Page 104 of The Diamond in the Rough

There hadn’t been any knives or swords on display downstairs.

Because they were all up here.

One wall of the attic was a mini armory—I could see four guns, six knives, and a few spaces that clearly had heldsomething,but which were currently empty.

Raj didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to—I knew hewanted me to touch the weapons. I also knew that he knew that I really didn’t want to.

But I was going to do it anyway.

Spendingthat much time in the mind of a killer was something I never,everwanted to do again.

I’d also thrown up again.

Because the glee he felt every time he took a life was justdisgusting.

I’d witnessed the deaths of a wealthy banker, a woman who had been pushing her child’s buggy, an already-dying old man, several different men of different races and ethnicities in dark alleys or night clubs or abandoned buildings.

I gave Raj as many names as I got out of the weapons. Seventeen victims.

And then Hart came up, muttering curses under his breath, and stopped in front of me. I looked up from my bucket.

“I need you to come poke something,” he said, then his eyes flicked down to the bucket. “You up for that?”

I nodded, preparing to stand by pressing my hands into my own thighs.

“Are you certain?” Raj’s deeper voice asked me. “This has clearly been… difficult.”

“I’m fine,” I answered sharply, pushing myself to my feet. I wasn’t going to be the reason this failed. I wasn’t going to disappoint them by refusing to touch something else.

I was going to have nightmares for a week. A month, maybe.

Pushing away the nausea and concentrating very hardon keeping my legs steady so that it wouldn’t be apparent to any of the other agents—but especially Raj—that I wasn’t capable of doing this.

My knees felt wobbly on the way down the attic stairs, and I held hard to the two-by-four that served as a rickety railing on one side.

Step. Step. Step. Step.

I followed Hart down the hall, then down the much more stable staircase with its sturdy railing, my fingers running along the wall on the other side for extra stability. At the bottom, Hart led me down a hallway and into an office. Like every other room that wasn’t the attic, it looked perfectly normal. A moderately nice desk, a fabric office chair, a lamp, some abstract painting prints on the walls. A round glass paperweight that could double as a magnifying glass. Nothing particularly personal. No monogrammed letter openers, no figurines or office-style name plates or fancy pens. Just a plain little office basket pen cup with generic clear plastic Bic pens.

Hart led me over to a massive safe. I looked at him, confused.

“I want to know if you can get the code,” he said.

“How?” I asked.

He shrugged. “When I open my locker at the FBI, I think the code out loud. I’m hoping this asshat does the same thing.”

I blinked. He was right—or, at least, I assumed he was, because I did it, too. If I had to enter a code, whether on a keypad or a locker dial, I thought my way through each number and spin.

So I nodded once, then put my hand on the dial.

This was far tooprecious to leave lying around. Too precious even to store upstairs, which wasn’t locked, even if he knew the second anyone pulled the attic ladder down.

I sucked in a breath,pulling myself out, and turned wide eyes to Hart. “He knows we’ve been in the attic,” I blurted, breathless. “He has a sensor or a camera or something up there.”

Hart’s brow rose. “He thought about that?” he asked.

I nodded, my heart pounding. “Whatever he put in this safe,” I explained, rushing. “Whatever it is, he wanted it here, not up there, even though he knew that he would know the second anyone pulled the ladder down.”