Sapphire Flames

by Ilona Andrews

  “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.

  Chapter 10

  Being brave was easy in the kitchen, surrounded by my family. But by the time I got to the back door, all of my courage had evaporated. We were about to drive to a place where people would try to kill us. While we were gone, the warehouse was very likely going to be attacked, and Arabella wasn’t here to defend it. I had no doubt that my family could hold the fort. But my sister’s presence guaranteed a quick victory.

  I stepped into my office and grabbed a ratty trench coat off the coatrack. My hands shook.

  This was ridiculous.

  I moved around the office, collecting things I’d need. Let’s see; chalk, spare magazine for the Beretta, phone, keys, what was I forgetting? The sword sheath. I would take the gladius again. It offered the most versatility. I took the sheath out of the cabinet. Driving with it on would be a pain in the butt, so I would buckle it on after we got there.

  Alessandro leaned against the door frame and watched me. “It’s very you.” He gave the office an elegant sweep of his hand.

  Very me? He didn’t even know who I was. “How so?”

  “Organized and businesslike.” He said it like a condemnation.

  “It’s a business office. It’s supposed to be organized and businesslike. This is where I work.”

  He strolled into the office, reached behind my monitor, and swiped his finger across the desk’s surface. “No dust.”

  “That’s a good thing,” I told him. “Dust is bad for computers and people.”

  “Have you ever tried making a mess, Catalina?”

  “I don’t make messes, I clean them up.” And now I was sounding like a renegade detective from some edgy cop drama.

  Alessandro shuddered. “Ooh, so hardcore.”

  I ignored him. It was that or throw something, and the chief of police said next time it would be my badge.

  I pushed past him and walked out to my car. He followed. I couldn’t see him behind me, but I knew exactly how much space separated us. Sometimes Matilda and I took Zeus to her aunt’s property on the edge of Houston, to walk the trails through the woods. The moment we let him out of the car, Zeus melted into the brush. He would follow us while we took the path, invisible but always there, a dangerous predatory presence gliding through the woods like a gho
st, watching us. Walking with Alessandro behind me was just like that.

  I took my gladius and slid it into its sheath. The holster was next. I didn’t feel any need to hide it from Moody. I fitted the Beretta into its holster, locked my car, and went to Runa’s Nissan.

  Alessandro held out his hand. “Keys.”

  I made a face at him, popped the locks open with the fob, and put my coat and sword in its sheath in the backseat.

  “Catalina.”

  I got into the driver’s seat and shut the door.

  Alessandro knocked on my window. I could just drive off, but then I would have to go to Moody’s office by myself. It wasn’t like he could follow me in his car. Oh, oh, that was good.

  I rolled the window down. “I thought you’d follow in your Jeep.”

  Alessandro leaned his right arm on the top of the car and bent forward, so our faces were close. The urge to scoot out of the way gripped me.

  “I get it,” he said. “You had to put on a show for your family. But it’s just us now. I’ll drop you off at a coffee shop, go see Moody, and pick you up on the way back.”

  Who the hell did he think he was? “Amazing.”

  “Give me the keys,” he said.

  “You have two choices. You can get in the passenger seat or you can stand there looking stupid as I drive away.” I rolled the window up and started the car.

  He didn’t move. I wiggled my fingers at him in a little bye-bye wave, put the car into reverse, and eased my foot off the brake. The Nissan rolled a bit. He stepped back to save his feet.

  I let the car move back another foot.

  He looked like he wanted to take the door off the Nissan with his bare hands and pull me out of it.

  Another foot. Last chance, Alessandro. I really didn’t want to go there without him. Thinking about it turned my insides cold. But I would if he left me no choice.

  Alessandro circled around the front to the passenger side. I unlocked the door. He got in, and suddenly there wasn’t enough air. He stole it all, saturating the car with menace. It rolled off him in waves.

  I pulled my phone out and snapped a picture of him. Mine.

  He glared at me, his eyes full of orange flames.

  “For my private collection,” I told him. “Seat belt, please.”

  Moody ran his business from an office building on Bering Drive, sandwiched between the multimillion-dollar mansions of the Villages in the west and the less luxurious but still prosperous neighborhoods of Tanglewood in the east. The traffic was decent for Houston, and the eight-mile drive to Bering took us only twenty minutes.

  I turned right and continued down the street. We were almost there.

  Alessandro hadn’t said a word since he had buckled his seat belt.

  Any other time, the prospect of spending twenty minutes in a car with Alessandro would have petrified me. He filled the vehicle, his presence much larger than his physical body, and his magic simmered just above his skin. I felt it, a volatile power ready to lash out. The faint scent of his shampoo or soap, herbal and slightly spicy, curled around me, enticing and distracting. It was just me and him, together in the car, with the night wrapping around us like a length of smoky velvet.

  It would have been shockingly intimate, except that the memories of slitting a human throat with my sword cycled through my head. I saw myself kill over and over, I smelled the blood, I heard the hoarse gasp one of them made through my fingers clamped on his mouth. We weren’t driving to dinner where Alessandro would be charming and clever and make me laugh while I drank my wine. We were going to do terrible things.

  Alessandro reached over and touched my right hand. I jerked my hand off the wheel, the Nissan veered right, and I caught it just before it jumped the curb. I glared at him. I must have seemed a bit freaked out, because he rolled his eyes.

  “The coffee shop offer is still on the table.”

  “What the hell was that?”

