Takara’s website described it as an Asian bistro, which in reality meant that they specialized in beautiful sushi and had a couple of traditional Chinese and Korean dishes on the menu. It occupied a large, modern building, all heavy brown stone and big windows. As I walked through the door, an eight-foot-wall fountain greeted me. The color palette was creamy beiges, soothing greens, and rich browns with a touch of metallic bronze here and there. The colors, the gentle sound of water, and the tasteful decor were soothing, yet the hostess in front of me and the three sushi chefs behind the counter looked distinctly freaked out.
I looked over the dark brown tables and saw Mad Rogan, wearing a grey suit over a white shirt opened at the collar. He sat toward the back, by the oversized bamboo shoots in a tall black floor vase. I knew the table. It let you look outside through the window, but the passersby couldn’t really see you clearly. It was the least noticeable table on the floor, but now it might as well have been in the middle of the room. Mad Rogan was extremely difficult to ignore. The place was empty, except for two young women and a middle-aged couple, and all four pretended their hardest not to watch him.
My mother was parked across the parking lot, barely two hundred feet away. Her Barrett sniper rifle had an effective range of just over a mile. Her magic ensured that she didn’t miss. My knees were still shaking. This was a dumb idea.
A hostess in a tight black dress forced a smile at me. “Ms. Baylor? Right this way, please.”
I followed her. All this adrenaline primed my magic, and I could almost feel it pouring out of me like an angry swarm of electric bees ready to buzz. I was wearing old jeans, a charcoal blouse, and my best pair of running shoes. If I had to run for my life again, I was all set.
Mad Rogan rose to his feet, a fluid motion. A waiter appeared, as if by magic, and held the chair out for me.
Mad Rogan didn’t touch my chair. He should’ve pulled it out, but he stayed right where he was. It could have been deliberate because he felt I didn’t deserve the courtesy, but members of Houses lived and breathed etiquette.
“Did you do something to my chair?”
“No.”
My magic snapped like a whip. Lie.
I turned to the table by the window. “I like the table over there better.”
The waiter froze, petrified, unsure what to do.
I stepped toward the window table, pointed to the chair facing the parking lot, and looked at the two of them. “I’m sitting here.”
Mad Rogan moved the fingers of his left hand half an inch. Faint red smoke puffed out of the carpet, forming a shape of a magic circle centering on my former chair, and dissipated into the air. He had laid a trap, and I had almost sat down into it. Bastard.
I pulled out my new chair. The rules of politeness dictated that he sat across from me, which would put the back of his head to the window and give my mother a lovely target. Mad Rogan took a step toward my chosen table. It slid back across the carpet out of the window’s view as other tables glided aside, making room. The chair jerked out of my hand and followed. The three other chairs chased mine and arranged themselves around the table. He put his hand on the chair that let him watch both the door and the window, then invited me with a casual gesture. “Your table.”
Grrrrr. This wouldn’t go well.
I sat down.
He did also.
We glared at each other across the table.
The waiter hovered next to us, a nervous look on his face. “Welcome to Takara. What can I get you to drink?”
“Unsweetened tea with lemon,” I said. “And could you please bring me some fake sugar with it?”
“Same,” Mad Rogan said. “No lemon.”
“Appetizer?” the waiter asked.
Mad Rogan glanced at me. “Your pick.”
“Carpaccio.”
“Great, I’ll get that right out.” The waiter took off, visibly relieved.
The Scourge of Mexico and I resumed our glaring. His eyes seemed to change color depending on the light. Yesterday, when he was in the circle, they were dark, almost indigo. Today they were a light, clear sky blue. My mind flashed right back to the cliff in my dreams. I stomped on that thought. I had no idea what sort of telepath he was. The last thing I needed was to have him pluck an image of his half-naked glory out of my head.
“Do you have any ID?” I asked.
“ID?”
“You told me you were Mad Rogan, but how do I know you are who you say you are.”
