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“See then? Jonah Steel didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Of course not. First of all, he most likely wasn’t wearing gloves when he handed Ms. Hayes the card. Second, what kind of a moron would go into a woman’s apartment, murder her, and then leave a calling card lodged under the carpet?”
Thank God. “For a minute I was sure you were going to go after— Oh, never mind.”
“You know me better than that, Ruby, but this card was left by someone for a reason. We need to figure out what that reason is.”
I wasn’t sure whether I could talk to Mark about the card found in Talon’s home. The Steels hadn’t gone to the police about the break-in and the rose left on Jade’s pillow. It turned out that it hadn’t been a break-in at all. Someone, most likely my father, had threatened Talon’s housekeeper, Felicia, and forced her to leave the rose for Jade. Why? We could all only guess. I had given up long ago trying to figure out why my father did anything. Until I had the Steels’ okay, I had to keep quiet about the similarities in the placement of the cards.
“So there are no prints,” I said.
“That’s right. So what’s the next step?”
“Figuring out who would want to frame Jonah Steel, I guess.”
“Yeah. You have any idea?”
If he only knew. “I do have a few ideas, Mark. Why don’t you let me handle this?”
He pushed the file toward me. “It’s all yours, kid.”
Though being called kid would probably bother some detectives, I let it roll off my back. I had grown up at fifteen. I had never really had the chance to be a kid, so I kind of liked the term. “Thanks, Mark.” I took the folder. “Anything else?”
“Yeah. Go home. You look like shit.”
I chuckled. “Thanks.
I’ve just been burning the candle on both ends.”
“That vacation didn’t do you a lot of good, did it?” he said. “And then you came back early too.”
I hadn’t explained to Mark the reason I had come back from Jamaica early—because of the kidnapping of Juliet and Lisa. Though the resort hadn’t closed down, they’d offered refunds and allowed people to leave if they wanted to. Our party had stayed for the wedding and left the next day.
“You know me. Workaholic.”
“This can wait till tomorrow, Ruby. Go home and have some ‘you’ time.”
“I’ll think about it.” I left his office.
But there would be no thinking about it. Once the workday was over, I was meeting Ryan at the prison to see Larry Wade. He was already in the city now, presumably talking with Bryce Simpson’s uncle about the future lawmakers ring. I hoped he was getting some good information.
I plopped the new file down on my desk. My phone, which I had left on my desk when I went to see Mark, blinked with a missed call.
A number I didn’t recognize.
Chapter Eighteen
Ryan
“That’s right,” Chase said. “The phoenix.”
“The phoenix is a symbol of Lucifer? The devil?” Bryce asked. “I’ve never heard that.”
“My guess is that you never studied the occult,” his uncle said.
“Not in this lifetime, no,” Bryce said.
A vise tightened around my abdomen. The phoenix was an image I was well acquainted with. Ruby’s father, Theodore Mathias, had a phoenix tattooed on his forearm. Talon had told me about how he remembered the image from his captivity, how it had been both heaven and hell—the symbol of those who menaced him, yet also a symbol of escape. Of course he hadn’t realized all of that until he went through therapy with Melanie. He had been very open with me about what he had learned about himself and those two torturous months he had endured.
