Page 103 of The Diamond in the Rough

Hart rolled his eyes. “Fuck’s sake, Tony,” he muttered.

But Raj was still looking at me, pinning me with those gold-brown eyes.

“I just—realized he might be here,” I half-whispered.

“He’s not,” Hart interrupted. “We know he happens to be out of town today, and our warrant allows us to enter and search in his absence.” He grinned at me. “We wouldn’t hang you out to dry like that, kid.”

I nodded, relief flooding through me.

Raj let out a soft grunt, but he stopped staring at me, so he must have been satisfied that I was no longer terrified. “I’m going to knock on the door as though he might be, though,” he said, and I realized he was talking to me, even though he was no longer looking at me. He was letting me know that I shouldn’t worry just because he was about to knock as though he didn’t know whether or not Jennings was home.

I couldn’t decide if that made me feel better—because he was thinking about me—or worse—because he thought I was an overly-sensitive coward.

His big fist knocked on the door, the boom echoing through the wood. “Mr. Jennings. FBI. Please open the door.”

He and Hart both looked bored as they waited a minute or so, then Raj repeated the pounding and calling.

When the house remained quiet, Hart and Raj both pulled guns.

“Okay, people,” Raj said to the other agents who had driven in other cars, their unmarked sedans—and one van—parked up and down the street. Like Raj and Hart, they were wearing bullet-proof vests and carried weapons.

“Stay out here, kid,” Hart said to me. “Until one of us comes to get you.”

I nodded. I had no interest in following two armed men into an uncertain situation without them checking to make sure it was safe, first.

“Ready?” Raj asked, looking at Hart. The elf nodded, and then Raj leaned back a little, then delivered an explosive kick to the door that ripped out the bolt and half-knocked it off its hinges. Even though I’d known it was coming, I still jumped at the crash, sucking in a hard breath.

My heart pounded, adrenaline running through my system as I listened to them move through the house, voices of the agents calling “Clear!” as they moved through empty rooms and hallways.

After a long silence in which I felt my anxiety growing, Hart stuck his head back out the now-broken door. “It’s clear,” he said, beckoning me to come into the house.

I swallowed, then followed him inside.

I had to blink a couple of times after I walked into the relative darkness of the interior in order for my eyes to adjust. Like the outside of the house, the inside ostensibly looked normal. Laminate fake-wood flooring, rugs, furniture. The occasional knick-knack.

I’d expect a killer—an assassin, if the memories I’d been in were any indication, since he’d been hired to kill Yvonne Gates-Adams—to have something a bit more… violent in the house. A sword mounted above the fake fireplace, rather than a TV, for instance. Or maybe taxidermied animals everywhere. Or statues of death gods.

But there wasn’t really anything that struck me as at all out of the ordinary. But it still felt creepy. Maybe because I knew he was a killer. Maybe if I’d just walked into the house, then it wouldn’t have felt that way.

“Jesus fuck,” Hart grumbled, although loudly enough that everyone in the room could hear him. “Is there a single fucking personal thing in this place?”

Or maybe other people thought it was just as odd. Hart clearly did.

A youngish blond agent with slightly sunburned skin and wide eyes walked in from a doorway. “I’ve got a grocery list,” he said. “And there’s condiments in the fridge.”

Hart blew out a breath. “So the fucker lives here, then. Because this looks like a damn model house, not a house-house.”

“Until you go into the attic,” came Raj’s voice from the stairs.

“Creepy shit up there?” Hart asked.

“I don’t know that I’d use that particular term,” came the mild response. “Rayn, would you please come with me?”

I swallowed, nodded, and walked over to the stairs, then followed Raj up to the second floor, then up a set of pull-down open wood stairs.

Not that I’d ever spent much time in attics like this, but TV and movies had led me to believe that attics were supposed to be dusty and filled with boxes and dropcloths, maybe with sunlight filtering through a charming round window at the far end.

But this was something completely different, and I immediately wished I wasn’t up here.