“And stealing the body was what?” Nick said. “A crime of opportunity?”
“That would be my guess.”
“Why isn’t it here?” Nick asked.
That pulled me up short. If Damon had already sold it, then it was lost to the black market, but if he hadn’t, maybe he’d want to keep it close.
“Where would you put the most valuable thing you owned?” I asked.
“In a safe deposit box,” Nick said.
“No,” I said. “If you were a normal person and not someone who’s the poster child for adulthood.”
The shriek of tires interrupted us, the sound of sirens overwhelming. Holding up our hands, we waited to see who the employee had called.
Surprisingly, it was just the fire department. As they checked the unit and then the adjoining two for fire, Nick called his boss.
A few minutes later, the place was crawling with crime scene techs and police. They had shuffled Nick and me off to a corner at Tate’s dark look. When the lead crime scene tech came to speak with Tate, Nick and I crept close.
“We have records of some of this being stolen,” the tech said. “But a lot of it is a complete mystery. No idea where it came from, but my guess is theft. Sorry.”
Tate nodded and turned to me and Nick. “King, I know I told you that you were on vacation. In fact, I remember having a whole meeting about it. The wordsdesk dutywere used.”
Nick looked down, then glanced at me. “I am on vacation, sir.”
“I needed a storage unit,” I said. “We just stumbled on this. Complete fluke that the sprinkler system went off while we were taking a tour.”
“Sure,” Tate said. “And I spend my weekends knitting doilies to enter in the county fair.”
“Well,” I said, “everyone needs a hobby.”
“You know,” Tate said, “the woman giving you the tour thinks you two are suspicious.Ithink you two are suspicious. Just to be clear, neither of you is on this case. In fact, I’m thinking maybe I need to extend your vacation, King. I’ll buy you tickets to Hawaii and force you onto the plane at gunpoint. You understand?”
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll just be on our way, then.”
Tate’s narrow-eyed look told me he was buying my compliance with about as much enthusiasm as he’d buy the Brooklyn Bridge from some con artist in New Jersey. Still, he knew me well enough to know that whatever he said wouldn’t stop me.
“Both of you are going to submit a statement to Detective Lewis. I want it typed, I want it signed, and I want it tomorrow.” He jerked his chin. “Now get off my crime scene. Go to the beach or something.”
We left Tate swearing about cops who didn’t know how to take their mandated vacations.
Once we were in the car, I glanced at Nick and gave him what I hoped was a convincing grin.
“Nick, I have an idea,” I said. “What do you know about glamours?”
Five
“I’m not sure I like this,” Nick said. He looked at me, color high on his cheeks from embarrassment.
Brushing my thumb across his cheekbones, I added a layer to the glamour I was weaving around him. Nick was an attractive man, but a glamour turned him into something else. He was a foreign creature, something that couldn’t possibly be human, his coloring too different, his eyes too strange.
“No one will recognize me, right?” Nick said. “If Tate even suspects…”
“As much as I would like to tempt you to the dark side where we have good snacks and no health insurance, even your own mom wouldn’t recognize you.” I pulled a mirror out of my satchel and held it up to Nick.
It was a small makeup mirror, and Nick had to turn it at an angle to see the whole of what I’d done. His normally warm brown skin was now an iridescent green with shining blue tattoos streaking across his cheekbones and down his bare chest like he was some deep-sea creature attracting prey.
I’d left his nose alone, but his eyes were now a deep blue like they were made of sapphires. No human could have eyes thatnavy. For his ears, I’d given him the stereotypical points on the end and decorated them with a series of gold hoops.
