White Hot

  “Drop my client!” I barked.

  Rogan pressed harder. Cornelius’ face turned red. I’d seen what Rogan could do with his bare hands to a person. If I didn’t pry Cornelius away from him, Rogan would crush his windpipe.

  “Rogan! He’s a . . . he’s a civilian!”

  Rogan stepped back as if I’d thrown a switch. Cornelius dropped to the floor, gulping air. Apparently I’d said the magic word.

  “Try that again and I’ll shock you into oblivion,” I ground out.

  The elevator doors opened. Twelfth floor. Rogan pushed the button, forcing the doors to close, and peered at Cornelius. “Is this my replacement?”

  What? “I didn’t replace you!”

  “Of course not. I’m irreplaceable.”

  Cornelius finally managed to squeeze out a word. “Rogan? The Butcher of Merida? Mad Rogan?”

  “Yes,” Rogan and I said in unison.

  “Is this the R on the dress?” Cornelius’ eyes were wide.

  Think of clouds, think of bunnies, don’t think about the wedding-gown pictures. Rogan claimed he wasn’t telepathic, but he could project images, which meant he could probably pick up impressions if I concentrated on things too much.

  “Dress? What dress?” Rogan asked, honing in on the word like a shark sensing blood in the water.

  “Never mind,” I told him. “Cornelius, not another word or I walk.”

  Rogan’s eyes narrowed. He’d recognized the name. He was involved in this thing with Forsberg up to his elbows. Just my luck.

  Number two above us blinked. Almost there.

  Rogan tossed the coins in the air and the quarters hung around him motionless. His magic brushed past me, a raging, terrible beast. Shivers ran down my spine. Suddenly the past two months of normal life tore apart, like fragile paper, and I was right back next to Rogan, about to charge into a fight. And it felt right. It felt like I’d been sleepwalking and had suddenly woken up.

  I had to get away from him as soon as I could. He was bad for me on every level.

  “Alive!” I told him. “I need Forsberg alive.”

  The doors chimed and opened. We burst into the lobby to a wall of shotguns pointed in our direction. Behind the security, Forsberg lay on the floor on his back. A puddle of red slowly spread from his head. His eyes were gone. In their place two blood-filled holes gaped at the ceiling.

  Rogan swore.

  Normally it would’ve taken me days to extricate myself from the clutches of the Assembly’s security. With Rogan emanating menace and Cornelius explaining things in a calm, patient tone one normally used with small children, we walked out of the building in twenty minutes. They stuck to the truth: Forsberg attacked Rogan without provocation. Cornelius and I just happened to be in the way, and there were a dozen witnesses who would confirm it. When one of the security people asked if Rogan had threatened Forsberg, the Scourge of Mexico looked at him for a moment and condescended to explain that he hadn’t threatened anyone. He had been moving though the hallway with a purpose because he had someplace to be and if they had a problem identifying the difference between that and him actually threatening someone, he would be happy to demonstrate. They decided not to question him further after that.

  Outside, Rogan raised his head and squinted at the sun that broke through the overcast sky. The robes were really too much. He needed some crimson banners and a glowing staff and he’d be all set.

  His face was tight. He was pissed off. I was pissed off too. We’d lost Forsberg and we had no idea how he’d died, let alone any clues as to who might have helped him on his way. House Forsberg would circle the wagons and hunker down now. Everything about this investigation had just become a lot harder.

  “Since when did you stop carrying your gun?” Rogan asked.

  “Mr. Rogan . . .”

  “Oh no.” Rogan glanced at Cornelius. “We’re back to formal ground. I’m clearly out of favor.”

  “Mr. Rogan . . .”

  “Why are you mad at me?”

  I made a heroic effort to keep my voice calm and measured. “You panicked the witness I was interrogating, causing him to throw me around like a rag doll, hop his way through the floors, and get himself killed, which really complicates my life and robs my client of an opportunity to discover why his wife was murdered, and then you almost strangled said client in an elevator.”

