Celtic Dragons

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “Very,” Grady told her. “This looks like more than it is though, probably. These are ten-gram gold bars, and their value, in the current market, works out to be around three hundred fifty dollar dollars per bar. I have five million in here, so that’s roughly fourteen thousand bars. But it’s still just five million dollars.”

  She glanced over at him. “You have to stop saying things like ‘just five million dollars.’ Most people don’t have access to anywhere near that kind of money.”

  “Part of what makes me an unrelatable, privileged, entitled rich boy, presumably.”

  Moira didn’t see any point in equivocating. She had said those words, and she couldn’t take them back, and the fact that she had been completely freaked out at the time didn’t mean she had meant them any less than if she had been perfectly calm. It was probably better to have her feelings out in the open anyway, and even if it wasn’t, there was nothing she could do about it now. “Part of it, yes.”

  Grady laughed again, the way he had the first time she’d insulted him. “I’m trying to decide whether or not I like your honesty.”

  “Would you rather I lie to you?”

  “No, but there are general social norms people follow, like not saying anything at all if they can’t say something nice.”

  Moira glanced back at him with a slight smile. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Turning her attention back to the stacks of gold, she walked up and down the aisles, getting a feel for the place and keeping in touch with her senses to see if she picked up on the feeling she’d had just outside of the elevator. Nothing that potent hit her again, but there was still a faint buzz along her skin that told her that she needed to be on her guard and that she wasn’t wrong to suspect that there was some kind of underlying force at work here. She just didn’t know what the source of the feeling was. It could be that whatever was tampering with Grady’s vault was giving her the feeling, but it could also still be coming from Grady himself or his organization. Nothing was definitive at this point, and while she recognized her instinctive reaction outside of the elevator as an overreaction, she still wasn’t entirely sure that she could trust Grady or his intentions.

  She made her way through the shelves of gold all the way to the very back of the vault, where she came across a filing cabinet, a series of jewelry display cases, and a collection of fine art. Reaching out, she began to touch the frame of one of the paintings, but Grady was suddenly at her side, his hand on hers as he stopped her from making contact.

  “That’s an original,” he told her. “It hasn’t been touched by human hands in generations.”

  “An original what?” she asked, studying the pastoral landscape.

  His chuckle was surprisingly disarming. “Uh, I don’t know. It’s my mom’s pride and joy, and she says it’s worth a couple of million, but I’m the last person to ask about any kind of art. I’m not interested in it at all.”

  She looked over at him, shaking her head. “You’re not interested in a family heirloom worth a few million?”

  “Unrelatable rich boy?”

  “Completely.”

  Grady lifted a shoulder. “What can I do? I’ll ask her for you if that helps.”

  Changing the subject, Moira moved back toward the gold bars. “So tell me again when you first noticed a theft.”

  “It was about a month ago,” Grady said, looking to Jason for confirmation and getting a business-like nod. “Like I told you before, I have a pretty thorough security system down here. Cameras everywhere and a security team. One entrance. Theft wasn’t really something I was worried about. Like you pointed out, not a lot of office buildings have vaults underground, so it’s not like the average person would know this was here. But I get reports now and then, and when my accountant checked in down here about a month ago, about forty thousand dollars’ worth of gold was missing. We reviewed all of the footage and interviewed all of the security guards, but there was no evidence of anything. Then when we ran another report the next week, another forty was missing. Then another and another …and another. And now you’re here.”

  Moira nodded, biting down on her bottom lip as she concentrated. “It’s very strange. Repeated thefts of small amounts. These aren’t large bars. If they had access, why not take more?” She was thinking out loud as she walked the aisles, processing her thoughts. “There are really only a few reasons. The inability to carry more, which hardly seems likely, given how manageable the bars are. More likely there was some sort of desire to avoid initial detection paired with a confidence of continued access. That screams of someone who works here, naturally. But still…I don’t understand why not just take everything they wanted at once. How could they be sure they wouldn’t be found out? Unless …maybe they intended to put them back. Or they’re buying time, waiting for the moment to jump ship.” She paused, looking back over at Grady. “You’ve interviewed everyone with access?”

  “Everyone,” Grady confirmed. “And accused my accountant.”

  “I’d like to talk to him.”

  “You can talk to anyone you like, and there’s plenty of footage of the initial interviews for you to review as well,” Grady reminded her. “I can set you up with an office where you can watch the video and call in whoever you want. The organization is completely open to your observation. Like I said, it’s not really about the money. I just need to figure out how this breach is happening. It’s making me crazy. Every time I switch out the guards or add security, it happens again.”

  Moira looked back over that filing cabinet and display cases. “You need to move your family’s valuables out of here. Do you have any other location where you can store these things?”

  “I can move the gold easily enough,” Grady said. “The other stuff, like the painting, is more problematic, but I can make arrangements.”

  “As soon as possible,” Moira told him. “Why haven’t you already moved it all? Obviously this isn’t a secure location.”

