even the visitor furniture, upholstered soft chairs, were a greyish off-white. The place begged for a plant or a Gustav Klimt print.

I walked up to the receptionist behind the counter. I had checked the case status on the institute’s website. The case was listed as pending, so I called ahead and warned them that the two of us would be coming.

“Catalina Baylor and Runa Etterson,” I told the woman behind the counter. “We’re here about the Etterson case.”

The receptionist, an older Latina woman, gave me an apologetic smile. “I’ve spoken to AME Conway and he says that you can’t view the bodies.”

“Can’t?” Runa asked. “What do you mean by can’t?”

“They’re not available.”

The air around Runa shimmered with a faint trace of green. Her voice went cold. “Make them available.”

The lobby went completely silent, as the three admins behind the counter held very still.

I had to defuse this standoff before someone panicked and escalated it. Luckily, bureaucracy was made of rules, and rules and I were friends.

I smiled at the receptionist. “As the next of kin and Head of her House, Prime Etterson has a right to view the remains of her family members at will. If you deny her access, I’ll be forced to notify her House counsel and you will have to show cause for failing to comply with your own regulations, in court, before a judge. I’ll wait while you check the validity of our claim with your in-house attorney.”

The receptionist reached for the phone. “One moment please.” She turned away from me and spoke into the phone in an urgent whisper.

I stepped away and steered Runa toward the window.

Minutes ticked by.

“What is taking so long?” Runa ground out.

“They’ll sort it out.”

The admin hung up. “Our apologies.” She motioned to a young white man with longish, dark hair who had been hovering by the copier behind her. “This is Victor.”

Victor, who had been trying very hard to be invisible up to this point, performed an award-winning impersonation of a deer in headlights.

“Victor will take you to the correct autopsy suite.”

“Thank you,” I said. “We’re also expecting a Scroll representative. Please have him join us when he arrives.”

We followed Victor to the elevator. It took us to the third floor, which was just as gleaming as the lobby. We walked through a white hallway to a large room, where six autopsy tables waited in a row against the wall. Four stood empty. The other two held bodies covered with white fabric.

A white man in his late thirties waited by the nearest table with his arms crossed. He wore a pristine white lab coat, which gave a glimpse of a striped grey dress shirt and yellow tie. His dark hair was cut so short, it was barely there. You would expect him to be clean shaven, but the stubble sheathing his face and neck was about the same length as his hair. It looked like he had gotten up a couple of mornings ago, shaved everything from the neck up, and now was letting it grow out. The effect was rather unsettling.

Victor beat a hasty retreat without saying a word. The man in the lab coat showed no signs of coming forward to greet us, so I headed for him. Runa followed. Two security cameras, one on the right wall and the other directly above the door, watched our every move.

The man lifted his badge, showing it to us. “Silas Conway, MD, assistant medical examiner.”

I waited. Nothing else came out. That was the totality of the introductions. Great start.

“Catalina Baylor and Runa Etterson. Thank you for meeting with us on such short notice, Dr. Conway.”

“What are you doing here?”

“What do you think we’re doing here?” Runa asked.

“Wasting my time.”

He did not just say that. “We’re here to view the bodies.”

Conway fixed me with his stare. “Why?”

“It doesn’t matter why.” Runa took a step toward him. “You have no right to block my access to the remains of my family.”

“I wasn’t blocking your access. I was otherwise occupied. I had to drop everything and come down here to accommodate you. The bodies are not in any state to be viewed, and it is the policy of this office to spare the family members the unnecessary trauma. I was trying to be considerate, but clearly my efforts and concern were wasted.”

Clearly. He was a veritable fountain of consideration and sympathy. He couldn’t even manage a “sorry for your loss.”

This felt wrong. First, I had called ahead, so he knew we would be arriving. Second, he wasn’t just irritated but borderline hostile, as if he were trying to antagonize Runa. This was a routine procedure and he was in breach of protocol. What possible reason could there be for that hostility? If he acted like this with everybody, let alone Primes, he would be fired. He had to know everything he said was being recorded on the security feed.

I should’ve come by myself, but I needed Runa to cut through the bureaucracy. Still, Runa was traumatized and fragile, and she swung from jokes to anger in half a second. I had to be very careful with her, and now this guy was pushing for a confrontation for no apparent reason. Controlling this situation was getting more and more complicated, and using my magic on a city employee was a felony. Starting this investigation by breaking the law wasn’t on my agenda.

