Pilar’s old station—and the drawers had been yanked fully out and plopped on the floor.
Arthur’s tall gun safe had been blown open, too, the metal warped and charred.
“Rio,” I said. “How certain are you nothing live is here?”
“Approximately ninety percent,” he answered.
I inched forward, motioning Pilar to stay back. Luckily, I knew this room well, and the level of sloppiness here suggested little attempt at subtlety, enough for me to be able to take a set difference. The complement rose to prominence in my senses, allowing me to focus on what had changed.
The locks on the file cabinets, the desks, and the gun safe had all been busted open with varying levels of explosives. “One-trick pony,” I muttered, as I edged around to Arthur’s desk. The desktop computer still hummed. I reached out and turned on one of the dual monitors.
A login screen flared to life undramatically. No way the ransacker could have gotten past Checker’s security, not unless the computer was already unlocked for some reason, which I supposed was possible. Come to think of it …
“Isn’t there a security system on this place?” I called to Pilar, who was still by the door. Checker’s security on his home probably rivaled the White House; why wouldn’t he have wired the office the same way?
Pilar twisted her hands against each other. “We have one, we do, and it’s really good, but it’s more for when we’re not here. During the day, we mostly have it turned off—we have to, what with clients coming in and out all the time. And even the cameras, Arthur doesn’t keep them on when we have people in, because of confidentiality.”
I finished my circuit of the office. The set difference had revealed no indication of active explosives anywhere things were out of place. I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure, but I thought we were probably in the clear, and on top of Rio’s check, that was the best we could hope for.
“Okay, you two can go,” I said to Simon and Rio. “Pilar, text Checker and see if he can get anything, anything at all, from either the security system or by hopping on the office intranets. Then tell me where you think Arthur would’ve been keeping stuff.”
“We’ll go find the man you took prisoner,” Simon promised, turning to leave.
Shit. I’d already forgotten that’s where I was sending them.
“Rio,” I called.
He turned.
“This guy, he…” My memory of the Australian’s face was still fuzzy, but I could recall my attempted interrogation now. “I had the impression … I don’t think he’s quite with it. Minimal force, okay? Unless you find out he really is with Pithica.”
Rio hesitated. “Cas, if they have broken their covenant with us, this will only be their first step. I submit that I may be more useful to you elsewhere.”
He was right, but … “Our first priority has to be finding Arthur. Please.”
He touched his forehead. “As you wish, Cas.”
I took a relieved breath.
A year ago I wouldn’t have thought it necessary to caution Rio against employing his … usual methods … against someone who displayed a questionable mental capacity. But these days, every time I thought about assuming something like that, the image flashed in my head of Rio pointing a gun at Pilar’s head, and I warned him off anyway.
He didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he seemed to take it as logical, which was frightening in a whole host of other ways.
Rio and Simon headed out into the gathering darkness, and Pilar finished tapping out a message on her phone and picked her way across the paper-strewn floor. “When you say you want to know anywhere Arthur was keeping stuff, what kind of stuff are you looking for?” she said. “Do you mean anything on—on D.J.?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That, or any current cases, any files he wanted to keep sort of on hand. Or, on the flip side, anything he wanted to hide. And if he or Checker were still doing any legwork on Pithica without my knowledge, I want that too.” Dawna had also given Arthur the mental block, but he might’ve taken advantage of Simon’s presence to get it removed too. Everything was on the table at this point.
A sneaking doubt reminded me that Checker wasn’t the only one who had a complicated past. What if instead of D.J., it was my own history Arthur had been looking into?
Was it possible a personalized bomber could be after me? Thanks to Simon, any villains I had known