“Why?” she said, when she’d recovered the ability to speak. “Why would they want Shen dead?”

“I don’t know.” And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “Are you sure he never had any business with the organization? Could he have been working with or for someone you didn’t know about?”

Red hair tumbled over her shoulder as Anne shook her head slowly, clearly giving it serious thought. “We both worked from home. We shared an office. There’s no way he could have kept something like that from me. No way he would have.”

“Then I don’t know,” I repeated. “Cam, any insight? Why might your brothers in crime have a suburban software engineer capped?”

He scowled at me, but didn’t even try to deny the illegal nature of most of his employer’s business. “It could have been anything. To stop him from working on whatever he was working on. Or, if they wanted him to do something and he refused, this could have been a reprisal. It could even have been intended to scare someone else he worked with into falling into line. Or it could be completely unrelated to his job. Maybe he saw something he shouldn’t have. Maybe he borrowed money he couldn’t pay back. But based on the amount of money someone put out for this, and the fact that they hired someone outside of the organization, I’m guessing this was both personal and important to someone pretty high up. And that’s all I can say. But for the record, it’s also all I know.” This time.

He didn’t say that last part, but we all heard it.

“This doesn’t make any sense.” Anne still looked so stunned I was surprised she could form complete sentences. “He didn’t owe any money. We’re not wealthy, but our savings are intact. And he didn’t see anything unusual—he would have told me if he had.” I started to argue that he might not have, to keep her safe, but she amended her own thought before I could. “Or maybe he wouldn’t have told me, but I would have known if he was upset about something. But everything was fine.” Anne closed her eyes and visibly paled. Her hands shook as she pushed straight red hair back from her face.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, though the answers seemed too numerous and obvious to be stated.

“I just realized that Hadley could have been home when it happened. Any other Thursday night, she would have been. She would have seen him die. Or worse.”

“What was unusual about yesterday?” Cam asked, and I leaned closer to listen. Any variation in their normal routine could hint at why Shen was killed.

Anne picked at the fingernails of her left hand. “It was Hadley’s best friend’s birthday. I dropped her off at the party on my way to the gym. Any other night of the week, we all three would have been home. Any other Thursday, Shen and Hadley would have been home together.”

I laid my hand over hers on the table. “Okay, I think you should focus on the fact that she wasn’t home. Neither of you were. Focus on that and be grateful. And leave the rest of it to us.”

“You’re still going to…finish this?” Anne’s eyes shined with feverish hope. Dark desperation.

“We can—and will—still go after Hunter,” Cam said. “He’s not a member of the syndicate, so I have no official conflict of interest. But that’s as far as I can go. I can’t take any action against the organization, and I can’t know for sure that either of you are going to, or I’d be obligated to stop you. So please take this seriously—do not move against Tower.” He turned to me then, as somber as I’d ever seen him. “And if you choose to ignore that warning, as I’m fully aware that you will, do not discuss it in front of me. Wait until I’m gone.”

“We’re not moving against Tower,” Anne insisted. “That would be suicide. Just get Hunter—that’s all I have any right to ask.”

“Wait…” I turned to Cam, choosing not to point out that Anne didn’t actually have the right to ask for Hunter’s life, either—she was neither judge nor jury. “How do you know Hunter isn’t syndicate?” Surely Cam didn’t personally know everyone bearing Tower’s mark.

“An initiate wouldn’t have been paid like that—he would just have been ordered to make the kill. He might have gotten a bonus after the fact, if he really rocked the execution, but it wouldn’t have been even half what Hunter got paid. Someone hired an independent to keep this from being traced back to the syndicate.”

“But we traced it back to you guys pretty easily,” I pointed out.

“No, Van traced it back to Tower. Because she works on the business side of things and is already familiar with the accounts. An outsider would have had a bitch of a time finding the source of that money, I’d bet you anything.”

“Okay, I think the best thing for you to do is to go back home and be with your daughter. And forget about the Tower syndicate,” I said to Anne, pushing my own mug toward the middle of the table while Cam dropped a twenty-dollar bill next to his. “We’ll call you when it’s done.”

Anne nodded, still gripping her mug.

I glanced back at her from the front of the restaurant as Cam pulled open the door. She still sat there, staring at the tble. Shaking. Gone was the steel-spined widow who’d walked into my office demanding justice. Things had changed. She was in over her head.

And so were we.

Eleven

“Why would he stay?” I asked, as Cam flicked on his left blinker. At the moment, the pull of Hunter’s name was stronger than the pull from his blood, so I was letting him take the lead in tracking, so long as his path didn’t contradict the pull I felt. And so far, it hadn’t.