Shadow trotted around, periodically paused to sniff at some random spot of asphalt, carefully considered it, then moved on. Apparently, selecting the perfect place to pee was vitally important.
“I need to catch you up on what we have so far.” I summarized the last few days for her; Diatheke, Celia, Benedict, Keystone, the chase, and Alessandro’s involvement. I kept the information about his database private. I didn’t know what it meant yet in the big picture.
She rubbed her face with both hands. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”
“It’s my job.” But yeah, it sucked. “I’m sorry we haven’t found Halle. But so far the evidence seems to point to kidnapping, not murder.”
Professionally I knew that we were doing everything we could. Personally, the guilt drowned me. No matter how many times I warned myself, I thought of Runa as my friend. I desperately needed to fix this for her, and this case was a quicksand trap. Just when I thought I was on my way up, I sank deeper in. It was driving me up the wall.
“So where do we go from here?” Runa asked.
“Well, first things first. We’re now in the crosshairs of an assassin firm, so we’ll get attacked. It’s not an ‘if,’ it’s a ‘when.’ I called Matilda’s aunt. Unfortunately, she’s out of town, but she said a friend will be coming by to pick her up. Would you like to send Ragnar with them?”
“No.” She didn’t even pause. “Right now, the last thing he remembers is getting off the plane and he’s so calm, it’s borderline freaky. I don’t know how long this will last, but if his memory and emotions come back, I don’t want him climbing onto another roof. I need to be there to steady him.”
“Okay.” It was her decision. “The next step is to identify your mother’s target. We know he’s male, powerful, and his death would cause an uproar. Diatheke wants him dead, but they don’t want the heat that will come with it.”
Runa shook her head. “No clue. Mom didn’t socialize. Sometimes she didn’t leave the house for weeks.”
“I looked at your mother’s social calendar. The last ten years are backed up. How much do you know about the Texas Assembly?”
Runa sighed. “Just what everyone knows. It’s a legislative body that governs the Houses in Texas. Each House has one voting seat. If you are a Prime or a Significant, you are entitled to view the sessions but only the designated House representative can vote. Most people don’t go to the sessions unless something important happens. Mom usually went. She liked to know what was happening in the political world.”
I nodded. “The Texas Assembly has two main political factions: the Civil Majority and the Stewards. The Civil Majority thinks Houses have enough power and want to keep to themselves. The Stewards want to rule everyone and everything. Every three years the Assembly elects a Speaker. The winning party receives the Gold Staff and the loser is given the Silver Staff. Nine years ago, when the Civil Majority was in power, your mother served as the Gold Staff.”
Runa frowned. “I think I remember that. Isn’t it mostly ceremonial? She would bring the staff out and bang it onto the floor at the start and end of each Assembly session.”
“It is. But it also means that she met most of the Assembly’s members and knew all of the major players.”
Runa groaned. “It could literally be any member of any House in the state.”
“Yep.”
The political undercurrents within the Assembly were so complex it would take a supercomputer to sort them out. I made a note of everyone Sigourney was in office with, starting with the former Speaker Linus Duncan. Linus would take my call. He’d served as a witness to the formation of our House. Whether he’d tell me anything was a different question entirely.
We watched Shadow wander about. Arabella was still MIA and worry gnawed at me. My sister could handle herself, but Diatheke’s roster of killers was nothing to sneeze at.
“My brother is an emotional zombie, my sister is missing, and I found out that my mom was a hit woman.” Runa sighed.
“I’m sorry.”
“I suspected. The math just wasn’t adding up. She didn’t make enough from her forensic work to cover our bills. I mean, it wouldn’t even pay my tuition. When you asked me to go through her bank statements, I went back to the beginning of her records twelve years ago. You know what I found? Large deposits for consulting work. A hundred grand, two hundred grand. One was for half a million. Half a million, Catalina.”
“Must have been a high-risk target.”
