his room, because he hasn’t slept for two days,” Bern said. “Grandma Frida is in the motor pool still working on the Guardians.”
“Where is Arabella?”
“She said she had an errand,” Mom said.
I pulled out my phone and texted Arabella. Where are you?
No answer.
I dialed her number. It went to voice mail. Would it kill her to charge her phone? Half of the time her phone was dead and the rest it was dying, because she was always on it. Argh.
“Something bad happened,” Runa guessed.
“Diatheke is an assassin firm. They ordered the hit on your mother.”
Mom sat up straight. “How sure are you?”
“Pretty damn sure. We’re putting them at risk of exposure.”
Ragnar tilted his head as if he was considering a thorny logical problem. When he finally recovered from the magic drain and his emotions returned, there would be hell to pay. “We should notify the authorities.”
Runa’s face went white again. “We can’t.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because they have your sister,” Bern said. “They’ll kill her.”
Runa clenched her hands together. “Not if I get them first.”
“You would never get to her in time,” Mom said.
“We don’t know where they’re holding her,” I told her. “Diatheke’s building downtown is a fortress. Everything requires a keycard. Once you’re in the lobby, they can drop the grate over the front door and shoot you remotely. You won’t get the chance to kill anyone or to ask any questions.”
“So we just sit here. Again.”
“No,” Mom said. “We prepare.”
“They’ll hit us, sooner rather than later,” Bern told her. “If we can, we need to take some of them alive, so we can bargain. If we get ahold of someone valuable enough, we can trade them to Diatheke for your sister.”
Runa stood up. “I need some air.” She walked out of the room.
“Stay close to the warehouse,” Mom called.
“I’ll keep an eye on her.” Bern got up and followed her out.
I looked at Mom. Bern had voluntarily left the warehouse. Again. Since graduating from college, Bern did his best to impersonate a mushroom: he parked himself in the Hut of Evil with his servers and basked in the glow of the monitors, escaping only to use the bathroom and consume food. Going outside wasn’t in his repertoire.
Mom shrugged.
Ragnar got up. “I’m going to the kitchen to get snacks. Please don’t worry. I won’t go outside, and I’ll try very hard to not kill anyone.”
He left. It was just me and Mom.
“It won’t work,” I told her. “They’ll never trade Halle. She’s a potential witness.”
“I know,” she said. “We have to bleed them. We have to make it so expensive that they’ll drop it. They’re a business.”
“We’re gambling with her life.” Anxiety churned inside me.
“It’s not about Halle now,” Mom said. “It’s about keeping that wild wrecking ball and her brother alive.”
My stomach dropped. “I’m going to try, Mom. Halle’s still alive. There is still a chance.”
“Then you go and try. Heart and his people will be here tonight. That should give you some freedom of movement.” Mom sighed. “I miss doing small, quiet jobs. Insurance fraud. Cheating spouses.”
“I miss them too,” I told her. “But we are who we are. There’s no going back.”
Alessandro had taken the top floor in the three-story brick building that used to be a fire station years ago. Rogan purchased it but never did anything with it, and eventually we bought it from him.
I had walked through this building before when we purchased it. The first floor, with an unusually high ceiling, served as the garage for the fire trucks. The second, accessible by an iron staircase, housed the offices, and the third contained the rec room, sleeping quarters, and a big kitchen once capable of serving food to an entire fire team.
I climbed the iron stairs, with my hip screaming at me the entire way. I had left Shadow in the warehouse. She seemed susceptible to his bribes, and I had no idea what sort of bizarre thing he would try to feed her this time.
The original plan was to turn the fire station into barracks, but the building proved to be too old. Fixing it up would be more expensive than building a brand-new structure. Rogan let it go for next to nothing. At some point, Leon, obsessed with the fire pole, had tried to convince Bern to move there with him and turn it into a “hip bro cave.” That plan died when they realized rewiring the place was out of their budget.