House of Stone

by T. K. Thorne

  “What?” He steps to my side to look over my shoulder. “Where is he?”

  I swallow, half turning to look up at him. “He’s at Alice’s, I mean, Alice’s old house—”

  Tracey burns the pavement to Southside. I call Alice while we are in route.

  “Hello,” she answers in her Southern lilt.

  “Irene, are you—is everything okay?” She will know by me calling her Irene that someone else is with me.

  “Becca’s the same, if that’s what you mean.”

  “No, I mean, are the doors locked?”

  “Of course. Why?”

  “We’ve located the position of the man who murdered Dr. Crompton and his assistant.”

  “Oh my! Be careful.”

  “You don’t understand. He’s there, at the house.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes and he’s dangerous. Very dangerous.” I want to let her know he is House of Iron without saying that in front of Tracey.

  “Whatever you do,” I say, “don’t let him touch you or Becca.”

  “I see.”

  “We’re on our way.”

  “I’ll check the house,” she says.

  “No, don’t do that. If you aren’t aware he’s there, then he’s hiding, and we need him to stay put.”

  “Should we leave?”

  I start to say yes, but stop. “Hang on.”

  I put her on mute and turn to Tracey. “There’s no sign of him. Shouldn’t they get out?”

  “Normally, I’d say yes, but I don’t want to alert him, and I don’t know what he would do. He might try to stop them. Maybe he’s waiting for us, so no. Tell her to stay put.”

  When we pull up, I’m out the door before Tracey can put the car in park, taking the front steps two at a time, my gun in my hand. If Angola has hurt Alice or Becca—

  I knock on the front door to keep from having to fumble with the key, standing to the side out of habit, in case Angola decides to shoot through it.

  From inside, Alice peers out from behind the curtain covering the sidelight. A moment later, she opens the door. Her hand grasps a full-sized umbrella with a pointed end. In spite of my terror, I can’t help a grin. “Is there a body anywhere we should know about?”

  She sniffs. “Not yet.” She peers over my shoulder. “I’m glad you brought that big partner of yours. I moved a chair over the trap door to your room. That’s where I’ve been sitting in case he’s down there and tries to come up.” She shakes the umbrella.

  “You and Becca stay in the living room. Until we know where he is, I want you behind us.” Becca is sitting on the couch, staring at the blank TV, Angel curled beside her, one paw on her thigh.

  Tracey and I move from room to room. While he covers me from the doorway, I check the closets and under the bed. We search everywhere. “One more place,” I say.

  He looks up. “Is there an attic?”

  “No, a basement.” I move the chair and push the rug aside with my foot.

  Alice’s forehead wrinkles with multiple lines.

  “What is this?” Tracey says as I pull up the trap door. “Was this some kind of safe house during slavery days?”

  “I had the same thought, but the house isn’t that old,” Alice says. “I guess some folks had secret places for other reasons.”

  “There’s no indication from the outside of the house that there’s much of a basement. It’s sunk into the ground on one side and looks like an unfinished area on the other.”

  “There’s not a light switch until you get down the stairs,” I say, taking out my flashlight.

  “Let me go first,” he says. “I have a vest on.”

  “Be my guest.” I wave him ahead.

  He moves cautiously. We always keep the house locked tight, in case Becca wanders. Not to mention the little thing about House of Iron periodically trying to kill me. But someone could have gotten in by breaking the back window to the unfinished portion of the basement and then entering the connecting door to my room. It’s solid wood with a deadbolt lock, but a crowbar can defeat almost any lock.

  When Tracey reaches the bottom and I illuminate the light switch with the beam of my flashlight, he flicks it on and exposes just enough of his face around the corner to sweep the room, gun close to his body.

  “There’s just the one room and a bathroom,” I whisper. “And a dirt basement on the other side of that door.” From where we are, the door looks undisturbed.

  “Whose room is this?” he asks.

  “Mine.”

  “You need a housekeeper.”

  I peer over his shoulder. It looks okay to me. I put all the dirty clothes in a chair. Making up the bed is a waste of effort when you’re just going to get back in it in a few hours. “The bathroom will impress you.”

  When Tracey is satisfied that everything is clear in my room and the unfinished portion of the basement, we go back upstairs. I take a deep breath. Tracey calls the phone company and has them ping the number again.

  As he makes his request, Alice looks at me. “You have his phone number?”

  I nod.

  The same coordinates come back, indicating that Angola is in the house.

  “He’s not here,” Tracey says, puzzled. “Unless maybe he’s outside or in a car nearby.”

  “Or,” I say, chewing lightly on my bottom lip, “the phone is here but he’s not.”

  “Why don’t you ring it up?” Alice asks.

  Tracey and I exchange looks.

  “Not sure we want to give away the fact that we know his location,” Tracey says.

  I nod. “It could put Kaleshia in danger.”

  “Who is Kaleshia?” Alice asks.

  “A little girl who’s been kidnapped,” I say.

  She clasps her hands in front of her. “But if he’s here, or his phone is here, doesn’t that mean he already knows you are involved?”

