Fire and Obsidian

by Andrew Grey

  “I’ll go up with you.” James rinsed the dishes and then turned out the lights. They walked through the rooms and then up the stairs. “I have fresh towels in the bathroom for you, and if you need more, they’re in the closet in there. I’ll see you in the morning.” James lingered in the hallway, and Mattias wondered if it was because of his trust issues. Mattias went into the bedroom, closed the door, and got ready for bed, wondering just what he’d gotten himself in for with this assignment.

  MATTIAS WOKE to a strange sound beneath him—whispers and a slight scrape. He pushed back the covers and sat up, listened as he got out of bed, and pulled open the bedroom door. James’s door was still closed, but Mattias paid little attention, descending the stairs on his thief’s catlike feet as the scrape came again. Someone was trying to get into the house using the front door. As he drew closer, one of the old floorboards squeaked. He cringed and held still, but the sound stopped. Mattias veered into the living room, peering out into the night. A dark van was parked right in front of the house, blocking the view of the front door.

  “What are you doing?” James asked as he lumped down the stairs.

  Mattias didn’t turn away as figures bolted from in front of the house. Doors opened and closed, and the van pulled away within seconds. “Trying to catch our thieves,” Mattias said as he let the curtain rest back into place.

  “What?” James wiped his eyes, and Mattias blinked. James in his boxer shorts was a glorious sight, all muscle and richly tanned skin with a dusting of dark hair over his pecs and down his belly.

  “I’m a light sleeper. I heard a slight scraping sound, and I came down here to check it out. There was a van parked in front, and I was trying to see if I could make out anything special about it.” Mattias swallowed as James reached for the door. “I suggest you put on more than just those striped shorts or you’ll be giving the entire neighborhood something to look at.” He smirked, and James blushed high on his cheeks. He turned and hurried back up the stairs. At least Mattias was in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.

  He waited for James to return and let him open the door, turning on lights. “I need to get some gloves.” James hurried away again, and Mattias looked over the lock without touching it.

  “They were trying to pick it and not doing a very good job,” Mattias said when James returned, doing his best not to keep looking over at the way his dark T-shirt stretched over his chest. Damn, the man would look good in a plastic garbage bag. Mattias pulled his attention back to the task at hand. “It’s possible they got past the door lock, but the dead bolt was proving to be more difficult.” He backed away so James could get closer, stepping outside into the illumination from the streetlamp. The van would have blocked the light and the view of the front door. “They really hurt themselves.”

  “How so?” James asked as he examined the lock further.

  “They parked their van to block the view, but it also made it harder for them to work. They would have needed flashlights, but those could draw attention.” Mattias pointed to a small penlight next to the steps. “Looks like they dropped something.” He didn’t touch anything, but looked up and down the street. “Why you?” Mattias asked. The house was smaller than the others, and there was nothing remarkable about it. “Did you draw attention to yourself somehow?” As soon as the words escaped his lips, he shook his head. Of course not. James was all about work. Mattias knelt down, watching as James gathered what evidence there was. “Why would anyone try to break into your house?”

  “It’s happened before,” James mumbled.

  “Excuse me?” Mattias asked. “You’re a cop. Doesn’t that scare the crap out of them?” Hell, it would him if he were still in the business. What surprised Mattias the most was how calm James was. People had tried to break into his house before? Shit, no wonder he’d been antagonistic.

  James stepped back from the door and motioned for Mattias to come inside. He closed the door, locked it, and made a phone call, probably waking up one of the guys. “Clay will be here in the morning to look over anything I might have missed.” He set the plastic bag on the table and sank into one of the chairs.

  Mattias took a seat near him. “What’s going on? What is it I’m missing?” This made no sense. If people were trying to break into his house on a regular basis, he’d have moved a long time ago.

