Page 24 of Fated By Fire
“Oh, I bet he’s watching your every move, alright.”
“Mara!” I fling my hands in the air. “You’re not helping. I’m in shit here.”
“Fine, fine.” She holds up her palms in surrender. “Let’s talk about the investigation, then. You said you’d been feeding details back to Blackthorn, but they want more.”
“Yeah.” I huff a breath. “They seemed happy with the initial stuff. Corporate structure. Accounting systems. The usual drill.But now they keep pushing, and I have a feeling that what they want is going to be hard to get my hands on.”
“Any idea what it is?”
“Nope. But I’m pretty sure that it’s in the company vault in the basement.” I gnaw on my lip as I think back to what I saw there.
“Oh my God, they have a vault in the basement!” Mara lets out a wild laugh. “Because every corrupt corporation needs to have one.”
“Actually, I haven’t found anything dodgy yet.” I reach for my coffee and take another mouthful. It’s growing tepid.
“You’re kidding,” says Mara. “Cagey Craven is clean?”
“So far, yes.” I nod. “Everything I’ve dug up is totally above board.”
“Well, that… sucks.” Mara scowls. “How am I supposed to run an expose on them if they’re clean?”
“Easy. You don’t.” I set my mug down. “This is my gig, Mara. It’s confidential.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” She waves a hand. “I’m just fucking with you. Tell me about the vault, then. What do you know about it?”
“Only that it’s locked up tighter than Fort Knox.”
“Which is definitely a sign that there’s something compromising in there.”
“Exactly,” I agree. “Plus, it gave off a really weird vibe.”
“Weird vibe?”
I hesitate, trying to find words for that strange sensation. “It was… different down there. Like static electricity under my skin. And this weird humming that wasn’t exactly a sound—”
“Holy shit!” Mara practically bounces off the couch, grabbing her phone. “That’s exactly what people report around supernatural hotspots. Look at this.” She shoves her phone in my face, showing me a website covered in neon text and blurry photos. “There are these things called ley lines—channels of mystical energy that—”
“Mara, please.” But unease crawls up my spine as I remember that otherworldly feeling. “I do not work in an office above a ley line,” I go on. “This is something else. It felt a bit like electricity. Maybe there was a short circuit somewhere.”
My fingers drift to my lips without conscious thought, remembering a different kind of electricity. Caleb’s kiss, demanding and desperate and—
“Ha! Caught you!” Mara’s triumphant cry makes me snatch my hand away. “You were thinking about him just now, weren’t you?”
“I need to focus on getting into that vault,” I say firmly, ignoring her knowing smirk. I move to the coffee table, sweeping aside empty mugs to spread out my case notes. “There has to be a way—”
“Oh! Oh! I know!” Mara leaps up, striking an exaggerated pose. “We go fullMission: Impossible. I’m talking black catsuits, rappelling ropes…” She mimes scaling a wall and nearly takes out my desk lamp in the process.
“Be serious.”
“Iamserious! Well, about the breaking in part, anyway. We just need to figure out the security system and—”
“Mara, there is nowein this equation,” I say firmly. “I’m bouncing ideas off you in the hope of coming up with something logical.”
She lifts her eyebrow at me. The silver ring through it glints in the lamplight.
“Oh, right. Look who I’m talking to.” I shake my head. “Logic isn’t part of the equation.”
“Logic is overrated,” she says. “It stops you from thinking out of the box.”
