Ilona Andrews: White Hot

A large reddish bird swooped down from the overcast sky and landed on the branch of a big oak tree across the parking lot.

“This is Talon,” Cornelius said. “He’s a red-tailed hawk, commonly known as a chicken hawk, although really it’s a misnomer. They hardly ever target adult chickens. The Assembly won’t permit me to bring in a dog. It won’t permit you to bring in a gun either. However, on the fourth floor there is a bathroom where the window has been altered so it doesn’t trip the security system. It’s frequently left open.”

“Is it the secret smoking bathroom?” I guessed.

Cornelius nodded. “It’s just far enough from the smoke detector that an open window lets them get away with it. Are you armed?”

“Yes.” Before Adam Pierce, I got away with carrying a Taser 90 percent of the time. Now I didn’t leave the house without a firearm and I practiced with my guns every week. My overtime at the gun range was making my mother very happy.

“Can I see it?”

I pulled my Glock 26 out of the holster under my jacket. It was accurate, relatively light weight, and made for concealed carry. I’d opted for one of my cheap pantsuits primarily because I could get away with the kind of shoes that let me run and because the jacket was loose enough to obscure my firearm. Besides, I seriously doubted they would let me into the Assembly building in my typical attire of old jeans, running shoes, and whatever top wasn’t too wrinkled after one of my sisters dumped my laundry on my bed to make space for her own load in the dryer. I’d have to clear an X-ray and a metal detector as well.

Cornelius examined the gun. “Why does it have this bright blue paint on this part?”

“It’s matte fingernail polish. The black on black sight makes it harder to hit dark targets and the fingernail polish fixes that problem and cuts down on the glare.”

“How much does it weigh?”

“About twenty-six ounces.” I’d stuck with the standard 10 round magazine, hollow point. And I carried a lot of extra ammo. My adventures with Rogan made me paranoid.

“Talon can carry it through the bathroom window for you.”

Okay, I had to nip this in the bud. It’s not that the idea of walking into a building filled with the top crust of Houston’s magic users unarmed wasn’t giving me anxiety. It was. My favorite strategy when confronted with danger was to run away. People who ran away survived and avoided costly medical bills, loss of work hours, and increases in insurance premiums. They also escaped being lectured by their entire family about taking unnecessary risks. I used a gun only when I had no choice. Confronting a Prime inside a building filled with other Primes would make running away very difficult, so going in armed was tempting. But bringing a firearm into the Texas Assembly was suicide. Might as well pin a target to my chest with the words Terrorist. Shoot Me .

“Why would I need to bring a gun into that building?”

“It might be useful,” Cornelius said quietly.

Right. “Cornelius, if we’re going to work together, we have to agree on full disclosure. You want me to bring the gun into the Assembly because you’re convinced that Forsberg killed your wife and you want me to shoot him.”

“When I talked to them yesterday before coming to see you, one of his security people suggested that Nari may have been having an affair with one or both of the other two lawyers. When I told him it was unlikely, his exact words were, ‘We don’t always know the people we marry. Who knows what the investigation will uncover? I’ve seen it all, embezzlement, sex addicts, drugs. Terrible what sometimes comes to light.’ They’re not simply content to ignore her death. They’re now actively distancing themselves from her and, if I keep making noise, they’re threatening to smear her name.”

“That’s awful of them. But it doesn’t tell us that Matthias Forsberg is guilty. It only indicates that Forsberg Investigative Services employs scumbags and they’re trying to cover their asses.”

Cornelius looked away.

“You came to me for the truth. I’ll get the truth for you. When I point out the guilty person to you, it won’t be because of a hunch or a feeling. It will be because I’ll present you with the evidence of their guilt, because accusing someone of murder should never be done lightly. You want to be sure, right?”

“Right.”

“Good. We need evidence. We’ll search for this evidence together and we’ll do it as safely and carefully as possible, so you can come home to Matilda. According to my research, the security at the Assembly is very tight. You can’t even get into the Allen Parkway parking lot without showing ID and having a reason to be there. If we were to follow your plan, and someone discovered that I carried a firearm into that building, the security wouldn’t detain me. They would shoot me and whoever I was with.”

His face told me he didn’t like it.

“What happens if Forsberg attacks?” he asked.

“On a crowded Assembly floor? In plain view of his peers, while we’re unarmed?”

Cornelius grimaced.

I smiled at him. “I think we should table the gun idea for now. If he attacks, I’ll do my best to handle it.”

I wasn’t exactly defenseless. As long as I could get my hands on my attacker before he or she killed me, they would be in for one unpleasant surprise. The military had been employing more and more mages. Military service wasn’t exactly a stress-free environment, and the people in charge had quickly figured out that they needed a method for neutralizing magic users. That’s how the shockers came on the scene. Getting them installed involved a specialist who reached into the arcane realm, the place beyond our fabric of existence, pulled out a creature nobody fully understood, and implanted it into your arms. I’d had mine implanted when I was hunting Adam Pierce. You primed them with your magic, suffering through some pain, and if you grabbed your victim, that pain would hit them and blossom into a convulsion-inducing agony. The shockers were supposedly nonlethal, but I had too much magic. I could kill an Average magic user, and although I had used them on a Prime only once, barely, he’d definitely felt it.

“I’ll defer to your judgment.” Cornelius opened the door of his vehicle. “Please.”

“Let’s take my car,” I said, nodding at my minivan.

He glanced at the Mazda. His face turned carefully neutral. My aging champagne mom-minivan clearly failed to make the right impression.

I walked to the minivan and opened the passenger door. “Please.”

Cornelius opened the trunk of his car and lifted out a large plastic sack similar to one of those fifty-pound bags of cheap dog food, except this one was plain white and unmarked. He heaved it onto his shoulder and carried it over to the Mazda. I opened the trunk and let him slide it in there.

We got into my car and buckled up. I drove out of the parking lot and turned right, heading to Blalock Road. Anything to avoid the hell that was the 290. Cornelius’ face was a grim mask. He didn’t trust me yet. Trust took time.

“May I ask, why your car?”

“Because I’m familiar with the way it handles and we may have to drive very fast. In addition, this type of car blends into traffic, while your vehicle stands out.” Also because my grandmother made some modifications to the engine and installed bulletproof windows after my Adam Pierce adventure, but he didn’t need to know that. “What’s in that bag?”

“It’s a private matter, unrelated to our visit to the Assembly.”

Okay. Fair enough. But now, of course, I was dying to figure out what was in there.

“Do you smoke?” I asked.

“No.”