Snared (Elemental Assassin #16)(3)

Well, they weren’t. Not anymore. Not from me.

I pushed aside the dangling white velvet bow, ducked down, and shimmied in through the open window, making sure to close it behind me. Then I turned and looked over the room.

The office was the inner sanctum of Damian Rivera, the first member of the Circle on my hit list. Several generations ago, the ancestors of Maria Rivera, Damian’s mother, had made a fortune in coal before selling off their mines and branching out into other areas. Maria herself had been big into real estate, buying and selling property all over Ashland and renovating crumbling old homes that she decked out with antique furniture and family heirlooms that she got for a song at estate sales.

Damian had definitely inherited his mother’s flair for both decorating and dramatic spaces. The office was enormous, taking up this entire side of the mansion. Dark brown leather chairs and couches filled the decidedly masculine area, along with tables covered with all sorts of expensive knickknacks. Porcelain vases, crystal figurines, wooden carvings, stone statues. All perfectly in place and all perfectly highlighted by the three gold-plated chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.

But the centerpiece of the office was an elaborate bar that took up one entire wall, complete with several red padded barstools lined up in front of it. A wide assortment of liquor bottles perched prettily on the wooden shelves behind the brass-railed bar, along with rows of gleaming glassware. I eyed the bottles, recognizing them all as being well out of my price range but fitting right in with the rest of the luxe furnishings. The air reeked of expensive floral cologne and even more expensive cigar smoke, adding to the feel of a gentlemen’s club. I had to wrinkle my nose to hold back a sneeze.

But I wasn’t here to gawk at the expensive furnishings, so I moved over to the desk in the back of the room near the window that I’d just slithered through. To my disappointment, the golden wood was spotless, as though it had never been touched, much less actually used, and not so much as a pen or a paper clip littered the smooth, shiny surface. Then again, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Damian Rivera didn’t have to do something as common as work. From what I knew of him, his favorite hobbies were drinking, smoking, shopping for antiques, and flitting from one woman to the next. Not necessarily in that order.

Still, I’d come here to search for information about the Circle, so I opened all the drawers and tapped all around the desk, looking for hidden compartments. But the drawers were empty, except for some stacks of cocktail napkins and paper coasters, and no secret hidey-holes were carved into the wood.

Strike one.

Since nothing was in the desk, I moved over to the bar, perusing the shelves underneath it and the wooden ones behind it. But all I found were more napkins and coasters, along with several sterling-silver martini shakers and other old-fashioned drink-making accoutrements.

Strike two.

Frustration surged through me, but I forced myself to stay calm and search the rest of the office. I ran my hands over all of the furniture, looking for any secret compartments. Examined all of the vases, carvings, and statues for false bottoms. Tapped on the walls, searching for hidden panels. I even rolled back the thick rugs and used my magic to listen to the flagstones, just in case a safe was hidden in the floor.

But there was nothing. No secret compartments, no hidden panels, no floor safes.

Strike three, and I was out.

My frustration mixed with disappointment, both burning through my veins like bitter acid. A couple of weeks ago, I’d found several safety-deposit boxes full of information on the Circle that Fletcher Lane, my mentor, had compiled. For some reason that I didn’t understand, Fletcher had only photos of the group’s members, but it had been simple enough for me to get their names, especially since many of them were such wealthy, prominent Ashland citizens.

I’d scouted several of the Circle members, and Damian Rivera proved to be the easiest target with the least amount of security. So I’d broken in here tonight in hopes of learning more about the group, especially the identity of the mystery man who headed the organization, the bastard who’d ordered my mother’s murder. But maybe there was a reason Rivera’s security was so lax. Maybe he wasn’t as important or as involved as I’d thought.

Still frustrated, I turned to the fireplace, which took up most of the wall across from the bar. Since any little bit of information could be important, I pulled out my phone and snapped shots of all the framed photos propped on the mantel, hoping that one of them might hold some small clue.

Not only did Damian Rivera love the finer things in life, but he also loved himself, since most of the photos were softly lit glamour shots showing off his wavy black hair, dark brown eyes, bronze skin, and startlingly white teeth. Rivera was in his prime, in his early thirties, and he was an exceptionally handsome man—and a thoroughly disgusting individual, even by Ashland’s admittedly low, low standards. Not only was he a trust-fund baby, living off his family’s wealth, never having worked a day in his life, but he’d also never faced any consequences for any of the despicable things he’d done.

And he had done plenty.

Silvio Sanchez, my personal assistant, had been looking into Rivera for only a few days, but he’d already found several arrests, mostly for DUIs, stretching all the way back to when Damian was a teenager. Rivera also had a violent temper and some serious anger-management issues. He’d beaten more than one girlfriend over the years, servants too, and had even put a couple of them in the hospital with broken bones and other serious injuries.