years? You must have, in order to have signed them.”
“Yes.”
“And none of your tax returns declared this income?”
She made a face. “No. Of course not.”
“Then you’re not wrong. If nothing else, he’s guilty of tax evasion and liable for quite a lot of money. Since he hid the income, he probably didn’t get it legitimately, although it’s possible he was only hiding it from you and the US government.”
She could feel her teeth grinding. “I thought of that too. He might have wanted to hide some of his assets if he was getting ready to leave me.”
Josiah folded the paper and tucked it into his jacket. “If your divorce is uncontested, it should be finalized in sixty days or so, and careful investigations aren’t like hour-long TV shows—they take time. Even if this does lead to something, my office wouldn’t be ready to make a move for several months anyway.”
She blew out a breath. “So you are going to investigate?”
“Oh, yes. I can’t wait to follow the threads and see what’s behind them.” He paused, and his expression turned calculating. “And Sullivan didn’t acquire that money in a vacuum.”
Briefly, her mind opened up to just how big Josiah’s investigation might get. Other people had to be involved, powerful people. Probably even people she had met at their many dinner parties. The amount of money involved all but guaranteed it.
With an effort she pulled out of conjecture. “I’ve been wrapped up in my own concerns. I didn’t consider how big this could get. And you know what? I don’t care. All I want is to decouple from him legally and financially so I can move on with my life.”
Josiah leaned forward. “This all ties back to that defensive spell you want to learn.”
“Yes. I switched to a new location, but I want to be prepared just in case.” She gave him a level look. “I will buy a gun if I have to, but is there a protective incantation or potion that would be better?”
His keen gaze probably saw more than she wanted. “I’m not against guns. I own several myself, but you’re right. You don’t need one to protect yourself. There are more elaborate incantations, potions, and spells you can learn over time, but you’ve already demonstrated you can call up everything you need for now.”
She blew out a breath, feeling both exasperated and intimidated at once. “What does that mean?”
“Come on.” He scooped up the six-pack from the table.
Grabbing the empty dinner bag, she tossed it into a nearby trash can as she followed.
Halogen streetlights had switched on, casting white light over their cars. Josiah strode to the middle of the parking lot. Pulling out an empty beer bottle, he set it on the asphalt. Then he walked back to where she had stopped, several feet away.
“Everything you need is inside you.” He looked down into her eyes. “You don’t need a spell for this.”
She thought she knew where this was going. “You want me to knock that over like I broke the vase at my house.”
“Yep.” He set the six-pack beside his feet and crossed his arms. “Go ahead. Do it.”
She threw up her hands. “I can’t.”
He lifted one broad shoulder. “If you think you can’t, then you can’t. But the Powerful woman I saw at the party didn’t say she couldn’t do things. She just did them.”
“That’s overly simplistic.”
“Is it?” he replied. “Watch this.”
He turned to look at the bottle. An invisible force shot out of him, blazed across the intervening feet, and the bottle exploded.
“Holy crap,” she whispered. Turning her back, she scrubbed her face with both hands.
Like darkness eclipsing the day, he came up behind her and whispered in her ear, “I would never have been able to learn that if I had said I can’t.”
She spun around again. “Okay, I take your point. But the last time I did this, there were sparks of lightning at the edges of my vision. A huge emotion had built up in my body and it didn’t have anywhere to go, at least not until it shot out of me. I don’t know how to access that. I can’t…” At his expression, she swallowed down the rest and made a frustrated noise at the back of her throat.
He snatched up another beer bottle, stalked to the center of the parking lot, and set it into place. As he returned, he pointed at it. “Go.”
She glared at the bottle and tried to push out mentally. It remained upright. She