“At least she was good at her job, right?” Runa gave a short laugh. “It’s one consulting fee after another, and then eight years ago everything just stopped. This was right about the time she told me that she wanted to spend more time with us. She must have stopped ‘consulting.’”
“I’m sorry,” I told her again.
“I can’t ask her any questions. I can’t say, ‘How could you do this?’ or ‘What were you thinking?’ So I went to my house yesterday. I talked to the ash and then I cried. I might be losing it.”
“No,” I said. “You’re keeping it together just fine. Better than I would.”
Runa shook her head. “I looked at the files on the flash drive. I thought maybe she was a kind of Robin Hood, who only killed bad people. She wasn’t. She killed whoever they paid her to kill.”
In the real world, there was no honor among thieves and no Robin Hood assassins.
She turned to me. “Ragnar can never find out. He wouldn’t understand. I can rationalize it somewhat. We were in debt, we were about to lose the house, we would go hungry. I don’t condone it, but all my mom knew was how to be a mother, a wife, and a superb poisoner. She was an amazing assassin. I don’t even know how she did half of the stuff on that flash drive. So, I’ll deal with it. I have no choice. But my brother can never be told. Promise me.”
“I promise,” I said.
Shadow squatted and peed at a random spot.
I clapped my hands and crooned in a high-pitched voice, “Good girl, good girl.”
Runa whistled and made “woo” noises.
Shadow kicked her back legs, trying to scour the pavement, and strutted off.
“About Alessandro,” Runa said. “I shouldn’t have made the decision to work with him without talking to you. He was there, and he asked me, and I answered honestly. Brain wasn’t engaged.”
“Don’t worry about it. I was just trying to squeeze more information out of him. Your mother hired him to kill her assassin. He isn’t going away until he nukes them, so we can either work together or we can keep bumping into each other with unpredictable consequences.”
Runa raised her eyebrows. “Are you sure you don’t want to keep bumping into him, just a little bit?”
I gave her the Look of Death. “No. I found out that Alessandro has been staying across the street, so I disassembled his car window and then walked into my bedroom and found him posing on my bed like some sort of erotic poster.”
“He was posing on your bed? Was he naked?”
“No.” I wish. “But he was holding the picture I had left on the nightstand.”
Runa frowned. “Wait, the picture? The pink, glitter heart picture?”
I nodded. “Yep. That’s the one. I took it to my room. And now he knows about my kid crush and he’s mocking me.”
“Well fuck,” Runa said.
“Fuck” was a good way to put it.
“Look on the bright side,” Runa said. “If he steps out of line, I can poison him, so blood will come out of both ends simultaneously and continuously.”
“Thank you, I think.”
“You must think I’m crazy.” The smile slid off Runa’s face. “Joking while my mother is dead, and my sister is missing. Maybe I am, a little, and if I was by myself, things might be different. But I have my brother. I’m trying my best to not freak the fuck out. I’m trying to be positive and hopeful, and pretending that everything will be okay. But I know nothing is okay and sometimes I just want to scream myself hoarse.”
I hugged her. “Runa, you don’t owe me or anyone an explanation or an apology. Terrible things have happened to both of you, and you do whatever you need to do to get through it. If you want to strip naked and dance in the street throwing glitter in the air, nobody would blink an eye. It’s your grief. You own it.”
She wiped her eyes.
The door of Rogan’s HQ opened, and Bug emerged into the light of the streetlamp. He wore a clean khaki T-shirt and a pair of dark pants. His face was clean, and his hair was damp and brushed.
“That’s my cue to go inside,” I told Runa. “This is Bug, Rogan’s surveillance guy I told you about. He doesn’t do well with strangers.”
“No sudden moves?”
“No, he’s okay with sudden moves. Just don’t expect him to do small talk.”
Runa was right. The lemon roasted chicken did smell amazing.
The entire family had gathered for dinner, all except Arabella. She’d finally charged her phone and replied to my seven texts with “I’m okay, keep your panties on.” I composed an eloquent reply rich with four-letter words, sent it to her, and hadn’t heard anything back.