  “It does sound bad when you put it that way, Ms. Baylor.”

  His words were meant to sound light, but his eyes remained dark and grim. Something bad had happened to Rogan. I almost reached out, then caught myself. No.

  No.

  The man was a disease and I couldn’t get rid of the infection as it was. I so didn’t need another outbreak of Rogan fever.

  Two Range Rovers pulled up, one gunmetal grey, the other white, both with familiar thick and tinted windows. Rogan owned a fleet of VR9 armored cars. They were state-of-the-art custom vehicles, built to be armored from the ground up while looking perfectly normal and blending into traffic, and they handled like a dream. I’d ridden in one just before Adam Pierce blew it up.

  An athletic man in his twenties, with short blond hair and military bearing, jumped out of the grey Range Rover and brought the keys to Rogan. “Sir. Ms. Baylor.”

  “Hello, Troy.” I was there when Troy had his job interview and was hired. He was ex-military and Rogan had saved him from a foreclosure. Today Troy wore a hip holster, full and in plain view.

  “How is being an evil henchman treating you?”

  “Can’t complain, ma’am. It’s a good gig if you can get it.”

  Of course. Complaining wouldn’t be evil-henchman-like. Rogan’s people worshiped the ground he walked on. If Troy was any indication, he found them at the lowest point of their lives and offered them a chance to be somebody. To matter, to have a well-paying job they would be really good at, and to provide for their families. A pack of hounds raised from puppies couldn’t be more devoted. I just wasn’t sure he ever saw them as anything more than assets at his disposal.

  Rogan turned to me. “Come with me to my house. I have some information you’ll want.”

  Enter my lair, said the dragon. I have shiny treasure for you to play with, I’ll keep you warm and safe, and if it suits my purpose, I’ll chain you to the floor and kill your client by throwing quarters at him with my magic. Been there, done that.

  “I don’t think so. But I’ll be happy to discuss things with you in daylight in a very public place. Would you like my card?”

  When I was in college, one of my professors liked creative descriptions, and whenever he had to indicate that some historical figure was in a moment of monumental rage, he’d say he had thunder on his brow and lightning in his eye. I never understood what that phrase meant until Rogan’s face demonstrated it for me.

  Cornelius took a careful step back. Troy backed up too. Yes, I did just tell Mad Rogan no, and look, the planet was still turning.

  “Your card?” Rogan said, his voice very calm and quiet.

  “It’s a little piece of paper that has my phone number, email address, and other contact information on it.” I waited to see if his head would explode. I shouldn’t have taunted him, but I was really pissed off. We’d had Forsberg until he butted in.

  Rogan pivoted to Cornelius. “My condolences on your loss. It would be my honor to have you as my guest tonight. Permit me a chance to make up for our earlier misunderstanding.”

  How nicely put. “You mean the part where you almost choked the life out of him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please don’t get into his car,” I told Cornelius. “He’s dangerous and unpredictable.”

  “Thank you,” Rogan said.

  “Your life means absolutely nothing to him,” I continued. “When he doesn’t like somebody, he hits them with a bus.”

  “I have no desire to start a feud with House Harrison,” Rogan said.

  Truth.

  “I guarantee your safety.”

 
Also truth.

  “And I have a recording of your wife’s final moments,” Rogan said.

  Bastard.

  Cornelius glanced at me.

  “He isn’t lying,” I told him. “But if you get into that car, I don’t know if he’ll let you leave. Please don’t do this.”

  Cornelius squared his shoulders. “I’d be delighted to accept your invitation.”

  Damn it. Why don’t people ever listen to me?

  Rogan opened the back passenger door of the Range Rover. Cornelius got in. Rogan leaned over the open door to look at Cornelius.

  “Would you mind if your employee joined us?”

  “Of course not,” Cornelius said.