  “But it should be,” Grady insisted. “Everything that is logical in the world says that this should be completely impenetrable. There’s one entrance upstairs, and it’s guarded. The whole place is under surveillance. There’s a guard right outside the safe that’s on duty twenty-four seven. There are mechanisms in place that even I don’t know how to open.” He threw up his hands, clearly unhappy with being outsmarted. “I don’t understand how this keeps happening.”

  Moira didn’t understand either, but she was willing to bet that there were things at work that were going to be far beyond Grady’s comprehension. He relied on what he could see, touch, feel, know, and understand. He was the kind of man who had his world perfectly ordered, with himself at the helm. If she was right and there was something supernatural behind these thefts, she was willing to bet he wasn’t going to take it well.

  He might not believe her at all, or he might start looking too closely at her own life. She was going to have to proceed carefully and keep him at arm’s length.

  That wasn’t a bad idea, regardless of whether her hunch was right. He had too powerful an impact on her, and while it was mostly negative, she was a smart enough woman to recognize that the intensity between them could easily morph into something she wasn’t prepared for. He frustrated her, but he also attracted her, challenged her, and intrigued her. She wanted to shake him, but she also wanted to see if she could get him to touch her arm again.

  There was plenty to be wary of in this case, and not just because some dark force was brimming under the surface. Grady Princeton was a danger in and of himself.

  Chapter Eight

  Grady

  Grady poured two glasses of scotch, one for him and one for Abigail, who was both his twin sister and one of his closest friends. She could handle a scotch even better than he could, and when he handed the tumbler to her, she immediately knocked back a swallow, licking her lips with satisfaction and smirking at him as she stretched out on the white sofa that was the centerpiece of his apartment’s living roo
m.

  “You know I just come over here for the drinks, right?”

  “I knew it wasn’t for the company,” Grady said, settling himself down in an armchair, feet kicked out in front of him. “I was told today that I’m an unrelatable, privileged rich boy, so it can’t be for the company.”

  Abigail let out a loud laugh, her eyes, which mirrored his exactly, twinkling. “No way. What brave soul in your company said that to you, and how long did it take you to fire him?”

  “Actually, it was a woman I contracted for security services today, and…I didn’t fire her.”

  “Seriously?” Abigail said, sounding more than a little skeptical. “That suggests a depth of character I didn’t know you had.”

  Grady rolled his eyes. “What is this? Insult Grady day? I like to think my character is halfway decent, thank you very much.”

  “Oh come on. Admit it. You wouldn’t normally allow an employee to say those kinds of things to you. What CEO would?”

  It was a fair point, considering that Grady did, like any employer, demand a basic level of respect from his employees. But the circumstances were different here. Moira was different. Even now, hours after they had parted ways for the day, he to continue with his work schedule and her to follow up on the interviews and footage that had already been recorded, she was still on his mind. He could still smell the scent of her shampoo that fluttered from her hair every time she turned her head and imagine the little scrunch of her nose whenever she was concentrating. He could envision the curve of her hips and the long stretch of leg encased in tight, faded denim …

  “Oh my God, you have a thing for your sassy female contractor,” Abigail said, studying him intently from the couch. “That is so cliché, Grady. How could you let this happen?”

  “I do not have a thing for her,” he muttered, sipping at his own drink as he told the blatant lie. It was time to distract from Abigail’s astute observations by dropping the bombshell he’d been avoiding for weeks now. “I just need her. She’s a private investigator that I hired to figure out how my vault keeps getting broken into. Someone’s been stealing from me for the past five weeks.”

  Abigail sat up, all her joviality gone in an instant. “Wait, seriously? Someone who works for you?”

  “I don’t know. Probably,” Grady said, draining his glass and standing up to fill it again. “I don’t know how an outsider would be able to manage it. Hell, I don’t know how an insider would be able to manage it, but there have been five different thefts—that we know of.”

  “Shit,” Abigail said, standing up and walking over to him for her own refill. “How is it possible that you’re just now telling me this? I mean, we talk every day. You didn’t ever think to mention that you’re being robbed? How much have you lost?”

  “About two hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Shit!” Abigail’s eyes shot wide open, her mouth dropping. Although they came from the same family and had shared the same womb, they couldn’t be more different. While Grady had always been business-minded and driven by the idea of success and wealth, Abigail was a struggling artist who brought in money through web-based commissions and relied on Grady to make the ends meet and pay her bills. Their parents were quite wealthy as well, but Abigail had never gotten along with their parents the way Grady had, and it was unthinkable for her to consider taking money from them. Grady never resented helping his sister out, and she never took advantage of his generosity. He wanted her to be able to pursue her dreams and had no doubt that her talent and work ethic would allow her to break into the art world full-time, and in the meantime, he was there to fill in the gaps for her.

  But because of how she lived her life, two hundred thousand dollars was an unimaginable sum for her. That was why he hadn’t told her what had been happening in recent weeks, and he hadn’t told his parents either because they would be furious and his mother would be worried about her belongings. He had hoped to be able to clear it all up without having to involve them, but Moira had told him he needed to move the family items as soon as possible, and he had to admit that he agreed with her. They had gotten to the point where he needed to exercise ultimate caution.

