Page 135 of No Greater Oblivion

“Narvaez,” I hear him say. “Just the man I wanted to speak to.”

33

SOMETHING OF MINE, SOMETHING OF YOURS

Alejandro

The Present

“You have something of mine and now, I have something of yours.”

My grip tightens on the phone.

“My instructions are clear. Dahlia dearest took a very valuable weapon. I want it back. You have until midnight.”

“Dahlia would never hide a gun in her nightstand.”

Rian’s icy gaze sends daggers in my direction. “Clearly you don’t know her as well as I do because she’d hide it somewhere accessible to her, where a man wouldn’t be smart enough to look, and where anyone else with too much common sense wouldn’t bother looking.”

Damiano rushes into the room and says, “We have a half hour left. Has anyone checked the attic?”

My voice and Rian’s overlap.

“She’d be too lazy to go up there,” I say.

At the same time Rian insists, “She hates attics.”

Damiano’s lips purse as he rubs his jaw. “Shit…where else haven’t we looked?”

“What the Hell is going on here!” Lyss screams at us.

Footsteps rush down the hall and Lyss barges into the room, cheeks red from the cold and snowflakes melting in her auburn hair. The first thing she takes in is the disaster in Dahlia’s bedroom. After Li’s call I immediately informed Rian of what was happening and he called Damiano for help. The townhouse is massive and Li had only given us a few hours to search for a gun I’m almost certain Dahlia has stashed in an impossible hiding spot.

Rian and I have been able to avoid each other for the most part but after turning almost every other room in the house upside down there left only Dahlia’s bedroom. Except I don’t think she’d hide something as important as the weapon that can prove Li Huang murdered a prominent FBI agent in her bedroom of all places. But where else could it be? She wouldn’t hide it somewhere else and run the risk of it being found nor would she store it in a safety deposit box. Rian’s right; she would hide it in plain sight. In a place where the people who didn’t know her well enough wouldn’t think to look and where the people who do, know she wouldn’t. She’d pick a hiding spot that’s simple yet deceitful and where she’d have easy access to it no matter what.

But where?

“We don’t have time to explain. Li took Dahlia and he wants his gun back. We have until midnight and we’ve searched every inch of the house looking for it.” Damiano says. “Have you seen it before? The pistol?”

Lyss’s face blanches. “Please don’t tell me it was a gold one.”

“Brass,” Rian corrects. His eyes narrow. “An old, vintage piece. Do you know where it is?”

She wrings her hands. “Well…I did. Before. But I don’t know where it is now.”

Rian lets out a huff of frustration and goes back to pilfering through Dahlia’s nightstand.

“Rian seems to think Dahlia keeps a pistol with all her night creams,” I remark.

He turns around and holds up a box which he gives a little shake. Across the top written in bold, purple script reads Moments of Pleasure. “That sound like a vibrator to you?”

“Actually—”

Rian opens the box but pulls out a small, silver revolver instead.

Lyss winces. “The pistol used to be in there. She got the revolver last month. Christmas gift from Sasha.”

Damiano perks up as if he’s just had an idea. “Did we check any of the tampon or pad boxes?”