by T R Kohler
“No, it is. At least, the part about Mr. Tam being out of the country. Whether he has a new assistant named Rocco, I can’t say for sure. The man goes through them like others change clothes.”
A look of guilt crossed over the man’s face, lines forming around his eyes in a slight wince. Recognizing it as a sign of someone that had just divulged more than they wanted, Ember took another half-step forward.
The man was frustrated. He was probably the manager of the place and was tired of dealing with an eccentric owner that did things like frequently leaving the country.
Which meant it was time to find some common ground.
“Don’t they all?” Ember asked. “The client I’m here on behalf of now has gone through three more in the last six months before I got here. That’s why I’m so desperate to find this thing right now.”
Lifting her leg again, she said, “Heck, I even ruined a perfectly great pair of Levi’s!”
What brand of jeans she was wearing, Ember didn’t have a clue. What she knew was that yucking it up, trying to make this man feel like they were kindred spirits, was 101-level interrogation technique.
Pump someone for information without ever letting them know it.
“Yeah,” the man said, looking sympathetically toward her leg, “and allow me to apologize on Mr. Tam’s behalf for that. I can tell you, he hates dogs, and if he finds out this Rocco character had one at his house, he will flip.
“Do you have any idea the amount of damage an animal could do inside his place?”
Bit by bit, Ember fed the information she was being handed into her mind. The original file she’d been given wasn’t enough to already have a working framework, though a loose tangle of information was starting to come together.
“So,” the man asked, drawing himself back around to the conversation at hand, “what was it you’re looking for exactly?”
Chapter Fifteen
“Helloooo!”
The saccharine sweet voice echoed through the showcase, loud enough to be heard by people a floor above or below. And maybe even a few in the next building over. Reverberating off the walls, it pulled the attention of Ember and the manager both toward the front door, each wincing slightly at the auditory intrusion.
“I am a girl in need of a rug, and I am told this is the place to get it!”
Even knowing full well who the voice belonged to and why it was present, Ember couldn’t bear to look away. Drifting to the side to see out around the man, her eyes bulged at what she saw, her stomach tightening.
The reason she’d asked Kaia to come up was so that she could serve as a distraction. Dressed the way she was, there was no need for enhancement to make that happen, her bare midriff and cleavage already plenty to set this poor bastard back on his heels.
What Kaia was now wearing might possibly make his head explode.
Looking like her inspiration was Jessica Alba in Sin City, Kaia was dressed in hip-hugging leather pants and lace-up boots. On her top half was a lacy halter that looked closer to what Ember would simply call a bra, fringe hanging down from the bottom cusp, providing a tiny modicum of coverage to her carved torso.
How or when she had managed to procure the outfit, Ember didn’t have the slightest idea.
Dumbfounded, she gawked as the manager turned back her direction. “I’m sorry, can you excuse me-”
“Go,” Ember said, holding up her palms toward the man. “Nothing I need is more urgent than that.”
Giving her a look that trended somewhere between apologetic and mortified, the man wheeled and headed toward the door, practically running.
Watching him go, Ember had to stifle a laugh, his uneven gait reminding her of a wounded animal that was bounding straight off to be devoured.
Covering her mouth to keep any sound from escaping, Ember turned to the side. She pretended to look over a set of oil lamps, their pewter casts scratched and tarnished, allowing the occasional glance toward the door.
On the first look, it appeared the man was still trying to maintain some form of professionalism.
By the second, he was completely gone, Kaia’s hand looped into his arm, her head lying against his shoulder. Rattling off platitudes at a rapid pace, Ember didn’t need to hear exactly what was being said to see that it was working.
She’d been right. The place kept a man on as a manager, and he had no defense against Kaia.
And the girl thought working with Ember might be a waste of her time.
Maintaining her stance, Ember slid one foot across the other. She pushed over to the side, working her way to the end of the row she was on, before nudging her way forward.
Free of a direct sightline, the sound of Kaia’s voice faded away. In its stead was the low buzz of the lights overhead, more rows of rare treasures piled haphazardly in every direction.
Bending at the waist, Ember lifted her right foot, peeling off her shoe. Repeating the process on the opposite side, she jogged forward in bare feet, her head rotating to either side as she went.
Thus far, she hadn’t seen another person, though that didn’t mean one couldn’t be around. While most of the items around her looked like nothing more than junk, she knew that for them to be present meant someone valued them quite heavily. Leaving all that to one man and a few cameras wouldn’t be savvy business.
Gripping her shoes in either hand, she jogged on. Moving in the direction the manager had nodded toward earlier, she worked her way past another partition, finally spotting the office tucked into the far corner of the spread.
Giving one last look back toward the door, she pushed forward, her pace rising slightly as she headed for the office, the door cracked open slightly, a full-length mirror affixed to it. Extending her stride, she passed straight through the narrow walkway, making it almost to her destination before the angle of the door finally aligned with her.
And flashed her own reflection back her way.
Pulling up abruptly, Ember felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. Her jaw sagged as she stared at what stood before her, her hand rising to her face.
