What a convoluted mess. All I wanted was for Benny’s people to call off the hit on me, and now I was running around Washington State like a chicken with my head cut off, trying desperately to do what? Find a murderer? I wasn’t an investigator. Nowhere close to it, and yet—here I was, sitting in front of a stupid warehouse, waiting for somebody to come that I could interrogate and hopefully, mercifully, get a lead on finding the blonde from the photo. Yes, Ollie, you really stepped in it. Just remember, five million dollars are waiting for you at the end of this—assuming you get to the end of this.

I didn’t love stake-out work, but it was an essential component of any good investigation. Still, in desperate times we took desperate measures, and these were desperate times, with five million dollars on the line.

When I reached the warehouse, the fire had been quelled into a smoking ember. Fire trucks and ambulances were beginning to disburse, leaving only the police officers at the scene. By now, they would have found out who owned the lease to the building. If my hunch was correct, they would run into a dead-end, as the individual likely paid in cash under the table to remain anonymous.

That didn’t change the fact, though, that somebody worked in that warehouse, and eventually, they would return, maybe tonight, maybe tomo—oh, that looks like an interesting candidate.

A scruffy-looking man walked up toward the warehouse, scratching his head. The cops circled around him, peppering him with questions, but it was clear that he didn’t know much about anything. He had the body of a grunt warehouse worker, stocky and strong, wearing a back brace for heavy lifting—somebody who was told where to go and went there, gladly, not somebody who ran the warehouse.

Still, he should be able to lead me up the chain of command. After about fifteen minutes of questioning the worker, it seemed the officers had pulled as much information as they could from the man, and he headed back to the parking lot.

He was opening his car door when I appeared in front of him. “I have questions for you.”

He jumped back in fright. “Who are you?”

“I’m sorry, I thought I was clear. I have questions. You have answers. Not the other way around.” Gain the upper hand, and don’t lose it. That was the key to effective negotiation. “Understand?”

He tried to brush past me. “Get out of here, lady.”

It was funny to watch big men realize that I was stronger than they were. It’s not something they ever expect. They were used to pushing everyone, so when I dropped him to the ground with just a finger, he was none too happy, but he finally got the point.

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“Who is your boss?”

He grunted. “I don’t—”

I twisted his arm behind his back, careful to stop before he yipped and alerted the police. “I know you don’t have any part in this. You’re just collecting a paycheck. Tell me who hired you and who runs this warehouse, and I’ll let you go.”

“Gina.” He struggled unsuccessfully to break free. “Gina Feretti.”

I released him. “Give me her number, and I’ll let you go.”

The man scribbled a number on a piece of paper and handed it to me before scrambling into his car and tearing out of the lot. Poor shlub.

I could have waited around for Gina at the warehouse, but who knew if that was even her real name or if she would ever come back to the scene of the crime when she was alerted her warehouse had been destroyed. She might have cut tail and run. In any case, I had a number and could reverse engineer an address from it, which was what Phil did, easily, for me.

The number traced to a house in West Seattle near Seacrest Park. The homes there were large but not gaudy, clean but not repressively so. Her house was a two-story colonial ten blocks from the water. A Corvette idled in the driveway with the trunk popped. Stupid car for a getaway. The trunk was way too small to carry a lifetime of possessions.

The front door was open when I walked up, which was never a good sign. Frank Sinatra blared over the speakers in the living room, and a series of glamour shots on the stairs confirmed whoever owned this house was the same woman from the picture I snatched in the warehouse.

I heard the muffled sounds of frantic feet above me. I stepped up the stairs slowly, not wanting to spook Gina. Then, I heard a scream, and my slow plod turned into lunging up to the second floor. The screams came from the bedroom at the end of the hall. I pulled out my wand.

When I opened the door to the room, Gina was lying on the ground, bleeding from multiple stab wounds to her stomach. Somebody wearing a ski mask stood over her, ready to impale her with the knife again.

“Diarfogi!” I screamed, and the spell knocked the knife out of the attacker’s hands. They turned to me and then took off like a bolt toward the window, but they didn’t jump through it. Instead, they took a headfirst dive into the shadows on the edge of the room, disappearing from sight. “Goddamn it!”

Gina was hyperventilating as the blood flowed out of her. I knelt next to her. “Trwsio.”

The spell was meant to mend her wound, but it did nothing except make the blood gush harder. I picked up the knife from the ground and studied it. It was covered in runes. A magical wound blocked my mending. There were plenty that could, including many that I’d procured in my career.

“Gina, Gina, Gina,” I said to her. “Listen to me. I need you to tell me who you work for. Who hired you to oversee the warehouse?”

She choked for every breath of air. Blood pooled under her. She only had a few moments left. She dug into her pocket and pulled out a beeper. With her last act, she placed it into my hand.

“Last… number.” That was it. She was dead. I heard the police sirens in the distance, and I had to get out of there before they harassed me like I had a part in this. Somebody was tying up loose ends, and I had to figure out what was going on before they managed to do so.