Walking down the hall to my second office, I punched in the keycode and stood still as the retinal scan read my eye. When the lock disengaged, I walked in and locked it behind me. My second office was my sanctuary and one of two safe rooms I had on the property—both necessary. I had lost count of the number of people who had tried to kill me decades ago.
Considering the whole Raphael Alvarez thing was a dead end, I wanted to work on something important.
I stopped at my secondary desk and turned to see the wall by the door. There, my pride and joy and eternal nightmare, The Board. I’d lost dates, friends, and colleagues because of The Board. At some points in my life, I’d lost nearly everything, thanks to it.
Dozens of photos were thumbtacked on with strings and small bios written of different people under mug shots or crime scene photos. Companies and shell companies. Phone numbers and addresses from all over the world. It stretched over the entire wall, slowly building up over the years as new pieces came to my attention.
After two weeks of not seeing it, I felt almost relieved it was in front of me again. Even though I’d had no real breakthroughs in nearly five years, The Board and the information on it kept me remembering, kept me on task. Every day I was home, I came in and looked at it, wondering if I would see something new, something I missed that I had tacked up years earlier but didn’t think was important.
Today, something was bugging me.
I started on the left, looking through different people and places. Whatever was bugging me wasn’t apparent, but I had a need to look over everything, carefully analyzing small things I wrote and clippings of articles. I subscribed to every supernatural publication possible, always on the hunt for more information, more connections.
I lifted a piece of the picture and read what I had underneath, frowning. Was this what had stuck with me?
Five years ago, I had read about a rich vampire bragging about her snakeskin bag in an article on a supernatural dark web fashion site. To most people, it was innocuous, innocent. Snakeskin was readily available for most people, and they hadn’t paid her love for the bag much attention. I had paid attention.
I knew naga skin when I saw it.
I had broken into her home and stolen the bag, leaving a note—a warning—that owning parts of other supernaturals was illegal. She never went public with the theft, and when others noticed the bag was missing and she no longer spoke about it, she had claimed it had been ruined. She had known what it was, which was why she had loved it so much.
She was lucky I didn’t kill her, and she knew that too.
I had put her face on The Board, along with any possible ties she had in the supernatural world.
“There it is,” I murmured. “Her brother is a high-ranking board member of Mygi Pharmaceuticals.” I sighed. Doesn’t help me any. I’m not chasing down this human. I did what Paden asked, and I have a feeling there’s not much more information to find.
Unsatisfied, I sat down at my desk and stared at The Board, wondering if there was anything I could do. What if the human was somehow connected to it all? I knew better than to go down rabbit holes—they always sent me spiraling—but there I was, staring down the dark hole that accounted for most of my worst choices in life.
I haven’t even been back for twenty-four hours. Do I really want to jump into this?
It was an addiction, the need to connect the dots and discover the secrets behind it all. An addiction, like many others, that destroyed my life every time I dabbled in it.
I can’t get answers if I don’t follow every lead.
I texted Paden again. He should be awake by now or getting up soon.
Kaliya: What do you have on Mygi Pharma?
Then I pinned Raphael Dominic Alvarez’s bounty to The Board.
3
Chapter Three
I walked into The Jackalope that night with only one thing on my mind. Paden had texted back, saying he could have something by the time business opened, and I was resolved to be there. I didn’t much care about the human who was in trouble with a large bounty out on his head, but I did care about anything he might know or his