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“It’s just, you might be the first person to ever say that sentence, ‘No more floor urn’.”
Despite her distress, she laughed at that one, and to my ears it sounded like the tinkling of bells.
Chapter Thirteen
Gunner
Stepping into Trevor’s office was like stepping into another world. Where the rest of the house was modern and tidy, the office, well, it was a disaster, to say the least.
I could tell Rachel had tried to organize some things, little stacks of papers and books filled with bookmarks, but if she was telling the truth about only having access to the office for a single day so far, it was no surprise that she had barely made a dent.
I was asking myself that question a lot. Was Rachel telling the truth? My gut said that she was, but I had been burned too many times in my industry to take everything at face value anymore. Either way, I couldn’t discount how valuable she was to my investigation, and having open access to this house could make all the difference in the long run.
At the moment, Rachel was perched on the corner of a low bookshelf, feet kicking in the air as she watched me with rapt interest. Having an audience weirded me out a little, but at least she was polite.
The woman of the house had decided to put me out of my misery and change into some real clothes, but where I had been catching glimpses of her bare legs and hips when the robe would swish to one side or the other, now I could see her entire figure in a pair of tattered jean shorts and a black tank top.
Her long, dark hair was loose, still damp from the shower, and when she would throw it behind her, the streaks of water left behind on her shoulders and collarbones were driving me up the wall. I was having a more difficult time by the minute, believing that she hadn’t been sent just to distract me.
But that was impossible. She had been so open and vulnerable when talking about the weeks and months leading up to her fiancé’s death that she was either the most talented actress on the face of the planet, or she was exactly who she claimed to be. And that person was just my type.
Gritting my teeth, I ignored her, leafing through the piles upon piles of papers for anything that made any sense. If they had been dated, I could have lined the sheets of paper up and they would have told the story of a man slowly losing his mind. What the fuck kind of statue was this thing, anyway?
I also wondered if Rachel knew exactly how much all the things haphazardly thrown in drawers in this office were worth. I was not exactly an expert in the finer things, but I’d been hired to secure enough jewelry collections to know a few tips and tricks. It was only when I opened a blue box and found a vintage Tiffany brooch inside that I understood the scale of the scam Trevor and Geoff must have been running.
I looked at Rachel and had the wild thought that she might be the wealthiest person I’d ever worked for, and she wouldn’t even know it.
“Are you finding anything?” she asked after she caught me looking in her direction. “I have no idea what all the Egyptian stuff is about, honestly. It must have been his area of expertise, but he never talked to me about it, so I wouldn’t know for sure.”
“I mean, there’s a lot of stuff. Don’t take this the wrong way Rachel, but I can’t tell what stuff is legit and what is just ramblings, you know?”
“If you would tell me what you’re looking for, I could probably help,” she said coyly. I knew she was curious, but I was not showing my hand just yet.
“Clever, but no. This thing that I’m dealing with could range from dangerous to deadly, and so far it doesn’t look like you’ve been dragged into it, so let’s keep it that way.”
“Fine,” she huffed. “It’s just so weird that you’re here, basically a stranger. I’m letting you go through my house, and I don’t even know why.”
“Hopefully, I can find what I’m looking for and be gone out of your life as quickly as possible. The sooner I get this thing taken care of, the sooner we can all return to our own worlds,” I pointed out.
After some time, Rachel spoke up again, her voice quiet and serious. “There are a few guns in the drawers, too. But you already have one, so I’m sure that doesn’t bother you.”
I patted the Glock in my hip holster. “Just another part of the job. You never know what you’re going to run into when dealing with break-ins.”
“If Trevor had hired you, I don’t understand why he would need his own. Or three. Especially with the serial numbers filed off.”
I shrugged. “He was trying to go off the grid. Guns are easily traceable if you buy them the legal way, but it looks like your fiancé was concerned enough about his safety that he didn’t think my guys would get here in time, but also freaked out enough to not want a firearm traced back to him.”
Rachel wrapped her arms around herself and seemed to shudder. “Would you believe me if I told you he was a normal guy when we first got together?”
I thought of Nellie, and how happy she had been those first few years with Geoff. He had given her the world, but then abandoned her.
“Actually, yeah, I believe that.” I gave her a reassuring smile, which I’m sure looked off on my face. “You didn’t strike me as the kind that was naturally attracted to lunatics.”
She looked offended for a beat, but then snorted. “No, not usually.”
I didn’t ask her why she insisted on watching me. It was her house, and after the past few nights she’d had, it was no wonder she was dying for company. I was finding frustratingly little about where the Anubis artifact could actually be, only a ton of literature on where it came from initially. I didn’t think Trevor would have ditched it, and Geoff had seemed certain he passed it off to Rachel, which meant it had to be somewhere around here.
My frustration was mounting when I heard the telltale ping of my security app going off on Rachel’s phone. She frowned and pulled up the camera that gave the alert, and I came to join her, dusting my hands off on my pants.
