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James grinned, lunging forward to tickle my stomach. “Smartass.”

Chapter 9

“Ow!”I leapt out of my chair, wondering what the hell had just stabbed me in the leg.

“Are you all right, love?”

“I’m fine.” There it was: what looked like a broken piece of plastic. I tossed it to the floor and sat back down. “I’m just ready to get this over with.”

I’d been on edge the past week, to say the least. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was, but the mystery behind Kian’s adoption was distracting me so much that I seemed to find the sharp edge of everything, from the odd piece of plastic to the edge of my keys. I was more than ready to visit Gabriel and put it behind us. James squeezed my thigh, stilling it. I hadn’t even realized it was bouncing. We sat in a waiting room in downtown Boston, on a way-too-high floor inside one of the city’s many skyscrapers. It had taken several days to get an appointment with Gabriel, and now that we were here, we were being made to wait. See? The man was evil. He owned the whole floor, working as an investigator to cover up what he did outside of work hours—which, I guess, explained his appearance on the day of the fire.

James had been checking in on me all morning, and every time he asked, I believed myself a little less. “Are you sure? Because we can?—”

“I’m sure,” I lied again through the nerves in my stomach. In an effort to convince him, I brought his hand to my mouth and kissed his fingertips. That move never failed to make him melt. I stood, and his hand slipped from mine. Historically, heights and I didn’t mix, but I was itching to move and that led me over to the windows. If I pushed away the thoughts of exactly how high up we were, the view was incredible. It was early in the morning, early enough to where lights were slowly being flipped off as the sun rose higher in the sky. In the distance, sunlight reflected off the glittering surface of the Charles River. Even if the guy gave me the creeps, I could appreciate Gabriel’s taste. And that was precisely when the door opened and he stepped inside.

I shoved my hands in my pockets, training my eyes on the view as I used my peripheral vision to pay attention. Gabriel rounded the table and smacked a folder down onto it. Only then did I return to my seat.

Yep, Gabriel was exactly how I remembered him. His platinum-blond hair had grown a little, curling at the ends, and I assumed the glare he gave the lock that fell into his face meant he didn’t care for its new length. The dark collared sweatshirt he wore only made his pale skin and hair stand out even more. When he looked up from the table, I fought the urge to shrink away. Barely. The blood red in his eyes battled with the sunlight for control of the space.

“Thanks for meeting me so early.” He paused, and before I could get a word out, he opened his mouth. “Were you two not offered drinks? I swear, I’m firing that useless?—”

“We’re fine,” James interjected. “No need to fire anyone.”

Gabriel relaxed in his seat, eyes sliding to me. I fought the urge to shrink back in my seat. In fact, I fought the urge to do anything that would give away how uncomfortable I was—especially when Gabriel’s mouth curled into a grin. “Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes? It’s good to see you again, Ryder.”

I swallowed, regretting our decision to decline the drinks he offered. “You too.”

Thankfully, James broke the tension by indicating the folder he’d brought with him. “What’d you find?”

Gabriel didn’t respond right away, instead holding my gaze for several long moments. “Quite a bit actually,” he finally said, turning his attention to James—and I didnotsag in relief. “It was exciting to look into something other than infidelity or insurance claims for once.”

“We’re happy to be of service,” James said dryly.

Gabriel singled out a page. “The documents you provided got me pretty far. Not much came up in Massachusetts, but then I started looking out of state.”

He slid the page across to me. It was a birth certificate.

“California?” I muttered, worrying my bottom lip. “That’s a big move for a kid to make. Wouldn’t Kian remember it?”

“There’s more.” Gabriel slid the entire folder over. It was a news article: one about a suspicious fire that killed two people and injured three more.

I was baffled. What did this have to do with Kian? “I don’t understand.”

“It’s the strangest thing.” Gabriel pointed to a highlighted section on the page. “The victims’ five-year-old boy was never found. This article is the only thing to survive the fire. There were no arson reports, no witness statements, and no other new reports to be found. Every first responder who was there that day has mysteriously vanished.”

I rolledmy shoulders to combat the chill creeping down my spine. Everything in that article felt eerily familiar: a suspicious fire, people dead—and more missing.

“What aren’t you saying, Gabriel?” James asked. I looked up, surprised to find that Gabriel was still staring at me. Those red eyes burned through me. James was onto something—Gabriel definitely knew more than he let on, and James had figured that out before I had. “You think this was related to the supernatural.”

“I do.”

I held up the papers in my hands. “Did you clean this up?”

A thin-lipped smile. “Alas, my presence was required elsewhere. But my sister, Abigail, was the one to head that mission.”

“Can we talk to her?” If she could confirm that the victims of that fire didn’thaveany children, then there was a chance we could be wrong about this entire thing.

“Ryder, are you sure you want to keep digging into this? You might uncover some things you never wanted to.”