a Touch of Revenge (Romantic Mystery - book 6): The Everly Gray Adventures (13 page)

The door was double locked, and it took me longer than I’d have liked to pick both of them. By the time I got inside and punched in the alarm code—using the blunt end of my lock pick since I didn’t want to be blasted with any images other than what I found in Fion’s private study—my palms were slick with sweat, and the inside of the gloves uncomfortably damp.

The interior of the mansion reeked of desperation and fear. I tried not to breathe too deeply because the energy was powerful and rank with negative vibrations. There was no doubt Fion Connor had some extra-sensory gifts, and I would need to thoroughly protect myself before I touched a single thing in her study.

“I’m in,” I whispered to Pierce.

“Keep the line open.” His voice was strong and steady. Just what I needed to hear.

I tucked the phone away and worked my way toward Fion’s office, breathing a sigh of relief that the mansion had been artistically designed with low-level lighting throughout the hallways and common rooms. Keeping tight to the darkest area of the hall, I braced my fingers against my thighs. If I accidently touched anything before I reached my target it could overload my ESP circuits with whatever whammy Fion might have conjured. What had appeared to be a short distance on Cait’s diagram turned out to be a long hike down the hallway.

When I neared Connor’s office, a subtle blast of cold seeped into the hall from the office door, and it brought me to a dead stop. It was…odd. Creepy. Almost black-witchy. Was Connor a bad witch? Did real dark witches actually exist?

Considering my own gifts, I wasn’t in any position to judge one way or the other, but there was some kind of energy field protecting that door. Had she been messing with my mother’s formula? If so, there was no telling how powerful, or crazy, she was. Ingesting various combinations of the plants Mom had used in her concoction could have caused all kinds of cellular mutations.

I palmed my cell. “Connor has placed an energetic shield on her office door. I’m turning the phone off because the backlash from dismantling it could fry an open circuit.”

Silence. And then a grunt. “Call me when you’re in.”

I clicked the phone off and stepped back against the far wall to get a better view of the energy field. I’d had a lot of experience picking the kind of metal locks Fion had installed on the door, but little to no experience untangling anything like the mess of energy floating in front of it.

I closed my eyes, and touched my belly diamond. If I ever needed my talisman, now was the moment. Kahuna Aukele had been working with me, trying to teach me to shut down the left side of my brain and completely surrender to what the right side sensed. Most people hone in on an object with their eyes open, but like all kahunas, my grandfather had other ideas. I let go of logic, and watched the door through closed eyelids, letting my mind absorb the flow of energy. Typically the right brain takes a snapshot of a big picture, then shifts to details. At first, all I could “see” was total chaos, but, ever so slowly, the details began to emerge.

Connor had somehow created a locked grid of energy, and considering I was doing a teeth-chattering shiver from eight feet away, it would probably freeze me if I got within touching distance. Instant icicle. And that was definitely a bad plan.

Next up: destroy the damn thing. And it had to be fast, because the clock was ticking. I thumbed on my cell to check the time. I’d been on the property thirty minutes—thirty to go.

No time to do anything but work from the illogical assumption that Fion was a black witch. According to the little I’d read about the Craft, witches worked with the elements, so my best bet for destroying the energy shield would be earth, air, fire, or water. Right. I had a solid acquaintance with handguns and knives, and I was good with healing energy, but this…unless I tried healing it rather than destroying it.

My cell vibrated. Damn, hadn’t I turned it off?
Time’s short. Wrap up.

I couldn’t leave now, not when I was faced with this challenge.
Two secs. Have to heal an energy lock. Turning phone off again.
This time I made sure I slide the power button off before I stuffed it in my pocket. I held an image of the icy chaotic energy as though it were a fatally ill person, built heat in my core, pushed it into my arms and hands, and gently pressed them against the outer edge of the energy field. A blast of cold shot through me, but I was far enough away from the core of the pattern that it wasn’t painful. Shades of blue, almost black, flashed against my skin.