He broke apart his pair of chopsticks, rubbed them against each other, and held one at eye level, thicker end toward the ceiling. He opened his fingers. The chopstick remained suspended above the table. Impressive. I knew this game. We all played it in elementary school to identify our magic. If you could move the chopstick off the table, you were telekinetic. If you could lift the chopstick and hold it steady, you were a high-precision telekinetic and people would come to talk to your parents and offer scholarships for the commitment to future employment. They would pay for your education, and you would work for them for a decade or two in return.
Mad Rogan casually unrolled his napkin. A paper-thin slice of wood, so thin it was translucent, shaved itself off the top of the chopstick and floated down. Holy crap.
Another slice peeled off. The middle-aged couple stopped eating. The man’s mouth hung slack. The woman visibly strained to swallow. Shivers ran down my spine. This couldn’t be happening. Moving a table was one thing. It was bulky and heavy and required a lot of power to move, but this was on a different level. No telekinetic had that much control.
Mad Rogan placed the napkin across his lap. The chopstick spun in place. The wooden slivers rained down, landing in a perfect circle around it, like a ring of tiny petals.
The waiter came out of the back, carrying our drinks, and froze in the middle of the floor.
The first circle filled up with wooden shavings, and a second ring, wider, formed around it. The remaining half of the chopstick landed in the center of the two rings and split into four slivers with a loud crack.
I remembered to breathe.
The man from the middle-aged couple pulled out three twenties, tossed them on the table, and grabbed the woman’s hand. They hurried out at a near run.
That was the scariest thing I had seen in a long time. How was it even possible that he could do this? If he did that to a human being, it would be horrifying.
Mad Rogan looked at me.
I had to say something, do something. Anything.
I pulled out my phone and took a picture of the table.
His eyebrows crept up a tiny bit.
“For my grandmother.” I put the phone on the table and smiled at the waiter. “He broke his chopstick. Could you get us another set?”
The waiter nodded, hurried over to the table, set our drinks and carpaccio down, and escaped without saying a word. Mad Rogan picked up a tiny white dish usually used for soy sauce and casually swept the wooden slivers off the table with his hand.
“I would’ve settled for a driver’s license.” This was so not a good idea. He was freakishly powerful.
“A driver’s license can be counterfeited. Nobody in the continental United States can duplicate this.”
And so modest too.
The shorter of the women with auburn hair rose, walked over to our table, and placed a card on it. Her fingers shook a little. “My name is Amanda. Call me.”
She walked back to her table, aggressively swaying on her heels.
I snagged a pink slice of rare New York strip drizzled with tangy sauce. Mmm, delicious. “That was ballsy. You’ve chased off two diners, caused the other two to lose their minds, and scared our waiter. Would you like to go in the back and terrorize the kitchen staff as well?”
“You started it with the table.”
“Was I supposed to sit down in your trap?”
His face was completely serious. “Yes. It would’ve made you more agreeable and let us both get out of here faster.”
“Well, I didn’t.” I almost slapped myself. How was that for a clever comeback? Not.
The waiter reappeared with chopsticks. “May I take your order?”
“Bulgogi,” Mad Rogan said.
I ordered a simple salmon roll, and we both tore identical pink packets of fake sugar and dumped them into our drinks.
“Here is what I know,” Mad Rogan said. “Your name is Nevada Baylor. You’re the only licensed investigator in a small firm, which is currently a subsidiary of MII. MII runs security for several venues owned by House Pierce. House Pierce hired MII to bring their prodigal son home, and you drew the short straw.”
I stole another piece of meat and chewed. It was delicious, and it kept me from talking and saying anything I might regret later.
“I’m not interested in Adam Pierce,” he declared.
True. “Could’ve fooled me. Now I’m insulted. You kidnapped and tortured me for someone you’re not even interested in.”
The dragon refused to be amused. “I’m interested in finding Gavin Waller. Preferably alive.”
True, but I had figured it out already. “Gavin has vanished off the face of the planet. His Twitter is inactive, his Instagram hasn’t been updated, and there have been no sightings of him since that night. He’s either hiding or dead.”
