Sapphire Flames (Hidden Legacy 4)

And when I found him, he would regret every word. He’d surprised me this time, but he wouldn’t again.

“He said what?” Runa asked.

The car speaker remained silent.

“Bern, are you there?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “You’ve had a pretty big morning.”

“See you soon.” I hung up.

“How is Sagredo involved in all this?” Runa asked.

“No idea. Do you know him? Do you know his family? Did your mom have any contact with him?”

“No.”

“But you recognized his picture,” I reminded her.

“I recognized him because I had a giant crush on him in high school, like every other girl my age. When he got engaged for the first time, Felicity, Michelle, and I had a pity party with cheesecake and whipped cream.”

When I heard about his first engagement, I locked myself in my room and cried alone. I had cried the next two times too, because I was a moron.

Runa shook her head. “Trust me, if anyone has any connection to Sagredo, it’s you. He doesn’t even know I exist.”

If House Etterson had no connection to House Sagredo, then why was Alessandro at the morgue, and why had he killed Conway and told me to go home? He was involved in this somehow. He had to be.

I needed to find Alessandro, and for that I would need Bug.

Bug served as Rogan’s surveillance specialist. Magically altered, he processed visual information at an astonishing rate. He could sift through the simultaneous feed from dozens of CCTV cameras and track a person across the entire city. If anybody could find Alessandro, Bug could.

He was also fanatically loyal to Rogan. The moment we involved Bug, Rogan would know every detail of what we asked, real and imagined, because Bug wouldn’t just report the facts, he would embellish them with his conclusions delivered with his particular flair.

I could just imagine the way that report would go. Hey, so you’ll never believe this dick fart thing: they want me to find Alessandro Sagredo. The gnome molester apparently stabbed somebody, and your sister wants to marry him. She’s paying me a fortune to find him before he kills again and ruins the romance. She believes the dimwit shit-for-brains can be redeemed, I guess, by the love of a good woman. Isn’t that just reindeer balls?

Nevada would then drop everything and fly back here to help and fix things which would jeopardize Mrs. Rogan’s claim. Rogan’s grandfather was difficult in life and he saw no reason to change in death. His will specified that unless Rogan and Nevada were present for the entire duration of his funeral and the mourning period, Mrs. Rogan would be cut out of her father’s will.

Mrs. Rogan wanted to inherit only one thing from her late father: the family’s summer house on the coast where her late mother had planted a beautiful garden. When Mrs. Rogan was a little girl, before her mother’s death, the family would vacation there. It was the place of her happiest memories.

For the past three years Mrs. Rogan educated and trained me. She found tutors for my magic, she arranged for etiquette lessons, she took me to museums and art galleries trying to hone my taste. She did it all never expecting anything in return, except a thank-you. Nevada and I wanted her to get that house more than she did.

I loved my brother-in-law, but to say that he was paranoid when it came to safety was like saying a typhoon was a gentle breeze. I had no doubt Connor had us watched. He couldn’t help himself. That meant he already knew that Augustine showed up at our place in the middle of the night and that I left with him and came back with Runa and her unconscious brother. Whether he shared it with my sister was another question, but sooner or later Nevada would find out that we took a dangerous case. The likelihood of her rushing back home was already high, and Bug’s litany of curses could push her over the edge.

The only way to stop this from happening was to level with her. It was too late to call her now. She would be in bed.

We needed Bug now. It was vital that we got a handle on where Alessandro was and why he was here. I couldn’t wait till tomorrow.

“Call Bug.”

The phone barely had a chance to ring before Bug snatched it up. “What do you want?”

“I need to hire you to find somebody, but you can’t tell my sister. I’ll tell her myself first thing in the morning. Can you wait that long?”

“Depends on who it is.”

Nice try. I wasn’t born yesterday. “Promise first.”

“Fine. I promise.”

“Alessandro Sagredo.”

Bug’s voice spiked. “Your virgin girl crush? The Italian Stallion?”

“Does everybody know that I had a thing for Alessandro?”

“Anybody who knows you. What did he do? Have you given up on pining from afar and decided to sweep him off his expensive cordovan leather loafers?”

I ground my teeth. “He killed my prime suspect.”

Silence.

“How?”

“He stabbed him in the heart. Less than five feet away from me.”

“Ohhh. That’s good. That’s too good. I’ve got to tell the Major.”

“Bug! Think way back, about two milliseconds ago, when you promised me that you wouldn’t tell?”

“You tricked me. I don’t know if I can hold it in. It’s too good.”

Argh. “Okay, you can tell Connor if you swear him to secrecy. He can’t tell Nevada. I’ll explain it to her myself, tomorrow morning. Can you do that?”

“I’ll try.”

“They’re asleep, anyway.”

Bug snorted. “The Major never sleeps. Sometimes he rests his eyes while thinking deep thoughts.”

“Connor is at his grandfather’s funeral trying not to murder his obnoxious family. He’s dealing with a lot right now, Bug. You don’t want to add to that, do you?”

“You always ruin things with your logic. Fine. Where was the fancy boy last seen?”

“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.”