“And blue lilacs,” Nevada said.
“It will clash,” Arabella growled.
I googled sage bridesmaid dress, held the tablet toward Nevada, and scrolled through images. “Look at the flowers. Pink and white. Pink. Pink. White. Pink and white.”
“I don’t care,” Nevada said. “I want blue lilacs.”
And I want to fly away from here, but that wouldn’t happen anytime soon, would it?
“Anyway, I have to get back to the office,” Nevada said. “Text me if anything.”
“The queen has dismissed us,” Arabella announced.
I dropped into a deep curtsy. “Your Majesty.”
“I hate you guys.”
“We hate you back,” Arabella told her.
“We hated you before the wedding.”
“Before it was cool to hate you.”
“Get out!” Nevada growled.
I walked out of the room.
Arabella caught up with me. “We can’t do lilacs. It ruins the theme.”
“I know.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Sleep on it,” I told her. “Let’s go home.”
“Catalina,” a woman called.
I turned toward the sound. Arrosa Rogan, Nevada’s future mother-in-law waved at me from the doorway, from her wheelchair.
“May I speak to you in private, dear?”
Oh-oh. This couldn’t be good. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll wait for you outside,” Arabella said.
Chapter 2
I followed Mrs. Rogan deeper into the room. The large office spread before me, walls and walls of bookshelves filled with books of every age, thickness, and color. Daylight spilled from the large arched windows on the right, and the polished floor of cream marble gleamed where sun rays touched it. Each window came with a reading bench equipped with turquoise cushions and ornate pillows. Mexican blankets, white, black, and lavender, were folded on each bench. Delicate Moroccan lanterns hung from the ornate ceiling that was painted with an intricate geometric pattern of pink, white, and blue.
It should’ve clashed, but instead it all melded into a perfect blend of Texas, Spain, and Morocco. There was something magical about it. Like opening a book of fairy tales and stepping through the pages into some fantasy castle. And Mrs. Rogan glided through it all with effortless elegance, a graceful queen of the palace. Even her wheelchair somehow fit.
I looked down on the floor. Of course, she fit here. She belonged here. It was her house. It wasn’t anyone’s fault that this house made me feel weird. Being here was like walking through an expensive furniture store or a museum filled with priceless antiques and being afraid to touch anything. It was someone else’s space and I just wanted to get out of it and go back to the familiar space of our warehouse.
“I would like to show you something.” A heavy leather-bound volume slid from the top shelf and floated to Mrs. Rogan’s hand. She opened it.
I came closer and stood on her left. On a thick page an old, yellowed photograph showed a man in a dark uniform and a beautiful woman in a black dress with a black veil, holding a bouquet of white flowers in her hand. A beautiful tiara secured the veil. In its center, under the highest peak, sat a stunning jewel shaped like a heart. It had to be the size of a walnut and it glittered even through the old worn paper.
“My great-grandmother at her wedding,” Mrs. Rogan said.
“Oh wow. But the dress is black.”
“Traditional Spanish wedding dresses are black.” Mrs. Rogan smiled. “Catholicism has this slightly morbid part to it. By wearing a black dress, Catholic women promise to love their husband until death.”
That was a little morbid. Who wants to think about death during a wedding?
“Black dresses for devotion and orange blossoms for fertility and happiness. The white wedding dresses didn’t come into fashion until British royals adopted it in the 19th century. Elite European families followed suit, but my great-grandmother was a holdout.”
Mrs. Rogan turned the page. Another beautiful bride, in a white dress this time, next to a groom in a black suit. The gown’s silk train was fanned out in front of them across the floor. The same tiara secured a beautiful veil.
“My grandmother.”
“She is very beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
Another turn of the page. A third bride in a white dress cinching her waist next to a man in a tuxedo, with a 1960’s hairstyle. The same crown holding back a veil that blew in the wind, but this time the photograph was in color and the blue green of the jewel took my breath away.
“My mother,” Mrs. Rogan said.
“She is also very beautiful.”
Why don’t we have this? As soon as I got home, I would buy a photo album online and get Grandma Frida and Mom to cough up their wedding pictures.
“Thank you.”
Mrs. Rogan turned the page and I saw her, young and radiant, next to a man who looked like Mad Rogan. She was glowing. Her gown was delicate like spiderwebs. The tiara perched on her dark hair as if it always belonged there.
“Wow.”
Mrs. Rogan laughed. “Thank you so much for cheering me up. I’m going to add Nevada’s picture to this album. Rogan is my only child, but I will be gaining a daughter and her picture will belong in this album.”
“She will be very honored,” I told her.
“Did you notice the tiara?” she asked.
“Yes. It’s gorgeous.”
“It’s called the Sealight Crown. Technically it’s a kokoshnik, not a crown, but crown sounds more impressive. The jewel is an aquamarine. Most people don’t know this, but natural aquamarine is often found in sea foam color. They heat it to achieve the light blue. But this stone hasn’t been altered in any way. This particular shade of blue green is important to our family.”
