Page 19 of Through Any Fire (Any x #1)

“Perhaps. But as it stands, we’ve reviewed what footage we do have and found nothing out of the ordinary.”

Nothing out of the ordinary? So someone could sneak onto the Edwards’s property, plant a bomb in Cal’s car, detonate it at exactly the right moment, and get away scot-free? There has to be some sort of evidence.

The skin around my wrist tingles as if it remembers the stale touch of the man from the party. Cal looks over to me and must notice my distaste. He lifts the phone once more. “Send it over anyway. Get me the hour before.”

Isaiah sighs. “Fine,” he relents. An audible click signals the end of the call.

Cal tosses his phone onto his desk. “We’ll find him.”

“He said the strangest thing. He asked me where you were, and then waved it off and said you’ve got bigger fires to be putting out than escorting me. I thought he was being satirical, but now…”

Callahan scoffs, and his grip on the edge of his desk tightens. “What else did he say?”

I think back to the conversation. “Most of it was a lot of nothing, just a guy trying to unnerve me. He had an accent, something European. He said something about looking at me and needing a cigarette before he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack and lit up. A server came rushing over and told him to put it out, so he dropped it in my drink. I about threw it in his face, but the server took it from me.”

Everett crosses his arms, and a deep scowl creases his face. “Did he know you?”

I nod. “He called me Ms. Catrone before he corrected himself. It felt like he was trying to intimidate me. But our wedding was in the papers with profiles on both of us. At the time, it wasn’t as unusual as it is now because anyone could’ve known who I was.”

“It could be connected to the fire and the note.”

Matthias’s words are like a shock to my system. “ The note. What did the note say? You got cut off by that fucking bomb.”

Callahan looks away from me as he stands and pours himself a drink from the bar cart. He slings back the whiskey, then pours another and takes it back to his desk.

“It was…” He trails off, voice suddenly catching. He tosses back another healthy swallow and hisses as he wipes the corner of his mouth with his thumb.

I stand and lean over his desk. “It was what , Cal?”

Tense silence builds as he refuses to look at me.

Instead, he stares at his almost empty glass, rolling it around his hands, watching as the last drops of the amber liquid pool at the bottom of the tumbler.

Finally, he looks over to me. “There was a note found on the gate in front of the warehouse that was burned down.”

Through whatever cosmic force, I know whatever he’s about to say will change everything.

“What did it say?” The words wobble out of me.

Cal’s nostrils flare. “It said, ‘ Til Death Do You Part, Mrs. Keane. Until then, your brother will do.’ ”

The words hang between us, thickening into a deadly storm of electric anxiety and muggy tension. I don’t know what to say, and I collapse back into the chair, curling my fingers into fists and dropping them into my lap. The weight of the implication presses on me.

“Mason,” I whimper. His face materializes like a ghost, battered and bruised. It’s like a sucker punch to the gut, stinging harder than Jude could ever manage. I knew I’d wasted too much time.

I look back to Callahan and find his usual defenses missing. He openly searches my face, and I see a flicker of doubt that’s quickly replaced by resolve.

“We have to find him.” My words seem to change something in Cal.

The air thickens until it lodges in the base of my throat.

“What happened tonight?” I ask Cal.

His jaw ticks, and he looks to Matthias.

Matthias stiffens, his knuckles turning white where they grip the arm of the couch. “At approximately eight-fifty, the Culver Street warehouse was set on fire. Redding and his team were on site, and there were eight casualties. Any product left was compromised.”

The clock on the wall ticks loudly until it’s almost all I can hear. I draw in a shaky breath. Eight dead.

“And Redding?” Cal asks.

A prolonged pause follows. Matthias shakes his head. “He didn’t make it.”

Callahan curses and slams a fist on his desk. It echoes throughout the room. A tense quiet follows. Everett enters again and crosses the room to sit on the couch.

This time, it’s Cohen who chimes in. “Who called it in? ”

“Barley. He was on his way in for inventory when he noticed the flames. He called Redding, and when he didn’t pick up, he called Everett.”

“Who are among the dead?”