  “It’s not that big of a deal,” he said, trying to reassure Abigail. “It’s just money, and not a ton of it. Not in comparison to my assets. I just have to get the problem taken care of. That’s all.”

  “Not a ton of money,” Abigail said, snorting a laugh. “No wonder that woman called you unrelatable.”

  “Oh come on,” Grady protested, reaching out and tugging the bottom of her ash-blonde braid. “Don’t pretend that just because you live the way you do now you don’t remember growing up with our parents. You were once a rich kid too, you know.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed, sitting back down on the couch. “I was. But it never mattered to me the way it did to you. And Mom and Dad. I never liked having all that money, you know? And I think it’s crazy to say that two hundred thousand dollars doesn’t matter, Grady. Sorry, but it is.”

  He swirled the amber liquid in his tumbler around, studying it closely. “I don’t really mean that it doesn’t matter. It does. I wouldn’t be wealthy if I went around acting like hundreds of thousands of dollars didn’t matter. I just mean that it’s not the money that bothers me. I can make the money back. It’s the fact that there’s a security breach that I don’t understand. It makes me feel vulnerable to some force out there that’s apparently smarter than me, and I hate that feeling.”

  “I get that,” Abigail said, nodding. “So this woman …what is she doing about it?”

  “Well, I’ve interviewed my own security team, reviewed the footage, accused my employees. None of it has helped. So I’ve hired an outside investigator to review all of it and hopefully figure out what’s happening. She suspects, and I think she’s right, that it’s an inside job that goes pretty deep.”

  “Kind of like how you want to give her an inside job that goes really deep?”

  Grady picked up the book that was sitting on the table beside his chair and threw it toward Abigail, making her squeal and duck. “You’re a bad person,” he told her, smirking all the same. “You have a dirty mind.”

  “I learned that from my little brother.”

  “I’m not your little brother,” he muttered, standing up as he heard his phone ring as it lay on the accent table by the front door. “I came out ninety seconds later. Ninety!”

  “Still makes me the big sister,” she called after him.

  They’d had that same conversation any number of times, and Grady had to roll his eyes in amusement as he reached for his phone and answered the call, despite not recognizing the number flashing on the screen. “Grady Princeton.”

  “Hi, Grady, this is Moira Brennan.”

  Inexplicably, Grady felt his stomach flip over, causing a strange feeling to come over him. “Hi, Moira.”

  “I know it’s late, but I’ve been reviewing the materials you’ve given me, and I have a request. I’d really like to spend the night in the vault.”

  Surprised, Grady leaned against the hallway table, pursing his lips together. “Why’s that?”

  “A number of reasons,” she said, as though she expected his hesitancy and was prepared to answer it. “The first is that I like to take a very hands-on approach to my cases. It’s important that I see, feel, and experience what I’m dealing with in order to best understand it. The second is that I’ve reviewed the footage, and it’s impossible to tell whether or not it’s a still image being fed into your cameras by someone on the security team because nothing in the vault moves. If I spend the night in there, we’ll be able to review the footage and see if it reflects my movements or continues to show the same image. And, third, I’d like to do a more thorough investigation for any potential vulnerable spots in the vault itself. Perhaps an entrance method we’re unaware of.”

  Grady had to admit that her logic was sound, and he mentally gave her credit for being good at what she did. It was almost ten o�
��clock at night and she was clearly still working, which also impressed him. She might have given him grief earlier that day about the average person not keeping long work hours, but clearly she was willing to do so when the situation called for it. “All right,” he agreed. “I don’t have a problem with that.”

  “But I’d like to dismiss your security team while I’m there.”

  That gave him pause again, and he repeated, “Why’s that?”

  “Because I’m bringing a colleague with me, and I’d like for us to have the opportunity to be in the space alone. We’ll provide all the necessary security. I can assure you of that.”

  Grady knew, logically, that it would be a leap of trust to grant her request. Granted, she was part of a legitimate firm, and it was unlikely that she was suddenly capitalizing on this situation in order to rob him blind the rest of the way. But allowing a woman, who was essentially a stranger, to spend the night, unsupervised, in a vault that held his most valuable items …it wasn’t the business-like decision to make.

  “All right,” he said, again making the choice to follow his gut when it came to Moira Brennan. He could only hope that the choice would prove as sound as following his gut usually did. “I can meet you over there, walk you down, and dismiss the security team for the night.”

  “Thanks. That would be great. Fifteen minutes?”

  He glanced at his phone, noting the time and keeping in mind that he’d just downed two glasses of scotch. “Uh, I’d better call my driver. Make it thirty minutes.”

  “You have a driver?”

  “Would you prefer I drive under the influence?”

  There was a moment of silence that he found quite gratifying, and then she answered. “Okay, thirty minutes. Thanks.”

  “See you then, Red.”

  “Moira.”

  “See you then, Ms. Brennan.”

  Chapter Nine

  Moira

  “Do you feel it?” Moira asked Eamon, standing with him just outside the elevator that led from the ground level of Grady’s office building down into the underground space that housed his vault. She watched her friend’s face closely, already knowing the answer to her question.