I jerked my arm from his grasp and met his gaze reluctantly. “Nothing I can’t handle.” Yet. But he didn’t understand that, and I couldn’t explain it. “Fine. You can drive. It’ll be easier for me to concentrate on the blood that way anyway.” Which was probably the reason he’d offered in the first place.

The last thing that went into my satchel was a spray bottle of ammonia, then I zipped the bag and set it on the desk. I shrugged into my good holster and pulled my jacket on over it, then checked the clip and the safety on my favorite 9mm and dropped it into the holster. I sealed the sock back into its bag and shoved it into my right jacket pocket. With my phone in the opposite pocket and my satchel over one shoulder, I shooed Cam out the door and locked it behind us.

“It’s good to see you again,” he said, following me down the narrow staircase at the end of the hall. “Even if you’re not talking to me.”

“I am talking to you.” I pushed open the door at the bottom of the stairs and stepped into the bright parking lot, squinting against the glare of the sun. I’d rather work at night, when there were fewer of Cavazos’s eyes around to see me with Cam, but Anne’s blood sample wasn’t getting any fresher.

“You’re talking, but you’re not really saying anything,” Cam insisted, digging his keys from his pocket.

“You’re doing enough of that for both of us.”

His car—the one he’d tracked me down in the night before—was parked near the end of the front row, and as we approached, he unlocked it by remote.

“What do you want me to say?” I asked, dropping into the passenger’s seat.

“It’s been six years, Liv. I don’t even know you anymore.” When I didn’t know how to respond, he sighed and started the car. “Is this what you do now? Freelance Tracking?”

I nodded, and the knot of tension inside me eased just a little. Work questions, I could handle. “I was on Adam Rawlinson’s team for three years. They taught me to shoot and fight—Rawlinson himself trained me on the nine mil—and I quit last year and went into business for myself.”

Cam stopped at the parking-lot exit, the car’s V8 rumbling all the way into my bones. “Which way?”

I set the sock on my lap and opened the bag, then ran my fingers over the damp, sticky material and closed my eyes. “West.” Shit. Tower’s side of town. Not a promising start to the afternoon.

“What happened with Rawlinson?” Cam asked, turning left onto the street. “You didn’t like the company?”

“No, it was nice.” Good money, decent benefits and an upstanding boss. Rawlinson had a sterling reputation and got the bulk of the business from anyone who didn’t want to get tangled up with either Tower or Cavazos. Including a lot of unofficial police “consultations.”

“So why’d you quit? You obviously took a cut in pay….”

I laughed, and it almost felt good. “Is that a dig at my liquor cabinet?”

Cam smiled. “That wasn’t liquor, it was swill. And that wasn’t a cabinet, it was a drawer.”

“The money will come, once I get my name out there.” For too many years, I’d been known only as Rawlinson’s top Tracker, “You know, that girl.” I’d almost started answering to the unofficial title.

“So you quit over money?”

“No.” I glanced at him, looking for judgment in his eyes, because there’d been none in his voice. “I wanted to be my own boss.”

The irony of my lie stung. Good thing I wasn’t bound to tell the truth.

I’d quit my job after Cavazos inked his mark on my thigh and ruined my whole life. I did it to keep Rawlinson and the rest of his employees safe. He would have fired me anyway if he’d found out. No syndicate-bound employees—that was both company policy and common sense. Never hire someone whose loyalty belongs to someone else. Especially someone with the power not only to kill you, but to make the world forget you ever existed. And that was only one of the reasons I had to keep my binding secret.

“Well, then, I guess you got what you wanted.”

Hardly. I stared at my lap. I hadn’t gotten a damn thing I’d wanted since that night six years ago.

When the road curved to the right, I looked up. The blood wanted us to go straight. “Take the next left and veer toward the market district,” I said, staring out the window to avod looking at him. Being with Cam was harder than I’d thought it would be. Some things hadn’t changed—he still smelled like good coffee and cheap shampoo—and some things were totally different. Like that dark, scruffy stubble, as if he hadn’t gotten a chance to shave. And maybe he hadn’t. The stubble made him look older, and at first that had bothered me, because it reminded me how much had changed since we’d been together. But now that stubble was kind of growing on me.

Wonder what it feels like…

I’d actually pulled my hand from the plastic bag before I realized what I was doing, and when he glanced at my bloody fingers, I felt myself flush.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Did you lose the pull?”

“No.” I shoved my hand back into the bag and ran my fingers over the stiffening material, staring straight out the windshield. He couldn’t guess at my thoughts if he couldn’t see my face. “Just keep heading west.” Deeper and deeper into Jake Tower’s side of town…