Conway marched over to the two tables and stood between them. “You wanted to view the bodies, here they are.”

He jerked back the two sheets covering the remains.

I had read about burn victims in forensic textbooks. Several years ago, Nevada was forced into tracking down a pyrokinetic Prime. None of us could help her, so I sat at home, worried out of my mind, and read every book on fire and burn victims that I could get my hands on. At the time, Arabella had pointed out that I was just driving myself crazy, but somehow that was my way of coping with the stress. A kind of self-imposed exposure therapy.

Reading about someone burning to death and seeing an actual body were two different things.

The two charred figures on the tables couldn’t have weighed more than sixty pounds each. The heat of the blaze had desiccated them, and as the muscles and ligaments dehydrated, the bodies contracted, bending their knees and elbows and curling their fingers into fists. Textbooks called it the pugilistic pose because it was similar to the defense stance of a boxer. The facial features were gone. The skin and subcutaneous layer of fat were gone as well. It was impossible to guess at gender, race, or age of the bodies. I was looking at the two vaguely human-shaped objects sheathed in blackened, shriveled flesh.

A hint of a sickening odor spread through the room. Bitter, nauseating, sweet, and coppery, it was like nothing I had smelled before; a greasy, burned pork roast mixed with charred leather. Bile rose to my throat.

I turned away and saw Runa, standing statue-still behind me, her face so pale she looked dead herself. And in a sense, she was. Losing my mother and sister would’ve killed a part of me. It must have hurt so much. All we could do was hope that they’d died before the fire reached them. Nobody deserved to burn to death.

“Satisfied?” Conway asked. “Wouldn’t it have been better to remember them the way they were?”

“No,” Runa said. “I want to remember them just like this. I’ll never forget this, and I’ll make whoever did this pay.”

“This was a tragic but accidental fire,” Conway said. “It’s natural to look for someone to blame, but we’ve found no signs of violence. My estimate is that the arson investigation will uncover the source of the fire and the final finding will demonstrate a terrible turn of events but not a criminal one. Go home, Miss Etterson. You’ll find no answers here.”

“Was there particulate found in the lungs?” I asked.

He glared at me and took a step forward. Trying to intimidate me with his age and size.

All my life I worked at being overlooked. Drawing any attention to myself meant putting others in danger. I didn’t just avoid conflict, I made sure I would never be anywhere near it. My natural inclination was to flee; out of the institute, to my car, and then to the safety of the warehouse and my family where everybody loved me, so I could recover from being glared at by this jerk.

However, there were two bodies on the tables and Runa needed answers. I took the job and I had to do it. Besides, I was right, and he was wrong.

I channeled my best impression of a displeased Arrosa Rogan, fixed Conway with a frigid stare, and held it. Eye contact and derision didn’t come naturally to me, but Rogan’s mother had been adamant that I learn how to do both. I practiced this expression in the mirror for weeks until I got it just right. It was like firing an emotional shotgun loaded with cold disgust.

Conway halted in mid-move.

“I assume they keep you around because you’re good at your job, since your manner and conduct are appalling. That you would meet a survivor with aggression and arrogance is beyond any guidelines of the ME’s office or common human decency.”

Conway’s face turned purple.

“So, I’ll ask again. Was there smoke in their lungs? If you can’t answer my question, find someone who can.”

Conway drew in a deep, rage-filled breath. I braced myself.

Victor appeared in the doorway.

“What?” Conway roared at him.

Victor stepped aside, letting a man in a severe black suit into the room.

“Hello, Mr. Fullerton,” I said.

The Scroll representative walked into the room. He was in his forties, trim, neat, with skin tanned by the sun, and dark hair combed back from his face. His eyes were an unexpected, very light shade of blue. They were also the only spot of color. Everything else—the Wolf & Shepherd oxfords, the tailored suit, the crisp shirt, the impeccable tie, and the glasses—was black.

“Ms. Baylor, it’s always a pleasure.” He offered his hand to Runa and she shook it. “Ms. Etterson, my deepest condolences.”

“Who is this?” Conway demanded.

