“Here.” I plucked out the papers and handing them to Donovan. “Photograph these.”

The detective spread the documents on the desk and used his cell phone to snap off some pictures. I reached back into the safe, wondering what other secrets it held.

My fingers closed around a small plastic vial, which I pulled out. I played my flashlight over the container. Black foam filled the inside of the vial, cradling a diamond.

The gemstone was small, not much bigger than one of my fingernails, and rough around the edges, but it still sparkled with an inner crimson fire. Definitely a high-quality stone. One that would polish up quite nicely.

But its sound—oh, its sound. That’s what held my attention.

The diamond practically sang with its own purity.

The gemstone’s inherent vibration was beautiful, breathtaking, enchanting, even. Like a Bach composition played by the master himself. I could have sat there listening to the diamond’s clear, pure song for hours.

Too bad an alarm blared out and cut into its lilting melody.

19

19

For a moment I froze, crouched there on the floor, the diamond vial in my hand. The alarm continued to blare like a police siren wailing in my head. Donovan Caine kept sorting through the papers, as if he couldn’t hear the unending, violent shrieking. He’d have to be deaf not to hear it.

I frowned and stared at the granite safe. The stone’s low murmur had transformed into a sharp, piercing alarm. A rune flashed to life on the front of the safe, on the slab I’d cut out of the rest of the block. A tight, spiral curl burned a cold gray in the middle of the black granite like some sort of all-seeing eye. A spiral curl—the rune for protection.

Tobias Dawson had used his Stone magic to ward his safe with a protection rune, one that would alert him if anyone tampered with the granite. I’d done the same thing to protect myself on more than one occasion. Even used the same rune as the dwarf.

Donovan Caine wasn’t an elemental, wasn’t a Stone, so he couldn’t hear the alarm, couldn’t see the rune. But I could, and I knew what they both meant—trouble headed this way.

“Fuck,” I cursed out loud this time. “Give me the papers.

Now.”

“What? Why?” Donovan asked in a distracted tone.

“There’s some interesting stuff here—”

“Because I’ve tripped some kind of silent alarm,” I interrupted him. “So give me the papers right now.”

To his credit, the detective didn’t ask any questions.