“If he were an initiate, I’d say he’s being shielded— Tower put the word out that he’s not to be touched. Or maybe he put Hunter in a safe house. But he’s not a member, and I would have heard about him being shielded. Thanks to Nick, the organization knows you and I are working together, and that we’re looking for Hunter. If the syndicate had any problem with us killing him, they’d have already stopped us.”

We were still on the west side, but headed east now. Huh. Hunter was on the move.

“So, what, they don’t care if we kill him, because then they don’t have to drop the second half of his payment?”

“Maybe.” Cam shrugged and took another left, and I verified our direction privately with another feel of the stiffening bandage in my pocket. “Also, whoever hired him is probably happy to have us clean up loose ends for him.”

I would have been much more comfortable if those loose ends weren’t winding through the center of Jake Tower’s territory. The blood pull of Hunter’s energy signature was very strong now, and based on the confidence with which Cam navigated the streets, the name pull was even stronger. Which didn’t make much sense. Even if he’d died in the three hours since we’d found blood in his apartment, the blood pull should have been just as strong.

“Do you know this neighborhood?” I asked, as Cam slowed the car to a crawl and the setting sun blinded me in the side-view mirror. We were close now. Close enough that we’d overshoot it if we weren’t careful.

“Yeah, and so do you. We were here this afternoon.”

We were? I sat straighter, glancing around for something I recognized, but saw only a narrow backstreet—an urban alley bordered by rear garage entrances and tiny backyards fenced with chain link. “This doesn’t look familiar.”

“The back of his building’s about half a mile ahead. We’re coming at it from another direction. I know this way better.”

His sudden glance out the driver’s side window told me there was something he wasn’t saying. So, of course, I asked. “Why are you familiar with a residential neighborhood backstreet, when you live in an apartment on the main drag?”

“I used to know a girl who lived in that house.” He pointed to a small, run-down, white-sided house with a big dog fenced into a small yard. “But I don’t think she lives there anymore.”

I swallowed the bitter taste on the back of my tongue at the thought of him with someone else. It was inevitable. Six years is a long time, and Cam…he wore it very, very well. Of course other women would want him.

“Was she syndicate?” I asked, and he glanced at me with a look I couldn’t quite interpret. Was he surprised that I’d ask? Or that I cared? Or that I thought he might go out with someone outside of the organization? Or the opposite?

“No. I don’t…socialize with coworkers. That’s too complicated. And dangerous.”

“You’d give up on a relationship because it’s dangerous?” Maybe he would understand why I’d left…

But he mistook my hope for a criticism.

“Not a relationship,” he clarified. “Sex. No momentary pleasure is worth the risk that she might be looking to sleep her way up the tiers. Or that she might think I am. Or that she may be bound to someone who outranks me, but she’s unhappy with his performance. And it’s even worse if she outranks me, because then I’m tiptoeing through a minefield where orders and requests get confused.”

My stomach churned. “It sounds like you’ve learned through experience.”

“Six years is a long time.” He turned left onto one of the major streets, then met my gaze. “Are you jealous?”

“No,” I answered too fast.

“You never used to lie to me.”

Speaking of minefields… I exhaled slowly and made myself hold his gaze. “I shouldn’t have asked. It doesn’t matter whether or not I’m jealous. Do I like thinking about you with other women? Of course not—”

“Then why’d you ask?”

“Because…” I’m an idiot. A masochist. “I don’t know why I asked.”

“I do.” He exhaled, then shifted into Park right there in the street, sitting idle at a stoplight. “Would it help to know that I tracked down and beat the shit out of the asshole you moved in with a couple of years ago? The one who stole your car.”

I felt my jaw drop open, but words wouldn’t come. I could only gape at him. “Are you serious?” I asked at last and he nodded solemnly. “Over a car?”

He blinked, but his gaze held mine captive. “It had nothing to do with the car, Liv.”

“Did you… Is he…?”

“He lived.” Cam shifted into Drive again when the light changed and we rolled through the intersection. “But I don’t think he’ll be looking either of us up again anytime soon.”

“I can beat up my own exes, thank you.”

He laughed. “Not like I can.”

“That’s not the point.”

you were jealous because you still want me.”

“No…” I said through clenched teeth. “The point is that we have a job to do, and that job has nothing to do with who either of us has slept with or pounded on since we broke up.”

“We didn’t break up, Liv. You ran out on me, right before…” He stopped, staring out the windshield at the city as we rolled through it slowly enough to annoy the cars trapped behind us.