Burn for Me (Hidden Legacy #1)(110)

In his spare time, Jeff Caldwell kidnapped little girls. He kept them alive for up to a week at a time, then strangled them to death and left their remains in parks, surrounded by flowers. His victims were between the ages of five and seven, and the stories their bodies told made you wish that hell existed just so Jeff Caldwell could be sent there after he died. Last night he had been caught in the act of depositing the tiny corpse of his latest victim, and he’d been apprehended. The reign of terror that had gripped Houston for the past year was finally over. There was just one problem. Seven-year-old Amy Madrid was missing. She had been kidnapped two days ago from her school bus stop, less than twenty-five yards from her house. The MO was too similar to Jeff Caldwell’s previous abductions to be a coincidence. He had to have taken her, and if so, it meant she was still alive somewhere.

Jeff Caldwell refused to talk.

Police scoured his house. They questioned his family, his friends, and his coworkers. They pored over his cell phone records. They interrogated him for hours. He kept his mouth shut.

I could make him talk. Ten minutes with him, and my magic would crack him like a walnut. There was only one problem. Doing that would be announcing to the Houston PD that I was a Truthseeker.

If I’d been a member of a prominent family or a retainer of one of the Houses, such as House Montgomery, the power and influence of such a magic dynasty could have shielded me from the consequences of exposing my magic. But I wasn’t. I was twenty-five years old, and I ran Baylor Investigative Agency, a small, family-owned investigative firm. I had no wealth, no power, and no pedigree. I was a nobody.

If I walked into the police station, declared that my name was Nevada Baylor, and wrenched the truth from Jeff Caldwell, a couple of hours later I would get visitors from Houston PD, Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, private Houses, and anyone else who had need for a talented, 100 percent accurate interrogator. Truthseekers like me were rare and valuable. My life would become hell, and they would keep pressure on me and my family until finally I broke and went to work for one of them as a human lie detector. If the government didn’t strong-arm me into it, one of the Houses would.

I liked my life exactly the way it was now. I liked my job, I loved my family, and I even loved our odd house. But if one of my sisters had been kidnapped, and some woman I didn’t know could find her, I would do everything in my power to convince her to do it. I would cry, I would beg, and I would offer her anything she wanted if only she could bring my sister back. Right now Amy Madrid’s parents were probably begging and crying, trying to convince a monster to return their child. And I was that other woman, sitting in my car, while somewhere Amy Madrid was slowly dying of thirst and hunger.

I’d been walking to the New Justice Center, about to destroy my life, when Augustine Montgomery had called my cell. Technically, MII owned Baylor Investigative Agency. We had mortgaged our firm to pay for my late father’s medical bills. Augustine Montgomery had a client for me. He could no longer compel me to take his cases, thanks to a renegotiation of our contract, so I’d declined. But he had insisted. The client was his friend and had asked specifically for me. We’d struck a deal. I would talk to the client, and Augustine would make sure I could anonymously interrogate Jeff Caldwell. Which is how I’d ended up in the corporate bathroom, putting on this disguise Augustine had procured for me. It was the only way he would let me do it.

Lina handed me a charcoal black mask that looked like a ski mask and a ninja hood had a baby. I pulled it on, making sure to tuck in any loose strands of hair, and looked in the mirror. The mask hid my face and my blond hair completely. All you could see were my brown eyes and a narrow strip of tan skin around them.

“Hold your hands out,” Lina said, picking up a pair of elbow-long charcoal gloves. “You can’t put these on by yourself.”

I raised my hands and she tugged the gloves on me.

“Nevada,” Augustine said. “Don’t do this.”

“I have to,” I told him. I couldn’t get the photo of Amy Madrid out of my head.

“You don’t.”

“Mr. Montgomery, when my father was still alive, he set up three rules for our agency. We stay bought once a client hires us. We try to avoid doing illegal things. But most important, at the end of the day we have to be able to look our reflection in the eye. I have to do this. She is just a little girl. She is slowly dying somewhere.”

Augustine sighed. Lina turned to the dark garment bag hanging from the hook on the wall, unzipped it, and took out a long green garment. “Arms.”

I raised my arms again. She slid the garment on me. I was wearing a cape. Dark, forest green, it hid me from head to toe. Lina pushed the Velcro closed on my chest, pulled the deep hood onto my head, and stepped back.

I couldn’t even tell if I was a man or a woman. “What is this?”

“It’s a costume from Alley Theater’s stage production,” Lina said.

“Congratulations,” Augustine said, his perfect face twisting in disgust. “You are now Sir Dougal MacLagain, ‘the Scottish Highwayman.’”

Lina opened the bathroom door.

“Showtime,” Augustine said.





About the Author


“ILONA ANDREWS” is the pseudonym for a husband-and-wife writing team. Ilona is a native-born Russian and Gordon is a former communications sergeant in the U.S. Army. Contrary to popular belief, Gordon was never an intelligence officer with a license to kill, and Ilona was never the mysterious Russian spy who seduced him. They met in college, in English Composition 101, where Ilona got a better grade. (Gordon is still sore about that.) They have co-authored two New York Times and USA Today bestselling series—the urban fantasy of Kate Daniels and the romantic urban fantasy of The Edge—and are working on the next volumes for both. They live in Texas with their two children and many dogs and cats.