Sapphire Flames

by Ilona Andrews

  “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.”

  Chapter 4

  Houston traffic was murder. It took us twenty-five minutes to cover the distance we could have driven in fifteen if the streets were empty. Nobody tailed us, but still I couldn’t breathe right until we turned onto the road leading to the warehouse.

  The security checkpoint, a squat armored building, was an eyesore, but when I finally saw it up ahead, I wanted to run out and hug it. Almost home.

  “Catalina!” Runa yelled.

  A truck horn blared. I nearly jumped up out of the seat. A delivery truck screeched to a halt on our right, from the access road. Another foot and it would have plowed into us. The driver waved his arms, his face skewed by anger.

  I had run a stop sign. I knew the stop sign was there and I ignored it, because we were on high alert. There should have been a two-foot-high steel barrier obstructing that access road.

  This was beyond ridiculous.

  I stepped on the gas, drove up to the security booth, and rolled down my window. Kelly, a white man in his forties, with dark blond hair and a farmer’s tan, slid open the window and grinned at me. “Stop signs are there for a reason, Ms. Baylor.”

  There should have been two people in the booth.

  I had two choices. I could either chew him out in front of Runa and highlight exactly how incompetent we were, or I could let my mother, who oversaw our security, chew out his superior in private. I settled for the latter. “Raise all security barriers. No vehicles come in.”

  “But what about the deliveries?”

  I made my voice very calm. “No vehicles come in, Mr. Kelly. Find Mr. Abarca and please have him see me ASAP.”

  Kelly finally realized that things were FUBAR, and the smile bled off his face. “Yes ma’am.”

  I rolled up my window and drove off, checking the rearview mirror. Behind me hydraulics whined, raising the spiked barricade to block the street.

  I drove to the warehouse, and we came in through the business entrance. I walked into the conference room and used the intercom. “Family meeting in the conference room, please.”

  Runa took a seat. I sat down at the head of the table.

  I’d been attacked by two corpses, saw my teenage crush stab a man in the heart, and then watched him jump out of a three-story window. I’d bullied an administrative assistant and stood up to the cops. Then I drove through heavy traffic, scanning it for enemies, and almost got into an accident in front of my damn house. My heart was still pounding. I wanted to jump up and run around the block to burn off the adrenaline.

  Instead, I had to sit in a chair and appear professional.

  I could still feel the sharp desiccated fingers on my throat, squeezing to crush my windpipe. I would remember that awful smell as long as I lived. There was no time to deal with any of it.

  The reanimated bodies were bad, but Alessandro was worse. I kept replaying that strike in my head. I wasn’t sure I could’ve blocked it even with my magic. And his face. He’d looked relaxed. He’d stood there, with a human being sliding off his knife, and he’d looked relaxed.

  My cell rang. An unlisted number.

  I answered it on speaker. “Yes?”

  “You’re tracking me,” Alessandro said.

  Runa’s eyes went big.

  “I’m not tracking you,” I told him. Technically, it wasn’t even a lie.

  “You’re having me tracked. I understand that I’m irresistible. It’s a cross I bear. But do try to have some self-control, Catalina. I’m embarrassed for you.”

  He . . . Argh. “As I recall, I never had a problem resisting you.”

  “I thought we agreed that you would drop this.”

  “I didn’t agree to anything.”

  “Catalina, listen to me. This is serious, the people involved are dangerous, and your well-being is important to me.”

  Since when? “Why don’t you tell me more about it? Maybe if I fully understand the danger, I’ll stay out of it.”

  “No, you won’t. You have no sense.”

  “I have all kinds of sense.”

  “This is your last warning, Catalina.”

  “Or what?”

  “Trust me, you don’t want to find out.”

  He hung up.

  I glared at the phone. Insufferable ass. When I got my hands on him, I would pry his mind open like a tin can. And then I would make him do a little dance, record it, and play it for him on a loop after I drained my magic off. Irresistible. I’ll show you irresistible. Just you wait.

  “‘I have all kinds of sense’?” Runa quoted.

  “I was too mad to think of a snappy comeback.”

  Mom and Bern walked into the conference room. I put my phone down.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked.

  “Closing Yarrow,” Mom said. “There has been a development. Leon called for reinforcements. Your grandma and Arabella left about an hour ago.”

  “What kind of a development?”

  “They wouldn’t tell me, but they took Brick.”

  Brick was Grandma Frida’s ultimate achievement. It started life as a military Humvee and was now the pinnacle of vehicular security. It couldn’t go faster than sixty miles an hour, but my grandma claimed it could take a shot from a tank. She also refused to let any of us drive it.

  The Yarrow case involved a woman who posed as a CPA and used her charm to worm her way into her friends’ small businesses and then rob them blind. What in the world would they need Brick for?