  Rogan turned to me. “See? Your employer doesn’t mind. If I’m such a villain, why don’t you tag along to ensure his safety?”

  He was insufferable. That was the long and short of it. And getting into the same car with him was out of the question. The more distance between us, the better. Except now he had my client in his claws.

  “I’ll follow you in my car. Cornelius, he also projects, so try not to think about anything you don’t want him to pick up.”

  Rogan stepped close to me. Too close. I wished my body would stop betraying me every time he shortened the distance.

  His voice was intimate. “I’m not one to judge, but it seems to me that you’re not taking me seriously as a threat. I could kill him en route.”

  I crossed my arms on my chest. “Really? You’re actually going to stoop to direct threats now?”

  “You think the worst of me, and you know how I hate to disappoint. Troy will be happy to drive your vehicle.”

  Okay, something was definitely off with him. The Rogan I remembered was direct, but he could also be subtle. This wasn’t even remotely subtle. He had another car following him and usually he preferred to travel alone. He was twisting my arm trying to get me into his armored vehicle. The cars had parked so their bulk blocked us from anyone entering the parking lot. Troy wore his sidearm in plain view. This wasn’t about abducting Cornelius or forcing me to do something I didn’t want to do. This was about safety. Both Cornelius and I would be much safer in a state-of-the-art armored vehicle than in my minivan.

  As much as I wanted to be away from Rogan, if he was concerned about safety, I’d be an idiot not to take it seriously.

  I handed the keys to Troy. “Mazda van over there. She handles light.”

  Troy nodded and jogged around the cars.

  I walked up to Rogan’s Range Rover, sat in the front passenger seat, and buckled my seat belt. I’d just have to endure and not think of him sitting next to me.

  You’d think two months of not seeing him would’ve made a difference, and it had. It made whatever was pulling me to him worse. Yeah, do you remember how you woke and ran downstairs, because you thought you saw him, and when you opened the door, nobody was there?

  He shut my door and got into the driver’s seat, scanning the parking lot in front of us with a thousand-yard stare. “There is a Sig in the glove compartment.”

  I opened the glove compartment, took out the Sig, checked it, and put it on my lap.

  “What happened?” I asked quietly.

  “I lost some people,” he said. There was an awful finality in his voice.

  I hadn’t thought he cared. I’d thought he viewed his people as tools and took care of them because tools had to be kept in good repair, but this sounded like genuine grief—that complicated cocktail of guilt, regret, and overwhelming sadness you felt when someone close to you died. It broke you and made you feel helpless. Helpless wasn’t even in Rogan’s vocabulary. Maybe I’d been wrong then or maybe I was wrong now. Time would tell one way or the other.

  I closed my mouth and watched Houston slide by outside the window, searching the warm winter day for something I might have to shoot.

  Chapter 3

  Most of the Houston Houses had mansions inside the Loop, a long road that encircled the downtown and the pricey neighborhoods such as River Oaks. Having an address inside the Loop was as much of a status symbol as driving luxury cars and owning personal yachts.

  However, Rogan was a fourth-generation Prime. He had no interest in impressing anyone. We climbed northwest instead, leaving the city, and then the main road, behind. Old Texas oaks spread their branches over green grass, stoically enduring the rain of Houston’s December.

  My phone rang. Bern.

  “Yes?”

  “Hey, the Internet is buzzing with some sort of disturbance at the Assembly.”

  Well, that didn’t take long.

  “Do you know what’s going on?”

  “Forsberg is dead. I didn’t kill him.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m showing you moving northwest.”

  He’d tracked my phone. “That’s right.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m going to Mad Rogan’s house.”

  Silence.

  “Don’t tell Mom,” I said.

  Rogan grinned next to me, a quick parting of lips.

  “I won’t,” Bern promised.

  I hung up.

  “Were you trying to murder Forsberg?” I asked.

  “If I was trying, he wouldn’t have left the floor.”

  “You looked like you were about to kill him.”

