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“Which was the point.” Lash’s phone rang, and he answered as he accelerated up a ramp and onto the highway. “Very nice, Mr. D.”

“I think we done good,” the Texan said. “’Cept I can’t see no drugs. Must be in the trunk.”

“They’re in that car. Somewhere.”

“We still meetin’ back at Hunterbred?”

“Yes.”

“Hey, ah, listen, y’all plannin’ on doin’ anything with this here car?”

Lash smiled in the darkness, thinking greed was a great weakness for a subordinate to have. “I’m getting it repainted and buying a VIN and tags for it.”

There was silence, as if the lesser were waiting for more. “Oh, that’ll be good. Y’sir.”

Lash hung up on his disciple and turned to Grady. “I want to know all of the other big retailers in town. Their names, their territories, their product lines, everything.”

“I don’t know if I got all that—”

“You’d better find it out then.” Lash tossed his phone into the guy’s lap. “Make the calls you need to. Do the digging. I want every single dealer in town. Then I want the elephant that’s feeding them. The Caldwell wholesaler.”

Grady’s head fell back against the seat. “Shit. I thought this was going to be, like…about my business.”

“That was your second mistake. Start dialing and get me what I want.”

“Look…I don’t think this is…I should probably go home….”

Lash smiled at the guy, revealing his fangs and flashing his eyes. “You are home.”

Grady shrank back in the seat, then started pawing for the door handle, even though they were cruising down the highway at seventy miles an hour.

Lash hit the locks. “Sorry, you’re on the ride now, and there’s no getting off in the middle. Now dial the fucking phone and do me right. Or I’m going to carve you up piece by piece and enjoy every second of the screaming.”

Wrath stood outside Safe Place in a ball-numbing wind, not caring two shits about the nasty weather. Rising before him like something out of a Leave It to Beaver Rockwell daydream, the house that was a haven to victims of domestic violence was big and rambling and welcoming, the windows covered with quilted drapery, a wreath on the door, the mat on the top step reading WELCOME in cursive letters.

As a male, he couldn’t go inside, so he waited like lawn sculpture on the hard brown grass, praying that his beloved leelan was inside—and willing to see him.

After having spent all day in the study hoping that Beth would come to him, he’d finally gone through the mansion searching her out. When he hadn’t found her, he’d prayed she was volunteering here, as she often did.

Marissa appeared on the back stoop and shut the door behind herself. Butch’s shellan and Wrath’s former blood mate looked typically professional in her black slacks and jacket, her blond hair twisted into an elegant chignon, her scent like the ocean.

“Beth just left,” she said as he walked over to her.

“She go back home?”

“Redd Avenue.”

Wrath stiffened. “What the…Why’s she over there?” Shit, his shellan out alone in Caldwell? “You mean at her old apartment?”

Marissa nodded. “I think she wanted to go back to where things started.”

“Is she alone?”

“As far as I know.”

“Jesus Christ, she’s already been abducted once,” he snapped. As Marissa recoiled, he cursed himself. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m not real rational right now.”

After a moment, Marissa smiled. “This is going to sound bad, but I’m glad you’re frantic. You deserve to be.”

“Yeah, I was a shit. Big-time.”

Marissa tilted her head up to the sky. “On that note, a word of advice when you go over to her.”

“Hit me.”

Her perfect face leveled again, and as she refocused on him, her voice grew rueful. “Try not to be angry. You look like an ogre when you’re pissed, and right now, Beth needs to be reminded of why she should let her guard down around you, not why she shouldn’t.”

“Good point.”

“Be well, my lord.”

He nodded to her with a quick bob of the head and dematerialized directly to the Redd Avenue address where Beth had had an apartment when they’d first met. As he went, he got a good goddamn taste of what his shellan had to deal with