Across from her, the image on the mirror mimicked her movement, the sole part of it that was as she expected.
Two days prior, Ember Squires had stood along the side of that damn intersection in the driving snow with straight brown hair that fell past her shoulders. In her late thirties, she had a few lines around her eyes and mouth, her skin clear, free of blemishes. A dedicated gym warrior, her body fat percentage hovered just below the teens.
The person that was now staring back at her looked nothing like Ember used to. Or anybody she’d ever encountered before.
Kaia had said that Ember Squires was gone. Her assumption had been that that was in name only, but now she realized exactly what Kaia had meant.
Departed was her long, straight brown hair, replaced by a frizz of red that stood out from her head in a halo. A heavy splotch of freckles covered the bridge of her nose and cheeks. She carried an extra fifteen pounds, all of it concentrated in areas she would prefer not mention.
If making sure she was incognito was the goal, it had been achieved. Right now, her own mother wouldn’t know who she was.
If not for the same blue eyes and the matching movements, she wouldn’t have recognized herself.
A tingling feeling permeated the length of her body as she stood and stared. Rooted in place, she didn’t know what to make of things, almost numb as she gaped at what she saw.
Not until a faint whisper of Kaia’s laugh found its way to her did she snap herself from the trance, pushing inside the office to do what she came to.
Chapter Sixteen
Pushing the image of her new self from her mind for the time being, Ember slid inside the office. Returning the door to the slightly ajar state it had been in when she arrived, she put her back to it and did a quick sweep of the small space.
For as large and luxuriant as Tam’s house and showplace both were, the closet he expected his manager to work out of was a
nything but. No more than eight feet in either direction, it was the sole spot on the entire floor that was without a window. Built as a tiny enclosed structure, it was completely closed off from the rest of the area, a building support pole descending through the center of it.
Against the right wall was a desk with a computer monitor and keyboard, a touchtone phone, and a mousepad. Above it was a bulletin board covered in slips of paper, handwriting scribbled across most of them in black or blue.
A rolling chair sat in front of the desk, turned toward the door, as if the man was at work when Ember arrived.
On the opposite wall was a small kitchenette, a mini fridge and a microwave stacked up. Beside it was a stand with two shelves, a coffee pot on the top, stacks of napkins, cups, and various other utensils and condiments beneath.
In the air was an assortment of smells, the most pronounced being flop sweat.
Again, Ember couldn’t help but question which one of them was in Hell.
Any remaining room in the tiny cubicle was taken up by stacks of boxes along the left wall, of various shapes and sizes. Ember tilted her head sideways to see shipping labels affixed to them.
“Tahiti...New Zealand, and...Buffalo,” Ember read softly aloud. “Huh. Quite the collection.”
Leaving them where they stood, she lowered herself into the rolling chair. Dropping her shoes into her lap, she put her focus on the computer, using the mouse to minimize the purchase order that was on screen and going straight to the desktop.
On it was a picture of a pair of cats curled up together sleeping. One light and the other dark, they looked like the traditional yin and yang symbol, their bodies perfectly intertwined.
“Now I know the guy is in Hell,” Ember muttered, bypassing the picture and instead focusing on the icons along the left side of the screen.
Invoices. Shipping. Wanted.
Clicking on the third in order, Ember made a quick pass through, seeing what she would assume to be the usual assortment of items listed. A rug from Persia. A tiger pelt from Thailand. A Japanese wall hanging.
Nothing that jumped out at her, neither from the items listed nor the people requesting them.
Closing it out, she returned to the desktop before going to the bottom corner and pulling up an explorer window for the hard drive. Casting a quick glance toward the door, she ran the math in her head, knowing that while Kaia could probably keep the man occupied all day, there was no need to press their luck.
Besides the obvious, there wasn’t a great deal of difference between what she was doing now and what she’d done the last ten years.
Start with a lead. Let it take her to the next step. And then the next. Keep her mouth shut and her eyes open. Pay attention to the details.
Let somebody make a mistake.
Already, the manager had done just that. What all of it meant, Ember hadn’t yet had time to decipher. There would be plenty of time for that soon enough.
Right now, she just needed to proceed to the next step.
Two more passes through the assorted listings on the computer revealed little of actual use. If there was anything nefarious going on at the place, they were smart enough to keep it off the machines.
Giving up on it, Ember pulled the purchase order back up, careful to leave the mouse exactly where she’d found it.
“Damn,” she whispered, casting her gaze around the room before coming to face forward, her attention landing on the bulletin board just inches from her nose. One by one, she went through each of the snippets of paper, names and numbers and figures jumping out at her.
Nothing that alone told her a damn thing, but it was something.
Sliding open the top drawer of the desk, she extracted a tablet. Tearing away the top sheet to ensure there’d be no indent left behind, she placed it on the smooth surface of the desktop and scribbled down everything she saw, working as fast as her hand would move.
Each second, she could almost imagine the door bursting open, the manager standing over her. Sweat again came to her upper lip as she jotted down the last few things and stuffed the paper into her pocket.
