Rogan had given Nevada a beautiful necklace with a pendant. She thought it was an emerald at the time, but it turned out to be Tear of the Aegean, a one-of-a-kind blue-green diamond. Now it totally made sense.
“Will you let Nevada wear the tiara?” I probably shouldn’t have asked that. It was rude.
“I was counting on it. After the wedding, the Sealight will belong to her and she can pass it on to her and Connor’s children.” Mrs. Rogan sighed. “One small problem.”
“Yes?”
“The crown is missing.”
“What do you mean it’s missing?”
Concern flickered over Mrs. Rogan’s features. “It was in its usual place two days ago and it’s not there today. Unfortunately, we have to conclude that it was stolen.”
Considering how many people had been in and out of the house, it wasn’t shocking. We vetted everyone, but background checks never told you the whole picture. A landscaping crew prepared the grounds for the wedding, carpenters were building the custom arbor, another crew was raising an enormous clear tent, at least eight people were hanging lights on the trees, the interior designer and her people, the furniture delivery people . . . That would be a lot of people to interview. It would take Nevada at least two hours. Getting her to sit still for that long would be a challenge.
“The Sealight is tagged with a sensor,” Mrs. Rogan said. “It’s embedded into the crown and cannot be removed without destroying the tiara. The system can track it through a satellite with the accuracy of up to one mile. Right now, it’s telling me that the tiara is still on the premises. I would like you to find it.”
Me? I had worked for our agency since I was twelve, first doing small things like surveillance and answering phones, then moving on to my own jobs, but none of my cases were that significant. Mostly, I dealt with insurance fraud because it was low risk, and runaway teens because kids told me things they wouldn’t usually tell an adult. This was a big leap.
“We would . . .” I was a rude idiot. I should thank her for her confidence. “I mean, thank you for trusting me. But we must sort through at least a hundred employees, many of them new to the estate. Nevada can do it in a fraction of the time it would take me, and she would do so with complete accuracy. My sister never had a false positive.”
“I don’t think the culprit is an employee.” Mrs. Rogan looked like she’d bitten into a lime. “I’m confident it’s a member of my family.”
“Why?”
Mrs. Rogan turned to the bookcase. A section of it—six feet wide and twelve shelves high, all crammed to the brim—rose about one-eighth of an inch off the floor and moved toward us.
I held my breath. The weight had to be enormous.
The bookshelves slid past us and gently landed on the floor, revealing a short passage leading to a round chamber. The lights came on, highlighting persimmon-colored walls pitted with alcoves and niches, each holding a treasure: statues, jeweled daggers, scrolls and books in vacuum-sealed cases, and in the center, in the place of prominence, a niche with a bare jewelry holder.
I remembered to breathe.
“Moving the bookcase by normal means would take several people,” Mrs. Rogan said. “They would have to unload the books, slide it out without damaging the floor, then slide it back in and fill it with books. I was in this office for the entire afternoon yesterday and almost the entire day the day before that. At night the office is locked and secured by several alarms installed by Connor’s people. To disarm them, the perpetrator would have needed the code and my thumbprint. The windows here face the cliff, and they are secured by alarms as well.”
Although most biometric security systems were difficult to bypass, it could be done. Fingerprints and even irises could be digitally cloned by using pictures, sometimes the ones taken with a regular cell phone. “Who knows the code?”
“Connor and I. The house server logs every time the door opens, and there were no log-in attempts after I locked the office for the night.”
“Do you lock the office during the day if you leave it for a short period of time?”
“No. Children like to play here, and since only a powerful telekinetic can open the vault, I didn’t think anyone would touch it.”
I glanced at the corners where the security camera watched over us. “What about the security feed?”
Mrs. Rogan looked sheepish. “The cameras aren’t on.”
“Why?”
She sighed. “Because a woman has a right to privacy inside her own house. The cameras that cover ingress and egress points are always on and the security footage is monitored by Connor’s people, but I don’t want strangers watching me inside my home. We compromised.”
Knowing my future brother-in-law, he wouldn’t have liked that one bit. Connor Rogan was deeply paranoid when it came to security. Nevada was too. I shuddered to think what their kids would be like.
“You see now,” Mrs. Rogan said. “There was no opportunity to remove the Sealight by ordinary means. The culprit is a powerful telekinetic, which makes this a family affair. And that’s exactly why I don’t want to involve your sister. I’ve had an opportunity to observe Nevada over the past three months and I have both respect and affection for your sister.”
“Then why not let her handle this?”
Mrs. Rogan folded her hands on her lap. “My son doesn’t care for some family members on my side. He has perfectly justifiable reasons for it. They are difficult, entitled, and often ungrateful. However, they are still my relatives. I remember playing in the garden with my brothers and sisters, the trips to the beach, and the family celebrations. I have hopes that we will mend the gulf widening between us. If we ask your sister to handle this theft, she will interrogate the family.”
Made sense to me. “And you don’t want that?”
“No. Nevada’s first introduction to the family can’t be that of interrogation and suspicion.”
Not to mention that when my sister really used her magic, she could paralyze her target and pry all of their secrets out of their minds. Those who experienced it never forgot it. That’s why our paternal grandmother, Victoria Tremaine, was so feared by other Primes.
“I know that you have a lot on your plate already,” Mrs. Rogan said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have anyone else to ask. If I go to Connor, my son will hold his relatives upside down one by one and shake them until they confess.”
Which would be a lot of fun to watch.
“You have investigative experience and I want to keep this within our family. Will you do this for me? As a favor.”
“Of course,” I said. “And it’s not a favor. Family members don’t owe favors to each other.”
Those assholes stole my sister’s crown. Nevada would wear the Sealight to her wedding even if I had to tear the house down to the slab to find it.
I faced Mrs. Rogan. “I understand that your condition is that Nevada can’t know?”
“Yes.”
“I have some conditions too. First, I will need access and authority to question your relatives. I can’t get very far if they refuse to answer me.”
“Not a problem,” she said.
“I will need access to your security footage. I would also like to place some additional surveillance cameras inside. They will be monitored by my cousin, not an outsider, and we will remove them once the tiara is found.”
“Can this be avoided?”
“No.” One of the first things I learned about investigation is to gather as much information as I could.
“Very well.” Mrs. Rogan nodded.
“Lastly, I have to tell Connor.”
“As long as he doesn’t interfere.”
“I also have to warn you,” I said. I’ve heard Nevada give this speech before and it felt odd to repeat it. “When an investigation includes members of one’s family, we often find something that everyone wishes would’ve stayed buried. You have to be prepared for that possibility.”
Mrs. Rogan considered it. “If one of them jeopardized my son’s wedding, I want them found. And punished. The family will forgive the embarrassment, but not the betrayal.”