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Storm shook his head. “You can’t imagine the trouble that Ronin’s mesmeric influence gave us with the jury during the trial. The guy is a master game player. He knows that you want to believe him, and that’s why his game is working. He is a selfish man who’s been locked away for six years, Diana. He wouldn’t have sat on information he knew we wanted badly for all that time. If he really knew anything he would have traded it in for a few luxuries a long time ago.”
“Not if he is innocent. He would be going insane trapped in there if he is innocent. He wouldn't give away his most powerful bargaining chip for anything less than his freedom.”
Storm sighed. “I don't know how to get through to you, Diana. The chief and the Agency will never sign up on you pursuing this case. The Ronin family are the most powerful vampire family in London. Steffane’s father, Gaius Ronin is a friend of the mayor. Gaius Ronin had political ambitions of his own before his son sullied the family name. But they are still a well-connected and wealthy family. We can’t mess with them on a whim.”
“So you’re saying don’t mess with the status quo. They’re too rich so we can’t upset them?”
“I’m saying we will get DCK some other way. And as your boss, I expect you to back off this case. I don't want to hear anything more about it.”
Boss-smosh, I felt like saying, But I knew it would not get me anywhere. I took a deep breath. If this was any other case I might have thought that Storm was right. I had no real reason to believe that Ronin was innocent after all. I’d had no visions.
“Fine,” I told him. “I understand.”
The hell I did. But I wasn’t about to tell him that.
Chapter 7
DIANA
As I made my way out of Storm’s office I saw that Remi had arrived at work. Her desk was just outside of Storm’s office. Her back was to me as she took off her jacket, but that tall lithe figure and her abundant dark red hair pulled back into a braid was unmistakable. Hearing my footsteps she turned, and then grinned when she saw it was me.
“Hey early bird,” she said. “I got you this.” She handed me a tall paper cup with a hot drink inside. It was full to the brim and she’d had to wrap her napkin around it to catch the drips. The aroma rising from it told me it was a steaming hot chai latte, my absolute favorite.
I accepted it gratefully. “Thanks Remi. You’re the best. But you took a risk there. It might have been stone cold by the time I usually arrive.”
“I thought you might be in early today,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.
“Oh yeah?” I raised an eyebrow. “You know I love my sleep too much to drag my carcass out of bed early except on special occasions.”
She waggled a finally arched dark brow. “Maybe today is a special occasion.” Her eyes flicked for the briefest moment towards Storm in his office.
Storm had been away for a whole week. She thought I’d missed him. “Shut up!” I said, tossing my crumpled wet napkin at her.
She snatched it out of midair before it had a chance to hit her shirt, and laughed as I walked away. Damn her. She thought I had a crush on Storm. She thought that just because he’d been away I had been pining for him. As if! So I’d missed him. That was perfectly normal. So it had been driving me crazy that I had no clue why he suddenly took a week off out of the blue, as if he had to attend to a private matter. Yes, I didn’t like that he had private matters that took him away. And yes, I wished I knew why the hell he had gotten sloppy drunk the other night to the extent that he had actually ended up in my bed. And yes, it was goddamn annoying that he had refused to tell me why he had lost control of himself like that.
Gaaargh. So I had major feelings for Storm. But I would never call it a crush. Crush was such an insipid and ludicrous word. I did not have crushes and she had better well not be thinking that I did, dammit.
And just because I might or might not have feelings for perfect Mr Storm, or not so perfect as it turned out, didn’t mean that I was going to jump to attention at his say-so. If he thought that he could order me about he had got another think coming.
I hadn’t lied when I told him I understood his problem with reopening the Ronin case. I did understand. I understood my problem too. I had to get to goddamn DCK one way or another and scratch my little killer itch before it got out of control. Storm had made it clear that his hands were tied. But mine weren’t.
And maybe it was better if I handled this one on my own. It meant that Storm couldn’t get in my way when I finally got my hands on DCK. It mean I wouldn’t accidentally launch into full blown killer mode around him, and that he had to never know what I was. When this was all over, one day in the future, all I wanted was a peaceful life. Preferably with Storm.
The rest of the working day was going to drag for me. I was peeved about it. Storm was paying me after all, and I couldn’t just walk out because I had other things on my mind. I had to give him something for his money. But mostly it was the thought of Zezi that kept me going. I had persuaded her mother to allow me to come and see the bedroom that she had once slept in today.
Even though Mrs Shahidi had insisted that none of Zezi’s belongings were there, I hoped I might pick up a feeling or vision. Mrs Shahidi had refused to allow me to visit the house while her other kids were there, saying that she hadn’t wanted to rile up all of those old and disturbing feelings for her kids again. She what hadn’t wanted to give them false hope.
When I got to the house Mrs Shahidi was waiting for me. She thrust an old dusty plastic bag into my hands. “I found it under the floorboards,” she said excitedly. And then she began to pace with great agitation, wringing her hands. “I was tidying her old room and it was there. I knew it! It was the goblins. It was that horrible boy she went to school with. She kept it a secret from me!” She looked baffled and upset.
The contents of the bag turned out to be a diary that Zezi had kept.She had written all of her diary entries as letters addressed to the so-called horrible boy, one Finch Greyiron.
“He’s a goblin!” Mrs Shahidi shouted. “I told him to stay away from my girl. I told him, but he wouldn’t listen.” She sat down on the couch and put her face in her hands and started to cry.
I sat down beside her and put my arm around her until she stopped crying. I made her a cup of tea and drank it with her and let her talk to me about Zezi before I left. I knew she hadn’t spoken about Zezi to anyone else but me in a long time.
Afterwards I went to a cafe to scan through the diary, not wanting to read it in front of Mrs Shahidi. The contents were unexpected. They made me decide it was a good idea to find Finch Greyiron immediately. By the time I finally tracked down his current whereabouts and made his neighbor promise to tell Finch to call me, it was already past 6:00 pm and time for me to call it a day.
I would normally have kept going, unable to rest once I was on the scent, but today I had bigger and more personal things on my mind. After all, I hoped Zezi was only missing, abut even if she had been dead, no killer was as important to me as DCK.
