I tried on a grin as we walked up the stairs. “What, you won’t set foot on the west side, but you’ll have lunch in Cavazos’s backyard? No wonder people are talking.”

Liv scowled. “People are talking because someone’s started a smear campaign. The rumors are malicious, and evidently aimed at the west side of the city. Someone’s put a target on my head. My guess is Travis Spencer. He’s had it out for me ever since I found the governor’s missing mistress.”

I nearly choked on my own surprise. “That was you?” It hadn’t made the local news, of course. Officially, no one was supposed to know that governor was getting some on the side. But Trackers had been rabid over that job, and I’d never heard who finally found the target.

“Yeah. Paid for two whole months’ worth of office space. But evidently it also earned me some enemies. Stupid rumor-spreading bastards.”

“Relax, Liv. It’s just a bunch of idiots talking, and all you have to do to prove them wrong is wear short sleeves.” I shrugged. “Besides, I’d go to Karagas for lunch every day if I didn’t value my life just a bit higher than good Greek food.”

“Maybe if you hadn’t signed over your free will in exchange for a paycheck, you could enjoy both your life and your lunch wherever the hell you want. Then you could be a part of the solution, rather than the problem. Wasn’t that the plan?”

“Plans change.” I kicked the door closed and dropped my keys on the coffee table, and when I met Liv’s gaze, I was almost bowled over by the pain and power of my own memories. This part of her hadn’t changed—this fiery temper threaded with innate goodwill. She would have been one hell of a lawyer, or a child advocate, or a…superhero.

“What happened to the FBI, Cam?” She took the bag from me and pulled out two cartons of dolmades.

I shrugged and took two plates down from the cabinet over the bar, avoiding her gaze. “Last I heard, they’re still out there fighting crime. Catching murderers and foiling terrorists.”

“And you’re here, wasting a degree in criminal justice o you can track losers for a Mafia boss.”

“Yeah, well, it turns out the FBI can hold its own without me.” I pulled two forks from the drawer to my right and gave her one while I used the other to slide three dolmades onto my plate.

“What happened to the interview? Did you even go?”

“No, Liv, I didn’t go. Okay?” I dropped my fork on my plate, and the clang of metal against glass was louder than I’d intended. “I didn’t go on the fucking interview. I didn’t join the FBI. I don’t fight on the side of truth and justice, and frankly, having been out in the real world for a while now, I can say with some measure of certainty that it was a dumb idea in the first place. Just the stupid dream of a stupid, idealistic kid with a shiny diploma and no clue how the world really works.”

At twenty-two, I’d thought I was going to change the world. Or, at the very least, I was going to clean it up. I was going to join the FBI and use my Skill—secretly, of course—to track serial killers and pedophiles, and make the world a better place, one conviction at a time.

“It wasn’t dumb,” Liv insisted. “A little naive, maybe, but you could have pulled it off. You should have pulled it off.” She pushed one of the bar stools out with her foot and sat. “So what happened? How did you get tangled up with Tower instead?”

“I got shot.”

“What?” Her fork hovered over the open carton.

“I got shot. The week I moved here.” I took my first bite while she stared, obviously trying to decide what to ask first.

“How? What happened?”

I shrugged and swallowed, my favorite food suddenly tasteless with the memory. “I don’t know. I was walking down Hyacinth, about four nights after I got here, all farm-fresh and clueless—”

Liv frowned. “Hyacinth. That was in my neighborhood.”

“I know.”

She stabbed a dolma with her fork and the leaf started to come unwrapped as she gestured with it. “Do I even want to know what you were doing two blocks from my apartment?”

“Tracking you. You owed me an explanation—and, frankly, an apology—and I’d come prepared to demand both. But obviously, I didn’t find you.” Not that night, anyway. “I found the business end of a bullet instead.” I stood and pulled up my shirt to expose the small, round puckered scar just to the right of my navel. “I never saw the shooter or the gun. I was just walking down the street one minute, then flat on my back the next, lying in a pool of my own blood. I was trying to hold my guts in with one hand and dig my phone out of my pocket with the other when these guys just showed up out of nowhere.”

“Tower’s men?” she asked, her food untouched.

“Yeah.”

Her brows rose in challenge. “You do know they’re probably the ones who shot you.”

“Probably.” I certainly couldn’t prove otherwise. “All know for sure is that they’re the ones who saved me. They took me to one of their doctors and paid the bill. They destroyed all the blood I spilled. Then, when I was released, they took me to Adler’s house—he’s my direct supervisor now. His wife put me in their guest room and took care of me for weeks, while I recovered. After that, how could I not sign with Tower? I’d come to town with nothing, spent more than I had on a hotel room I never actually checked out of. By the time I was able to get out of bed, I was flat-ass broke, unemployed and—”