Текст книги "Windfall"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

Соавторы: Rachel Caine
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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

“Sure.” Sarah abandoned the chopping and turned to the beating of eggs, which she did with amazing skill. “I can take care of myself.”

I knew she believed that. I’d just never seen any real evidence of it.

But she did make one hell of an omelet.

The first stop on my list of things to do was to have that heart-to-heart conversation with Detective Rodriguez, whose van was still conveniently located downstairs. Avoiding him wasn’t going to get it done. I’d rather finish the conversation, amen, and at least have one fewer potential gun aimed at my head.

It wasn’t quite as hot as it had been, although it was way too muggy—the clouds overhead, which had started out thin and cirrus, sliding like white veils over the sky, were thickening to cotton clumps. Cumulonimbus. I couldn’t feel the tingle of the energy building, but I could read the sky about as well as anyone, and there was definitely rain on the way. The wind had shifted.

I knocked on the van’s window, waited, and finally got a sliding door opened in the back for answer.

I don’t know what I expected from the Good Ship Surveillance, but it was clean.

Really, really clean. There was a neat little bed, made up so crisply it probably would have passed a drill sergeant’s inspection. No food wrappers or loose papers or detritus of a normal life. Near the back was a closed metal locker that probably held necessities like toothpaste and changes of clothes and spare ammunition.

He had video running. Video of all of the entrances to my building, plus a pretty good view through the patio window into the apartment. Some kind of wireless cameras. Good God.

“Good morning,” Rodriguez said, and nodded me to a chair. It was bolted down to the floor, but it swiveled. Kinda comfy, too. I settled in as he slid the door closed behind me. “Coffee?”

“I’m already soaking in it,” I said, and held out a cup I’d brought with me.

“Here. Fresh orange juice. My sister got enthusiastic and pulped half the state’s cash crop for breakfast.”

“I know,” he said, and gestured toward the monitor that showed the view through the patio door. Sarah was at the sink, washing dishes. Eamon was rinsing and drying. They were so much in each others’ spaces it was like watching something a whole lot more intimate, with a whole lot fewer clothes.

“Remind me to pull the shades later,” I said. He leaned over and took the OJ, but he didn’t drink, just set it aside. “What? You think it’s poisoned?”

“I’m careful,” he said. “No offense.”

“Fine. Your loss. Are you taping all of this? The video?”

“Yes.”

“Is there anything embarrassing I can use on my sister?”

I got a very faint smile that didn’t reach those impartial eyes. “Privileged.”

Banter was over. Silence fell, hot and oppressive, and he studied me with wary eyes. Waiting.

I caved. “Look, Detective, what can I do? What is it going to take to make you, you know…”

“Go away?” he supplied, and eased down into a chair across from me. Not as comfy as mine, I noted. “Answers. I need you to tell me everything, start to finish. Nothing left out.”

“That’s why I’m here. I’ll give you the whole story, but honestly, it won’t do you any good. And there’s not a shred of proof, one way or the other, so you’d better give up on having any peace of mind. All you’ll have is my word, and I have the impression that isn’t going to carry a lot of weight with you.”

He sat back, watching me, and finally picked up the orange juice and sniffed it, then took a sip. “Actually, I revised my opinion a little,” he said. “Last night. On the beach.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer. He swiveled his chair instead and looked at the screen, where my sister and her new boyfriend were scrubbing dishes and laughing.

“What’s his story?” he asked. “Your new friend.”

“Sarah met him at the mall. Same day I met you, as a matter of fact. Though you and I haven’t hit it off quite so well.”

He sent me one of those looks. “You live an interesting life.”

“You have no idea. What made you change your mind on the beach?”

He drank more of the OJ. “Two things. One of them has nothing to do with the beach itself: You were pissed off, not scared, when you confronted me the first time. Guilty people get scared, or they get smooth. You’re different.”

Well, that was a nice compliment. “And the other thing?”

“Guilty people don’t save lives in the dark. Murderers can save lives, if it suits them. They can run into burning buildings and grab babies out of cribs at risk of their own skins. They can even feel sorry about it if it doesn’t work out. But if there’s a choice, and if there’s no percentage and no witnesses, they won’t put themselves out for it. If a guy’s bleeding to death in an alley and all they have to do is make a 911 call, they won’t unless there’s a reason—unless somebody sees them and expects them to do it, or there’s some profit in it. Get my point? It’s all about the way it looks, not the life they’re saving; they really don’t give a shit about that.” He shrugged and tilted the glass to drain the orange juice to a thin film of gold. “You do. All you had to do was walk away and let that hole collapse on those poor bastards, and nobody would have known.”