Rogan had given Nevada a beautiful necklace with a pendant. She thought it was an emerald at the time, but it turned out to be Tear of the Aegean, a one-of-a-kind blue-green diamond. Now it totally made sense.
“Will you let Nevada wear the tiara?” I probably shouldn’t have asked that. It was rude.
“I was counting on it. After the wedding, the Sealight will belong to her and she can pass it on to her and Connor’s children.” Mrs. Rogan sighed. “One small problem.”
“Yes?”
“The crown is missing.”
“What do you mean it’s missing?”
Concern flickered over Mrs. Rogan’s features. “It was in its usual place two days ago and it’s not there today. Unfortunately, we have to conclude that it was stolen.”
Considering how many people had been in and out of the house, it wasn’t shocking. We vetted everyone, but background checks never told you the whole picture. A landscaping crew prepared the grounds for the wedding, carpenters were building the custom arbor, another crew was raising an enormous clear tent, at least eight people were hanging lights on the trees, the interior designer and her people, the furniture delivery people . . . That would be a lot of people to interview. It would take Nevada at least two hours. Getting her to sit still for that long would be a challenge.
“The Sealight is tagged with a sensor,” Mrs. Rogan said. “It’s embedded into the crown and cannot be removed without destroying the tiara. The system can track it through a satellite with the accuracy of up to one mile. Right now, it’s telling me that the tiara is still on the premises. I would like you to find it.”
Me? I had worked for our agency since I was twelve, first doing small things like surveillance and answering phones, then moving on to my own jobs, but none of my cases were that significant. Mostly, I dealt with insurance fraud because it was low risk, and runaway teens because kids told me things they wouldn’t usually tell an adult. This was a big leap.
“We would . . .” I was a rude idiot. I should thank her for her confidence. “I mean, thank you for trusting me. But we must sort through at least a hundred employees, many of them new to the est
ate. Nevada can do it in a fraction of the time it would take me, and she would do so with complete accuracy. My sister never had a false positive.”
“I don’t think the culprit is an employee.” Mrs. Rogan looked like she’d bitten into a lime. “I’m confident it’s a member of my family.”
“Why?”
Mrs. Rogan turned to the bookcase. A section of it—six feet wide and twelve shelves high, all crammed to the brim—rose about one-eighth of an inch off the floor and moved toward us.
I held my breath. The weight had to be enormous.
The bookshelves slid past us and gently landed on the floor, revealing a short passage leading to a round chamber. The lights came on, highlighting persimmon-colored walls pitted with alcoves and niches, each holding a treasure: statues, jeweled daggers, scrolls and books in vacuum-sealed cases, and in the center, in the place of prominence, a niche with a bare jewelry holder.
I remembered to breathe.
“Moving the bookcase by normal means would take several people,” Mrs. Rogan said. “They would have to unload the books, slide it out without damaging the floor, then slide it back in and fill it with books. I was in this office for the entire afternoon yesterday and almost the entire day the day before that. At night the office is locked and secured by several alarms installed by Connor’s people. To disarm them, the perpetrator would have needed the code and my thumbprint. The windows here face the cliff, and they are secured by alarms as well.”
Although most biometric security systems were difficult to bypass, it could be done. Fingerprints and even irises could be digitally cloned by using pictures, sometimes the ones taken with a regular cell phone. “Who knows the code?”
“Connor and I. The house server logs every time the door opens, and there were no log-in attempts after I locked the office for the night.”
“Do you lock the office during the day if you leave it for a short period of time?”
“No. Children like to play here, and since only a powerful telekinetic can open the vault, I didn’t think anyone would touch it.”
I glanced at the corners where the security camera watched over us. “What about the security feed?”
Mrs. Rogan looked sheepish. “The cameras aren’t on.”
“Why?”
She sighed. “Because a woman has a right to privacy inside her own house. The cameras that cover ingress and egress points are always on and the security footage is monitored by Connor’s people, but I don’t want strangers watching me inside my home. We compromised.”
Knowing my future brother-in-law, he wouldn’t have liked that one bit. Connor Rogan was deeply paranoid when it came to security. Nevada was too. I shuddered to think what their kids would be like.
“You see now,” Mrs. Rogan said. “There was no opportunity to remove the Sealight by ordinary means. The culprit is a powerful telekinetic, which makes this a family affair. And that’s exactly why I don’t want to involve your sister. I’ve had an opportunity to observe Nevada over the past three months and I have both respect and affection for your sister.”
“Then why not let her handle this?”
Mrs. Rogan folded her hands on her lap. “My son doesn’t care for some family members on my side. He has perfectly justifiable reasons for it. They are difficult, entitled, and often ungrateful. However, they are still my relatives. I remember playing in the garden with my brothers and sisters, the trips to the beach, and the family celebrations. I have hopes that we will mend the gulf widening between us. If we ask your sister to handle this theft, she will interrogate the family.”
Made sense to me. “And you don’t want that?”
“No. Nevada’s first introduction to the family can’t be that of interrogation and suspicion.”
Not to mention that when my sister really used her magic, she could paralyze her target and pry all of their secrets out of their minds. Those who experienced it never forgot it. That’s why our paternal grandmother, Victoria Tremaine, was so feared by other Primes.