Fullerton looked at him for a full second. “I’m here on behalf of Scroll, Inc., to perform genetic identification at House Etterson’s request.”

Conway’s eyes went glassy and wide. Panic shivered in his brown irises. He took a jerky step back and threw his arms out to his sides, touching each corpse. A wave of revulsion slammed into me, sudden and overwhelming, a terrible feeling that things had just gone horribly, horribly wrong.

The desiccated body on the table next to me lunged up. I saw it coming but my mind had half a second to react, and it refused to accept what it was seeing. The corpse leaped at me. Cold, hard fingers locked on my throat.

Panic slapped me. The air vanished. Pain clamped my throat in a steel vise and squeezed.

Conway sprinted to the door. Fullerton stepped aside, letting Conway pass, his face perfectly calm as if we were at a society lunch. Runa spun, aiming at Conway with her hand. If she poisoned him, whatever he knew would die with him.

I clamped my hands together and drove them up between the corpse’s arms. Its hands fell off my neck and I rammed my heel into its midsection. It stumbled back.

“No!” I croaked.

A burst of green shot from Runa like a striking viper and lashed Conway’s shoulders, just before the other corpse jumped over me and landed on her back. Conway dove through the doorway and vanished from sight.

Crap.

The first corpse righted itself. I sucked in a breath—my throat was on fire—and pulled my knife out. The reanimated bodies didn’t act like zombies; they were simply vessels for the reanimator’s magic, like puppets on invisible strings. Stabbing it in the heart or the head would get me nowhere. I had to disable it.

My magic sparked, pulling me, and I let it guide my strike. My siren talent came from my father, but this I inherited from my mother. It made her a deadly sniper, it allowed Leon to make impossible shots, and it never steered me wrong.

The desiccated husk of a human charged at me with its arms open wide. I caught its right wrist, stabbed my blade into its armpit, and twisted. The seven-inch CPM-3V high-carbon steel sliced through the shriveled gristle of the tendons and cartilage like it was old, dry leather. The arm fell from the shoulder, hanging by a thin strip of flesh.

I let go of its wrist, jerked the blade free, and slashed across the back of the corpse’s neck. Its head rolled off its shoulders. I stabbed my knife into its other shoulder, wrenched the bone out of the socket, cut across the body’s lower back, severing the vertebrae, and hammered a kick to the back of its knee. The corpse collapsed, falling apart. Pieces of the body writhed on the floor, no longer a threat.

The second corpse had sunk its fingers into Runa’s hair, hanging off her. Green mist wrapped around both, turning the body’s charred flesh green.

“Don’t touch!” Runa screamed. “I’ve got this. Go!”

I dashed past Fullerton and out of the room. The hallway on the right lay empty. On the left, Conway staggered forward, bent over and grabbing the wall for support. Yep, she poisoned him.

Never again. Runa Etterson wasn’t coming with me to interrogate any more leads. I had minutes, maybe seconds, to squeeze answers out of him.

I ran.

Conway glanced over his shoulder and sped up. He was nearly to the corner. I had to get to him before her poison finished him off.

He stumbled, clutched at the wall, and pulled himself up. I was almost to him.

A tall, lean man in an expensive black suit rounded the corner and stalked toward us. He moved with grace, not like a dancer but like a swordsman, swift and supple, and carried himself with complete assurance as if he owned the whole building and his mere presence was an honor to behold. His longish brown hair had fallen over one side of his face.

Conway lunged to the left, trying to avoid him.

The man’s hand snapped out. He caught the AME’s shoulder, steadying him, pulled a long, narrow dagger out of his jacket, and stabbed Silas Conway in the heart.

It was a breathtaking strike. Smooth, fast, flawless. My magic sparked, as if acknowledging the beauty of it. He didn’t even aim. He did it all in a single offhanded motion, as if he had taken his car keys out of his pocket and tossed them to a friend. This wasn’t expertise, this was mastery, born of pure muscle memory and superior reflexes.

The man raised his head. Alessandro Sagredo looked at me over Conway’s shoulder, smiled, and smoothly withdrew his knife from the AME’s chest.

My brain short-circuited. I tried to stop, but I was sprinting on a polished concrete floor, and the laws of physics conspired against me. I slid. The floor squeaked under my boots, and I skidded past the two men at full speed. Alessandro tilted his head and watched me slowly come to a stop.