  “You were gripping the wheel so tight, I thought your fingers would break.”

  “I wasn’t.” Yes, I was. My hands hurt.

  “I’m good at this. I won’t let you get hurt. We’ll get what we need, get home, and I’ll sample that mythical pithivier I’ve been promised. We’ll have dessert, we’ll have coffee, everything will be fine. You won’t die there.”

  “That’s not what I was afraid of.”

  “You’re not scared of dying?”

  “I am. And I’m scared of getting hurt. But I’m more afraid of what I’ll have to do to walk out of there.”

  For a long moment we were both silent.

  “You can always stay in the car,” he offered, his voice seductive, as if he were trying to tempt me with expensive chocolate. “Or you can come inside and watch me work and tell me how good I am. I’m very susceptible to flattery.”

  “Not susceptible, Alessandro. More like dependent on, addicted to, live only for.”

  I pulled into the nearly deserted parking lot overshadowed by trees. The twelve-floor office building towered over the lot, its big black windows dark. Only the lobby was lit, a haven of warm electric light trying to push back the night.

  “So judgmental,” Alessandro said. His tone was light, his mouth was smirking, but the humor didn’t reach his eyes. They were hard and sharp. “First you tell your family that I’m a bad person, now you’re accusing me of vanity.”

  “I have an idea. Why don’t I go in and you can sit here in the car and look pretty?”

  He heaved a dramatic sigh. “But what would I do alone for hours with no one to admire me?”

  “Take selfies, kill random people, take selfies of you killing random people?”

  “Is that why you think I’m not a good person?”

  “No, lots of people take selfies. You just do it more than most.”

  I stared at the building looming in front of us. I had to get out of the car.

  Alessandro turned, leaned over, and looked me in the eyes. “Catalina.”

  I really hated the way he said my name. It cut through the constant busy hum of my thoughts like a knife. I could never let him learn about it, because then he’d purr my name in the middle of random conversations just to mess with me.

  “You don’t have to go in there. Once I’m out of the car, drive away. Don’t park anywhere, keep moving. I’ll call you when it’s done.”

  I opened my door and got out of the car. The cold night air bit at me. I shivered, retrieved my sword sheath, buckled it on, and put on my trench coat. The weight of the weapons inside was comforting and familiar, like hugging an old friend. I started toward the building.

  He caught up with me. “Why are you so stubborn?”

  “I’m here because a girl is missing. Someone killed her mother in a horrific way and took her from her bed in the middle of the night. It’s wrong and I’m going to fix it. As much as it can be fixed. It’s my job, Alessandro.”

  “Good,” he said.

  The doors slid open at our approach. The cavernous lobby lay empty, the grey and cream modern walls rising two stories high. A polished concrete floor, a matching shade of grey, reflected the cluster of white oval lights floating like glass jellyfish suspended from the ceiling by thin wires. At the opposite wall, a bank of elevators offered access to the top floors.

  After the gloom of the parking lot, walking into a brightly lit, huge space, with its polished floor and shiny light fixtures, was like striding out of a dark passage into a sun-drenched arena. The sound of our steps sent echoes scurrying up the tall walls. In my imagination, they morphed into the beating of a drum counting heartbeats until the start of a fight. The space between my shoulders itched, expecting a bullet. I couldn’t see the other fighters, but I knew they were waiting.

  We passed the empty reception counter and walked to the wall opposite the entrance, to a bank of elevators. On our right a small waiting area offered ultramodern grey loveseats and a coffee table with a selection of magazines, their bright covers fanned across the wood. On the l
eft a narrow hallway led to two doors, one marked as an exit and the other as stairs.

  I checked the directory posted next to the elevators. Moody’s office was on the second floor. The elevator would be a trap. All they had to do was stop it between floors and we would be sitting ducks.

  “Stairs,” Alessandro said.

  I nodded.

  We turned left, into the hallway. As we reached the end, Alessandro leaned on the metal bar of the exit door. It didn’t budge. Locked. One way in, one way out. Better and better.

  I tried the door to the stairs. It swung open, revealing a concrete staircase. I held the door open and listened.

  Silence.

  Alessandro glided past me and went up the first flight of stairs, completely silent, like a ghost. I followed him, carefully, quietly, moving at a measured pace. A few tense breaths, and we emerged into a simple hallway, lined with a charcoal rug. A row of doors, each an identical wooden frame with frosted glass, punctuated the right wall, with small signs identifying the individual offices. We started down the hallway, Alessandro stalking next to me on quiet feet. The signs slid by.

  L.M. Markham, CPA

  Eunice C. Roberts, Affinity Insurance

  Dennis George Moody, Moody Investments

  The rapid staccato of someone typing filtered through the frosted glass. Alessandro reached for the door handle, swung the door open, and held it for me. I walked into a cozy office with a desk on the right and a couple of chairs on the left. A woman sat behind the desk, typing at the computer. She was Hispanic, in her sixties, and as I walked in, she raised her head and gave me a smile.

  “Runa Etterson?”

  “Yes,” I lied.

  She opened her mouth, saw Alessandro, and stopped for a befuddled second. “And who are you?”

  “My personal assistant,” I said.

  My personal assistant dazzled the receptionist with one of his armada-launching smiles.

  The woman finally recovered. “Mr. Moody is waiting for you. You go on right ahead, it’s the second door on your right.”

  We walked deeper into the office suite. The short reception area terminated in a hallway. We turned right and found the second door. It stood wide open, and we went through it.