“You can’t just—just kill him!”

He’d told her the truth about himself, but she still didn’t seem to get it. Not the good guy. “Sure I can.” He closed his eyes. Summoned up the power that was always inside him. Let it swell. Let it grow. Let the dark edges seep past his control. When his eyes opened again, he knew that she’d see the fire in his eyes. “I can do anything I want.”

No one would stop him. His guard wouldn’t be lowered again. Wyatt was dead. Fried to ash.

Soon Jimmy would be, too.

Paranormals had died in that facility, and, unlike him, they hadn’t been able to regenerate and come back. He’d heard their screams. Their last desperate cries.

They deserved their vengeance, too. He’d give it to them.

He turned away from her again. Began walking.

“Don’t.” Her soft voice behind him.

But he didn’t stop. He didn’t look back. He had a shifter to kill, and Eve, with her big, blue eyes and her trembling, red lips, wasn’t going to stop him.

No one was.

He’d left her. The jerk had actually dumped her at a truck stop. Just . . . walked away. Okay, he’d left the truck with her, so she hadn’t exactly been stranded, but . . .

He’d still ditched her.

And gone off to kill.

No, you’re not doing it. She wasn’t just going to stand back while some shifter was slaughtered.

Even if he deserved that death?

She jumped out of the truck. Slammed the door and raced the rest of the way up the graveled drive. She’d told Cain the truth when she’d said that she had friends in this city. This particular friend was loaded—and that was why he had a giant house on twenty private acres in Atlanta.

She pounded on the door. Hurry, hurry . . .

The door opened. Trace Frost glared down at her, wearing a pair of pajama pants and looking severely irritated. His eyes were narrowed, the faint lines around his eyes tight.

“It’s two-thirty in the morning, Eve,” he growled. “Two damn thirty. Unless you’re here to have sex, then—”

“Someone’s about to die.”

Her words cut him off.

Trace blinked at her, his green eyes waking up very quickly. The guy was built, muscled, freakishly smart.

He was also a shifter.

So Trace usually kept tabs on any other shifters in his town. It was the whole keep your friends close, and your enemies closer bit. His motto was keep the shifters close . . . and be ready to defend your f**king territory from friends and enemies.

He raked a hand over his face. “You would be coming about something like that.”

She pushed the laptop against his chest. He’d be the one cracking that pass code for her later. The guy owed her. Seriously owed her since she’d risked her life for him more than once. “Jimmy Vance.”

Trace whistled as he rocked back on his heels. “You don’t want to mess with that guy.” His native Texas rolled faintly beneath the words. Trace gave a quick shake of his head. “Vance would sell out his own mother for—”

“If I don’t find him soon, he’s dead.” She didn’t want Vance dead because, well, one, killing the guy was wrong. You couldn’t just go up and torch a shifter. Cain would find his own ass hunted if he did that. And, two, she needed Vance. Eve wanted to break the Genesis story wide open, and if Jimmy Vance had been dealing with Wyatt, then she wanted to talk to him.

Preferably while he was still breathing. Otherwise, it would be rather difficult to accomplish.

“I don’t know if his death would be such a loss,” Trace muttered as he lifted up the laptop. “You didn’t have to bring me a present.” The porch light glinted off his tousled, blond hair.

“You’re getting me into that system,” she told him, putting her hands on her hips, “after you take me to Vance.”

Trace’s gaze came back to her. Then that stare slowly swept over her body. He winced. “Fine, but, seriously, if we’re hunting shifters tonight, you have to change. You won’t get into a fight looking like that.”

Whoa, hold up. “A fight?” She followed him into the house.

He tucked the laptop under one arm and shut the door behind her. The alarm beeped. “Vance—and the shifters like him—always head to the cage fights on Saturday nights.”

Her stomach clenched. “You’re not talking about a normal cage fight, are you?”

Trace shook his head. “Just to get in that fight, one of us will have to bleed.”