I peeked around the side of the building just in time to see two giants run into the front office. A few seconds later, lights flared in the front room, then spread down the hallway like a wildfire, before erupting in Tobias Dawson’s office. I stood off to one side of the windows and watched. It was the same two men Dawson had brought to the Country Daze store earlier this afternoon.

The two giants still had on the same grimy work clothes they’d sported then, and they both carried long, heavy flashlights that could easily be used to break bones or crush someone’s skull. They had to be the dwarf ’s top two enforcers.

I watched them sweep into Dawson’s office. They didn’t bother with anything on the desk, but went straight to the glass case that housed the dwarf ’s rock collection.

“The lock’s been picked,” one of the giants rumbled, swinging open the case. “But it doesn’t look like anything’s been taken.”

The second giant came to stand beside him. “Nothing obvious anyway. But somebody was messing with the safe, with the diamond. That’s why the alarm went off inside the guardhouse. Because somebody other than Dawson opened the safe.”

Well, that confirmed my suspicion the dwarf had used his Stone magic to craft the alarm on his safe. I could do the same thing, although I was usually more interested in keeping people out of whatever building I was sleeping in rather than trapping them inside. That’s what would have happened here. If I hadn’t been a Stone, hadn’t been an elemental, I wouldn’t even have heard the alarm. Both Donovan Caine and I would have still been sitting in Dawson’s office when the giants came calling. Some definite pain, perhaps even death, would have ensued.

Sneaky dwarf, using an elemental alarm like that.

Something to keep in mind next time, when I went in to kill him.

“But it doesn’t look like the safe’s been opened,” the first giant rumbled. “Maybe it’s just a false alarm.

“No way,” the second guy replied. “The case is open. Somebody touched that safe.”

“Maybe. But you know how sensitive that rune alarm Dawson created is. I had to come up here twice last week because the cleaning crew jiggled it while they were dusting.

Remember?”

“I remember,” the second man said. “But you know how obsessed Dawson is with that diamond and the others he found. We’d still better call him, just to cover our own asses. And get Stan and Donny up here too. They can help us look around.”

The first giant sighed and picked up the telephone on the dwarf ’s desk.

I stood outside, still processing what I’d just learned.