How was this possible? Alessandro Sagredo was a playboy. He took pictures in the Caribbean with his shirt off. He surfed in Fiji and shopped in London. He didn’t stab random government workers in the heart with surgical precision.

Alessandro was looking at me. Right at me. Like I was the only thing in the world. A hot, predatory fire played in his amber eyes. He looked at me like I was a delicious steak and he was a hungry wolf.

Say something smart, say something smart . . . “Hey!” Oh my God.

Without saying a word, Alessandro stepped over Conway’s body and walked toward me. I should have turned around and run the other way, or at least raised my knife. Instead, I just stood there, like a complete idiot.

Alessandro reached over and offered me his bent arm. I rested my fingers on his forearm. The muscle under the suit’s fabric felt like steel. Alessandro moved, and we strolled around the corner.

I was hallucinating. I had to be.

“I . . .”

“Shh,” he said in a slightly accented voice. “Just keep walking. Building security will be here soon, and we need to not be here.”

He had killed Conway. It didn’t bother him. It didn’t disturb him any more than swatting a fly. Alessandro had stabbed a human being in the heart before. Many, many, many times before.

I’d made a serious error in judgment.

“I like your knife,” he said. “You might want to put it away though, before someone gets excited.”

I slid the blade back into its sheath in my coat. Wait. He’d shushed me. Like I was five. He told me to put my knife away and I did. And now I was letting him walk me away.

What the hell am I doing?

“Why are we walking?”

He glanced at me, his tawny eyes amused. “Because I’ve just knifed someone. Security will want to ask me a lot of boring questions. I hate boring questions. And there will be paperwork. I hate that too.”

Oh yeah, well, in that case. “You killed Conway.”

“Yes, I did.”

I stopped. He stopped too and looked at me.

“Alessandro, what are you doing here?”

“Trying to get you to walk faster?”

My brain finally regained the ability to form complete sentences. “Why did you kill Conway? He was a lead in my investigation and now he’s dead.”

“He was a very bad man. You were chasing him with a knife.”

“I needed to ask him some questions.”

He smiled like a wolf baring its fangs in a dark forest. “Were you going to stab him if he didn’t answer?”

“I don’t need to stab people to get answers.”

He sighed. “Collect your friend and go home, Catalina. There are no answers for you here.”

What?

Runa rounded the corner at full speed, saw us, and froze.

“I’m so sorry,” Alessandro said. “I have to leave now. Go home, stay safe, and forget all about this.”

Ahead the elevator chimed.

“I’ll see you around.” Alessandro raised his hand. Somehow there was a gun in it. I didn’t see him draw one. The gun barked, spitting bullets, the window to our right shattered, and Alessandro jumped out of it.

The elevator doors slid open, and guards in grey uniforms poured out, guns drawn.

“Put your hands up!” the leading guard roared.

I put my hands on my head and let them handcuff me.

Ten minutes after the building security apprehended me, the Houston PD House Response Unit arrived at the scene in a blaze of glory. They released Fullerton, who was clearly a neutral third party, detained Runa and me, and asked us questions for forty-five minutes. The way they concentrated on the description of the mysterious male who stabbed Conway made me think Alessandro had tampered with the hallway cameras. After the third round of the same questions, I dug my heels in, gave them the name of our attorney, and pointed out that my client was traumatized by having her family reanimated and that she had enemies powerful enough to corrupt an AME and that I could see at least three spots from which one could line up a long-range shot and snipe her. After that I answered every question with “Are we free to go?” They gave up and released us. I grabbed Runa and all but shoved her into the elevator.

The moment the elevator doors closed, Runa spun toward me. “You lied to me!”

“Not here,” I warned her. “When we get out of the elevator, walk next to me. Stop when I stop and if I tell you to run, run.”

Runa’s face hardened. “You think they’ll try to kill me.”

“Yes.”

“I hope they try.”

Right. Runa’s emotions had clubbed her rational thinking over the head, dumped its body on the side of the road, and took my friend for a joy ride. Just what we needed.

Client. Not friend; client. Friends were for other people. You wanted your friends to like you, and when I wanted someone to like me, the chances of my magic leaking out and enthralling them was much higher. I’d spent twenty-one years avoiding making friends. It was irresponsible to start now.

