White Hot (Hidden Legacy #2)(17)

Mad Rogan owned my dream house. Life just wasn’t fair. That was okay. I would work really hard and one day I would buy my own house—maybe not quite as big, or as tastefully furnished, but it would be mine.

Rogan went up the staircase and we followed him across an indoor balcony that spanned the living room to a hallway. Rogan turned right, and we walked up another short staircase to a metal door. He held it open for me.

I walked into a square room. The wall on my left and the one directly in front of me were thick tinted glass that showed a wide covered balcony and more walls—these windows opened into the inner courtyard. The other two walls were taken up by screens and computers, manned by two people with headsets.

“Leave us,” Rogan said.

They got up and left without a word. Rogan invited us to a U-shaped blue couch arranged around a coffee table. We sat.

“Bug!” Rogan called.

“Coming, Major,” a voice responded from some speaker.

Rogan looked at Cornelius. “Did you bond with your wife, Mr. Harrison?”

Cornelius hesitated. “Yes.”

What kind of a question was that?

“Was it a true bond?’

“Yes.”

Rogan looked at me. “Is he telling the truth?”

“You do realize that I work for him and not you?”

“If he’s lying to me, and I show him this, I may have to kill him.”

I looked at Cornelius. “Do I have your permission to tell him?”

“Yes,” he said.

“He’s telling the truth.”

Rogan walked over to the wall, slid the panel open, and came back with a glass and a bottle of Jack Daniels. He set the glass and the bottle in front of Cornelius.

“I don’t drink,” Cornelius said. “I’ll be sober for this.”

“What will happen after you find your wife’s killer?” Rogan sat down to my left.

“I’ll fire Ms. Baylor,” Cornelius said.

“Because of Ms. Baylor’s stubborn inability to compromise when it comes to legal matters?” Rogan asked.

“She made it clear she doesn’t want to be involved in what would follow.”

I waved at both of them in case they forgot that I was sitting right there.

“How committed are you to this course of action?” Rogan asked.

“I’ve taken measures already,” Cornelius said.

Rogan sat back, his eyes calculating. “I’m going to share some confidential information with you. It has wide-reaching implications. If you would rather not be involved, tell me now. The lives of my people depend on your discretion and if you betray my confidence, I’ll have to eliminate you.”

“Understandable,” Cornelius said. “Likewise, if I discover that you in any way caused Nari’s death, I’ll take the appropriate actions.”

This wasn’t the world of normal people. Yet somehow I kept getting stuck in it.

“For the record, I don’t consent to being killed,” I said.

They both looked at me.

“Just getting it out there in case there are any questions later.”

A careful knock sounded and Bug bounced into the room. One of my mother’s friends had a cairn terrier called Magnus. Cairn terriers were bred to catch vermin among the cairns of the Scottish Highlands, and Magnus was physically unable to sit still. He dashed about the back yard, he ran on walks, he chased toys, and if you blew bubbles, he turned into a bolt of black furry lightning until he murdered every single one. Moving was his job and he devoted himself to it.

Bug was Magnus in human form. He was always moving, typing, talking, tracking . . . Even though he often sat for most of the day, he wasn’t sedentary. He was never without a purpose or a task, and I had a feeling that if only he could stop doing all of his things and eat a sandwich once in a while, he would put on the twenty-five pounds his skinny frame was missing.

Bug was a swarmer. The U.S. Air Force had bound him to something they’d pulled out of the arcane realm. They called it a swarm because they had no better name for it. The swarm had no physical form. It lived within Bug somehow, which let him split his attention, process information faster, and made him into a superior surveillance expert. Most swarmers died within two years of being bound, but Bug had somehow survived and, until recently, lived in hiding, detesting all authority, especially the military variety. I’d occasionally bought his services with Equzol, a military-grade drug designed to even him out. Then Rogan had lured him from his hiding place with promises of Equzol, advanced computer equipment, and whatever else was part of the devil deal they struck.

Being lured into Rogan’s clutches agreed with Bug. His skin had lost its sallow tint, and while his eyes still brimmed with nervous energy, he wasn’t twitching or freaking out.

Bug dropped onto the couch and placed a laptop in front of him on the table. “Hey, Nevada.”

“Hey.”

A plump dog that was mostly French bulldog and part something unidentifiable sauntered into the room and rubbed its face on my pants leg.

“Hi, Napoleon.” I reached down and patted his head. Bug’s dog rambled over to Rogan and unceremoniously flopped on his feet. Rogan reached down without really looking, on autopilot, picked Napoleon up and put him on the couch next to him. The French bulldog sighed contently, wedged his butt deeper into the couch, and closed his eyes.