Read Online Spirit and Dust by Rosemary Clement-Moore - Free Book Online

under the teakettle of my temper.
    “Why doesn’t Maguire just pay the stupid ransom?” I demanded. “I mean, what are they asking for? His left kidney?”
    Carson debated a moment and glanced at Lauren, who gave him a “your call” sort of shrug. “Because it’s not money they want,” he finally said. “It’s a thing. And he doesn’t have it.”
    “Why doesn’t he just go get it?” I asked, slightly more calm, but much more confused. “Or send somebody. He seems pretty good at that.” The two of them exchanged another look.
“Hey,”
I said, at the end of my rope with them. “Stop with the secret eyeball communication. I’m
standing right here
.”
    Carson sighed and reluctantly confessed, “Because we don’t know exactly what it is.”
    I eyed him suspiciously, but he didn’t
look
like he was joking. “That doesn’t make any sense. Are you supposed to just
guess
?”
    He didn’t laugh. “What the kidnappers said was, ‘Bring us the Oosterhouse Jackal.’ But no one here has heard of it.”
    “Did you Google it?” I asked, because that’s what I would do.
    Lauren slapped her forehead. “Oh my gosh, Carson! Why didn’t we think of that? Google! What a genius idea!”
    Carson straightened and jerked a thumb toward the door. “Out, Lauren. Now.”
    I expected an argument, or some more eye rolling. Instead, she indulged him, calling, “Don’t let her beat you up again,” before she closed the door behind her.
    At least Carson seemed as annoyed by that as I was. So we agreed on something.
    The room seemed smaller somehow, once he’d taken charge. He had a trick of fading out when he was with Maguire and Lauren, standing still and contained, as if he were just the muscle, waiting for orders. It would be easy to underestimate him. Maybe that was why he did it.
    But now he was all business. “Yes, of course we did anInternet search for the Oosterhouse Jackal. Nothing useful came up, but Maguire has people on it.”
    I was sure he did. Scary people without the restrictions of, oh, say, jurisprudence or civil liberties. My job was to follow the clues to Alexis. That was what I’d sworn to do.
    But something kept nagging at me. I mulled over what it might be as I went back to the curio case, looking at the stuff Alexis had collected, picking up the figurine Lauren had warned me away from. It actually did look old, even felt that way to the touch. But to my other senses it was oddly … inert. At any rate, it was not cursed from the tomb.
    When I turned, Carson was watching me, as if curious when the show would start. “I still don’t get it,” I said, fidgeting with the carved stone. “Why would the kidnappers ask for something that Maguire doesn’t have, or even have access to?”
    “Lauren and I have a theory,” he said. “We think
Alexis
knows what it is or where to find it. So maybe the kidnappers assumed the boss does, too.”
    “Her dorm room was totally trashed,” I said. “It could be they were looking there for this jackal thing. Whatever it is.”
    He took the stone figurine from my hand and placed it with care back on the shelf. “She wouldn’t keep anything valuable in her dorm. It’s too unprotected.”
    No argument there. But his point did spin up a new idea. “
This
place,” I said, meaning Castle Maguire, “is like a freaking fort. When was Alexis last home? Could she have hidden something here?”
    “About a week ago,” he answered. “The mansion
would
be a safe place to keep something secure from outsiders. We thought of that, and Lauren did her divination thing. There’s no sign of anything on the property.”
    “Yeah, but if you don’t know exactly what the Jackal is, any kind of locating spell would be only slightly better than guessing.” I knew that much, because it was usually the same for psychics.
    I’d also caught his qualifier—safe from outsiders. Where would Alexis keep something she didn’t want
Maguire
to know about?
    “Is there a