Wolfe walked over to Shannon. “C’mon, kid, we’ve got to go. We’re seriously in danger here. Don’t blow this rescue.”

The room smelled like chemicals and fear—and now, a rising undertone of blood. Nothing about the room was an ideal place to stay. Despite that, Shannon remained right where she was on the cold, bare concrete floor and didn’t move, although she started to shiver. Whether from fear, reaction to the violence, or the actual temperature, Wolfe didn’t know.

Fuck. Now is not the time for this.

“No one came for me,” Shannon mumbled into her knees. “I was scared, and no one came for me.”

Wolfe blinked and half-glanced back at the corpse in the doorway, surrounded by teeth and shattered screen. “What are you talking about, kid? I’m right here.”

Shannon shook her head against her arms. “No. You came for Lucy. No one came for me. Nobody… they don’t want me. No one cares.”

Wolfe had no idea how to deal with whatever Shannon was going through. “Look… we have to go. Now isn’t the time for this.”

Lucy walked over and placed her hand on Shannon’s shoulder, but Shannon still didn’t move beyond shivering.

Wolfe was tempted to grab Shannon and shake some sense into the blonde-haired girl—tell her now wasn’t the time for existential dread, and that everyone had shit they were dealing with.

Before he could act, Lucy spoke. “Talk to her. You knew about her mother.”

Gods damn it, I wasn’t the one that made the choice to hide things from her.

Wolfe took a breath. He remembered how terrible it had felt when he thought he was alone, after being abandoned by the system that was supposed to protect him when his father had been abusive and his mother permissive. It had felt like shit. And he had felt powerless—a feeling he had overcome through training and violence. It had to be worse, being a pre-teen instead of a teen, and knowing that neither your dead mother nor murderer father were going to be in your life—and having a grandma that, however well meaning, wouldn’t talk to you.

Not to mention not having the option to kick the shit out of people.

Wolfe sighed. “I wasn’t going to leave without you. I promise. You need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and help us, okay? When I was only a little bit older than you, my parents died as well. I can take care of myself, in case you haven’t noticed. Sometimes life kicks you in the ass, but you’re strong enough to kick back. I know, because I did it. You can too.”

“Your father died?” Shannon looked up at Wolfe with wide eyes. “Your mother too?”

Well, I killed him, but… “Yeah. And I’m fine. A little secret—sometimes you make your own family.”

Wolfe didn’t tell her the rest, of course. He left out the fact that he had made the mob his family, and a mob boss—better than most, but still on the side of the demons—his surrogate father. His life hadn’t really been Hallmark movie material. He was pretty sure the details wouldn’t help anyone.

“I’m cold,” Shannon whispered.

Wolfe took his holster off and put it on the table. Then he pulled his huge hoodie off and held it out. Shannon put her arms straight up, and it took a moment for Wolfe to realize what she wanted. But he carefully straightened the hoodie out and put it over the girl—unlike the t-shirt she wore, it went past her knees, and sat on her like a massive tent.

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Wolfe was cold in just his t-shirt and sweatpants, but damn if he would say anything when Lucy was in less and hadn’t complained.

Shannon stood, and then hugged Wolfe hard, much as Lucy had done. She buried her face in his stomach and let out a sob.

“There, there,” Wolfe said, awkwardly running his hand over her blonde hair.

As Shannon held Wolfe, there was a crunching sound from behind him.

He whirled, knocking Shannon to the side where Lucy caught her before she could fall, and was confronted by a gun pointed directly at his face.

Wolfe briefly thought he was dead, but still wasn’t going to go down without a fight. He reached for his gun on the table at the same time he touched his chest, but the person lowered their gun.

“Wolfe?” Shel asked.

“Shel!” Lucy cried.

Then she flung herself into her sister, hugging her as tight as she had Wolfe. “You came for us!”

“I would never leave you,” Shel said. Then she took her own hoodie off and gave it to her sister.

It didn’t quite cover her as effectively as Wolfe’s giant hoodie covered Shannon, but it helped.

“Alright, well, that was a great reunion. Worthy of an old-school Disney movie. But we need to get out of here before this becomes a tragedy,” Wolfe said.

Shel looked down at the blood she was now standing in with a sardonic expression. “Yeah, I can think of a few places I’d rather be.”

Then her face went deadly serious. “This place is crawling with goons—I swear they seem even less competent then when I was around them nine months ago, but they’re everywhere.”

Wolfe was surprised—he hadn’t run into many gang members at all.

“You found them where you were? Toward the front of the place?”

Shel nodded. “Yeah, there was a sign that said ‘garage’ on it. I couldn’t get any further without getting caught though.”

Wolfe looked back at the table in the room they were in, and thought about the person attached to the medical machines outside.

“They must be getting a shipment prepared, probably in the garage. Perhaps after I shut two down at their sites with plausible deniability, they decided to handle the next one in house.” Wolfe briefly thought about the pickup of Lucy and Shannon. “And on almost no notice.”

“Well, we need to get out of here,” Shel said.

The four of them walked out of the back room into the front, Lucy gagging as she stepped over the man Wolfe had killed.

Lucy stopped and pointed at the guy on the table. “Is that… a person?”

“Yeah,” Wolfe replied.

“What… what’s happening to him?” Lucy asked again.

Shel answered. “They put him in a medically induced coma.”

“Why?”

“I…” Shel paused. “Every answer is evil. Bad people doing bad things. I’ll tell you more when you’re older.”

For a wonder, Lucy didn’t argue the point, instead asking, “Are we going to save him?”

“I can’t carry a dude and fight,” Wolfe said. “I might need to fight. So not yet. But when we get out, we’ll call the police.”

“The police brought us here,” Shannon said. “Why will they save this man?”

“We know some good police, that take their job very seriously,” Shel said. “I’m going to be a police officer, and you trust me, right? Well, we’ll get people like me.”

Lucy and Shannon both nodded. Crisis averted, Wolfe took the handle of the door.

Static sputtered from the man Wolfe had killed, and he whirled. For a moment Wolfe was worried that a monster had appeared, but the sound was coming from his pocket.

Then, a voice he hadn’t heard in almost a year came from the pocket, slightly electronic and distorted by the clothing.

“Wolfe has come for us,” the voice of Damian said. “He’s in the cannery. Everyone not in the cannery get to the exits and guard them, and everyone in the cannery, find him and kill him, and bring his cards to me. I want to make damn sure he stays dead this time.”

“Fuck,” Wolfe muttered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Lucy didn’t call him on his language, instead quietly asking, “Are we in trouble again?”

“We need to go. Now,” Wolfe responded.

He reached out and opened the door.

For a second time in a few minutes, he found himself staring into the barrel of a gun, but this time it was held in the hand of a man nearly as wide as he was tall—and he wasn’t short. The man had thick muscles across his body and a huge red beard with rings in it, but was otherwise bald. His eyes, however, were rimmed in dark circles, and his skin was sallow and pale.

“Wolfe?” the man asked with wide eyes.

Wolfe stared at the man, an apparition of old times that he hadn’t thought of more than twice in the last nine months, now standing in front of him. “Liam?”