Page 36 of Backfire
“I’d be nice to him if I were you,Bréagán.” Devlin warned. “Reese is the only thing standing between you and a dirt nap.”
Oh, so this was Reese. That explained why his voice was familiar.
“I’m sorry. Please forgive my attitude.” I stepped forward and held out my hand. “Devlin has told me so much about you.”
Like how he was his friend who liked to evaluate women based on their oral skills. And how could I forget theI’d slit your throat if it wasn’t for Reesecomment?
Reese smiled and reached out to take my hand. The warming sensation that floated through my palm wasn’t enough to detour me from my goal. My other arm swung through the air, cracking the book I held off the side of Reese’s face.
I smiled at Devlin. “How’s that for nice?” Then I stormed out.
Angus and I were about to have a serious talk on his choice of educator.
Growing up in the system taught me two things: How to survive and how to argue my point. I was pretty adept at both. Or at least that’s what I thought until I barged into Angus’s office.
He didn’t just out-logic me, he had paperwork to back it up. Whenever I tried to argue Reese’s inability, Angus would throw a file at me. Ten minutes later, and even I was willing to admit that Reese was more than qualified to handle my lessons.
The man had more degrees than I had hair clips, and that was saying a lot. I’d been collecting them since I was seven. Why I felt drawn to sparkly little trinkets, I had no idea. I never wore any of them. I just liked having them.
Instead of having tea parties with stuff animals, I had traffic jams with plastic bugs and bows. While it wasn’t the most normal thing to do, I could argue that hair clips were more useful. Couldn’t pick a lock with a stuffed animal.
Speaking of picking locks…
My gaze shifted over to a large black filing cabinet in the corner. It wasn’t the small silver keyhole in the top right corner that caught my attention. It was the portrait of Angus hanging above it. Etched into the bottom of the golden frame was the same phrase Devlin had in his room.Mors vincit omnia.
“Is there something else I can help you with?” Angus shifted, making his leather chair creak as he tucked Reese’s file back in his desk.
I shook my head. “No.”
What other information did he have in that drawer? Did he have files on other people, like, say, his kids or Charmaine? The picture I found proved that Angus knew something. Charmaine had never looked at me with that much clarity. Could the answers to her condition be inside that desk?
“I trust your reservations about Reese are satisfied then?”
“I suppose.”
Satisfied was a bit strong. I wouldn’t hit Reese with another book, but I also wouldn’t apologize for doing it the first time. He could thank his friend Devlin for that.
My eyes once again wandered back to the corner. “It’s kind of tacky to have a self-portrait in your office, don’t you think?”
I’d met some stuck-up people in my time, but Angus took the cake. He didn’t even bother to give me a simple grunt of acknowledgment before turning his attention to the papers on his desk. Can’t say I was surprised.
All it would take to see how far the stick was shoved up his ass was one look at the ebony furniture occupying his office. Which, by the way, was the one room that was easy to find in this godforsaken house.
That could have something to do with the brass nameplate on the door, but I preferred to take it as a win. For once, I didn’t get lost.
How sad was that? My crowning achievement since coming here was finding a room. God forbid I ever went camping. I’d be the girl who starved to death in the middle of the forest while the search party was less than twenty feet away.
“What does that phrase mean?” I wasn’t sure why I asked that. I certainly didn’t expect him to answer. But he did.
“Death conquers all.”
Who the hell would want that in their office? Or bedroom? As morbid as it was, the old electric chair in Devlin’s room was just for decoration. He was an ass, but that didn’t mean he’d actually hurt someone, right?
I looked around the room. The fancy crown molding and dark hardwood floors screamed one thing. Opulence. Which led me to a question that had been picking at the back of my mind since I arrived. What did Angus do for work? Where did the Adairs get their money? It was kind of important information to have.
Some boring corporate job was one thing, but if the source of their income was more nefarious… Well, that required a whole different skill set to work with. One of my foster fathers was a drug dealer, and not a small time one.
That was when I learned the true meaning of being seen and not heard. People who thrived in the underbelly of society didn’t have a problem hurting someone. Disappearances happened all the time in their world, which, considering Devlin’s threats, didn’t bode well for me.