  James sighed. “This is one of the oldest houses in town, and apparently there is an old story about one of the men who lived here before my family. Supposedly he was afraid of banks, so he hid money in the house and then died. In the time I’ve lived here, there have been two attempted break-ins, and one person who I met coming up the basement stairs after he spent half the night digging up the floor.” James shivered. “I don’t know who was more scared, but I’m willing to bet it was him when he saw I had a gun pointed at him and was ready to shoot. The idiot.” Now some of the anger Mattias had expected from James came to the surface. “After that, I changed the locks. Ordered special ones from Europe that take keys that aren’t available here in the US.” He got up, grabbed his ring of keys from the bowl, and showed Mattias a strangely angled two-prong key. “They can try to pick that deadbolt until they’re blue in the face, but it isn’t happening. The deadbolt slot is anchored into the house itself, not just into the doorframe. So, try as they might, they weren’t getting in.”

  Mattias nodded and then shook his head. “I’m glad that you’re safe and protected.” He reached for the ring, examined the key, and then handed it back.

  “Do you think you could pick it?” James asked.

  “Probably not. I could probably get past the lock with enough preparation, but it would be difficult. Not impossible.” Mattias didn’t move, even as his head ran through possibilities. “I’d probably need to take an impression of the key and then have one made. The process would take time, be expensive, and probably yield me a key that didn’t really work after all, because I’m assuming the lock is highly sensitive.” He sighed.

  “Do you ever turn off that part of you?” James asked.

  Mattias glared at him even as he pondered the question, and the answer was no. “You asked, I told you. And I was honest.” He hoisted himself to his feet. “Sometimes you can be the biggest pain in the ass of anyone I have ever met. No lock is unbreakable, but this one makes getting in here not worth the effort. And that’s probably the best defense you can have.” He turned to leave the room and then stopped. “I love puzzles, always have. I think stealing things was like a puzzle for me. I’d work out how to get past the obstacles to get what I wanted. Then when I did it, I moved on to the next one.”

  He left the room and headed up the stairs, realizing that James Levinson was probably the biggest and most complex puzzle he had come across in years. The question was, did he want to try to solve him or just step back and leave him alone? Some puzzles were better unsolved; he knew that. But James was just too good to pass up.

  Chapter 4

  DAMN IT all. James needed to get some sleep, but now he lay awake, staring at his recently painted ceiling, listening and wondering. His mind raced from the people who tried to break in, to Mattias sleeping in the other room. Yeah, Mattias hadn’t gone around the house flashing him the way James had apparently done, but his shorts were thin enough to leave very little to the imagination. And that T-shirt—“Grass, it’s what’s for dinner,” with a cow on it—had been cute, but the way it clung to Mattias’s arms and chest had been mouthwatering.

  He shook his head, and the attempted break-in returned to his mind and he listened once more. He wasn’t going to get back to sleep. When his head got like this, there was no use fighting it. James pushed back the covers, grabbed a light blanket, and went downstairs. He settled on the couch, found an old movie on demand, and settled in to watch.

  James must have fallen asleep. He sat up, noticing that the television was off, and then realized that Mattias was seated right across from him.

  “I made coffee. I hope that’s okay.” He han
ded James a mug.

  “What time is it?” James sipped and blinked.

  “A little after seven. I didn’t want to wake you, but it’s getting late.”

  James stood and took the mug. “I’ll get ready and be back down here in ten minutes.” He hurried up the stairs and right into the bathroom. He washed and shaved, jumped into the shower, and then hurried to the bedroom to dry off and dress. James made it downstairs and put his mug in the sink, loaded the dishwasher, and then met Mattias in the living room.

  “Is that what you’re going to wear?” Mattias asked.

  “Why?” James headed for the door.

  “You’re wearing two different shoes,” Mattias said.

  James glanced down, swearing under his breath. He went back upstairs, changed his shoes, and met Mattias by the front door.

  “You know, you could have started a whole new fashion trend.”