I did like Runa. I liked her when I first met her, and I wished I could be more like her, funny and charming and comfortable in her skin. Seeing her now broke my heart. I wanted to fix all the shitty things for her, and I had to watch myself very carefully. Besides, she didn’t need a friend right now; she needed a professional investigator.

The elevator opened. I took a second to scan the lobby. No visible threats. I walked out and headed for the door, my head held high. Next to me Runa marched like she was daring someone to block her way.

We exited the building, and I accelerated, almost breaking into a jog. The space between my shoulder blades itched, as if someone was aiming at me through a rifle scope.

Get to the car, get to the car . . .

I popped the locks, and we jumped into the Element. I started the engine, reversed out of the parking spot, and sped out onto the street.

“Alessandro was in that building. I saw him, Catalina, with my eyes.”

“I had no idea he would be there.” I concentrated on driving. The car shot down the road. Nobody followed us.

“What was he doing there?”

“Killing our suspect.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Call Bern.”

The sound of my phone dialing came from the car’s speakers and Bern picked up. “Yes.”

“You were right.” I took a turn a little too fast and accelerated up the access road, shifting to the left to enter the highway ramp. “It’s House warfare. We’re coming back to the warehouse. Lock us down.”

“On it,” Bern said. “Are you coming in hot?”

“Not that I can see.” I merged into the traffic.

“Is my brother awake?” Runa asked.

“No,” Bern said. “I’ll call if there is any change.”

“I need everything you can dig up on AME Silas Conway. In particular, sudden large payments to his accounts in the last month or so and where they came from.”

“What did he do?”

“He tried to prevent us from viewing the bodies, and when the Scroll rep showed up, he reanimated the corpses of Runa’s mother and sister and tried to kill us with them. The cops are digging into Conway’s past as we speak.”

“Are you okay?” my cousin asked.

“Yes. Fullerton got the samples, but Conway died before I could question him.”

“What happened?”

“Alessandro Sagredo.”

The phone fell silent.

“I’m sorry, say again?”

“Alessandro Sagredo happened. He showed up in the Harris County IFS and stabbed my suspect in the heart. He did it as if he had a lot of practice. Then he told me to collect my friend, go home, and not to worry my pretty little head about it.”

And when I found him, he would regret every word. He’d surprised me this time, but he wouldn’t again.

“He said what?” Runa asked.

The car speaker remained silent.

“Bern, are you there?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “You’ve had a pretty big morning.”

“See you soon.” I hung up.

“How is Sagredo involved in all this?” Runa asked.

“No idea. Do you know him? Do you know his family? Did your mom have any contact with him?”

“No.”

“But you recognized his picture,” I reminded her.

“I recognized him because I had a giant crush on him in high school, like every other girl my age. When he got engaged for the first time, Felicity, Michelle, and I had a pity party with cheesecake and whipped cream.”

When I heard about his first engagement, I locked myself in my room and cried alone. I had cried the next two times too, because I was a moron.

Runa shook her head. “Trust me, if anyone has any connection to Sagredo, it’s you. He doesn’t even know I exist.”

If House Etterson had no connection to House Sagredo, then why was Alessandro at the morgue, and why had he killed Conway and told me to go home? He was involved in this somehow. He had to be.

I needed to find Alessandro, and for that I would need Bug.

Bug served as Rogan’s surveillance specialist. Magically altered, he processed visual information at an astonishing rate. He could sift through the simultaneous feed from dozens of CCTV cameras and track a person across the entire city. If anybody could find Alessandro, Bug could.

He was also fanatically loyal to Rogan. The moment we involved Bug, Rogan would know every detail of what we asked, real and imagined, because Bug wouldn’t just report the facts, he would embellish them with his conclusions delivered with his particular flair.

I could just imagine the way that report would go. Hey, so you’ll never believe this dick fart thing: they want me to find Alessandro Sagredo. The gnome molester apparently stabbed somebody, and your sister wants to marry him. She’s paying me a fortune to find him before he kills again and ruins the romance. She believes the dimwit shit-for-brains can be redeemed, I guess, by the love of a good woman. Isn’t that just reindeer balls?

Nevada would then drop everything and fly back here to help and fix things which would jeopardize Mrs. Rogan’s claim. Rogan’s grandfather was difficult in life and he saw no reason to change in death. His will specified that unless Rogan and Nevada were present for the entire duration of his funeral and the mourning period, Mrs. Rogan would be cut out of her father’s will.

