But the centerpiece of the office was an elaborate bar that took up one entire wall, complete with several red padded barstools lined up in front of it. A wide assortment of liquor bottles perched prettily on the wooden shelves behind the brass-railed bar, along with rows of gleaming glassware. I eyed the bottles, recognizing them all as being well out of my price range but fitting right in with the rest of the luxe furnishings. The air reeked of expensive floral cologne and even more expensive cigar smoke, adding to the feel of a gentlemen’s club. I had to wrinkle my nose to hold back a sneeze.
But I wasn’t here to gawk at the expensive furnishings, so I moved over to the desk in the back of the room near the window that I’d just slithered through. To my disappointment, the golden wood was spotless, as though it had never been touched, much less actually used, and not so much as a pen or a paper clip littered the smooth, shiny surface. Then again, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Damian Rivera didn’t have to do something as common as work. From what I knew of him, his favorite hobbies were drinking, smoking, shopping for antiques, and flitting from one woman to the next. Not necessarily in that order.
Still, I’d come here to search for information about the Circle, so I opened all the drawers and tapped all around the desk, looking for hidden compartments. But the drawers were empty, except for some stacks of cocktail napkins and paper coasters, and no secret hidey-holes were carved into the wood.
Strike one.
Since nothing was in the desk, I moved over to the bar, perusing the shelves underneath it and the wooden ones behind it. But all I found were more napkins and coasters, along with several sterling-silver martini shakers and other old-fashioned drink-making accoutrements.
Strike two.
Frustration surged through me, but I forced myself to stay calm and search the rest of the office. I ran my hands over all of the furniture, looking for any secret compartments. Examined all of the vases, carvings, and statues for false bottoms. Tapped on the walls, searching for hidden panels. I even rolled back the thick rugs and used my magic to listen to the flagstones, just in case a safe was hidden in the floor.
But there was nothing. No secret compartments, no hidden panels, no floor safes.
Strike three, and I was out.
My frustration mixed with disappointment, both burning through my veins like bitter acid. A couple of weeks ago, I’d found several safety-deposit boxes full of information on the Circle that Fletcher Lane, my mentor, had compiled. For some reason that I didn’t understand, Fletcher had only photos of the group’s members, but it had been simple enough for me to get their names, especially since many of them were such wealthy, prominent Ashland citizens.
I’d scouted several of the Circle members, and Damian Rivera proved to be the easiest target with the least amount of security. So I’d broken in here tonight in hopes of learning more about the group, especially the identity of the mystery man who headed the organization, the bastard who’d ordered my mother’s murder. But maybe there was a reason Rivera’s security was so lax. Maybe he wasn’t as important or as involved as I’d thought.
Still frustrated, I turned to the fireplace, which took up most of the wall across from the bar. Since any little bit of information could be important, I pulled out my phone and snapped shots of all the framed photos propped on the mantel, hoping that one of them might hold some small clue.
Not only did Damian Rivera love the finer things in life, but he also loved himself, since most of the photos were softly lit glamour shots showing off his wavy black hair, dark brown eyes, bronze skin, and startlingly white teeth. Rivera was in his prime, in his early thirties, and he was an exceptionally handsome man—and a thoroughly disgusting individual, even by Ashland’s admittedly low, low standards. Not only was he a trust-fund baby, living off his family’s wealth, never having worked a day in his life, but he’d also never faced any consequences for any of the despicable things he’d done.
And he had done plenty.
Silvio Sanchez, my personal assistant, had been looking into Rivera for only a few days, but he’d already found several arrests, mostly for DUIs, stretching all the way back to when Damian was a teenager. Rivera also had a violent temper and some serious anger-management issues. He’d beaten more than one girlfriend over the years, servants too, and had even put a couple of them in the hospital with broken bones and other serious injuries.
But all of that was nothing compared with the woman he’d killed.
One night during his college years, Rivera had gotten into his SUV and decided to see how fast he could drunkenly navigate Ashland’s mountain roads. He’d come around one curve, crossed the center line, and plowed head-on into a sedan being driven by a single mother of two. She died instantly, but Rivera walked away from the crash with only minor injuries. He never was charged in the woman’s death, thanks to his own mother, who pulled all the right strings and paid off all the right people to cover the whole thing up.
But Damian hadn’t learned his lesson. He hadn’t learned anything, since he’d been arrested for several more DUIs over the years, including his most recent offense on New Year’s Eve just a few days ago. Not that he would face any consequences for that one either. His mama was long dead, but Damian still had someone to clean up his messes: Bruce Porter, a dwarf who’d been the Rivera family’s head of security for years.
I stopped in front of a picture of Maria Rivera, a beautiful woman with long golden hair, brown eyes, and red lips. In the photo, she was smiling and standing between Damian and his father, Richard Rivera, with a dour--looking Bruce Porter hovering behind them in the distance. I raised my phone and snapped a shot of them—
“You’ve been in there a while now.” Finn’s voice sounded in my ear. “Does that mean you’ve finally found something good?”
“No,” I muttered. “Just a lot of liquor, antiques, and photos.”
“What kind of liquor?” Finn chirped with obvious interest. “Anything I would drink?”
I slid my phone into my jacket pocket and took a closer look at the rows of gleaming bottles behind the bar. “Oh, I think that you would drink them all, especially since Rivera’s tastes are even more expensive than yours. Why, you would cackle with glee if you could see all the spirits he has in here.”
“Well, why don’t you bring me a bottle or two so I can cackle in person?” Finn chirped again. “I might as well get something for standing out here in the cold.”
Even though he was in the woods outside and couldn’t see me, I still rolled my eyes. “I came here for information on the Circle. Not to pilfer Daddy’s booze like some naughty teenager.”
“You say potato, I say opportunity.”
I had started to respond when a faint creak sounded in the hallway outside, as though someone had stepped on a floorboard. I froze. The creak came again, louder and closer this time, and it was followed by something far, far worse: the distinctive snick of a key sliding in a lock.
“Let’s have a drink,” a faint, muffled voice said on the other side of the door.
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