Page 2 of Mayhem

“I only need him functional for a little while.”

“You are describing organ removal in an office with a waiting room,” Samael said, and I glanced through the open doorway toward reception, where the chairs were empty, the front door was locked, and the last client had left almost half an hour ago.

I pointed that out because I was helpful, and he informed me that the absence of witnesses was not the same thing as professionalism, which sounded like quitter talk but was probably why he was in charge of paperwork and I wasn’t.

The corner of his mouth moved anyway, which meant I had almost won again. I nudged the chair backward and let it roll toward the wall behind me, where a year’s worth of Nichlas covered most of the available space. There were photographs from three states, printouts of old addresses, screenshots from accounts that had vanished within days of our finding them, campus maps, travel records, names connected by black marker, contacts that had led nowhere useful, and enough crossed-out possibilities to wallpaper a second office.

Some of the information had come from databases, some from surveillance, and some from people who had become remarkably cooperative after discovering that Father Three and I had different definitions of a polite follow-up.

The center of the board had changed three days ago. ALDRICH INSTITUTE sat across the top of a fresh campus map, and beneath it were a current enrollment record, a blurry photograph from outside the business annex, and Nichlas’ name without a question mark, a possible, or a maybe anywhere near it.

After a year of ghosts, false trails, burned accounts, bad addresses, and people swearing they had never heard of him while sweating through their shirts, we finally had him pinned to a place that existed.

I rolled closer until my knees nearly touched the wall and reached up to straighten the corner of the photograph even though it wasn’t crooked. Blond hair pulled back. Glasses. That same thin face I had once known well enough to read from across a room. He looked good, which was annoying. He looked rested, which was rude. He also looked alive, which was a temporary administrative error I intended to correct.

“You’re staring again,” Samael said.

“I’m debating on how to separate his head from his body.” I kept looking at the photograph, because for almost a year every trail had ended with someone telling us Nichlas had been there shortly before we arrived.

He had stayed just far enough ahead to remain a name on paper instead of a throat under my hand. Every time we found a financial trail, it broke. Every address turned into an empty room or someone who had never heard of him.

Then one tuition payment had landed wrong. Whoever was protecting him normally buried educational placement behind layers of legitimate money, and Nichlas’ payment should have disappeared into the same machinery.

Instead, a secondary account had been reused by someone who had gotten lazy, and the name attached to that transaction had appeared months earlier in a housing record Samael had discarded as unrelated. I had recognized it at two in the morning while eating cereal directly from the box at this very desk, because nothing said investigative genius like marshmallow dust on a case file and questionable posture.

“You’re welcome, by the way,” I said.

“For what?”

“Finding him.”

“You want a cookie?”

“Yes, daddy dear, I do.”

Samael grunted. “Aeron packed six in the kitchen.”

“See? That’s why Father One is my favorite.”

“You tell Runo he’s your favorite.”

“Father Four needed the reassurance,” I said, and a low cackle came from the front office before Runo leaned into the doorway with one shoulder against the frame.

Father Four looked from me to the wall behind me and then to Samael, his ocean-gray eyes bright with the kind of delight that usually meant somebody’s day was about to become legally complicated. “I heard favorite.”

“You’re nosy,” I muttered, deciding to twirl around in my chair again.

“That too.” He wandered farther into the room and studied Nichlas’ photograph with a smile that would have made a normal father deeply concerning. Mine had never even flirted with normal. “Have we settled on dismemberment, or are we still pretending Samael is going to keep this tasteful?”

“I was discussing kidneys,” I said.

Runo’s attention snapped to me. “Both?”

“See, this is why I liked talking to you! You get it. Father Three over there has lost his touch.” I shot Samael a wink anyway.

Samael rubbed a hand over his face and told us both to take it down several notches, which was rich coming from a man who had once built an information empire and still wanted the office to look respectable from the street.

Runo blinked at him before strolling toward Samael and plopping into his lap like the office wasn’t a workplace and I wasn’t an innocent bystander with eyes. I twisted away when he slotted his mouth over Samael’s, grimacing at the obnoxious display of affection. They’d been together over twenty years, and somehow the romance hadn’t yet had the decency to die quietly. “Disgusting,” I said, because someone had to defend the dignity of the room. “I’m fragile. I shouldn’t have to see Father Three get mauled before dinner.”