  She has a point. “She’s right. We should call the number.” I start to dig for my cell.

  “Wait.” Tracey reaches out, grasping my arm. “Narcotics has an untraceable phone. I’ll get them to call the number.”

  I nod. “Better.”

  Tracey gets on his cell phone. A few minutes later, we hear a phone ringing.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  The ring of Angola’s phone is muffled, but it’s clearly in the house.

  “Get Becca and stay in the kitchen,” I instruct Alice.

  She nods, snatches up the umbrella, guiding a compliant, but otherwise unresponsive, Becca to her feet and into the kitchen, where Alice takes up a stand between her and the living room. Gun still in hand, I am staggered behind and to Tracey’s side. We spread out and pause at either side of the entrance to the living room, sweeping arcs before us, even though not ten minutes earlier we cleared the entire house.

  “The couch,” Tracey says, following the ring of the phone that belongs to Angola.

  No way anyone could be under the couch. It sits only an inch or two above the floor. I lay my pistol on the coffee table and pull up one of the sofa seats to reveal the cell phone, still ringing. A chill chases my spine. How did it get there?

  “Irene, you got a plastic baggie?” Tracey asks Alice when it finally stops.

  She brings him one, and he works the phone into it without touching it.

  “Fingerprints?” Alice asks, peering over his shoulder.

  “I doubt it,” I say. “He’s much too careful for that.”

  “Well, he left his phone. I’d say he’s not that careful.” Alice’s hands find her hips.

  “It wasn’t left here accidentally,” Tracey says darkly.

  “It’s a message, isn’t it?” I look up at him.

  “Yes, but it didn’t deposit itself here . . . magically.”

  I wince at the subtle re
ference and bite my lip. Have to tread carefully and not forget to act stupid about magic in front of Alice. Tracey might think that Angola just knocked on the door, touched Alice, waltzed in, dropped his phone under the cushion and told her to forget the whole thing. Plausible, but it wouldn’t have worked on her. That means it didn’t happen that way. But Alice has never seen Angola. Did he come in under some guise or sneak into the house?

  “Angola called Segal on that phone today,” I say aloud. “He had to get it in this house after that and before we pinged him.”

  “No man has been in this house today,” Alice says.

  “Has anyone been here today?” I ask.

  “Well, yes,” she says. “That lady from the court.”

  “Tanya Melbourne?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” I press.

  “She said she forgot to have you sign one of the forms. She left it here for you. It’s on the kitchen counter. I completely forgot about it with all this about a killer in the house.”

  Her eyes widen and I know she suddenly understands, as I do, that Angola must have intercepted Melbourne and used Iron magic on her, telling her to hide the phone surreptitiously in the house. I turn to Tracey. “Melbourne is the social worker who—”

  “I remember her,” he says. “She took Daniel after his mother killed herself.”

  I don’t need to explain it to him either.

  “But why?” Alice says.

  “That is the question.” I press my hands over my chest, trying to hold in the blooming fear.

  “It is a message,” Tracey says. “Angola could have tossed that phone in a dumpster. He orchestrated this on purpose, letting you know that he knows we are on his trail and—”

  I finish his sentence for him— “That neither I, nor the people I care about are safe.”

  The three of us sit at the kitchen table sipping tea.

  “I’m sorry I don’t have any coffee,” Alice says.

  “No problem.” Tracey waves his hand. “I’ve had enough caffeine for the day.”

  I’m staring through the stained water into the leaves at the bottom of my cup. “How can I even think about bringing Daniel here?”

  Alice puts a hand on my arm. “It’s the best place for him.”

  I look into her contact-brown eyes. “What do you mean? How can you say that?”

  “This Angola person knows enough to have made a connection with Ms. Melbourne. It doesn’t sound as if Daniel is safe from him anywhere. This might be the best place.”

  “My cousin in the personal security business, Jamal Henderson, is, um, out of work at the moment.” Tracey clears his throat, and I assume Jamal was the security guard contact who gave Tracey the key to Vulcan, and that he lost his job because of it.

  “I think I can convince him to stay here for a few days while we track Angola.”

  My gaze flicks to Alice. She gives a barely perceptible nod.

  “That would be great,” I say. I have no doubt Alice would take a bullet for Becca, but having House of Stone here would mean two people between her and Iron’s magic, not to mention someone who could shoot back if necessary. At night there would be the three of us.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  When we are back in Tracey’s car, he twists in his seat to look over his shoulder before pulling out onto the narrow street. “Her secret is safe with me.”

  I stiffen. “What do you mean?”

  “‘Irene’ is your aunt, your Great Aunt Alice, isn’t she?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Hey, I’m a detective, right?”

  I give away nothing, waiting.

  “I know the stories about Alice. Come on, Rose. She was the last of your House. Everybody knew who she was. She was a short feisty woman with intensely green eyes.” He glances at me. “Like yours.”

  My ears tingle with a sudden infusion of blood. “Irene’s eyes are not green.”

  “They haven’t made contact lens that perfect yet. Up close, anyway.”