“Nobody but me.”

“Yes. That’s my point.”

Something he said rang a bell. “You said, a murderer can run into a burning building and grab a baby… you were thinking of Quinn, weren’t you?”

He was silent for a moment, reluctant to say it out loud. “There was something about the way he did it. Standing there in the street, calculating the angles. There was a crowd, there was a mother begging him for help, but it was like some little computer inside of him was adding up benefits. Look, I wasn’t lying to you. Quinn was a good guy. I liked him. But being a good guy doesn’t mean you’re not a bad man.”

“Detective, if you’re not careful, you might start sounding deep.”

He gave me a faint, strange smile. “No chance of that. I’m a good cop. If I can’t see it, feel it, taste it, explain it to the jury, I don’t believe it. Quinn, he was intuitive. Mind like a jumping bean. It was all like a game to him. A contest; see who’s the smartest guy in the room.” His hands were clasped now, his thumbs rubbing slow circles on each other. He bent his head and watched them at work. “Can I believe he was a wrong guy? Yeah. I can believe it. I didn’t want to, but I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve been watching you. You don’t change when nobody’s looking. You say what you mean, and you say it to anybody who’ll listen.”

“Are you saying I’m not subtle?”

“You’re about as subtle as a brick. But you can take that as a compliment. Hero-types generally aren’t that subtle.”

Hero-types?“Anything else?”

“Yeah,” he said. “The greasy-looking kid who was in your apartment last night ripped off some cash from the flour jar in your kitchen. And the guy you were talking to before you left for work made him put it back.”

Kevin and Lewis, each acting according to their natures. It made me smile.

“Also,” Rodriguez finished, “you looked totally hot on TV, and your sister looks pretty good naked. Now. Tell me about what really happened with Quinn.”

I realized, about two sentences into it, that I couldn’t nottell him about the Wardens, and especially the Djinn. He had to understand what we were dealing with, and the stakes we played for. He had to understand that Quinn was doing something far beyond the capacity of the justice system to punish.

It took a long time. When my voice ran hoarse, Rodriguez got me a cold bottled water, and when I started trembling from nerves, he switched me to cold beer.

The air conditioner kicked in with a dry rattle at some point, drying the sweat trickling down into the neckline of my white tank top.

It was a strangely quiet interrogation. He just listened, except for those small acts of kindness. Occasionally, he’d ask for a clarification if I wasn’t getting something across, but he never disputed, never doubted, never accused me of being a lunatic straight off the funny farm.

Which I would have, if I’d been in the less-comfy chair hearing someone spout the same explanation.

When I got to the part that talked about his partner’s death, I saw his eyes go cool and hooded, but his expression stayed neutral. Then it was over, and I was clutching an empty brown bottle in my hands, and all I heard was the steady whisper of the A/C fighting the Florida heat.

“You know how that sounds,” he said.

“Of course I know. Why do you think I didn’t tell you all this up front?”

He got up, as if he wanted to pace, but the van was too small and besides, I thought what he really wanted to do was put his fist through something yielding.

Like me. There was that kind of sharp angle to the way he moved.

And still, nothing in his expression. The anger was burning, but it was somewhere miles down and sealed off with a steel hatch.

“You say there’s nobody to back up this version.”

“Well, there is,” I said. “The guy that was here last night. The kid. And you saw some of it yourself last night on the beach. Hell, you could call my boss in New York if you wanted. He’d tell you it was true—well, maybe he wouldn’t, come to think of it; he’s got a hell of a lot of problems of his own. But the point is, none of these people would be credible to you. They don’t have real jobs and real identities you can check out with independent sources. They’re ciphers. Like me. So I think you’ve got to go with your gut on this one, Detective. Do you believe me or not?”

He stopped and put his hand on a leather strap hanging from the wall—the better to grab onto if the van had to move into gear, I realized. This was quite a mobile cop shop he had.

“Tell you what,” he said after a moment. “I’ll believe it if you show me something.”

“What?”

“Anything. Anything, you know, magic.”

“It’s not magic,” I said, exasperated. “It’s science. And—well, okay, the Djinn, maybe that’s magic, but really, it can all be explained if you go far enough with the physics, and—”

“You do stuff other people can’t do, and you make things happen with the power of your mind?”