I sucked in a breath, held my grandfather’s teachings in my heart, then shoved an image of fire into the energy lock. Vibrant red from the heat I’d generated tangled with the blue. I built more heat. Sweat trickled down my back, between my breasts. Black edges narrowed my vision. Not good.

I shook my head, cleared it. Dredged up another burst of heat and used all my strength to slam it against the door.

The energy lock melted into a non-threatening ripple, but the backlash knocked me flat on my ass, and a noxious sulfur odor permeated the air, gagging me. I tried to stand. Pain shot through my hip where I’d bruised it when I fell off Mitch’s desk. I ignored it, and used my fist against the wall to balance my wobbly legs while I stood. Another head shake and I was good to go.

Best thing about healing the energy pattern instead of destroying it: Fion might not notice that kind of change. It was still intact…just subtly different. A lot like one of those push-and-turn doorknob locks. No one ever pays attention to whether the little nub is vertical or horizontal.

Pleased with my progress, I picked the normal lock, limped into Fion Connor’s office, and closed the door behind me. Blinking at the light spilling from a lamp on her desk, I took a second to breathe, then went straight to the secret room, a no-brainer since it was the only other door in the office.

There was no energy barrier guarding the interior door, and, keeping my fingertips clear, I flattened my palm against the doorknob and turned. It opened easily.

My pulse pounded in my throat.

What had she done to protect this room? The door swung open, and I shuddered. There was no reason to go inside. I yanked my cell from my pocket, powered it on, and began snapping pictures, each one more terrifying than the last.

Just as I finished recording the pictures, the phone vibrated, scaring the hell out of me, and I tossed it into the air.

“Bloody damn hell, Pierce.” I barely managed to catch the phone before it hit the floor, then, swearing again, I read his text:
Twenty. Get out now.

I didn’t bother wasting the time to answer. In twenty minutes I could run my fingers over every surface in Connor’s office.

The top of her desk offered nothing interesting, and neither did any of the drawers…until I got to the one on the bottom right. The flimsy lock took me a nanosecond to pick, so I expected the drawer to hold nothing more interesting than a secret stash of Fion’s favorite alcoholic beverage, or maybe some expensive chocolate. Wrong. A cloud of dust floated up when I opened the drawer. Old, dry dust that had me fighting to stifle a sneeze. It was crammed with folders, all yellowed with age, and I huffed a frustrated sigh.

With a single glance I didn’t spot any that stood out. I’d have to search through all… Wait. Kaimi Maliu.

Maliu was my grandmother’s surname.

I jerked the file out of the M section, and flicked it open.

A faded picture of my mother stared back at me.

THIRTEEN

THE SHAKES HIT, OR WAS
that my cell vibrating again? It took me a couple of deep breaths before I could wrestle my attention from my mother’s picture long enough to check the phone. Pierce had updated my countdown.
Fifteen
glowed on the screen, and I could sense him giving me a cold, hard glare.

I slid the phone back into my pocket, ran my hand over the Smith&Wesson for reassurance, and then went back to touching the files. I couldn’t leave yet, not with so much information about my past right at my fingertips. Images poured onto my internal monitor, but they were all about Fion, the hatred in her eyes, her rage, mumbled threats—but no details about what happened before I was born. And there wasn’t enough time for me to thumb through the file and take pictures of the contents, not even if I chucked the phone, didn’t bother with real-time photos, and only used my fingers to catalog the information.

There was no way around it, I’d have to pilfer this file. I rolled the folder as best I could and stuffed it in my hoodie hand-warming pocket.

It was obviously the most important information in the drawer, so was worth whatever fallout I triggered by stealing it. Still, time be damned, I had to flip through the rest of the files since they wouldn’t all fit in my hoodie pocket. Next time I went on a B and E expedition, I’d be sure to bring a couple of those fold-up tote bags.

