“It’s tonight,” the secretary informed me.
Ha. Either my guns had made an impression, or nobody had explained to her that she was not supposed to give strange women confidential information. Most receptionists would’ve told me to shove off. “Wonderful. How old is he?”
“Forty-two.”
I went to the couches and sat. Minutes trickled by, slow and boring.
A quiet creaking of plastic wheels rolling came from the hallway. A man emerged—Latino, late fifties, early sixties. He pushed a bright yellow industrial mop bucket and he walked slowly, his eyes tired, his shoulders sloping forward. Probably part of the night cleaning crew, wrapping up his shift. As he passed the counter, the receptionist cleared her throat.
He glanced at her.
“There is a mess in the second-floor kitchenette,” she said. “Someone spilled coffee.”
“My shift was over half an hour ago,” the man said.
She stared at him. My opinion of Anapa’s reception staff plummeted. How difficult was it to clean up your own coffee spill? Get a rag and mop it up. If the man’s shift was over, let him go home.
He heaved his shoulders. “Fine. I’ll get it.”
I watched him roll away. The building lay quiet again.
I studied the stone tile: golden brown with slight charcoal and russet undertones. Beautiful. Raphael had a similar type of tile installed in his place. I could never understand the man’s aversion to carpet. His house looked like a castle: stone tile on the floor, beige and gray wall paint, Azul Aran gray granite countertops. He’d actually hired an artist to come in and paint stone blocks on the foyer’s walls. Cost him an arm and a leg, but it looked awesome, especially once I bought him a pothos vine and installed some tiny hooks to keep it growing in the right direction. He also hung bladed weapons on the walls.
I could picture him as a hidalgo, ruling some grand castle like Alcazar, dressed all in black. My imagination conjured up Raphael, his muscular body hugged by a black doublet, leaning against a stone balcony, a long rapier on his waist…with a seven-foot-tall blond bimbo by his side.
I had to stop obsessing. It was like my mind was stuck on him—every moment I wasn’t actively thinking about the case, my thoughts went right back to Raphael. Sometimes I plotted revenge, sometimes I felt like hitting my head against the wall. These bouts of feeling sorry for myself and daydreaming ways of making him regret he was ever born had to stop.
My ears caught the sound of distant footsteps. I rose. Three people strode out of the hallway, a trim woman in a beige business suit in the lead. She wore glasses and her light brown hair had been braided away from her face. Her clothes and hair said “business.” Her posture and eyes said “combat operative.” A man and a woman in tactical gear and dark clothes brought up the rear, holding cop batons. Each sported a sidearm on the hip.
“Good morning, Ms. Nash,” the woman said, her voice crisp. “Mr. Anapa sends his regrets. His schedule is full and he’s unable to see you.”
“I’m investigating murders on behalf of the Pack,” I said. “I only have a few questions.”
“Mr. Anapa will be very busy this entire week,” the woman said.
“He isn’t a suspect.”
“Whether you suspect him or not is irrelevant. You’re no longer a member of law enforcement. You’re here as a private citizen. Please leave our premises.” She turned, squaring off with me.
If I’d still had my Order ID, I’d have made her swallow those words. I considered my options. I could go through the two guards, but the faux secretary would provide a problem. The way she kept measuring the distance between the two of us telegraphed some sort of martial arts training, and her stance, square and straight on, said law enforcement experience. She was trained to wear body armor. Most shooters would blade their body sideways, minimizing the target area. People in bulletproof vests tended to face the danger.
Law enforcement meant she knew the rules and understood exactly what I could and couldn’t get away with. If I made a scene and got in to see Anapa, she’d sound the alarms and the cops would be on me like wolves on a lame deer. I could see the headline now: “Shapeshifter terrorizes local businessman.”
A part of me, the bouda part, wanted to do it.
I had to back off. She knew it and I knew it. “I’ll be back,” I told her.
“Bring a cop with a warrant,” she said.
I reached the door.
“Ms. Nash!” she called.
I turned. The “secretary” smiled. “This lobby isn’t big enough for the two of us, Ms. Nash.”
I shot her with my index finger. “I’ll remember you said that.”
Outside, the cloud cover had broken. I squinted at the sunlight and turned to examine the building. Anapa didn’t want to be questioned, but that didn’t make him guilty. It might just make him an ass. Except that I’d questioned hundreds of suspects over the years and this was far from a typical reaction. Usually when you walked up to a place of business and told the employees that you were investigating a murder, natural curiosity took over and everyone gathered around to find out more. People are voyeurs and most of us are fascinated by morbid things. You tell someone, “I’m investigating a murder,” the next question is usually, “Who died?” Anapa’s receptionist had asked no questions. Neither had Anapa’s knight in beige business armor.
The beige business suit woman must’ve taken the time to research my background to punch me with that “you’re no longer a member of law enforcement” bit. True, the Order had retired me, but before that my career was distinguished and nothing in my resume indicated that I gave up easily. She didn’t strike me as the type who missed details. It would have been so simple for Anapa to chat with me for ten minutes and clear his name. He would be off my suspect list and I would go away and stop bothering him. But he used his security people to chase me off instead. All sorts of alarming flags popped right up. Why all the secrecy?
When I was training, my instructor, a grizzled and scarred ex-detective named Shawna, taught me to eliminate suspects rather than look for them. Look at your suspect pool, pick a most likely one, and try to prove that he didn’t do it.
Right now that process of elimination had excluded only Bell. Anapa still remained on my possible perp roster, and now he had managed to bump himself right to the top of my suspect list.
I surveyed the building. Barred windows, surveillance cameras—which would work only during tech—and, if the rest of the security was anything to go by, probably really good wards on the windows. As a shapeshifter, I had a natural resistance to wards, but breaking one would really hurt and create enough magic resonance to make anyone in the building with an iota of magic sensitivity scream bloody murder.