Burn for Me (Hidden Legacy #1)(46)

“I have one more condition,” I said.

He simply looked at me.

“Do not read my thoughts.” He didn’t need to know what was in my head. He just didn’t.

He smiled. “Not a problem.”

I took the passenger seat and put my backpack in the space in front of it. Okay. I was in. I just had to say the bare minimum and keep my thinking to myself.

“I can’t read thoughts,” Mad Rogan said. “But I find that most of the time I don’t need to.”

And that did not sound ominous. Not at all. I buckled up.

The Range Rover shot down the side road. The window glass looked really thick and tinted. This wasn’t the cheaper bullet-resistant version. This was the heavy-duty bulletproof glass with six-centimeter safety glazing and a layer of polycarbonite on the inside to keep the window from shattering. You could fire an AK-47 at it at close range and the glass would crack but remain completely smooth on the inside. This kind of glass also weighed a ton. I touched the window controls. The window crept down, whisper quiet, and back up. Grandma Frida would be proud. A normal window lifter wouldn’t be able to raise the window back up. He’d had custom window lifters installed. The vehicle was likely armor-plated too.

“What’s the rating on the armor plates?”

“Hard ammo. It’s a VR9 vehicle.”

Holy crap. The Range Rover wouldn’t just stop a bullet from a handgun or an assault rifle. It would stop an armor-piercing round from a machine gun. That much armor meant a crap load of extra weight, but the car glided like a skater across the ice, which required reinforced suspension and custom dampers. This vehicle wasn’t retrofitted with armor. It was built to be armored from the ground up.

To top it off, it looked just like any other high-end Range Rover on the road. Most people didn’t realize that armored cars weren’t just about being the most bulletproof. It was also about discretion. No car was completely damage proof, not even a tank, and the best strategy to keep your occupant safe was to not get shot at in the first place. That required the vehicle to be as close to the non-armored equivalent as possible so it would blend in with other cars on the road. There were always idiots who wanted flashy armored monstrosities that looked like something out of a postapocalyptic movie. They wanted to make a statement. Unfortunately, their statement said, Here I am, shoot me. People who actually required protection opted for quiet quality like this, the kind that came at a heart-stopping price and said volumes about their owners.

Mad Rogan didn’t give a crap about what the rest of us thought about him. He had no need to impress; he wanted the best, and he would pay premium price as long as he got it. Somehow that didn’t make me feel any better.

“What’s in Jersey Village?” he asked.

“Bug. He’s a surveillance specialist. I have something he wants, and I’m going to have him find Adam Pierce for us. We have to do it now, before Adam shows up at my house again, because my mother has threatened to deal with him and then send what’s left of his body to his House in a plastic grocery bag.”

“Your mother seems confident,” he said.

“Do you know what a Light Fifty is?” I asked.

“It’s a Barrett M82 sniper rifle.”

“My mother was looking at your head through the scope of one while we were eating lunch. We need to find Adam Pierce before my mother shoots him or my grandmother runs him over with a tank. Or before he incinerates our home and my family with it.”

“As we discussed, I have a team guarding your warehouse. If he shows up anywhere near it, we’ll know. Now your turn. I’ll have the information now,” Mad Rogan said. “All of it.”

I started at the moment MII called us, told him very briefly that MII hired us to find Adam Pierce, and ran through my investigation, skipping unimportant details such as mortgaged businesses and dreams featuring him being half naked. Volunteering was for suckers, and he wouldn’t get any information out of me unless it was absolutely necessary.

He grimaced. “Augustine finally caved in.”

“You know him?”

“Yes. We went to college together. I’m not his favorite person.”

“Why?”

“I’ve seen him without his magic.” Mad Rogan shrugged his muscular shoulders. “Augustine always had an overdeveloped sense of loyalty to his House. He struggled with it. I told him back then that if he wasn’t careful, he’d end up in an office dancing to his family’s tune.”

“Is that why you joined the military? To get away from your family?” And why did I ask that?

“I joined because they told me I could kill without being sent to prison and be rewarded for it.”

True. Holy shit. I was trapped in a car with a homicidal maniac. Awesome.

“You have a strange look on your face,” he said.

“I just realized I shouldn’t be in the same vehicle with you. In fact, I shouldn’t have called you in the first place, so I’m trying very hard to rewind time.”

He grinned. I’ve amused the dragon. Whee.

“Would you rather I lied to you? Not that I would bother, but even if I did, there is no point in it, is there?”

I didn’t answer. Keeping my mouth shut was an excellent strategy.

“Does Augustine know you’re a Truthseeker?”