Rising from her seat, she peeked around the edge of the door.
Keeping her shoes off, she tiptoed along the outer edge of the room, letting Kaia’s voice be a guide as she made a wide berth back to the elevator and headed down toward the car.
Ember had expected that her ex-husband would find another woman. If she really wanted to be honest with herself, she’d always suspected he’d had them even during their time together.
That wasn’t the part that bothered her.
“He said what?” Ember asked, her voice just shy of seething.
Beside her, Emory went back to working with his hands in his lap. He kept his gaze aimed down at them, refusing to meet her look.
“What did your daddy say?”
“Nothing,” Emory whispered, just barely audible.
Much like the drive up, the only sounds were the icy pellets hitting the car and the wipers brushing them away.
“Emory...”
“I don’t want you to be mad at Daddy. Forget I said anything.”
Grabbing the wheel with both hands, Ember pulled in a deep breath. She let it slowly fill her lungs, lifting her chest.
Outside, most of the houses had fallen away. In their place were tight woods, pine trees crowding close to the road, their boughs laden with snow.
“Emory, I’m not mad. At you or your dad. I just need to know what he said.”
Glancing over her way once, twice, Emory swallowed, seeming to weigh things in his mind. “Promise?”
“I promise,” Ember said, lifting her right hand from the wheel and holding her index and middle fingers up together for him. “See?”
Looking up at it, Emory gave the slightest flicker of a smile before going back to his hands. “He just said that in the fall, Shasta would be my new mommy.”
Again, Ember felt the pang of rage rise within her. It started low in her core, shooting upward like an inverse lightning bolt, threatening to come spilling from every possible opening.
“That’s...that’s ridiculous,” Ember said. “I’m your mommy, your only mommy.”
“Yeah?” Emory asked. “Promise?”
Again, Ember lifted her right hand, holding up her two interior fingers for him to see. “Always.”
Chapter Seventeen
Jonas thumbed off the cell phone and slid it across the table in the middle of the social space they had created for themselves. The second call he had received from Rocco in just over an hour, this one was even more concerning than the first had been.
Taking a moment to process what had just been shared, he stood quiet, his eyes glazed as he stared into the distance.
For thirty-seven hours, ever since leaving John Lee Tam’s house, watching as Micah hefted the man onto his back and carried him away as effortlessly as a bag of laundry, Jonas had been waiting for something to happen.
He just hadn’t expected it to be this.
“Who was it?” Gad asked.
The game from earlier was long over, the cards shuffled into a pile and put away. In their stead, the table was empty, not a single thing out of place save the three men standing in a loose cluster.
“Rocco,” Jonas replied. His voice, his gaze, both still in the distance, he took another moment, reflecting on what had just been shared, before blinking himself back into the present.
What needed to happen next was obvious, even if it was a bit unexpected.
“The woman that showed up at the house just went to the office,” Jonas said. “I guess there was someone else with her that acted as a distraction while she slipped into the office there and poked around.”
“What did she get?” Micah asked, nudging a few inches forward.
“No way of knowing,” Jonas replied. “The cameras are designed to stop theft, not keep an eye on employees.”
“Any idea who she was?” Gad asked.
“No,” Jonas
replied, “but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Rocco is running the faces now, but given the way they alter their appearances...”
“Right,” Gad muttered, nodding slightly.
The move to snatch Tam was merely meant to be perfunctory. He didn’t have the artifact yet, but he was starting to get close enough to make people uncomfortable.
The decision to grab him when they did was made under the assumption that nobody on the opposition yet knew just how close he was.
Given the swift and decisive action to send people out to look for him, that assumption was fast starting to look faulty.
“Demons?” Micah asked.
Flicking a glance to the man, Jonas shook his head slightly. “Not the one that showed up at the house and went into the office. I guess Toby took a chunk out of her leg. Nothing.”
Micah raised his eyebrows slightly. Across from him, Gad offered a soft chuckle. “Good dog.”
Under different circumstances, Jonas might have laughed. Or at least allowed himself to crack a smile.
As it was, he had things to be doing.
“What about the other one?” Micah asked.
“Don’t know,” Jonas said, “but either way...”
Both men nodded in agreement, understanding the unspoken without needing to hear it. Things were moving on an accelerated timetable. It was time for them to start responding in kind.
“You going in?” Micah asked. Raising his chin, he gestured toward the smallest room in the barn, the fourth quadrant.
Jonas offered a grim nod. “Have to.”
Taking another moment, he thought on everything that Rocco had shared, on the briefing they had received when handed the job.
“You guys get into position. I’ll get started as soon as you’re ready.”
Chapter Eighteen
The Mustang was still parked on the curb, the front windshield wiper adorned with a new parking ticket as Ember slid down into the passenger seat. Not wanting to chance the wretched sound of the hinges squeaking again, she climbed in Dukes of Hazzard style, sliding her bottom over the window sill and dropping unceremoniously into the leather chair.