“Well—um—”

“Magic,” he said, and shrugged. “So show me something.”

Truth was, I didn’t have enough power to show him much of anything. I stared at him blankly for a moment, and then said, “Okay.” I had enough energy left inside for a tiny little demonstration. Maybe.

I held out my palm and concentrated.

It should have been easy, doing this; it was a trick I’d been practicing since I’d first joined the Wardens. Nothing to it—anybody with more than a spark of talent could pull it off; the trick was controlling it and doing it with grace and elegance.

I closed my eyes, let out a slow breath, and built a tiny little rainstorm over my hand. Pulled moisture out of the surrounding air and carefully crowded it together, cooled the vibrations of the molecules just enough to make them sticky. When I opened my eyes, a faint, pale fog was forming above my palm. It was ragged and not very well established and, all in all, the crappiest demonstration I’d ever seen, but I held on and continued to draw the moisture together into a genuine little cloud.

A tiny blue spark zipped from one side to another inside of it, illuminating it like a tiny bulb, and Rodriguez drew closer, staring.

I made it rain, a tiny patter of full-size drops on my hand—they had to be full-sized, because it had to do with gravity, not scale. I only squeezed out two or three, because of the size of the source material, but enough to get the point across. The friction of molecules sparked another baby lightning bolt; this one zapped me like a static charge. I winced.

Rodriguez dragged a hand through the cloud, and stared at his damp fingers in fascination.

“Real enough for you?” I asked him, and let it go. It broke apart into fog, which rapidly evaporated into nothing in the dry, air-conditioned environment of the van. I wiped my wet palm on my leg.

He didn’t answer for a long moment, and then he reached over and picked up the empty orange juice glass. Handed it back to me.

“We’re done,” he said. “Watch your step when you get out.”

That was it. He slid the door open. The glare of sunlight startled me, as did the humidity rolling in the door. I looked at Rodriguez, who stared back, and finally stepped out and onto the hot pavement.

“That’s all?” I asked him.

“Yeah,” he replied. “That’s all.” He started to slide the door shut, then hesitated. “Two pieces of advice; take them or leave them. First, get rid of the car. It’s a sweet ride, and it’s also hot and it attracts too much attention. Somebody’s going to figure it out.”

I nodded. Poor Mona. Well, I was really more of a Mustang girl, anyway…

“Second,” he said, “if what you told me about Quinn is true, he was in business with somebody, and he had a shipment to deliver. You might want to think about the possibility that somebody might be looking to collect, and why they wanted it so bad in the first place.”

I felt the skin tighten on the back of my neck. “You mean, collect from me?”

“You’re the visible link, Joanne. I found you. Somebody else could do the same thing. Watch your ass.”

I nodded slowly. “So this is good-bye?”

“You see me again, it’s because I found out you were lying to me, and believe me, that wouldbe good-bye.”

He slid the van door shut. I stepped back. He slid into the driver’s side seat in the front, and the van started up with a shiver and a roar. He rolled down the window, gave me a little salute, and backed out of the parking spot.

I watched him drive away. Except for a small patch of oil on the asphalt where he’d been parked, my cop stalker was gone as if he’d never been there.

One problem down. About a million to go.

Overhead, the clouds piled thicker, darker, and more imminently threatening.

I wished I knew what to do next. If Lewis hadn’t bugged out, at least I could have mined him for information—I knew he had a lot more than he was saying—but of course holding on to Lewis was like trying to hold on to a wave in motion.

And without access to the aetheric, trying to find anyonewas trouble. The Djinn were—at least for now—leaving me alone, probably too preoccupied with their own battles and problems. Jonathan, despite his threats, hadn’t come knocking for his pound of flesh. Ashan was proving the once-bitten, twice-shy cliché. I didn’t know whether that was a good sign, or bad, but at least it gave me a little more time to do whatever it was I proposed to do.

Which was… what?

I was in the middle of dithering about it when my cell phone rang, and it was Paul Giancarlo, calling from the Warden offices at the U.N.Building in New York.

“Good morning,” I said. “Before you forget to ask, thanks, I’m fine.”

“I wasn’t going to,” he grunted. “Lewis was with you last night?”

He had good sources, but then, he was the Head Hon-cho. At least for now. “Yeah. He needed someplace to stay and recover. Look, you’ve got rogue Wardens running in packs out here. Lewis has a bull’s-eye painted on his back. You need to do something, fast.”

“Would if I could. I’ve got a problem. I need your help.”