Mad Rogan nodded. “Agreed.”
“But Adam is loud and flashy, so you decided it would be easier to find Adam and make him tell you where Gavin is. I understand all that. Explain the kidnapping part.”
“It’s not relevant.”
I paused with the slice of carpaccio halfway to my mouth. “You do understand that you grabbed me off the street like some serial killer? I thought you might seriously hurt me. It made me scared and upset. I was in fear for my life. This is extremely relevant to me.”
Mad Rogan sighed. “Fine. I looked into Gustave’s shop and found a series of large deposits from House Pierce.”
I nodded. “I did as well.”
“I came to discuss the deposits when I saw you inside. You’re young, attractive, and blond. Adam’s type.”
“You thought I was Adam’s groupie?” I’d be offended, but it was a waste of time.
“Yes. I thought you were delivering the cash to him. I tailed you to MII. Given their business ties, if the Pierces wanted to funnel money to Adam, using MII would’ve been a logical step. I saw you come out of the building and talk on the phone, then I followed you to Mercer.”
My magic came on high alert. It wasn’t a lie exactly, but it felt off to me.
“How?”
“How what?”
“How did you follow me to Mercer?”
“I tailed you.”
Lie. My magic bounced up and down like a giddy toddler. Lie, lie, lie. Even if it didn’t, I’d still know he was lying. I always checked to see if I was being followed. It was a habit. The traffic had been too heavy for him to tail me effectively anyway. He’d watched me enter MII and leave my car in the parking lot. He’d done something to my vehicle. Aren’t you a sly devil? That’s okay. Two could play that game.
“I was searching the gardens for you when I heard that idiot’s motorcycle.” He grimaced slightly. Adam Pierce wasn’t his favorite person. If Adam got one of my cousins accused of murder, I wouldn’t be a fan either.
“So instead of talking to me, asking for my credentials, or doing any of those things a normal person would do, you decided to assault me and chain me in your basement?”
He shrugged, a slow, deliberate movement. “It seemed like the most expedient way to obtain the information. And let’s be honest, you weren’t exactly harmed. I even took you home.”
“You dumped me on my doorstep. According to my mother, I looked half dead.”
“Your mother exaggerates. A third dead at most.”
I stared at him. Wow. Just wow.
Our food arrived. Record time.
“I have no idea where Adam is hiding.” I grabbed a piece of salmon roll, smeared some wasabi on it, and stuffed it in my mouth.
“I realize that now. Also the fact that you’re meeting him alone, without any means to capture him, indicates that House Pierce hired MII and you to talk him into surrendering himself into their tender embrace.” He leaned forward. His blue eyes focused on me, his gaze direct and difficult to hold. “MII employs combat-trained mages. Why would they send you? What are you? You’re something. Not a telepath, but something.”
Wouldn’t you like to know? I chewed enthusiastically. Mmm, mmm, yummy sushi. Sorry, can’t talk with my mouth full.
“What’s your take on Adam?” he asked.
I kept chewing, playing for time and trying to think of the right words.
“I promise I won’t share.”
I sipped my tea. “Adam is volatile and chaotic. Every emotion is intense. He craves attention and desperately wants to be seen as cool, almost like a teenager. He likes a challenge, so when someone isn’t instantly knocked off their feet with his sheer awesomeness, he’ll work to prove that he’s awesome. But, like a teenager, he is self-absorbed and can be cruel. He hates rejection, and his need to impress can flip into hate fast. He’s smarter than he lets on, persistent, and dangerous.”
“But you think you can talk him into surrendering himself to his House?”
“It’s possible.” I had captured his attention, which was in my favor, but he was lying to me, which wasn’t. “I cut off his money. Combined with the manhunt, it should put enough pressure on him. He’s flirting with the idea. What’s your take on Adam?”
“A spoiled rich brat with too much free time, a daddy complex, and a sadistic streak a mile wide.”
Okay. We were on the same page then.
Mad Rogan leaned slightly forward, focused on me. “What if I told you that he’s stringing you along?”