  I brought Mom up to speed on the events of this morning. “Also, I asked Mr. Abarca to join us after this meeting.”

  “Right,” Mom said, loading a world of meaning into the single word. She and our head of security had been butting heads almost from the moment we hired him, and it was only getting worse.

  I turned to Runa. “We need to figure out why your family was targeted. People kill for one of three reasons: emotion, power, or money. Not every House in Houston would have the audacity to pressure an AME. The penalties are severe. Your mother made an enemy with a lot of power.”

  Runa spread her arms helplessly.

  “How did your family make money?” I asked.

  Runa frowned. “I don’t exactly know. We just always had enough. We had some investments, I think. Once in a while, Mom would consult in criminal cases. She served as an expert witness.”

&n
bsp; “Any recent cases?” If someone’s conviction hinged on her testimony, it could be a hell of a motive. That or revenge. Always a good one. I would have to pull up all the recent cases Sigourney Etterson had testified in.

  “No.” Runa shook her head. “She used to do it more frequently when I was younger. I remember her traveling a lot, especially right after my father bailed on us. But she told me a few years ago that she wanted to spend more time with us, and that the forensic work didn’t pay well enough to justify her missing things in our lives.”

  I glanced at Bern. He met my gaze and frowned.

  “What?” Runa asked.

  Someone had to state the obvious and that someone was me, apparently. “You said your father cleaned out the family accounts and twelve years later you are worth eight million dollars.”

  “Less now. Some of it was the house,” Runa said.

  “Expert testimony can be profitable, but it doesn’t pay that well,” Bern said.

  She bristled. “What are you saying?”

  “We’re not saying anything,” I told her. “We’re asking questions. Things are not making sense and we need to keep digging until they do.”

  Runa rubbed her face with both hands.

  “Did your mother use any kind of remote backup?” Bern asked.

  “I don’t . . . Wait, yes,” Runa said. “Yes, she did. She used Guardian, Ltd. All the important documents were backed up to a remote server. Her user name is Hemlock. The password is our three names, RunaHalleRagnar. She made me memorize it. I should have checked it. I’m so dumb. I didn’t even think about it.”

  “You had a lot going on,” Bern said. His fingers flew over his laptop’s keyboard. “I’m in.”

  “Did she leave any letters for me? A message?”

  “Not that I can see right away,” he said. “I’ll look.”

  The excitement drained from Runa’s face. “Is that all the questions?” she asked quietly.

  “For now,” I told her.

  “I’m going to go check on my brother. Please tell me if you find anything.”

  I waited until the door behind her closed and turned to Mom.

  “Abarca?” she asked.

  “The access road barrier wasn’t up. We almost got hit by a truck coming from that street. The barricade by the security booth was down also and when I checked with Kelly, he thought the truck thing was funny. Kelly didn’t have a battle buddy.”

  My mother rested her elbow on the table and leaned her chin on her fingers. This was her we-have-a-serious-problem pose.

  When I agreed to become the Head of our House, I decided that I wouldn’t repeat Nevada’s mistake. I wouldn’t try to do everything myself. I wasn’t as strong as she was, and if I tried to carry it all, I would crumble; so I delegated. Bern oversaw all things digital that were more complex than our regular information searches. Grandma Frida handled our vehicles. Arabella collected payments. Mom took care of our security. That was her sphere, and I mostly stayed out of it. Delegating didn’t mean anything if I questioned every decision she made.

  The doorbell chimed. I got up, went to the front door, and checked the camera. Abarca stood on the other side. Lean and bronze-skinned, Abarca was forty-eight years old but looked ten years younger. He had a full head of hair, once black but now going to grey, and a pleasant face with dark eyes and an infectious grin.

  As I opened the door, he gave me a bright smile. I smiled back, because it was polite, and shut the door behind him.

  Three years ago, Nevada married Connor Rogan, also known by such fun nicknames as Mad Rogan, the Scourge of Mexico, and Huracan. Connor maintained his own private army, and for a while they provided our security.

  We were all very naive back then. We actually looked into building a house next to Rogan and Nevada’s, going as far as negotiating the price for the land. The deal fell through when I crunched the numbers and saw how much money we still owed Augustine and how much we would need to survive. Instead we had to concentrate on paying off our debt.

  As time went on and we slowly crawled out of our financial hole, we decided to hire our own security team. We did it for two reasons. We didn’t want to be a drain on House Rogan’s resources, and we had to separate ourselves from Connor’s long shadow. Always counting on Nevada and Connor to save us and provide for us wasn’t fair to them. Once I understood that fact, I worked sixty-hour weeks.

  When we started, I had no idea how much capital went into maintaining a private security force. We had to house them, feed them, and provide them with equipment. We had to carry insurance and employ an accountant to issue paychecks and file taxes. We had to retain a lawyer to file all the necessary permits. It was like piling money into a heap and setting it on fire twice a month.

