“You’re sure you’re okay to drop me off?” Shel asked.

Wolfe nodded again and rolled his eyes. “Of course. I don’t think I’ll be in too much danger here, and I’d rather you not be there when I’m interrogating Tracy, in case someone sees.”

Shel smiled nervously. “I’m supposed to be by your side.”

“I’ll be fine,” Wolfe said. “This isn’t worth the risk. We’ve been over this. Tracy is zip tied with his hands behind his back, and I took his gun. If we’re caught, I seriously doubt he’ll talk, since that would get him involved in kidnapping, so I won’t get in too much trouble. But if you’re involved, even a small thing can get you kicked out.”

Shel slowly nodded, her fingers tapping together.

“I’m right here, you know,” came from the back. Wolfe glanced into the mirror to see Tracy sitting up in the car, a ripped shirt making a blindfold across his eyes, with his shoulders strained with how he was sitting with his arms tied behind him. Wolfe was pretty sure that Tracy could neither see where they were, escape, pull his deck, or attack anyone.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Wolfe quipped.

“Is that a joke about my deck, or…?” Tracy trailed off. “Fuck my head hurts. I assume team me lost?”

Wolfe chuckled. “Yeah, team you lost. I was just commenting about how long you’d been out, which is probably why your head hurts. Or just because I hit you solidly.”

Tracy glanced down at himself. “I’m cut and bruised, but no gunshots…”

Wolfe turned onto Persimmon and into their subdivision. “I have questions. If you answer them well, I’ll let you live.”

Tracy was silent for a moment. “You had a good name for that sort of thing… and I am blindfolded, I guess. But won’t you kill me just so no one knows you’re still alive?”

Wolfe laughed. “That’s well and thoroughly out of the bag, trust me.”

He turned onto his street before Tracy could respond. Wolfe was going to head to his driveway when he saw a blue Honda Civic in front of the house, interior lights on and engine idling. Wolfe narrowed his eyes. He didn’t know who was at his house at night, but he would rather sneak up on them than have them know he was coming.

Wolfe stopped his car on the side of the road. When Shel glanced at him, he instinctually nodded to the car rather than talking, even though they were two houses down and his silence was almost certainly useless.

He fished Shel’s Glock-17 from the glove compartment and opened the car door, keeping it behind him as he did.

Wolfe stuck his head back in. “Stay here and stay quiet, or I promise I will kill you.”

Tracy rolled his eyes but nodded.

Shel followed him out, and the two of them walked down to the blue Civic.

Before they reached their target, a huge man, as tall as Wolfe and even buffer, exited from the car like a cork popping free from a wine bottle, making the whole car rock a tiny bit.

Shel let out a tiny sigh of relief and waved. “Rhett!”

Wolfe was less happy about seeing the lieutenant and hissed, “Take your pistol!”

Shel bumped into him and he passed it back to her behind their backs.

Shel fumbled, gave a slight gasp, and dropped the gun.

Even though it was extremely unlikely, Wolfe tensed, figuring the universe—or Jyestha, goddess of misfortune—would cause it to misfire.

But nothing happened, and Wolfe breathed a sigh of relief.

“Did you just drop your gun, cadet?” Rhett asked as he walked up. “In fact, why were you even carrying your gun?”

Shel blushed hard enough that Wolfe could see it by street lamp, and then bent to retrieve the weapon. “Sorry, sir, I wasn’t sure who you were, or why you were at my house at three in the morning. My sister and her new friend are here.”

Rhett scratched his chin for a moment, then looked back at his car, his face conveying dawning realization. “Alright, yeah, somehow I didn’t think of it that way. You’ve got a point.”

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Wolfe almost snorted at the look on Rhett’s face, but held it back.

Rhett returned his stare to Wolfe. “A better question is why are you two here? Especially you, William?”

“Why do you care?” Wolfe asked.

“Well, I got a report from Cara—”

“Fingers?” Wolfe asked.

Rhett pinched the bridge of his nose. “Please never call her that again. As I was saying, I got a call from my assistant, who told me that we had received a call about a crime in Noimoire—involving human trafficking. I was just curious where you were.”

Rhett glanced down at Shel’s pants, which were torn and soaked in blood. “It seems like you might have a story to tell, cadet.”

There was a long pause as Rhett stared at Shel, then turned to Wolfe. “Care to enlighten me? Because I’m pretty sure that whatever you are up to, it ends poorly for the girl you claim to care so much about.”

Wolfe squeezed his fist. Don’t attack the asshole cop, don’t attack the asshole cop.

After another few seconds, Shel asked, “Are we being detained, Rhett?”

Rhett stared at her. “You really want to go down this path, cadet? Tomorrow is the gala, where you’re receiving the award for the top student in your class. Captain Tennison, as well as some police captains from neighboring jurisdictions, will be there. A very bright future is being born. Do you really want to throw it away?”