“What makes you think that?”
He took a small tablet out of the inner pocket of his suit and passed it to me. I took it, careful not to touch his fingers.
“A show of good faith,” he said.
True. A video was paused on the screen. I flicked it on with a swipe of my finger. A recording of the street in front of First National Bank, probably from a security camera. Was that the video the cops had? “How did you get this?”
“I have my ways.”
On the screen, two figures, one tall, the other shorter and slighter, walked into the camera’s view and stopped before the glass-and-marble facade of the bank. The taller figure, in a familiar leather jacket, set down a metal canister, pulled out a piece of chalk, and crouched, drawing on the asphalt. I couldn’t see what he was drawing, but my money was on a magic circle.
Thirty seconds later, the man spread his feet to shoulder width and raised his arms, elbows bent, fingers of the hands toward each other as if he were holding a large, invisible ball. The other figure opened the canister and began carefully pouring a thick, viscous liquid in front of the first man. A fire dashed through the stream, a quiet, golden flame contained in the invisible sphere between the first man’s hands. The shorter man kept pouring. The fire blazed brighter and brighter.
“Napalm B,” Mad Rogan said. “It’s a thickening agent that makes jellied gasoline.”
“I know. Benzene, gasoline, and polystyrene.” Grandma Frida had outfitted more than one House vehicle with a military-grade flamethrower. Napalm B also burned for almost ten minutes and generated temperatures that beat even Adam Pierce’s fire. It was one of the worst things humankind had ever invented.
Mad Rogan raised his eyebrows. I must’ve surprised him.
The ball of fire between the man’s hands had grown to the size of a basketball. It churned and roiled, a furious inferno contained by magic. The flame brightened to yellow, then blazed with white. The taller man turned, and I saw his face, lit up by the glow of the fireball. Adam Pierce.
The shorter man—probably Gavin Waller—raised his hands palms out and pushed. The fireball vanished. The windows of the bank shattered, and flames shot out. First National exploded from the inside out. The fire roared like an enraged grizzly.
That’s right, Gavin Waller was a short-range teleporter. Adam and Gavin stared at the flames, two dark silhouettes against the inferno.
Gavin’s image looked slightly distorted. The next second, the distortion disappeared.
Wait a minute.
I rewound the video a few seconds. Two minutes thirty-one seconds, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, missed it. Thirty-two, pause.
Gavin’s silhouette stood frozen on the screen. He was holding something rectangular, and it was bulging out on the left side. I zoomed in closer. A box. He was holding some kind of box. When did he get it?
I rewound the video back. The box popped into Gavin’s hands a millisecond after the fireball disappeared. “What is Gavin Waller holding? He teleported something into his hands.”
“A safe-deposit box.”
“What was in the box?”
“Nobody knows.” Mad Rogan grimaced. “They pulled it out, took something out, and put it back. Adam pressurized the napalm B, and when the magic was no longer containing it, it exploded. The bank employees are still sorting through the wreckage. Part of the vault melted.”
So this wasn’t a political statement. This was a theft, and the arson was just a cover-up. Adam had torched a bank, killed a man, and injured his family just so he could steal something. And he had needed Gavin to teleport his fireball directly into the vault, because coming through the front door would have meant all sorts of alarms going off. By the time he would have made his way to the vault, half of Houston’s finest would have surrounded the bank.
“Gavin isn’t a strong teleporter,” Mad Rogan said. “Someone had to have tagged the right safe-deposit box for him. Someone had gone to that bank and marked the box so Gavin could pull it out with his magic and stick the fireball in its place. That someone wasn’t Adam Pierce or Gavin himself. The point is, this was planned. Pierce pulled off a perfect heist, covered his tracks, and hasn’t said a word about it. Why?”