Everett lists the other seven casualties, and while I don’t recognize any of the names, my heart breaks for them. When he finishes, there’s a somber silence. But only for a moment.

The next instant, Cal’s office door slams open and crashes into the wall as Lucas shoves into the room. Ash coats his buzzed head, and a scowl mars his face. He barely spares me a glance and snaps, “The footage was wiped.”

The room is icy as his words simmer in the air between us.

“Which cameras?” Matthias asks.

Luc scrubs a hand over his face, smearing ash and dirt. “All of them. Inside and out. They were all wiped clean of the last twenty-four hours.”

Just like at the Edwards’s residence. Shit.

A ding chimes from Cal’s laptop. He opens it, eyes narrowing at the screen. “Looks like Edwards came through.”

His words ring out like a clang of a bell, and we rush to gather around his desk. We spend the next fifteen minutes tracking the stranger to a blue Tahoe, and Everett jots down the license plate. He steps outside to call someone, presumably to have it tracked.

“Why’d they target us in front of Edwards’s home?” Cal mumbles.

“Before the note at the fire, I would’ve suspected a coincidence.” Luc’s voice is drenched in fatigue, and he scrubs a tattooed hand over his buzzed hair.

“Nothing is a coincidence.” My voice cracks from disuse, and I grab Cal’s glass of whiskey and finish it .

Cal looks up from the screen to meet my gaze. Something flashes in his brown eyes, and I feel a tug on my chest.

“No,” he says, throat bobbing. “No, there’s not.”

“Someone who doesn’t want us using Edwards to ship product overseas?” Matthias’s question keeps us quiet in thought. So that’s what we were doing there…

“Perhaps. However, we’ve been quiet about the partnership. Only a select few know we’ve been meeting.”

We continue to investigate.

For the next hour, we pore over the conversation from every angle, analyzing every possible meaning. No one recognizes him, but the footage shows a tattoo peeking out of his sleeve. Everett enhances the still as best he can, but it’s still grainy.

“Is that a D ?” I point at what looks to be the point of a dagger. It slices through the top of a curved, capital D .

Everyone gathered around the computer leans closer. We work through the footage, shot by shot, trying to get a better look, but his sleeve never recedes any further. Cohen furiously types out a text to someone while I tuck that intel in the forefront of my mind.

The only thing we could gather was that he was likely involved in both the car bombing and the fire at the warehouse, and that because of the timing of both, there was likely more than one person involved.

With that realization, my stomach turns to stone, and prickles break out over my skin. That multiple people want me dead is jarring, something I’ve never encountered before.

Growing up in the Bianchi house, I was no stranger to death. Granted, except for my father, the Family typically hid the more gruesome details from me, but that doesn’t discount the several dead bodies I’ve seen over the years—or learned of various methods to dispose of them.

And when my dad died, I was—of course—sad, but I wasn’t that upset.

Somewhere along the way, I realized my father was the one responsible for his death.

He may have died in service to the Family by taking a bullet that was meant for Elias’s father, Dominic, but it was his own fault for choosing to involve himself with a criminal organization.

Death is part of life. It’s natural. But when faced with my mortality, it’s shaken me to my core.

I look to Callahan. He’s deep in conversation with Matthias and Everett and doesn’t seem to notice my staring.

His eyes are stained with purple shadows, and his five o’clock stubble only highlights his exhaustion, but he’s still the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.

It was true eleven years ago, and it’s true to this day.

Only now, I have the distinct feeling that whatever future I saw flashes of might not come true at all.

When a purple haze settles over the horizon, Callahan dismisses Everett to double security surrounding the remaining four warehouses in Roswell.

If the technology was failing them—or being tampered with—more eyes on the ground could help catch the perpetrator.

Cal also instructs Everett to assign leaders to each security detail at the warehouse, who will ensure shift changes are smooth and cameras are working properly.

The crews are stretched thin as it is, but no one speaks their nerves aloud.

Without anyone noticing, I slip from the room. I trudge back to my suite and fall into bed with a heavy heart.

As a war picks up outside this manor, a similar one wages inside of me.