Page 89 of Contested Crown

“Now who’s asking too many times?” But there was no heat in my words, and I crept inside first.

The club was a skeleton, all the flesh and meat burned off, everything that had made it beautiful reduced to the steel framing, the columns and struts blackened. The bar used to be polished wood, the wall of alcohol behind nothing but soot-stained, shattered bottles.

The fire department had moved most of the damaged furniture to the center of the room, and everything was black, warped by the ghosts of flames.

Beside me, Cade was pale, his eyes slightly distant. I could tell he was seeing the bar as it had been: luxurious and expensive. Nothing was too cheap for the wealthy mages Declan wanted to court.

“Come on,” I said, heading into the back. Cade followed me through the small kitchen, the industrial stove the only thing that looked normal, every other surface stained by soot and ash.

The office was in the back, a large room that had space for Declan but also a wall of monitors. At the door, I pulled up short.

It was my turn to see ghosts. I remembered the first time I’d been called in here, sitting on the other side of Declan’s desk like I was interviewing for a job. Then the last time, when I’d been so confident in my position that I had sat behind Declan’s desk because who was going to think of telling on me?

What if I had made my move then? How many of the guys would have sided with me? Could all of this have been avoided if I’d just taken my chance earlier?

I blinked back to myself and circled around the desk, finding the wall next to it.

“What are you looking for?” Cade finally asked after I crouched down on the filthy floor and pressed my fingers into the wall.

“Declan doesn’t keep a safe,” I said. “He has a hidden compartment with a safe inside. He doesn’t tell anyone about it. If he was having someone else do his dirty work…”

“Maybe he didn’t tell them about the safe?” Cade asked, frowning. “That seems unlikely.”

“He might have just wanted whatever was inside to burn.” I gestured to the wall. The way the flames had burned everything, the cracked paint and scorch marks were undisturbed. No one had touched it since the place had gone up.

When I finally found the right button, pressing it hard, the wall didn’t split open like I was used to. The heat from the blaze must have damaged the mechanism.

Frustrated, I sat back.

“Here,” Cade said. “Where is it?”

Based on the location of the button embedded in the wall, I sketched a rough outline.

“Why would he leave evidence here?” Cade asked, his tattoos dripping off his fingers.

The sharp scent of burning filled my nose. “Because he wanted it gone. He didn’t want it found.”

“There,” Cade said. He pulled his tattoos back, and I saw a narrow rectangle in the wall, like Cade had sliced through the charred material.

Carefully, I used my fingers to pry it loose, and underneath, as I expected, everything was burned. I took out the papers, which disintegrated to dust in my hands.

All that was left was scraps—a word here or there, a number.

“What are these usually?” Cade asked.

“The real books for the place,” I said. “The numbers that Declan doesn’t report to the IRS. But Declan wouldn’t burn down the place if he was trying to hide tax evasion. That’s what he has his expensive accountants for.”

“So what else was he doing here?” Cade echoed the questions I’d had since Declan’s bodyguards had burned down Lion.

“Yeah,” I said. “We need to look around some more?—”

I broke off, raising a hand to Cade’s arm. Someone else was in the building with us.

ChapterTwenty-Nine

It took a moment for my ears to place the sounds—the crunch of glass under feet, the scrape as something was moved aside.

Someone else was searching the bar. I held up a hand, and Cade stilled, his frown going from annoyed to worried with just a crease between his brows. I closed my eyes, listening. The low rumble of conversation was too muffled for me to understand what they were saying, but I heard two distinct voices.