Ah. An act.
Everyone has an angle. This is hers.
A distraction. Spiritual nonsense.
I keep my face expressionless and let her play her game. I’ve broken hardened killers twice her size.
Yet, for some inexplicable reason, this strange woman captivates me. Her eyes bore into mine, and a deep, repressed part of me feels compelled to step closer, to reach out and see if what lingers in the air is just as potent in the flesh.
I crush the thought. Focus on the mission.
I’m empty inside save for the ice that formed the night my mother died.
From my pocket, I extract the key we found mixed in with the diamonds in Chloe’s house. The one with “Safety-237” and “Insurance” scrawled on the tag. I hold it up between gloved fingers, hiding the sight of her father’s name written on the other side. “What does this open?”
She leans forward, her eyes narrowing in the dim, hazy light. “A key. Wow. Yeah, no idea about that specific one.” Her gaze floats back to my face, her lips curling in amusement. “Definitely feeling this intense energy coming from you, though. The real question is, what does this key mean to you?”
She’s deflecting.
And not even well. No polish, no practice, just an endless stream of words that tumble out and construct a wall of noise.
I put the key back in my pocket.
No more games.
My arm sweeps across her desk, pushing aside the laptop and messy stacks of paper filled with wild loops of handwriting. Nothing stashed in the crates beneath.
“Hey! Just because it’s junk doesn’t mean you can just throw it around.” She glares at me and grabs her computer, checking the corners for damage.
I move to the table behind her. Crystals scatter, rattling to the floor. A quick yank at the cloth reveals another stack ofcardboard boxes. I kick them over, listening for any noises that might come from objects inside.
No secret compartments.
Jordan scrambles over to pick up the mess. “What’s wrong with you? There’s nothing worth stealing in here.”
I upend the bookshelf. It’s all New Age clutter. Manifestation manuals. Self-help. Grabbing each by the cover, I shake them out to check for secrets between the pages.
She finally snaps, her voice sharp and wounded as I continue stripping books from the shelf, flipping them open, and letting them fall where they may. “What are you doing? That’s my sacred space!”
Sacred space. As if “sacred” could mean anything in my world.
I don’t even spare her a glance. Instead, I wade through the room in a slow circle. Dropping to one knee, I run my fingers along the baseboards, searching for weakness, a fault line, or some disguised seam in the cheap drywall that might indicate a hidden place.
“Want a rag? You can clean while you’re down there.”
I ignore her.
Not a damn thing here.
The room is too small, too exposed. No real space for the secret safe this key might open. No locked door obscuring what I need. Which means she stashed whatever her dad gave her somewhere else. Or the evidence doesn’t exist.
Or she really doesn’t know anything.
But I don’t buy that. Not yet. She’s Alistair Thorne’s daughter and the key to finding what I need.
I spin around to face her and pin her against the wall with my stare. “Tell me about your father.”
She stiffens, and the mask drops. The calm, guru composure evaporates, stripping her bare. Her face loses every trace ofcolor, causing her freckles to contrast with her too-pale skin. “What about him? Why? He’s been dead for fifteen years. I…I don’t understand?—”