The heavens opened, and the realization fell out and hit me on the head. “He isn’t done. Adam has an almost pathological need for attention. If he was done with his scheme, he would take a bow. He would go out in a blaze of glory, or let himself be arrested, or turn himself in to his House with a giant show. He wouldn’t be able to resist making a statement one way or another. Instead he’s hiding. And he’s using me to keep his family at bay. As long as I report that I’m making contact and he’s listening, they’ll think there is a chance he’ll turn himself in. They won’t try to capture him. They will concentrate on slowing down the manhunt. I’m making it easier for him to keep going on with his plan.”
“You don’t sound surprised,” he noted.
“I knew he was leading me on. I just didn’t know why. Now I do.” I gave him a bright smile to rub it in. “Thank you for solving the mystery for me.”
Mad Rogan leaned back, his muscular body resting against the chair. “You’re an experienced investigator. You want Adam Pierce, and he is open to making contact with you, but you can’t talk him in and you have no means to subdue him. I want Gavin Waller. I have money and power on my side, but I can’t find him. Lead me to Adam, and I will help you deliver him to House Pierce.”
“You think you can contain Adam Pierce?”
He nodded, his face confident. “Yes. I can’t guarantee he’ll be undamaged after I’m done, but I give you my word he will be alive.”
I folded my napkin and put it on the table. “Thank you for a lovely lunch. The answer is no. I already have an employer.”
“You’ve been employed to find Pierce, not Waller.” Mad Rogan flicked his fingers across the tablet. An electronic check appeared on its surface. “Type in a number.”
I could type in a number large enough to pay off my mortgage to MII. It was tempting. So, so tempting. But you don’t jump into the cage with a wild bear because he’s offering you some of his honey. Right now Pierce and I were just talking. Once Mad Rogan got involved, it would escalate to an open confrontation, and the kind of power he and Pierce threw around meant I could—no, would—get hurt. My life meant nothing at all to either of them. “No, thank you.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re still upset about the basement.”
“Yes, but my personal dislike of you has nothing to do with my decision. This is a purely professional choice. You’ve broken the law by kidnapping me, and although you apologized, your apology wasn’t sincere. It was a means to an end. You’ve rearranged the restaurant, someone else’s property, to accommodate your personal needs, you lied to me during this conversation, and you tried to trap me into a spell after assuring me that I wouldn’t be harmed.”
“I assured you that you wouldn’t be kidnapped.”
“You are incredibly powerful, and you have a blatant disregard for laws and moral constraints. I’m guessing that you don’t think anything you ever do is wrong. That makes you very dangerous and a huge liability in my line of work. You will break laws and kill to get what you want, and if I manage to survive, I’ll be left with the fallout. So the answer is no.”
“This isn’t wise, Nevada. I take care of my employees.”
The sound of my name coming from him derailed me for a half second. Trading being in debt to MII for servitude to House Rogan. No, thank you. At least with MII there were rules. There was a legal, binding contract, and what they were doing to us was underhanded but within the bounds of that contract. My value to them was tied to my ability as an investigator. My value to Rogan was tied to me somehow getting him together with Adam Pierce, and Rogan wasn’t bound by any rules. I had no business getting in bed with him.
In bed.
With Mad Rogan.
My mind conjured him naked on dark sheets. I slammed the door on that thought so fast that my teeth shook.
I pulled two twenties out of my pocket and put them on the table. “I don’t have any reason to trust a word you say.”
He leaned forward. His body tensed, his muscles flexing under his clothes. His face turned predatory. All of that civilized veneer tore, and here he was, a dragon in all of his terrible glory.
“Do not walk away from me.” His voice vibrated with power. “You’re in over your head. Adam Pierce, House Pierce, and MII are out of your league. I’m offering to become your ally. Don’t make me into an enemy, or you will regret it.”
“And this is exactly why it’s a no.” I rose. “And the next time you choose to project into my dreams, do keep your clothes on.”
He smiled. It was a very male, self-aware smile, not just sexual but carnal. The predatory look in his eyes turned ravaging. I felt the need to grab a napkin and hold it in front of me like a shield.
“I can project, but I would have to be next to you to do it.”
Oh crap.
His voice turned smooth and sensual. A man had no right to sound like that. “Tell me, what wasn’t I wearing in your dreams?”