“Does the word noring any bells with you? Because I’ve said it before.”

“Joanne, I’m not fucking around here. When I say problemto someone like you, what do you think it means?”

“Disaster,” I said briskly. “From what I’ve seen, there’s plenty of that going around, and I’m sorry about it, but I can’t help.”

“Yes, you can.”

“Seriously, I can’t.”

His voice went very quiet. Gravelly. “Did you hear me ask you a question? Short declarative statements, sweetheart. Not negotiable. This is serious business, and you’re going to get in line or I promise you, your powers get yanked. Clear?”

Fuck. Frankly, Paul sending Marion’s team after me to rip out my powers was far down my waiting list of panic attacks, but it wasn’t worth risking, either.

“Clear,” I said. “What do you need?”

“Get over to John Foster’s office. Nobody’s answering over there. I got nobody on the ground I can trust right now. Just make sure everything’s okay.”

That gave me a quiet moment of worry. “Paul? Is it that bad?”

His sigh rattled the speaker of my cell phone. “However bad you think it’s gotten, it’s worse than that. And I don’t think it’s anywhere near hitting bottom yet. Get over there, but watch your back. I’d send you cover if I could.”

“I know. Are you all right there?”

“So far. Nobody wants to uncork a Djinn around here, though. Six Wardens reported dead in the Northeast, and word is their own Djinn stood by and let it happen.”

I remembered Prada on the bridge, her defiant anger. “And once they’re free of their masters, they go after others to free them,” I said. “Packs of them.”

“Yeah. It’s a mess. Swear to God, Jo, I don’t know if we’re going to survive it. We’re warded halfway to hell around here, so I think this building’s secure, and I gave my Djinn a preemptive that her job was to protect my life from all comers until I said otherwise. I passed that along to everybody in the system; don’t know if it’ll do any good. You know how expert they are in getting around orders when they want to.”

“Yeah,” I agreed softly. “I know. Listen—be careful. I’ll call you when I know something.”

“Thanks. I can’t afford to leave the Florida stations unmanned.”

I knew. Key areas had seasonal posts of enormous responsibility. California was important all year long. Tornado-prone states like Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas got extra staffing for the spring and summer.

Florida, in hurricane season, was a key weather post, and if John was missing …

We were in big trouble.

I signed off and headed for my car.

The Warden Regional Office was located not far from the National Weather Service offices in Coral Gables, conveniently enough; we’d sometimes used them for conferences and research. But the Warden offices were unassuming, located in a seven-story building with standard-issue brown marble and sleek glass. There was no sign on the building itself, just a street number etched in brass. Security on the entrance. I didn’t have a card key, so I sat in the car and waited until someone else pulled into the parking lot and wheeled a laptop toward the front door. I didn’t recognize her—she probably didn’t work in the Warden offices, of course, because they only had a couple of small offices out of seven floors, and the others were all occupied.

I moved in behind the woman, smiled when she smiled, and she carded me into the building and took off for the stairs. I, feeling lazy, went for the elevator.

The lobby was quiet and dimly lit, going for soothing and achieving a state of restfulness usually reserved for dropping into a nap. The elevators were slow—it was a general rule of the universe that the shorter the building, the slower the elevators—and I killed time by trying to imagine what the hell I was going to do if I got up there and found a major fight in progress. I wasn’t going to be of any help, that much was sure.

I was hoping like hell that it was a downed-phone-line problem. Weak, but sometimes optimism is the only drug that works.

But it’s sadly temporary in its effects.

The front door of the Warden offices looked like somebody had taken a sledgehammer to it—splintered in half, raw wood shining naked under the sleek brown finish. The lock was shattered, pieces of it scattered for ten feet down the carpeted hallway. The windows on either side were gaping, glassless holes, and I felt the crunch of broken pieces under my shoes as I walked carefully toward the destruction.

I was half afraid I was going to find everybody dead, given the state of the door, but I heard voices almost immediately. I recognized the slow, Carolina-honey voice of my ex-boss.

The tension in me let go with a rush of relief. John Foster was still alive, and I was off the hook.

I knocked on the shell of a door and leaned over to look through the opening.

John—still in a shirt and tie, which was his version of business casual—was standing, arms folded. With him was Ella, his right-hand assistant; she was a dumpy, motherly Warden with moderately weak weather skills but a stellar ability to keep John’s stubborn, independent group working together.

Speaking of which, none of the others were anywhere in sight.