“I know that you have a lot on your plate already,” Mrs. Rogan said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have anyone else to ask. If I go to Connor, my son will hold his relatives upside down one by one and shake them until they confess.”
Which would be a lot of fun to watch.
“You have investigative experience and I want to keep this within our family. Will you do this for me? As a favor.”
“Of course,” I said. “And it’s not a favor. Family members don’t owe favors to each other.”
Those assholes stole my sister’s crown. Nevada would wear the Sealight to her wedding even if I had to tear the house down to the slab to find it.
I faced Mrs. Rogan. “I understand that your condition is that Nevada can’t know?”
“Yes.”
“I have some conditions too. First, I will need access and authority to question your relatives. I can’t get very far if they refuse to answer me.”
“Not a problem,” she said.
“I will need access to your security footage. I would also like to place some additional surveillance cameras inside. They will be monitored by my cousin, not an outsider, and we will remove them once the tiara is found.”
“Can this be avoided?”
“No.” One of the first things I learned about investigation is to gather as much information as I could.
“Very well.” Mrs. Rogan nodded.
“Lastly, I have to tell Connor.”
“As long as he doesn’t interfere.”
“I also have to warn you,” I said. I’ve heard Nevada give this speech before and it felt odd to repeat it. “When an investigation includes members of one’s family, we often find something that everyone wishes would’ve stayed buried. You have to be prepared for that possibility.”
Mrs. Rogan considered it. “If one of them jeopardized my son’s wedding, I want them found. And punished. The family will forgive the embarrassment, but not the betrayal.”
Chapter 3
I climbed into the blue Honda Element we borrowed from Mom. Our car options were limited. Most of the cars we owned were older and nondescript, so they wouldn’t be noticed during surveillance, and the Element was the best-looking available vehicle we had.
“What’s going on?” Arabella asked.
“Mrs. Rogan wants my help with a theft.”
Arabella’s eyes lit up. “What got stolen?”
“A wedding tiara.”
“Does Nevada know?”
“No. And we are going to keep it that way. We have to stop by Rogan’s.”
“What am I, a chauffeur?”
“I drove here, you drive back.”
The trip between our house and Mrs. Rogan’s mansion ran about three or three and a half hours, depending on traffic. Normally, we could do a lot of things remotely, but as the wedding drew closer, we ended up making the drive more and more often. And because we were a new House and our sister was marrying Mad Rogan, both of them insisted that we never take the trip alone.
Arabella wrinkled her nose. “Yes, but Rogan’s is half an hour out of the way.”
I pulled out twenty bucks. “Fine, you’ve been formally retained.” I would expense the agency for it.
Arabella snatched the money out of my hands. “Mine.”
“Let’s go.”
My sister’s eyes narrowed. “In a minute.”
I looked in the direction of her stare. A young guy was walking toward us. He was lean, with a dark wavy haircut long on top. He had a handsome face with chocolate-brown eyes, wide eyebrows, and full lips. His jaw was clean shaven. He had to be at least my age, but there was something slightly teen idol about him, something deliberately messy but at the same time polished, as if he got out of bed, tousled his hair, accidentally rolled into designer clothes, and now he was just wandering around, not sure what to do with himself and being slightly apologetic for being so handsome.
“He is walking this way,” Arabella said.
“
If you drive off now, we won’t have to talk to him.”
“I want to talk to him. He’s cute.”
Ugh. “Drive.”
“No. You’re like an old lady sometimes.”
Ugh.
The guy reached us. For a moment I thought he would go on Arabella’s side, but he changed his course and knocked on my window. Oh great. Just great. I wished I could melt into the car seat.
My window slid down. I would kill my sister.
He leaned on the roof of our car, so he could look into the window, and smiled. He had such a nice smile. It lit his face.
No. No, you can’t like his smile. You know what happens when you like people. Stop it.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” Arabella said.
He was looking at me. “Hello,” I said.
“I keep seeing you around,” he told me. “And keep trying to say hi. You’re always so busy.”
You said it, now go.
“I’m Xavier,” he said.
I waited for Arabella to jump in, but for once in her life she suddenly decided to keep her mouth shut. Traitor.
“I’m Catalina,” I said.
He smiled again. “I know.”
This was a stupid conversation.
“Do you like tennis?” he asked.
Who what? Say something . . .
“She loves it,” Arabella piped up.
“Maybe we could play sometime.” He shrugged. “Sorry, I know it’s lame, but the nearest town is an hour away and they won’t let me drive. There isn’t much to do here. So, what do you say?”
“Sure.” This was the quickest way to get rid of him.
“Great. See you around.”
He stepped away, gave me another dazzling smile, and walked away. I raised my window. Arabella drove out of the courtyard.
“She loves it? I don’t even know how to play!”
“He doesn’t care about tennis. He knows your name.”
“I know that,” I growled. “You know I can’t.”
“No, you won’t. You’ve been controlling your magic much better.”
Diamond Fire: A Hidden Legacy Novella Page 3