I rose, turned my back to him, and walked out.
The sound of his laughter caressed my back, almost like a sexual touch.
Keep walking, keep walking, keep walking. That was dumb. I just had to get that last word in. Would it have killed me to keep my mouth shut?
My phone beeped. I answered it.
“Drawbridge Security,” a brisk female voice said into the phone. “We’re showing a fire alarm at your residence.”
Grandma set the fire alarm off again. She’d test fuel or use some tool, and the alarm service called in a panic every couple of months. I had left them standing instructions to let the phone ring for at least a minute before calling the fire department. Sometimes Grandma took the time to put the fire out before answering.
“Did you let the phone ring?” I was almost to the door.
“We did. We’re registering two separate alerts, the workshop and the front door.”
Front door. The hair on the back of my neck rose. “Call the fire department now!”
I sprinted out the door and across the parking lot.
The van was already idling. I jerked the driver’s door open and jumped inside. “Our house is on fire!”
My mother snapped the rifle case shut, dropped into the passenger seat, and buckled. I stepped on the gas, and the van shot out of the parking lot. Mom dialed the house.
“Anything?” I took the corner too fast. The van careened and fell back in place, the springs screeching.
She put it on speaker. Ring . . . Ring . . . Ring . . .
“Is it the workshop?”
“The front door.”
We turned onto a side street. A slow-moving Prius blocked the lane. The line of cars in the opposite direction made it impossible to pass. Screw this.
I turned the wheel to the right. The van jumped the curb with a thud. I tore down the sidewalk.
Ring . . . Ring . . .
The Prius flew by. I dropped the van back into the lane.
Ring . . .
I made a sharp left. The warehouse loomed in front of us. It looked intact.
I screeched to a halt before the front door.
My mother swore. A huge chain blocked the door. Someone had cut holes in the walls and the door, strung an industrial-size chain through it, and locked it with a padlock. What the hell?
I stepped on the gas and drove around the warehouse to the workshop side. An identical chain blocked the back door. Damn it. I mashed the garage door opener attached to the visor. The massive door didn’t move. Disabled.
We had no tools that would cut the chain. Everything was inside the warehouse.
“Smoke,” Mother said.
A puff of black smoke escaped from the vent near the roof.
Grandma was inside. She could be burning to death.
“Ram it?”
“Go.” My mother braced herself.
I reversed, speeding backward down the street. The garage door would be the weakest point. It was an industrial garage door, reinforced from the inside, but it was still weaker than the walls. I’d have to hit it pretty hard. I aimed for the pale rectangle of the door and stepped on the gas. The van rocketed forward, picking up speed.
Mad Rogan stepped between the van and the garage door.
I slammed on the brakes, but there was not enough time to stop. I would hit him. I saw him with crystal clarity—his body, turned sideways to me, his striking face, his blue eyes—as the van skidded at him.
He raised his hand.
The van hit a cushion of air, as if we plowed headfirst into viscous honey. We slid to a soft stop a foot before his fingertips.
Mad Rogan faced the garage door. It clanged and crashed to the ground. Smoke billowed out, black and oily.
I jumped out of the van and ran inside. The smoke scoured the inside of my nose and scraped against my throat like fine-grade sandpaper. My eyes watered. The acrid stench choked me. I coughed and stumbled, trying to see through the dark curtain.
A human shape lay prone on the floor. Oh no.
I lunged forward and fell to my knees. Grandma Frida lay on her stomach. I flipped her, grabbed her by her arms, and pulled her across the floor. Mad Rogan congealed from the smoke, picked my grandmother off the floor, and headed for the exit.
The smoke ate at the inside of my mouth. It felt like someone filled my throat with crushed glass, and it was cutting into me. My head swam. I stumbled after Rogan, trying to find the exit. Suddenly the smoke ended and I shambled into fresh air. My lungs felt like they were on fire. I bent over and coughed. It hurt like hell.
Mad Rogan lowered my grandmother to the ground. Mom dropped by her. We couldn’t lose her. Not yet.