With no choice but to let my fingers do the work, I hunkered down, started at the back of the drawer, and worked my way forward, carefully touching each folder. Images bounced on my internal monitor, some probably important, but none that shot my intuition into hyper-drive, so I didn’t pause to pull out any of the papers.

A double whammy happened when I hit the M section of the file drawer for the second time. First, a jolt from one of the files knocked me on my ass, and then a determined clack-clack sound of heels hitting the wooden floor sounded outside Fion Connor’s office. And then paused.

My insides plunged in a sick free fall.

One crisis at a time, Everly.

I dialed Pierce. “The Megiddo Project. That’s M-E-G-I-D-D-O.”

“Got it. Get out now.” Tension hung on every syllable.

“Can’t. Connor’s here. Taking cover.”

I yanked the folder out of the drawer, and shoved it and my phone in my hoodie pocket. It took a precious second to close the drawer and ensure the lock had clicked into place. I scoured Fion’s office for a hiding place.

No go.

Except the secret room.

The office doorknob jiggled. No time to think. I slipped inside the secret room, and closed the door, catching a glimpse of Fion Connor when she stepped into her office.

Pierce was going to kill me. Unless Connor beat him to it.

Did she notice the energy lock had been healed? It was possible she’d created it with an automatic re-lock feature. Or spell. Whatever. I’d have to do some serious study of witchcraft in the very near future.

Keeping an ear to the office, I scanned the secret room. There wasn’t much light coming from under the door, but I could make out some details of the pictures lining the walls. It was deeply disturbing to be trapped in a room full of…me. My skin crawled with the sickness that was Fion Connor.

Cait had been right about the photographs. They covered my life from the time I was… Holy crap. I was a baby. In a stroller. Maybe not. Maybe it wasn’t me. I’d never seen any photographs of me as a child, but the red hair was a big clue. And so was the certainty that flooded every cell in my body.

I reached out, shy, and touched the stroller, ran the tip of my finger over my face. The images hitting my internal screen were of Fion, hiding, scheming.

A chair creaked in the office, and my nerves jumped into high gear. She was probably settling in to work, and I
had
to get out of the building. Preferably before Pierce came after me and killed Fion. Not that she didn’t deserve to die. There was no question about that, except that I still didn’t know anything about her connection to Mitch, and finding answers was my number one priority. We couldn’t dispense with Connor until after my history was laid completely bare.

I flicked my phone on.
In secret room. Connor in office. Is there a door or window exit from here?

I hoped Pierce had the answer, because the All-You-Can-Stalk Everly Buffet
covered all four walls, so it was impossible to tell if there was a window or door hiding under the pictures. I’d have to start from the beginning and touch my way around the room.

Checking.
My heart slowed to double time. Backup was flipping awesome.

Fion’s chair let out another creak. Best if I got on with exploring possible exit options. With both Pierce and me working on it, we’d find a way out…yeah, we would. There wasn’t another comfortable option.

Starting on the hinge side of the door that connected the secret room with Fion’s office, I ran my fingers over the pictures while I desperately tried to block the anger and despair pouring from them into my internal monitoring system. The woman was certifiable, but that was old news, and I needed to concentrate on finding the edge of a door or window so I could escape this crazy house.

There was always the scary option. I could storm the office and shoot Fion Connor, disable her long enough to make my escape. Problem was she’d fight and my aim might be off, so I could just as easily kill her as not. And I wasn’t ready for her to die quite yet. Not until I knew beyond a doubt she’d murdered my parents. It was my revenge, and if I was going to own it, it had to be completely justifiable.

The dark edge of doubt seeped into my thoughts and my mind slipped into an abyss. Was killing someone ever justified? The kind of work Pierce and Annie did? Probably. Self-defense was, of course, and if I surprised Connor she’d fight, try to kill me. There wasn’t so much as a smidgeon of doubt about that. So the real question was, which one of us had the better chance of survival? I’d have surprise on my side. She’d have experience on hers. It was a toss-up.