Ruby Fever (Hidden Legacy, #6)(23)

Alessandro and I decided to divide and conquer. He reached out to his international contacts trying to figure out why the Russian Imperium was suddenly interested in Texas or its Warden, and I decided to work on House Cabera.

My head hummed. I should probably eat something and soon. I rummaged in my desk drawers, found a packet of jerky, tore it open with my teeth, and surveyed the fruits of my labor. For a two-hour deep dive into all things Cabera, I hadn’t come up with much.

Luciana Cabera, halcyon Prime, Head of the House, fifty-six years old, widowed. For some reason I thought she was in her early sixties.

Husband, Fredrick Cabera, halcyon Prime, ten years her senior, died of cancer six years ago. Fredrick had joined House Cabera and taken his wife’s last name. From what I could gather, he had been born in South Africa and had wanted to immigrate to the US. At the time the US had prohibited immigration from SA due to an Ebola outbreak. Marrying Luciana allowed him to sidestep the ban.

Daughter, Kaylee Cabera, twenty-two years old. Full-time student at Rice University, right here in Houston. Her driver’s license and her IP address confirmed that she still lived at home. Kaylee either hadn’t wanted to leave the nest or wasn’t allowed to.

Luciana had two brothers, one uncle, three aunts, and her parents were still alive, although neither was in good health. Besides Luciana, House Cabera officially listed one other certified Prime, Luciana’s elderly mother. However, Luciana’s twelve-year-old niece and her seventeen-year-old nephew had both undergone preliminary trials and tested in the Prime range. Their official certification would wait until they turned eighteen. The rest of the family fell into the Significant range.

Unlike a lot of other Houses, the Caberas did not diversify their business interests. The Serenity Clinic was their primary source of income, aside from some privately held stocks. All of the adult Caberas worked for the clinic, all of them held relevant degrees or were in the process of obtaining them, and none of them had attempted to break away from the family business.

None of them had been involved in any scandals, nobody had a criminal record, and their credit reports were blissfully free of bankruptcies and large debts. They were respectably boring.

Luciana’s political career was equally as boring. I couldn’t find a single matter she had brought before the Assembly in the last three years that could’ve put her into Arkan’s crosshairs. I seriously doubted he cared about House inheritance minutiae or the exact procedure for the certification of Primes in the state of Texas. All of it was local and region specific.

I tapped my pen against my lips. There was one thing that bothered me. According to Herald gossip, Kaylee Cabera was a Prime like her parents. Most Primes couldn’t wait to undergo the trials. Four of Kaylee’s cousins had taken the preliminary test, and while it didn’t grant certification, it let the family ballpark their power range. Two of them had been designated as tentative Primes and the other two were likely Significants. House Cabera had plastered the results all over their website. I couldn’t find any record of Kaylee’s preliminary test or her submitting to the trials.

There were reasons for which a Prime might delay being officially recognized. Usually, they had to do with business or family considerations. For example, a House involved in a feud might postpone the trials to appear weaker than they were and surprise their opponents.

However, the Caberas didn’t feud, and Kaylee was a fixture among the young House scion scene. Her Instagram and Herald told me she was a privileged child. She wore expensive clothes, drove luxury cars, dined in trendy restaurants, and hung out with people who did the same. I pulled her transcripts from Rice through the Warden Network. She ran track and was pursuing a B.A. in psychology and her grades in public speaking classes told me that if she suffered from social anxiety, she had a good handle on it.

Sometimes people deliberately hid their talents. Olivia Charles, the woman who’d killed Cornelius’ wife, had been a manipulator, a mage who could impose her will on other people’s bodies. She had registered as a psionic. But that scenario still required one to show up for the trials.

Something just didn’t feel right. I couldn’t put my finger on it, and I would have to interview Kaylee to get more information.

My phone chimed. Agent Wahl. I braced myself.

“Hello?”

“That’s one hell of a favor!” Agent Wahl hissed into the phone in that way people do when they’re furious but have to look calm because they have an audience.

“We’re even now.”

“I don’t know what we are right now, Prime Baylor. This is a staged scene. What do you expect me to do with this?”

And how did he know that? Linus’ crew had successfully relocated three murders during my tenure alone, all with no one the wiser. They were flawless.

“I expect you to investigate. Very loudly. It would help if you refused to answer questions, then had a press conference where you gave the bare minimum of information, and then refused to answer questions again.”

“You want me to be a distraction.”

“I want to be free to conduct the investigation. Besides, you enjoy press conferences. You can wear that black suit again, the one you said makes you look inscrutable but official.”

“Does the Warden know about this?”

“As of now, I am the Acting Warden. The National Assembly appreciates your cooperation and understanding, Agent Wahl.”