“Grandma,” I croaked.
“We’ve got a pulse, but it’s weak.” My mother pulled my grandmother’s mouth open and began doing CPR.
Please don’t die. Please don’t die, Grandma.
My mother began chest compressions. Tears rolled down my cheeks. Grandma Frida was always there for us. She was always . . . What would we do . . .
A fire truck rolled into the street.
Grandma coughed. A word came out, creaky, like an old door. “Penelope.”
Oh God. Oh thank you. Relief washed over me like a cold shower. I exhaled.
“Mom?” Mother asked.
“Get off of me.”
My stomach constricted. I crouched, trying to get a hold of myself. Mad Rogan’s shoes came into view. Mad Rogan. The man who told me I would regret it if I walked away from him and who now conveniently showed up to be the hero. The fear and nausea boiled together into anger inside me. We almost lost Grandma Frida. Someone came into our house, someone chained our doors shut, and then someone tried to kill her. Someone did this, and I would make them pay. The fury drove me up. I stared into Rogan’s eyes. Something broke inside of me like a chain falling apart. My magic shot out, savage and raging like an invisible thundercloud, and locked onto Mad Rogan.
He strained, his teeth gritted. I felt him fighting me, but my anger was whipping my magic into a frenzy. I had questions. He would answer them, damn it.
I spoke and heard my own voice, inhuman and terrible. “Did you order someone to hurt my grandmother?”
His will fought mine, steel-hard and unyielding, but I was too angry. He refused to bend, so I chained him in place and squeezed.
He unlocked his jaws. The answer was a growl. “No.”
Truth.
I compelled him to answer. I had no idea how I was doing it, but I would do it some more. “Did you order someone to set this fire?”
“No.”
Truth.
“Did you set it yourself?”
“No.”
Truth.
My hold was slipping. He was too strong. It was like trying to twist a railway tie into a knot. “Do you know who did?”
“No.”
Truth.
I released him. He moved. His strong fingers fastened on my wrist, sending an electric shiver of alarm through me. His face was terrifying. His voice was suffused with quiet, barely contained aggression. “Don’t do that again.”
I should’ve been scared, but my grandmother had almost died and I was too furious and too tired to care. “Don’t like when the shoe is on the other foot? Let go of me.”
He opened his fingers.
There were only two people in my life right now who could have done something like this arson, and I had just eliminated one. Parents and sisters is something you do when you are five. They’re pulling you down and you’re letting them. No. Adam couldn’t be this stupid, could he? Did that bastard actually try to kill off my family?
Paramedics loaded my grandmother into an ambulance. It must’ve come while I’d been interrogating Mad Rogan. The first responders tried to keep the oxygen mask on my grandmother’s face. She wasn’t having it. My mother walked over to me.
“The last thing she remembers is getting the lug wrench. There is blood on the back of her head.”
“Someone hit her.” I would make them pay.
“Looks that way. I’m going to ride with her to the hospital.”
“I’m good,” I told her. “Go.”
She gave Mad Rogan an evil eye and climbed into the ambulance.
A fireman emerged from the workshop. The smoke had mostly dissipated. The fireman nodded at the inside of the warehouse. “Looks like someone left a lit cigarette near a can of gasoline. Ought to be more careful.”
“Thank you, we will.” I turned away from him to hide my expression. Unfortunately that put me face-to-face with Mad Rogan. An unspoken question hung in the air as the fireman walked away.
“My grandmother doesn’t smoke,” I said quietly. “All gasoline is stored in the metal cage. All munitions are stored in the other cage. Before I left for lunch, the warehouse had no chains on its doors.”
An SUV pulled up. Two men in dark pants and dark polo shirts exited. One was in his forties, dark-skinned, his short hair barely touched with grey. He was carrying a large, dark suitcase. The other man looked Latino and was about ten years younger. They moved like soldiers. I’d been around enough of them to recognize the walk, the unhurried but efficient stride of people who had a definite objective and had to get to it. They halted a few feet away.