  “I wanted answers and he was going to give them to me. If he didn’t, I probably would’ve.”

  I didn’t even need my magic to tell me he meant it. “Will you be able to get your hands on his autopsy report?”

  Rogan spared me a glance. Yes, of course. What was I thinking doubting the great Mad Rogan?

  “How was he able to hop while dead?” I asked.

  “Hopping is a two-step process,” Rogan said.

  “It’s similar to breathing,” Cornelius explained from the back seat. “Forsberg pulled the magic in, inhaling, then let it out, exhaling, and it carried him forward. If someone killed him just as he exhaled, the jump would still occur.”

  I really needed access to the House network and its explanations of higher magic talents. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a member, nor would I ever get to be one.

  We came to a wrought-iron gate that swung open at our approach and Rogan drove up the long curving driveway, past the picturesque plants. The path turned and a massive Spanish Colonial house sitting atop a low hill came into view. Two stories tall, with thick stucco walls and red tile roof, it looked at the world with arched windows. A large round tower graced the right side, and a covered balcony offered the view from the second story on the left. Red-and-purple flowers dripped from flower baskets, stretching over the balcony’s dark wood rail. In the middle, a heavy rounded door, old wood with wrought ironwork, offered access to the inside of the home. It was impossibly romantic. If they ever made another Zorro movie, I knew just the place where they could film it. You half expected a man in a black mask and a cape to sword-fight his way across the balcony, leap onto a jet-black Andalusian horse, and gallop past us down the driveway.

  I realized that Rogan leaned next to me.

  “Do you like it?” he asked quietly.

  People lied to me every day, several times a day, with the best and the worst intentions. I made it a point to lie as little as possible. “Yes.”

  A self-satisfied smile lit up his face. Oh, for crying out loud, it wasn’t as if he had built it with his bare hands . . . Why was it even important if I liked it?

  We followed him through the door into the formal entrance, with a cool limestone floor and massive columns. On the right, a curved staircase with a wrought-iron railing led to an upstairs hallway. On the left, a vast living room waited under the high ceiling crossed with rough wooden beams and lit by three rustic chandeliers, rings of metal studded with candle-shaped bulbs, that could’ve come from a medieval castle. Wide window-filled arches supported by stone columns interrupted the wall to the left, letting the light of the late morning stream into the s
pace. Red-and-white Oriental rugs lay across the floor. The furniture was old and heavy, the cushions of the couches oversized and plush. A massive fireplace took up the far wall. It could’ve easily turned into a stuffy dark space, but instead it was light and airy, welcoming and clean. Plants stood here and there in large pots, adding bright spots of green to the stone walls.

  Mad Rogan owned my dream house. Life just wasn’t fair. That was okay. I would work really hard and one day I would buy my own house—maybe not quite as big, or as tastefully furnished, but it would be mine.

  Rogan went up the staircase and we followed him across an indoor balcony that spanned the living room to a hallway. Rogan turned right, and we walked up another short staircase to a metal door. He held it open for me.

  I walked into a square room. The wall on my left and the one directly in front of me were thick tinted glass that showed a wide covered balcony and more walls—these windows opened into the inner courtyard. The other two walls were taken up by screens and computers, manned by two people with headsets.

  “Leave us,” Rogan said.

  They got up and left without a word. Rogan invited us to a U-shaped blue couch arranged around a coffee table. We sat.

  “Bug!” Rogan called.

  “Coming, Major,” a voice responded from some speaker.

  Rogan looked at Cornelius. “Did you bond with your wife, Mr. Harrison?”

  Cornelius hesitated. “Yes.”

  What kind of a question was that?

  “Was it a true bond?’

  “Yes.”

  Rogan looked at me. “Is he telling the truth?”

  “You do realize that I work for him and not you?”

  “If he’s lying to me, and I show him this, I may have to kill him.”

  I looked at Cornelius. “Do I have your permission to tell him?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “He’s telling the truth.”