“Jumping out of a third-story window of the IFS.”

“Okay, I’ll give it to him, that’s pretty badass. I’m on it.”

“We haven’t discussed your fee.”

Bug moaned. “Catalina, I’m so fucking bored. Nothing is happening. Another day and I’ll pay you to hire me. At least this is something to do. With a face like that, he’ll be easy to find. I’ll call you when I learn more.”

He hung up.

“You know some weird people,” Runa said.

“It comes with the job. Are you okay?” I asked her.

“No, I’m pretty far from okay. My mother’s dead body tried to rip my hair out.”

There was nothing I could do or say to take that away from her.

“She loved us so much. I could go to my mom with anything, and she would make me feel better. He used her like she was a thing. Like she wasn’t even a person.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?” she ground out. “I want to know why this happened.”

“We’ll figure out why. We learned two things already: your family was murdered, and their killer is powerful enough to compromise an AME.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Runa said. “It started weird and it keeps getting weirder, Catalina.”

“I told you this could get ugly when we started. Do you want to walk away, Runa? You still can, but there will be a point when we can’t stop what we started, and it’s coming up fast.”

“We didn’t start anything. Whoever killed my mom and my sister started it.” Runa swiped a tear from her eyes. Her teeth were clenched, her expression hard and angry. “But I’ll finish it. You have my word.”

Chapter 4

Houston traffic was murder. It took us twenty-five minutes to cover the distance we could have driven in fifteen if the streets were empty. Nobody tailed us, but still I couldn’t breathe right until we turned onto the road leading to the warehouse.

The security checkpoint, a squat armored building, was an eyesore, but when I finally saw it up ahead, I wanted to run out and hug it. Almost home.

“Catalina!” Runa yelled.

A truck horn blared. I nearly jumped up out of the seat. A delivery truck screeched to a halt on our right, from the access road. Another foot and it would have plowed into us. The driver waved his arms, his face skewed by anger.

I had run a stop sign. I knew the stop sign was there and I ignored it, because we were on high alert. There should have been a two-foot-high steel barrier obstructing that access road.

This was beyond ridiculous.

I stepped on the gas, drove up to the security booth, and rolled down my window. Kelly, a white man in his forties, with dark blond hair and a farmer’s tan, slid open the window and grinned at me. “Stop signs are there for a reason, Ms. Baylor.”

There should have been two people in the booth.

I had two choices. I could either chew him out in front of Runa and highlight exactly how incompetent we were, or I could let my mother, who oversaw our security, chew out his superior in private. I settled for the latter. “Raise all security barriers. No vehicles come in.”

“But what about the deliveries?”

I made my voice very calm. “No vehicles come in, Mr. Kelly. Find Mr. Abarca and please have him see me ASAP.”

Kelly finally realized that things were FUBAR, and the smile bled off his face. “Yes ma’am.”

I rolled up my window and drove off, checking the rearview mirror. Behind me hydraulics whined, raising the spiked barricade to block the street.

I drove to the warehouse, and we came in through the business entrance. I walked into the conference room and used the intercom. “Family meeting in the conference room, please.”

Runa took a seat. I sat down at the head of the table.

I’d been attacked by two corpses, saw my teenage crush stab a man in the heart, and then watched him jump out of a three-story window. I’d bullied an administrative assistant and stood up to the cops. Then I drove through heavy traffic, scanning it for enemies, and almost got into an accident in front of my damn house. My heart was still pounding. I wanted to jump up and run around the block to burn off the adrenaline.

Instead, I had to sit in a chair and appear professional.

I could still feel the sharp desiccated fingers on my throat, squeezing to crush my windpipe. I would remember that awful smell as long as I lived. There was no time to deal with any of it.

The reanimated bodies were bad, but Alessandro was worse. I kept replaying that strike in my head. I wasn’t sure I could’ve blocked it even with my magic. And his face. He’d looked relaxed. He’d stood there, with a human being sliding off his knife, and he’d looked relaxed.

My cell rang. An unlisted number.

I answered it on speaker. “Yes?”

“You’re tracking me,” Alessandro said.

Runa’s eyes went big.

“I’m not tracking you,” I told him. Technically, it wasn’t even a lie.

“You’re having me tracked. I understand that I’m irresistible. It’s a cross I bear. But do try to have some self-control, Catalina. I’m embarrassed for you.”

He . . . Argh. “As I recall, I never had a problem resisting you.”

“I thought we agreed that you would drop this.”

“I didn’t agree to anything.”

“Catalina, listen to me. This is serious, the people involved are dangerous, and your well-being is important to me.”

Since when? “Why don’t you tell me more about it? Maybe if I fully understand the danger, I’ll stay out of it.”

“No, you won’t. You have no sense.”

“I have all kinds of sense.”

“This is your last warning, Catalina.”

“Or what?”

“Trust me, you don’t want to find out.”

He hung up.

I glared at the phone. Insufferable ass. When I got my hands on him, I would pry his mind open like a tin can. And then I would make him do a little dance, record it, and play it for him on a loop after I drained my magic off. Irresistible. I’ll show you irresistible. Just you wait.

“‘I have all kinds of sense’?” Runa quoted.

“I was too mad to think of a snappy comeback.”

Mom and Bern walked into the conference room. I put my phone down.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“Closing Yarrow,” Mom said. “There has been a development. Leon called for reinforcements. Your grandma and Arabella left about an hour ago.”

“What kind of a development?”

“They wouldn’t tell me, but they took Brick.”

Brick was Grandma Frida’s ultimate achievement. It started life as a military Humvee and was now the pinnacle of vehicular security. It couldn’t go faster than sixty miles an hour, but my grandma claimed it could take a shot from a tank. She also refused to let any of us drive it.

The Yarrow case involved a woman who posed as a CPA and used her charm to worm her way into her friends’ small businesses and then rob them blind. What in the world would they need Brick for?

I brought Mom up to speed on the events of this morning. “Also, I asked Mr. Abarca to join us after this meeting.”

“Right,” Mom said, loading a world of meaning into the single word. She and our head of security had been butting heads almost from the moment we hired him, and it was only getting worse.

I turned to Runa. “We need to figure out why your family was targeted. People kill for one of three reasons: emotion, power, or money. Not every House in Houston would have the audacity to pressure an AME. The penalties are severe. Your mother made an enemy with a lot of power.”

Runa spread her arms helplessly.

“How did your family make money?” I asked.

Runa frowned. “I don’t exactly know. We just always had enough. We had some investments, I think. Once in a while, Mom would consult in criminal cases. She served as an expert witness.”

“Any recent cases?” If someone’s conviction hinged on her testimony, it could be a hell of a motive. That or revenge. Always a good one. I would have to pull up all the recent cases Sigourney Etterson had testified in.

“No.” Runa shook her head. “She used to do it more frequently when I was younger. I remember her traveling a lot, especially right after my father bailed on us. But she told me a few years ago that she wanted to spend more time with us, and that the forensic work didn’t pay well enough to justify her missing things in our lives.”

I glanced at Bern. He met my gaze and frowned.

“What?” Runa asked.

Someone had to state the obvious and that someone was me, apparently. “You said your father cleaned out the family accounts and twelve years later you are worth eight million dollars.”

“Less now. Some of it was the house,” Runa said.

“Expert testimony can be profitable, but it doesn’t pay that well,” Bern said.

She bristled. “What are you saying?”

“We’re not saying anything,” I told her. “We’re asking questions. Things are not making sense and we need to keep digging until they do.”

Runa rubbed her face with both hands.