“These are mine,” Mad Rogan said. “They’re arson specialists. If you give them permission, they will examine your warehouse.”
I nodded. I still didn’t trust him, but he had nothing to do with the arson.
“Go ahead,” he said.
The two guys went inside the warehouse.
I was suddenly so tired. My eyes were burning. My throat still hurt.
Mad Rogan raised his hand. A bottle of water landed into it. He handed it to me. “Rinse your mouth and eyes. Don’t swallow.”
I opened the bottle, gulped, swished the water inside my mouth, and spat. The scratching subsided.
The younger of the men reappeared in the warehouse door and nodded to us. We started toward him.
“Thank you for saving my grandmother,” I said.
“You’re no good to me if you’re burying a relative instead of looking for Pierce. I did it for a completely selfish reason,” he said.
Lie.
We walked inside. The older of the men was kneeling by the melted gasoline container. Soot covered the concrete floor. The suitcase lay open in front of him. Inside, vials and test tubes rested in a protective cushioning of foam.
Mad Rogan took in the canvas-covered vehicles. His eyebrows rose. “Is that a tank?”
“Technically that’s a gun on tracks. Mobile field artillery. That’s a tank in the corner. His name is Romeo.”
Mad Rogan shook his head in disbelief.
We reached the older man. He held up a test tube so I could see it, then used a small wire tool to scrape some of the soot off the floor. He lowered the tool into the test tube and shook it. A small clump of soot fell into the glass. The man added a few drops of a clear solution in a plastic bottle. The soot turned blue, then slowly changed color to pale purple.
“They used a party buster,” the older man said. “It’s a military-grade, slow-burning, smoke-producing compound. They mixed about four gallons of it with half a gallon of gasoline and lit it up. The woman who was loaded into the ambulance, where was she when you found her?”
“On the floor, facedown,” I said.
“She’s lucky,” the younger man said. “Floor was the safest place, plus the high ceiling helped. This stuff is designed to clear personnel from buildings without doing structural damage. You stay too long in it, you die.”
“Whoever did this knew what he was doing,” the older man said. “Party buster is expensive and hard to get without a clearance. Most civilian arson inspectors don’t test for it, and it dissipates quickly. Mixing it like that will make the incident look just like a normal gasoline fire. One more thing. I talked to the firemen. They say a cigarette was the point of origin. I’ve been doing this a while and I’m telling you now, a lit cigarette may have been here, but it wasn’t what started the fire. The container melted from the back and top down. Someone put a strong heat source against the back of it. Like a blowtorch.”
Or Adam Pierce’s hand.
“Thank you,” I said.
The two men rose and walked out.
Mad Rogan looked at me, his expression neutral, waiting.
“Thank you,” I repeated. “I’m very grateful for your help. I would like you to leave now.”
He turned on his heel and left.
I marched to the corner of the motor pool and opened the cabinet, where the old computer sat waiting. Bern had networked the entire house a long time ago. I tapped the arrow key. A prompt ignited on the screen and I typed in my password. The graphic of the security screen appeared. I clicked the rear camera and rewound back an hour. Grandma Frida puttering around the shop . . . I fast-forwarded ten minutes, another ten . . .
A blurry dark figure appeared in the doorway. The image went black.
I checked the outside camera. It went black without capturing anything at all. I rewound back to the image of the figure. It could’ve been a man or a woman. I couldn’t tell.
I turned around and went back to the door. The security camera was mounted about fifteen feet off the ground. It was gone. In its place was a melted mess of metal and plastic. The camera was too high for the direct flame and if the fire had burned that hot, my grandmother would be dead. No, this was done by a precise strike of a pyrokinetic. Only one pyrokinetic had come in contact with me in the past week. Adam Pierce had attacked my family.
I looked around the warehouse, at the burn stain on the floor, at the melted container, and I imagined my grandmother lying here on concrete, facedown, dying slowly in her favorite place. Whatever willpower held me together broke. I leaned against the nearest vehicle and cried.
