Chapter 20 #2
I’d expect a killer—an assassin, if the memories I’d been in were any indication, since he’d been hired to kill Yvonne Gates-Adams—to have something a bit more…
violent in the house. A sword mounted above the fake fireplace, rather than a TV, for instance.
Or maybe taxidermied animals everywhere. Or statues of death gods.
But there wasn’t really anything that struck me as at all out of the ordinary. But it still felt creepy. Maybe because I knew he was a killer. Maybe if I’d just walked into the house, then it wouldn’t have felt that way.
“Jesus fuck,” Hart grumbled, although loudly enough that everyone in the room could hear him. “Is there a single fucking personal thing in this place?”
Or maybe other people thought it was just as odd. Hart clearly did.
A youngish blond agent with slightly sunburned skin and wide eyes walked in from a doorway. “I’ve got a grocery list,” he said. “And there’s condiments in the fridge.”
Hart blew out a breath. “So the fucker lives here, then. Because this looks like a damn model house, not a house-house.”
“Until you go into the attic,” came Raj’s voice from the stairs.
“Creepy shit up there?” Hart asked.
“I don’t know that I’d use that particular term,” came the mild response. “Rayn, would you please come with me?”
I swallowed, nodded, and walked over to the stairs, then followed Raj up to the second floor, then up a set of pull-down open wood stairs.
Not that I’d ever spent much time in attics like this, but TV and movies had led me to believe that attics were supposed to be dusty and filled with boxes and dropcloths, maybe with sunlight filtering through a charming round window at the far end.
But this was something completely different, and I immediately wished I wasn’t up here.
There hadn’t been any knives or swords on display downstairs.
Because they were all up here.
One wall of the attic was a mini armory—I could see four guns, six knives, and a few spaces that clearly had held something, but which were currently empty.
Raj didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to—I knew he wanted me to touch the weapons. I also knew that he knew that I really didn’t want to.
But I was going to do it anyway.
Spending that much time in the mind of a killer was something I never, ever wanted to do again.
I’d also thrown up again.
Because the glee he felt every time he took a life was just disgusting.
I’d witnessed the deaths of a wealthy banker, a woman who had been pushing her child’s buggy, an already-dying old man, several different men of different races and ethnicities in dark alleys or night clubs or abandoned buildings.
I gave Raj as many names as I got out of the weapons. Seventeen victims.
And then Hart came up, muttering curses under his breath, and stopped in front of me. I looked up from my bucket.
“I need you to come poke something,” he said, then his eyes flicked down to the bucket. “You up for that?”
I nodded, preparing to stand by pressing my hands into my own thighs.
“Are you certain?” Raj’s deeper voice asked me. “This has clearly been… difficult.”
“I’m fine,” I answered sharply, pushing myself to my feet. I wasn’t going to be the reason this failed. I wasn’t going to disappoint them by refusing to touch something else.
I was going to have nightmares for a week. A month, maybe.
Pushing away the nausea and concentrating very hard on keeping my legs steady so that it wouldn’t be apparent to any of the other agents—but especially Raj—that I wasn’t capable of doing this.
My knees felt wobbly on the way down the attic stairs, and I held hard to the two-by-four that served as a rickety railing on one side.
Step. Step. Step. Step.
I followed Hart down the hall, then down the much more stable staircase with its sturdy railing, my fingers running along the wall on the other side for extra stability.
At the bottom, Hart led me down a hallway and into an office.
Like every other room that wasn’t the attic, it looked perfectly normal.
A moderately nice desk, a fabric office chair, a lamp, some abstract painting prints on the walls.
A round glass paperweight that could double as a magnifying glass.
Nothing particularly personal. No monogrammed letter openers, no figurines or office-style name plates or fancy pens.
Just a plain little office basket pen cup with generic clear plastic Bic pens.
Hart led me over to a massive safe. I looked at him, confused.
“I want to know if you can get the code,” he said.
“How?” I asked.
He shrugged. “When I open my locker at the FBI, I think the code out loud. I’m hoping this asshat does the same thing.”
I blinked. He was right—or, at least, I assumed he was, because I did it, too. If I had to enter a code, whether on a keypad or a locker dial, I thought my way through each number and spin.
So I nodded once, then put my hand on the dial.
This was far too precious to leave lying around. Too precious even to store upstairs, which wasn’t locked, even if he knew the second anyone pulled the attic ladder down.
I sucked in a breath, pulling myself out, and turned wide eyes to Hart. “He knows we’ve been in the attic,” I blurted, breathless. “He has a sensor or a camera or something up there.”
