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She pushed the door open and let out an involuntary shout. This was her father’s study as he’d left it, down to the vague smell of his disgusting pipe tobacco. It had been straightened up. No books stacked on the floor, no newspapers strewn about. The surface of the desk was clear of papers except for a white envelope with her name written on it.
The new cell she’d bought rang and her knees almost folded. She rumbled in her jacket pocket and answered.
“Got your new number,” Pari said. “Got good news.”
“Can I? Wait, I need to...” She needed to open more doors, race up the stairs and see if her bedroom was a study in goth punk rebellion. She needed a moment to get to the envelope, to understand what was going on here. “I’ll call you back.”
She thumbed off despite Pari’s protest and went through the rest of the house. It was clean, dust-free, sparkling in a way it had never done when she’d lived here. The broken door of the cupboard under the stairs had been repaired, a cracked tile in the kitchen backsplash replaced. The back garden was lush, green and trimmed to perfection. She took the stairs. The furniture in her father’s room was the same, but his wardrobe was empty, except for a stack of boxes labeled “personal effects.”
She hovered at the bottom of the stairs to the attic where Cleve had slept, not ready to confront that room, even though no one’s safety was compromised if she did.
Her own room was almost exactly as she’d left it, before the hurricane of abandoning it forever. The bed was made, drawers and doors were closed, whatever she’d left on the floor had been put away, and there wasn’t a speck of dust on her books or her collection of animal skulls and other knickknacks that’d been important enough to keep but not to take with her.
She sat on the bed in disbelief. If Cleve hadn’t lied about the house, maybe he’d been truthful about the rest. Maybe there was an intact bank account. It made no sense, but perhaps whatever was in the envelope would explain.
She opened it standing in the entrance foyer because nothing there spooked her, so she was standing there when the two men knocked on the door.
“Can I help you?” It was an effort to keep her voice level. They looked like cops. Feds. She could bolt, make them chase her. But they couldn’t be here for her. She pulled a document out of the envelope and scanned it. She was Aria Viola Harp and she had a right to be here because Cleve Jones had given her this house and she had its deeds in her hand.
“Agents Rickard and Choi,” said the taller of the two men, holding up a badge.
Her phone rang. She held up a finger to the agents and answered Pari’s call. “A little busy, I’ll call you back.”
“No, don’t hang up. We got him.”
She turned her body away. “Who?”
“I made a few calls, some old friends. One in particular was willing to turn on that bastard Shadow.”
“Wait.” She did the one-minute finger thing again and left the agents to walk into the kitchen. “Say that again.”
“The FBI or the CIA or Interpol or whoever it is that wants Cleve Jones the baddest got a tip-off from an old friend of a friend. They picked him up in Nagasaki.”
“What?”
“He didn’t have Celestia, but they’re holding him anyway. He’s going to prison for a fucking long time for what he did to you.”
“Ma’am.” The prettier of the two agents had come into the foyer.
“I need to...oh God.” What had she done?
“Ma’am? Is everything all right?”
She snapped, “I’ll call you back,” to Pari, turned to the agent. “What?”
He smiled, he was sexy in a very earnest Steven Yuen way, but that didn’t make her regret her tone.
“As you can see,” she pointed to her case in the hallway, “I’ve just arrived. I’m jetlagged something stupid. Whatever this is will have to wait.”
“No, ma’am, I’m afraid not.”
And Aria was simply afraid. There were cops in her house. Her own alibi was tight. A lookalike girl hired to pretend to be her and play poker almost continuously in Vegas the entire time the Celestia heist went down. There were other documents in the envelope she’d not yet read, but it was already clear Cleve had told the truth about the house at least. He’d transferred its ownership to her and engaged a caretaker service to manage it during her absence.
And now he was in trouble.
She glared at the intruders. She wanted them out of her house. “What do you want?”
“I’m Agent Daniel Choi.” He held out his hand.