  “Don’t start this morning, okay? I didn’t sleep very well last night.” The doorbell rang, and James groaned, hurrying outside to the front, where Clay stood. James had forgotten that he’d asked him to come over. His mind was all over the place this morning.

  “Just take care of things,” Mattias said, and sat down.

  James took Clay out, and they worked the scene now that they could see more clearly.

  “What’s going on? He’s staying with you?” Clay asked. “I thought you didn’t like the guy.” Clay examined the lock and pulled out a kit to check for fingerprints.

  “The power outage,” James answered, as though that explained everything. He didn’t want to talk about Mattias because that would only allow his confusion around the guy to bubble to the surface again, and it had been there all night. “Mattias saw the van. It matches some of the descriptions of the people we are after.”

  Clay worked the rest of the area, including where James told him the van had been parked. There were a few things that he bagged, but mostly they had gotten everything the night before, most of it probably useless, and the area was clean. “So our thieves decided it would be a good idea to try to break into the house of the detective in charge of the case,” Clay scoffed, his eyebrows knitting together. “That has to be a coincidence.”

  James wished he could say that it was. The story about the treasure that he’d told Mattias was a smoke screen of sorts. What he’d said was true and it had all happened, but James didn’t think that had anything to do with the rash of thieves or why his house was targeted last night. “I don’t think so.” He lifted his gaze to Clay’s.

  “You think they targeted you on purpose?” Clay’s eyes widened, and he leaned just a little closer. “Really? Are they the stupidest criminals in history? Maybe they should be permanent guests on Stupid Criminal Tricks.” He flashed a quick smile.

  “No. I think I’m being sent a message.” The idea sent a chill racing into James’s gut. It made him angrier than he could have ever imagined, but it was true.

  Clay stood, holding two evidence bags, and placed them in the evidence container. Then he returned to the work of lifting the prints. “How could anyone have known that you would be on the case so fast? I know word gets out on the street and all, and groups watch. But we all just started working it yesterday. And why would they want to send you a message? To get you to back off? Like that’s going to happen.” He continued working as James paced the front of the house, looking for something, anything, that leaped out at him that they might have missed. His head spun, and he clenched his hands into fists.

  James waited until Clay had finished, grateful that he had let the conversation end. By the time he was done, James had sent him the pictures he’d taken the night before with everything he’d found, and then they returned inside. James showed Clay what he had gathered last night and helped him label each of the bags. When they were done, Clay left with everything, and James returned to the living room.

  “Let’s go.” He didn’t say anything more as they left, locked the door, and headed to the station to go to work. This entire situation was getting under his skin, and James needed to leave as much of it behind as possible. He had a job to do, and no messages sent in the middle of the night were going to stop him from doing it. Hell, he’d send a message of his own, and it was going to be one that ended in their prosecution.

  “OKAY, WHAT do we have?” James asked the room as he wandered through. Anxiety built inside him, and he had no idea why. He’d lived with pressure his entire life, but at the moment, he was like a nervous cat and couldn’t sit still.

  “I’m not sure,” Mattias answered, and James didn’t smile.

  “I need coffee,” Pierre said, scraping his chair on the floor and then leaving the room. Clay followed, both of them rigid, with the door closing behind them.

  “Well….” Mattias looked up from his screen. “Where’s the snide comment?” He sat back, his arms out as though he were some prisoner waiting for the fatal blow.

  James shook his head. “You can’t find a pattern either?”

  Mattias sat back up. “No, and it’s driving me crazy. I know there’s one here. I just can’t quite figure it out.” He gaped a second, his mouth open. “Duh….”

  “What?” James asked.

  “There isn’t a pattern because there’s more than one group.” Mattias continued staring at the screen and motioned James over.

  James reluctantly drew nearer, and the temperature rose noticeably. He tugged at his collar and took off his jacket. Being near Mattias was like getting close to an erupting volcano. At least as far as he was concerned.