Mrs. Rogan wanted to inherit only one thing from her late father: the family’s summer house on the coast where her late mother had planted a beautiful garden. When Mrs. Rogan was a little girl, before her mother’s death, the family would vacation there. It was the place of her happiest memories.

For the past three years Mrs. Rogan educated and trained me. She found tutors for my magic, she arranged for etiquette lessons, she took me to museums and art galleries trying to hone my taste. She did it all never expecting anything in return, except a thank-you. Nevada and I wanted her to get that house more than she did.

I loved my brother-in-law, but to say that he was paranoid when it came to safety was like saying a typhoon was a gentle breeze. I had no doubt Connor had us watched. He couldn’t help himself. That meant he already knew that Augustine showed up at our place in the middle of the night and that I left with him and came back with Runa and her unconscious brother. Whether he shared it with my sister was another question, but sooner or later Nevada would find out that we took a dangerous case. The likelihood of her rushing back home was already high, and Bug’s litany of curses could push her over the edge.

The only way to stop this from happening was to level with her. It was too late to call her now. She would be in bed.

We needed Bug now. It was vital that we got a handle on where Alessandro was and why he was here. I couldn’t wait till tomorrow.

“Call Bug.”

The phone barely had a chance to ring before Bug snatched it up. “What do you want?”

“I need to hire you to find somebody, but you can’t tell my sister. I’ll tell her myself first thing in the morning. Can you wait that long?”

“Depends on who it is.”

Nice try. I wasn’t born yesterday. “Promise first.”

“Fine. I promise.”

“Alessandro Sagredo.”

Bug’s voice spiked. “Your virgin girl crush? The Italian Stallion?”

“Does everybody know that I had a thing for Alessandro?”

“Anybody who knows you. What did he do? Have you given up on pining from afar and decided to sweep him off his expensive cordovan leather loafers?”

I ground my teeth. “He killed my prime suspect.”

Silence.

“How?”

“He stabbed him in the heart. Less than five feet away from me.”

“Ohhh. That’s good. That’s too good. I’ve got to tell the Major.”

“Bug! Think way back, about two milliseconds ago, when you promised me that you wouldn’t tell?”

“You tricked me. I don’t know if I can hold it in. It’s too good.”

Argh. “Okay, you can tell Connor if you swear him to secrecy. He can’t tell Nevada. I’ll explain it to her myself, tomorrow morning. Can you do that?”

“I’ll try.”

“They’re asleep, anyway.”

Bug snorted. “The Major never sleeps. Sometimes he rests his eyes while thinking deep thoughts.”

“Connor is at his grandfather’s funeral trying not to murder his obnoxious family. He’s dealing with a lot right now, Bug. You don’t want to add to that, do you?”

“You always ruin things with your logic. Fine. Where was the fancy boy last seen?”

“Jumping out of a third-story window of the IFS.”

“Okay, I’ll give it to him, that’s pretty badass. I’m on it.”

“We haven’t discussed your fee.”

Bug moaned. “Catalina, I’m so fucking bored. Nothing is happening. Another day and I’ll pay you to hire me. At least this is something to do. With a face like that, he’ll be easy to find. I’ll call you when I learn more.”

He hung up.

“You know some weird people,” Runa said.

“It comes with the job. Are you okay?” I asked her.

“No, I’m pretty far from okay. My mother’s dead body tried to rip my hair out.”

There was nothing I could do or say to take that away from her.

“She loved us so much. I could go to my mom with anything, and she would make me feel better. He used her like she was a thing. Like she wasn’t even a person.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?” she ground out. “I want to know why this happened.”

“We’ll figure out why. We learned two things already: your family was murdered, and their killer is powerful enough to compromise an AME.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Runa said. “It started weird and it keeps getting weirder, Catalina.”

“I told you this could get ugly when we started. Do you want to walk away, Runa? You still can, but there will be a point when we can’t stop what we started, and it’s coming up fast.”

“We didn’t start anything. Whoever killed my mom and my sister started it.” Runa swiped a tear from her eyes. Her teeth were clenched, her expression hard and angry. “But I’ll finish it. You have my word.”