Ella looked exasperated. While John dressed like he’d been interrupted on his way to a board meeting, Ella might have been called out of giving her tile a good grouting: blue jeans, a sloppy T-shirt, a flowered Hawaiian-style shirt over that. She had graying, coarse hair that looked windblown.

They both turned toward me when I knocked, and Ella’s mouth fell open. “Jo!” she yelled at ear-bleeding volume, dashed for the door, and knocked it back with a nudge of her Nike-clad foot. Before I could say “El!” she had me in a warm, soft hug, and then was dragging me over the threshold into the office.

Which was a wreck, too. Not as much as the door, but definitely not in the best of shape. Computers tossed around, papers lying everywhere, chairs overturned.

The filing cabinets had tipped over, and the big metal drawers were out, their contents spilling in waterfalls of folders to the floor. Everything looked thoroughly bashed and dented.

“Love what you’ve done with the place. Sort of Extreme Makeovermeets Robot Wars,” I said. John—middle-aged, fit, graying at the temples in fine patriarchal style—smiled at me, but his heart wasn’t in it. He looked strained and a little sick. “Okay, that was lame, I admit it. What happened?”

“We’re trying to figure that out,” John said, and extended his hand. “Sorry, Joanne. Good to see you, but as you can see, we’re having a little bit of a crisis.”

“Paul was trying to raise you on the phone and couldn’t get an answer. He sent me to check up.” I looked around, eyebrows raised. “Robbery?”

“I doubt it,” Ella said, and kicked a destroyed flat-screen monitor moodily. “They didn’t take the electronics, and there wasn’t any cash here. Maybe it was kids, smashing things up.”

“You’re not going to say kids today, are you? Because I never really thought of you as grandmotherly, despite the hair.”

That earned me a filthy look.

John sighed and put his hands in his trouser pockets, watching me. “We’re fine, thanks. Tell Paul I’m sorry. My cell battery ran down hours ago. How are you?”

He sounded guarded, which wasn’t unexpected. I realized, from the wary light in his eyes, that my arrival was looking more and more suspicious. I mean, he’d taken me for a ride and practically accused me of corruption, and here we were, standing in his wrecked offices, and I was saying I’d been sent by the boss.

I could see how it could be misinterpreted.

“I didn’t do this,” I said. “You know me better than that, John.”

John and Ella exchanged looks. “Yeah,” Ella agreed. “We do.” John didn’t say anything. He kept his arms folded.

I took a deep breath and plunged in over my head. “Any trouble with the Djinn on your end?”

“What?” John frowned. “No. Of course not.” He had a Djinn, of course. Ella, so far as I knew, didn’t. Only four Wardens in Florida were equipped with magical assistants and, by last count, only about two hundred in all of North and South America. It was an alarmingly low number, until you considered two hundred Djinn who might decide to kill off Wardens, in which case it was alarmingly high. “What are you talking about? What kind of trouble?”

“Some of the Djinn are breaking free of their masters. You haven’t heard?”

Another look between the two of them. Silent communication, and me without my decoder ring. “No,” John finally said. “Not about that.”

“But you heard about some of the Wardens going rogue.”

He looked grimmer. “Yes. And that’s a subject I don’t think we should be discussing with you.”

A not-so-subtle reminder that I wasn’t in the Warden business anymore, and therefore not privy to the fun, interesting politics. I changed the subject with a wave around the trashed office. “Think this is related?”

“I doubt it.”

“Yeah? You get this kind of thing often around here?”

“Never,” Ella put in. “I guess it couldbe kids, though the timing’s odd. But Djinn wouldn’t have a reason to do this, and if a Warden did it, well, there must have been a reason.”

“Were they out to steal records? Destroy them?” I asked.

Oh, boy. Another significant glance.

“Again,” John said, “I think we’re on a subject that’s off limits. Look, you did what Paul asked, you checked. We’re fine. I think you should go now.”

It hurt. I’d worked for John for a long time, and we’d been friends. Not bosom-buddy friends, but strong acquaintances, good to get together for the occasional drink, chat about family and friends, exchange Christmas presents.

I’d trusted him with my life. I couldn’t believe that had changed overnight.

But maybe I should have known, considering how many things were changing overnight these days.

“Jo, don’t take it personally. You did quit, you know,” Ella said. “And I’m still finding that hard to believe, sunshine. You’re the most dedicated Warden I’ve ever met.”

“I wasthe most dedicated Warden you ever met,” I said. “Trust me, I had reasons.”