  “Look, I concentrated on the vans for one thing. Some accounts say green and others white. Those aren’t colors people confuse, and there are multiple accounts of both. I thought after the oil thing that maybe they had ditched the green one and gotten the white one, but it was around before that house was hit.”

  “So, two vans,” James said with a nod. That made a lot of sense with what they had. “Maybe two groups of thieves… two teams….” That sent a chill running up James’s spine.

  Mattias turned, looking up at him with his huge, almost puppy-dog eyes. “This means that whoever is doing this has one hell of an organization behind them. I’m not going to say organized crime, because they don’t seem that ruthless, but they have a team. It wouldn’t take but five or six people to get together and form a team. They would have one or two people inside, another acting as a driver and lookout, and they could be all set to go.” Mattias scratched the back of his head.

  “We know that the green van team tried to break into my house, because you were smart enough to try to see them. Did you add that to the sheet?” James backed away. “It may not be exact, but look through and label the ones we know as white or green. Then maybe we can get a feel for them.” He paused in his movements.

  “Good idea,” Mattias said, and returned to work. When he was done, he motioned James over. “Look at these….”

  James leaned over his shoulder, trying to ignore the fresh scent that tickled his nose, like it was crooking a finger to try to get James to come in closer, just to get another whiff.

  The others returned with extra cups of coffee, placed them on the table, and joined the group.

  “It looks partially as though it’s divided geographically, with the white van in Carlisle and the green van farther east. But there are exceptions, here and here. Maybe they overlap somewhat.”

  “Okay. We’re starting to get a picture now,” James said with relief. “We need to let law enforcement know what we have so far. At least officers can be on the lookout for suspicious vans meeting the descriptions that we have.”

  “I’m on it,” Clay said, and left the room.

  “What about this? Look at what was taken by this group. Someone here really likes antique pieces. There are a number of them taken here and almost none by the white van group,” Pierre mentioned as he pointed.

  “That could be meaningful. And that’s the group from Carlisle. I’m willing to bet that they have
someone with some knowledge or interest,” James said.

  “And that could be their weakness. If they’re stealing these items, then they need to move them. I doubt they’re just sitting on them, because the others will want their share.” Mattias turned to James, who nodded.

  “A lot of these items are going to be hard to trace, but a few are going to be relatively easy.” James hooked the laptop up to the printer. “I did my best to get approximate pictures of them from the internet. The Queen Victoria locket is going to look like this.” He showed it to them and then printed off copies. “I suggest you check local auction houses and antique shops to see if they have been approached. There are stores in Camp Hill, as well as Mechanicsburg, that specifically carry estate jewelry. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  Clay and Pierre divided the work and returned to their desks.

  “I think we need to visit these stores. See if they have been approached. We can probably do it in a few hours.”

  “Okay.” Mattias packed up his laptop and slipped it into his case. “I’m going to bring this along. We can show them the actual images. It will help a lot more than just descriptions. Maybe something will jog some memories.” He turned once he was ready, and the intensity in Mattias’s gaze held James still for a few seconds. Mattias parted his lips, his eyes wide, meeting James’s gaze full on. “Is something wrong?” Mattias asked after a few seconds, and James came out of the flight of intense, passionate fantasy that his mind had whisked him away on.

  What the hell was wrong with him? James never had trouble concentrating at work, but with Mattias around, he couldn’t seem to keep his head where it belonged. Instead of thinking about the case, he wondered how those supple lips would feel against his.

  “I’m fine,” he answered quickly, got his things, and turned to leave the suddenly confining space of the conference room.

  THE COMBINATION antique and jewelry store was on the main street of Camp Hill, about twenty miles from Carlisle. The building was relatively new, modern brick. James parked and got out, thankful he could breathe now. The entire way he’d had the fan cranked to keep the air flowing and the tight quarters inside the car from overpowering him. He’d grown cold near the end of the trip, but ignored it. “Let me do the talking.”