  “Lots of people wear contact lens.”

  “Granted, although not many her age. The wig is good though. Real hair.”

  I say nothing.

  “But you actually confirmed it,” he says.

  “Me?” I’d been so careful. “How?”

  “When I offered to have my cousin stay.”

  I frown. “I don’t get it. What are you talking about?”

  “The first thing you did, the instinctive thing, was to look at her. Not something an employer would do with an employee. It’s her house, isn’t it?”

  “She willed it to me.”

  “Okay, but then it would be your house, and you wouldn’t have looked at ‘Irene’ for permission.”

  “Irene’s part of the family now. I didn’t want to bring a man, a stranger, into the house without her being okay with it.”

  Tracey pulls into a driveway, stops the car and twists in his seat to look at me. “I get it that she wants to be ‘dead.’ That’s actually normal for us. My father is on his third ‘life.’”

  I feel the line of my mouth flatten in stubbornness.

  “I’m House of Stone. We’re sworn to protect House of Rose.”

  “Sworn? That’s the first I’ve heard that word.”

  “Yes.”

  “You haven’t been doing much of a job of it,” I say, unable or unwilling to keep the bitterness from my voice.

  “No, you’re right. We haven’t. And I have made mistakes.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as refusing to . . . court you.”

  “Court me? You mean try to have babies with me?” The flush, this time from anger, has spread from my earlobes to my cheeks and neck.

  “Calm down, Rose. There is a lot at stake.”

  I don’t calm down easily. I count to ten silently. That always sounded like stupid advice, but it actually works. I can make a sentence.

  “I know what’s at stake, Lohan.”

  “You understand why House of Stone would pressure me to—?”

  “Yes, I understand.” I want to stay angry, but Tracey has never made a move on me. He has always treated me as an equal, even in my rookie status. There is no basis to be mad at him. But I am anyway.

  “Well, why haven’t you?” I ask.

  He meets my eyes. “Are you angry because my House wants me to court you or angry because I haven’t tried to?”

  “Yes. I mean, no. I don’t know. How can we talk about this right now?”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I brought it up. Your family is in danger, and a young girl’s life is in danger. We need to be partners, to work together, to . . . trust each other.”

  I glare at him, but he is right and that is exactly what I meant, which somehow just makes me angrier.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  “Lieutenant Faraday got some information back from the military,” Tracey says, leaning over my desk.

  “How?”

  “They have a pretty sophisticated data base. ‘Angola’ isn’t a common name. She sent a photo.” He shows me the photograph on his phone.

  “That’s him,” I say, “minus the ponytail.”

  “Angola Simone. Served in Iraq, POW, Purple Heart. Honorably discharged.”

  I straighten when he gives me the last known address.

  “That’s the Swann/Simpson mansion.”

  He runs a hand through his hair. “Headquarters for House of Iron.”

  “What do we do?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “Go knock on the door.”

  “You know someone there is trying to kill me,” I remind him.

  “Which is why I am going without you.”

  “No way.”

  I don’t relish setting foot inside
this house. Only a few months ago, Becca and I were prisoners in the basement. And deeper into the mountain is a room with a solid iron throne where Theophalus Blackwell wiped Becca’s mind and tortured me, and where I killed two men and burned a child to escape him. I shudder and Tracey glances at me.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  I take a deep breath. Jason lives here when he’s in the country. I’m still chewing on whether Jason wants to make me his lover or kill me. Maybe both.

  It’s a mansion with a multi-gabled roofline and more fireplace chimneys than I can count. According to the Internet, the owner designed it based on English castles. Only two levels are visible from the front, but there’s a lower level in the back and an extensive basement, not to mention at least one secret tunnel into the mountain.

  Our knock brings a man to the door. My first visit here at the annual All Hallows’ Eve party, Angola answered the door. This man I don’t know.

  “May I help you?” His accent is crisp, and I wonder if he is a Family member or an employee who followed them from England.

  Tracey opens his badge case. “Birmingham Police. We’re investigating a homicide.”

  “You’ll want Ms. Blackwell.”

  He escorts us into the living room. We don’t sit. We’re in the enemy’s den. My skin crawls.

  Stephanie Blackwell makes an entrance. Another person would have just walked in, but drama wraps her like a 1950s movie star. She’s wearing black slacks and a white tailored shirt with a striking diamond pin. Her shoes are red, open-toed heels, more sensible than the stilettos she wore at the All Hallows Eve party, but fashionable. Becca would have approved.

  Stephanie extends a slender hand with nails that match her shoes to Tracey and introduces herself. Then she turns to me. “Lovely to see you again, Veronica.”

  “Rose,” I correct. I never use the “V” part of my name.

  She gives a gracious nod. “Rose, of course.”

  “We’re here on police business,” I say.

  “Won’t you sit down? May I get you something to drink?”

  I stay where I am, but Tracey sits and cocks his head at me. Stiffly, I sit opposite him.

  “No, thank you,” he says to the drink. “We’re looking for information on someone—Angola Simone.”