“People are—” Shel began, her finger twisting in her hair.

Rhett interrupted her. “I fully believe your intentions are good, Ms. Lyons. I even think there is a slightly greater than even chance that your boyfriend’s intentions are good. But intentions won’t matter in the face of certain methods. You’d be better served bringing your concerns to the police, and letting us handle it.”

“Emmett thinks—” Wolfe began.

Rhett interrupted him as well. “I know what Emmett thinks. I stand by the officers of my department fully. We’re a small department, and they’re all men I know personally. I trust their judgement—and their integrity.”

“Do you trust everyone in Noimoire’s police force?” Wolfe asked.

Lieutenant Rhett hesitated. Wolfe could tell he was an honest man, even if he was a pushy, self-righteous one.

He cleared his throat. “I don’t know everyone in Noimoire’s police force. It would be impossible—there are almost fifteen thousand employed officers there. We have barely a hundred.”

“Well, there you go.”

“There can’t be fifteen thousand corrupt cops,” Rhett said with disgust. “Even if, theoretically, there are a few. If you bring the trafficking to the attention of the department, they’ll deal with it.”

Wolfe snorted and crossed his arms over his chest.

Rhett grit his teeth. “Fine. Drag yourselves down. But don’t count on me to go easy on you when you inevitably screw up.”

He paused, and looked back to Shel. “I’ll see you at the gala at eight p.m. tomorrow night, cadet.”

Shel nodded, and Rhett turned and walked back to his car.

Wolfe watched as Rhett got in his car and drove away.

“Damn glad he didn’t search the car,” Wolfe muttered. “I probably would have said more about him showing up at my place at three a.m. except I was sweating bullets over that. Hell, all he had to do was glance in the back window.”

Shel let out a near hysterical giggle.

“I’m gonna go see to Tracy, you make sure everyone is okay. I’ll be in later tonight.”

Shel chewed her lower lip. After a moment, she nodded quickly, and kissed him on the cheek. “Don’t be too late. We have to go to the arena with Miriam tomorrow, and we should spend some time with Lucy and Sharon.”

“Who’s Sharon?” Wolfe asked.

Shel smacked him on the chest lightly. “You. It’s the neighbor’s granddaughter. She was over so that Ms. Timo could look after both of them.”

“I’ll be quick, promise.”

Wolfe turned and headed back to the car, then opened the door and got in, buckling himself in and starting the car.

“Who was that?” Tracy asked.

“A cop. So be glad you kept quiet, or you’d be in on multiple kidnapping and trafficking charges and I’d be in for being me.”

“So… what did you want to know?” Tracy asked, shifting around in his seat.

Wolfe drove out onto the street.

“Why do you need to drive somewhere if I’m going to live?” Tracy asked, still squirming in his seat.

Wolfe laughed. “Because it’s three a.m., I’ve got shit I need to do if I’m going to get any sleep at all. Let’s talk while we drive, huh?”

“What do you want to know?”

“How deep is the Grimm family involved?” Wolfe asked as he turned onto Main, which even at this hour had a few cars zipping by at over fifty miles per hour. “Or at least Damian’s portion of it.”

Tracy somehow managed to shrug despite being zip tied. “A lot, but he’s not the main guy. After you blew half the family to pieces, Damian sold a few cards, but his real source of money is someone else. He isn’t calling the shots, but he’s getting huge amounts of money to act as the main mover in this whole thing.”

“Where does it all operate out of?” Wolfe asked.

“The huge warehouse and shipping complex he bought, of course,” Tracy said nonchalantly.

Something about his voice sounded off. Wolfe glanced into the rearview mirror to see Tracy pulling the headband off his eyes with a hand carrying a small pocket knife.

How did he…?

Before Wolfe could even finish the thought, Tracy lunged over the side of the seat, knife out, wedged above Wolfe against the ceiling. Wolfe caught Tracy’s arm as he brought the knife toward Wolfe’s throat, but his enemy’s position gave Tracy a massive leverage advantage, and the knife was cutting deep into his hand.

Wolfe slammed on the brakes as hard as he could. The car squealed and slid two lanes, turning perpendicular to traffic. Tracy flew up and slammed into the inside, passenger side corner of the glass windshield head-first, getting wedged in with his feet over the back of the chair. Wolfe kept his foot on the brake and let go of the wheel, touching his chest with one hand and punching Tracy with the other repetitively.

Somehow, despite enough blunt force trauma to put a cow down for the count, Tracy managed to touch his own chest and hold for two seconds.

A deckbearer has summoned their deck.

A horn sounded, and Wolfe glanced past Tracy’s flailing form to see a car heading right at them.

He tried not to tense as it slammed into his car.