Page 73 of The Diamond in the Rough

Raj’s lips pressed together.

“With only a last name,” Hart replied, “we can’t fucking do much but keep an eye on people.”

Raj sighed. “We’ve identified possible families with those last names, but we have nothing else to suggest which members of those families might be involved.” He briefly tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair he was sitting in. “We can keep an eye on their activities to determinewhether or not they engage in any suspect behaviors.”

Ward didn’t look convinced. “So they can do this again?” he asked.

“So that we can figure out who the actual killer is,” Raj replied, his voice firm. “If we bring in our suspects, or even are more obvious about our surveillance, the killer himself will go to ground. We’d rather be able to catch all three of them at the same time—and anyone else who comes to light during the course of the investigation.”

I could tell he was annoyed from the clipped, formal tone.

Ward crossed his arms, not taking terribly kindly to Raj’s irritation. “Just make sure no one else gets killed in the mean time.”

“We’re doing everything we can,” Hart interrupted. “Even though it fucking sucks to have to wait.”

Ward let out a little harumphing sound, clearly still displeased. “You’re just going to run Rayn into the ground in the mean time,” he grumbled.

I felt my face flush. While I appreciated that Ward was trying to look out for me, it made me feel like a child who couldn’t make his own decisions, andthatI didn’t appreciate.

“Rayn is under no obligation to do anything he doesn’t feel comfortable doing,” Raj retorted, also clearly annoyed.

Ward looked over at me. “Are you okay?” he asked me.

“Yes, fine, thank you,” I replied. A little tired, but I didn’t feel too exhausted, and the nausea had mostly faded.

“Really?” Ward asked.

I frowned at him. “Yes,” I repeated.

He studied me, as though trying to decide whether ornot I was lying to him. He made a sound that said he wasn’t sure whether I was or not, but he wasn’t going to make an issue of it. I had the feeling he wasn’t going to let it go, though.

But then he said something far worse.

“You haven’t tried to find him in your dreams, have you?”

I felt the blood drain from my face.

“In… dreams?” Raj asked, and his voice was now completely flat. Devoid of emotion.

I glanced up and found his gold-brown gaze fixed on me.

I couldn’t meet it, staring down at my hands.

“Have you?” Ward demanded, taking my discomfort completely the wrong way.

“No!” Of that, at least, I wasn’t guilty. It hadn’t even occurred to me, in fact—but I wouldn’t have tried it, even if it had. I had no desire to enter the subconscious of someone like Yvonne Gates-Adams’s killer.

I knew what it was like to kill, but I wasn’t a killer-for-hire. I didn’t hate Arcanids. And I didn’t want to steal anyone’s magic. I wasn’t like either the killer or Garraway.

And I didn’t have any idea what other abilities either the killer or Garraway had. If they could use a dream to find me. And if they could find me, then they could find Ward and Mason and Beck and Jackson… and I wasn’t willing to risk any of that.

“What do you mean, ‘find him in your dreams’?” Raj demanded, and I could feel the burning of his gaze.

Ward looked over at him, seemingly surprised at the intensity of Raj’s question. “Rayn is a dreamwalker,” he replied. “Some witches have the capacity to… enter into someone else’s dreams. It’s how Rayn found me in the first place.”

“And that’s what led us to Tranquil Brook,” Hart put in.

“I see,” Raj said, and the words were ice cold. Flat.