Hart’s brow rose. “He thought about that?” he asked.
I nodded, my heart pounding. “Whatever he put in this safe,” I explained, rushing. “Whatever it is, he wanted it here, not up there, even though he knew that he would know the second anyone pulled the ladder down.”
Hart pulled a radio off his hip. “Tony, the kid says there’s something up there that’s set to notify the asshat if the attic ladder gets pulled down.”
“Does he know what it is?” came Raj’s voice out of the radio.
I shook my head.
“No,” Hart replied. “I’m gonna ask him to find out, though.” His lavender eyes were fixed on me, and I knew what I had to do.
The cameras he’d hidden would notify him and send images to his phone from anywhere.
“Cameras,” I gasped out. “Hidden ones. They send pictures to his phone.”
“Fuck!” Hart swore, then repeated what I said into the radio.
“Shit!” came Raj’s crackly voice over the radio. “Henson—” Whatever he was going to tell Agent Henson got cut off when he let go of the radio button.
I took a deep breath, although I couldn’t stop my racing heart. I didn’t know what it meant that Jennings knew we were in his house, but it couldn’t be good.
Even before Hart turned back to me, I was reaching out my hand.
But the cops wouldn’t be able to crack this safe. He’d spent a lot of money on it—and if anyone tried to cut into it, carefully planted explosives would destroy what was inside. Everything inside. The money. The guns. This.
Turn the dial four times left, stop on seventeen.
Three times right, stop on six.
Four times left again, stop on fifty-two.
One time right, pull, one time left to seventeen again, then push.
I looked at Hart, then mimicked what I’d just gotten from his thoughts, my hands shaking and my heart hammering away like a trapped bird.
The safe clicked heavily, and a gentle tug let me pull the door open.
“Fuckin’ nice,” Hart breathed, stepping closer.
I moved to let him look inside.
“Jesus fuck!” he hissed. “This thing is fucking rigged.”
“If the door isn’t opened correctly or if someone tries to cut into it, they’d blow up the contents,” I told him.
“Fucking hell, Rayn,” Hart hissed. “You don’t just open a goddamn safe with fucking explosives in it!”
I flushed. “I did it correctly,” I said softly.
“And if you hadn’t, you’d be missing your hands—or worse!”
Part of me wondered if that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. If I had prosthetic hands I wouldn’t make accidental contact with nearly as many thoughts. “I didn’t do it wrong, though,” I replied softly.
“Whatever you’ve got, Hart, wrap it up,” Raj’s deep voice came from behind me, and I jumped a little, not having heard him approach. “We don’t want to be here when this shithead does whatever he’s planning to with that footage.”
“Did you find the cameras?” Hart asked
“Henson got three,” came the response, clipped and clearly annoyed. “Pretty sure that’s all of them. Dammit.”
“You didn’t know,” Hart told him. “No way you would have.”
Raj glared at him. “I should have checked,” he replied, and I realized that he was annoyed at himself. Was blaming himself for not having found something that nobody should have expected to be there.
“Raj—”
The big tiger shifter held up a hand, stopping whatever Hart had been about to say. “Finish up, and fast, and let’s get the fuck out of here.”
“Kid got the safe open,” Hart said, then, and Raj turned those gold-brown eyes on me.
I expected him to say something. I wanted him to tell me that I’d done a good job, but I expected at least an acknowledgment.
He said nothing, just looked at Hart, who pushed the door open wider.
“Explosives?” Raj hissed.
“We’ve had that chat already,” Hart replied dryly.
A muscle ticked in Raj’s jaw, and I saw his nostrils flare as he breathed in and out a couple times. “What do we have?” he finally asked.
“Hadn’t quite gotten that far yet,” Hart replied. “You want to do the honors?”
Raj grunted, then stepped in front of it, between me and whatever was in the safe. As though I didn’t already know most of it.
“Pair of revolvers,” he said, his voice matter of fact as he pulled on a fresh pair of gloves and pulled it out, handing it to Hart to put in an evidence bag. “Look antique, although clean and in good condition. Potentially still useful.”
Hart bagged them, then radioed for someone to bring him an evidence box before setting the guns on the corner of the desk.
“Cash, a lot of it,” Raj said next, then handed wrapped bundles of bills out of the safe to Hart, who ended up having to use three evidence bags. The agent who brought in the filing box after the second bag let out a low whistle, which both Hart and Raj ignored.
“Wooden box,” Raj said, and now he must have been describing whatever it was Jennings wanted kept safe.