“Well, if you quit over some dumb disagreement, it’s a bad time for it,” she said. “Bad Bob is gone and we’ve down three Wardens around here. From what I’ve heard, half the senior members of the organization are dead or disabled, and the other half can’t decide what to do about it. We’re barely holding together.”

I hadn’t come to listen to the we-need-you-back speech, but something Ella had said stopped me. “Three team members?” I asked. “Me, Bad Bob… who else?”

“Ella,” John warned. She ignored him and kept talking.

“We lost another Weather Warden two nights ago,” Ella said. “Carol Shearer. Car accident.”

Another Djinn casualty, probably. They used natural forces to do the dirty work, not their own hands. They hit hard and fast, before a Warden could react to give their Djinn commands, and if the Djinn wasn’t commanded to be proactive, or wasn’t in the mood, then Ashan was the winner. Maybe he was systematically working his way through the ranks, testing.

Maybe John had already been targeted for death, but his Djinn had protected him without orders. The two of them had always seemed to enjoy a good professional relationship.

“I’m sorry to hear about Carol,” I said. “But I can’t come back right now even if you’d have me. And frankly, I wouldn’t be any good to you if I did. I’ve got some, ah, issues.”

John gave me the unfocused, faraway look of someone using Oversight. Whatever he saw, he went a shade graver and nodded. No comments. He’d seen the damage that had been done to me.

“Thanks for the offer, anyway,” he said. Not that I’d really made one.

“Let me help you clean up. Least I can do, after all the chaos I’ve caused over the years.”

John hesitated, but hell, he was shorthanded. I called Paul and reassured him all was well. While I was doing that, John called up his Djinn—who was a sweet-faced young man with glittering white-diamond eyes—and got the worst of the big damage repaired with a few murmured commands. I kept an eagle eye on that, believe me… but I didn’t see any indication of an impending rebellion. He and his Djinn got on well. Always had. I sensed a certain restrained fondness between them—not love, and not even friendship, but a good partnership. In many ways, John Foster was the poster child for what a Warden ought to be.

It depressed me. It reminded me of just how much I wasn’t, even when I was at my best. I was a messy, sloppy, emotional maverick. I couldn’t color inside the lines even when I wanted to.

I helped Ella with the grunt work of restoring files to the cabinets, and as I did, I realized that most of the folders had to do with personnel. Detailed records of everything that we’d done, throughout our tenure with the Wardens. Ah, so thiswas where all those reports went to die… nice to know that all those hours spent typing on a keyboard actually had some kind of effect. I’d half suspected all my hard work just disappeared into the aetheric, where it got eaten by hungry demons. Or malicious Free Djinn.

About the fifteenth folder I picked up—and it was huge, papers spilling everywhere—had my name on it. I paused, startled, and flipped it open. The clips that held reports in the file were missing, and everything was crammed in at odd angles, as if it had been gone through fast.

The memo on top was signed by Paul Giancarlo, National Warden Pro Tem. It was an order to keep me under close surveillance for any suspicious activities related to fraud, blackmail, and illegal trading in weather control.

I felt a wave of cold rush over me, and in its backwash came another one of heat, burning down from the top of my head and taking up residence somewhere in my gullet. In the memo, Paul practically accused me of collusion with two other Wardens—one of them Bad Bob—in carrying out a scheme to steer tropical storms, hurricanes, and tornadoes toward certain areas of the coastline, where an outfit named Paradise Kingdom seemed to be making a business of building expensive resorts and condominiums, only to have them destroyed before opening by bad weather.

For the insurance money.

The score so far: storms four, ParadiseKingdom zero. They’d never actually opened a single property.

Paradise Kingdom. I remembered that name, and it came back with a jolt… the drive out along the coast. A dead dad and kids. Tornadoes twisting the under-construction hotel to wreckage.

I flipped pages. The photos showed shoddy construction, with detailed notes.

Substandard parts. Bad wiring. Reused materials. If the buildings had ever actually opened, they’d have been deathtraps—but the insurance records showed payouts as if the construction had been to the finest possible standards.

I’d never even heardof ParadiseKingdom, but I was starting to shake with fury and a little bit of fear.

The folder was snatched out of my hands and slapped shut. John frowned at me, handed it to Ella, who mutely began straightening up the papers inside it.

“Let me guess,” I said. “I wasn’t supposed to see that.” Except Ella must have thought differently; she’d pointedly ignored the folder lying all by itself, and left it to me to pick up.