  Once we gathered enough capital to hire our own security, Mom brought Lieutenant Abarca in to oversee it. They’d served together, and he’d needed a job. Abarca supervised the hiring and the training of our guards, and he seemed competent. He was approachable and friendly, but as time went on, the cracks in our security became more and more apparent.

  Abarca dropped into a chair. “Hi Pen.”

  Pen was not my mother’s favorite nickname.

  “The security barriers weren’t up, George,” she said. “I sent the alert myself. You acknowledged it. And then my daughter almost got hit by a truck that shouldn’t have been on that road.”

  “It was Justin’s truck. He delivers groceries to the DFAC, and he has done so for the last eight months. He was not a security risk and we were almost out of coffee. You know an army runs on coffee.” He grinned.

  His smile bounced off my mother like rubber bullets off a tank. “This isn’t a joke. You put my children in danger. You put your own people in danger. Why was Kelly alone in the booth?”

  “Merriweather’s daughter had a recital,” Abarca said. “These are people, Penelope. They have lives and families, just like you.”

  My mom gave him her thousand-yard stare. “Their families don’t employ them, George. We do. And we have the right to demand a certain level of professionalism and discipline. Last night your people let an Illusion Prime roll right through the security checkpoint all the way to our front door.”

  “That was an extraordinary case. Nobody could have foreseen that.”

  “Really?” My mother leaned forward. “Our security personnel, who are supposed to maintain a log of departures and arrivals, didn’t realize that Catalina was already home or think it odd that she came back in a strange car driven by a chauffeur none of them had ever seen before?”

  Abarca’s face took on a patient expression. “People are human. They make mistakes.”

  “They can make mistakes on someone else’s dime.” Mom’s face held no mercy. “The two guards who let Montgomery through are fired.”

  Abarca stared at her in stunned silence. A moment passed.

  “You can’t mean that. Lopez is taking care of her sick mother and Walton has two kids.”

  “I have five kids and a mother in this house, and I want to keep them all alive. Mistakes like that get people killed.”

  Abarca shook his head. “I won’t do it, Pen. If you want them gone, you’re going to have to tell them yourself.”

  He and Mom locked gazes.

  “Either you fire them, or you can pack your shit and go with them.”

  “We’re not at war anymore,” Abarca said.

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “As of today, we are at war.”

  “You’re dismissed,” Mom said. “Let me know your decision by tomorrow.”

  Abarca looked at me, then at her, then at me again, stood up, and left.

  I turned back to my mother.

  “I know,” she said. “If we don’t fire him, he’s going to get himself killed and our people too.”

  “Then let’s fire him and hire someone else.” We would give him a generous severance package. At this point, I would rather take a financial hit than keep at it. I knew everyone who worked for u
s. I didn’t want any of them to die because we failed to properly train them. We needed better leadership.

  Mom sighed. “It’s not that simple. If we fire him, there is no telling how many of them will quit. They’re loyal to him.”

  “Mom, they need to be loyal to us.”

  “I know,” Mom said. “But at least they provide some protection. I don’t want to fire him until we have a replacement ready.”

  “We could give Abarca a second chance,” Bern said.

  Mom’s expression hardened. “We won’t get a second chance, Bernard. We will be dead. Second chances are given when someone is good but makes an honest mistake or their nerves get the better of them. I gave Abarca the authority to hire his own unit. I questioned his choices at the time and he personally vouched for every soldier he brought to the table. It was his responsibility to train them and mold them into a cohesive unit. It’s six months later, and they’re failing at the basic security procedures. That’s not nerves. That’s incompetence. Hiring him was a mistake, my mistake. I wasted our time and money and I put us in danger . . .”

  She looked like she was about to walk across hot coals barefoot. Oh, Mom.

  “It wasn’t a mistake,” I said. “It just didn’t work out. He looked really good on paper. He has all the qualifications. He’s just . . .”

  “He just cares about being liked more than he cares about doing his job,” Mom finished. “I’ll handle it.”

  Bern raised his head from his laptop. “Found something,” he said.

  I found Runa in the guest bedroom. She sat on the queen bed, next to Ragnar, who was curled up under a blanket. Sleep had softened his face. He looked so young right now.

  “Hey,” I said quietly.

  “Hey. He’s still asleep,” Runa said. “Is that normal?”

  “Yes. It’s normal.”

  “Have you actually done this before?”

  “Yes.”

  Last year one of Rogan’s security people had developed an unhealthy obsession with Arabella and decided to break into our house in the middle of the night. I had fallen asleep in the media room, and he surprised me as he blundered past. He slept for two days, and once he woke up, he was an emotional zombie for a week. Rogan fired him and strongly encouraged him to move out of state. The last we heard, the man was in Alaska.