“They’ve left Seattle,” Cade says. He places his hands on the back of the chair he should be sitting in, leaning forward. “They’re back in L.A.”

Back in L.A. That means Raphael’s hightailed it straight to his boss to tell him the good news. Hector’s been pushing for bloodshed ever since he moved up into the States. He wants our business. Well, that’s not strictly true. He wants our gun and drug business. He’s done everything in his power to take that business from us, but our clientele is loyal. And paranoid. They don’t trust new faces. Now we’ve drawn swords, as it were, Hector must think he’s going to wipe us out. Give the gang lords we deal with no other choice but to deal with them instead. This whole clusterfuck of a situation is political, mixed in with the fact Ryan was in a position to send Hector down the line for a very long time.

“You know this isn’t your fault,” Cade says softly.

I somehow manage to tear my gaze away from the gun, so I can look up at him. “And how the hell have you come to that conclusion? I told him to stand his ground. I told him we’d fucking protect him!”

Thankfully Cade doesn’t say another word on the subject. He knows the dangerous glint in my eye. He knows when I’m on the very brink of a total meltdown, and he knows better than to give me the final push. This is my fault. No two ways about it.

My friend drops his head between his braced arms for a second, sighing. “This might be nothing to concern ourselves with, but Raphael had a girl with him.”

“What do you mean, a girl?”

“Just some young thing off the street by the looks of things. Nice clothes. Had that moneyed look about her.”

“She wasn’t one of his crew?”

Cade shakes his head. “She was terrified. I told her to say she was a virgin.”

That’s potentially one of the only things that will save a girl once Hector’s guys get their hooks in them. Hector may want my guns and coke, but his main area of interest lies in human trafficking. A beautiful virgin is worth more than a whole shipment worth of AKs if you sell to the right buyer. “I wanna see this girl. You got footage?”

“I got something. Not a very clear picture, though.” Cade pulls a thumb drive out of his pocket and tosses it to me. I slot it into my computer, opening the file as soon as the device registers. Cade is right—the picture is for shit, but it’s good enough to make out the shape of a woman, walking down a darkened street.

The woman stops, turns, watches something farther down the street.

“That was us,” Cade tells me. “We knew Ryan was in the area. We were looking for him.” His face creases into a look of remorse. A look that worsens as Ryan’s figure appears on the screen, a meter from the girl. He frightens her. She staggers back, and he falls to his knees in the snow.

My heart rises up into my throat. I understand why Cade looks so fucking guilty now. They missed my uncle by mere seconds.

My eyes feel dry; I don’t think I’ve blinked since the footage started playing. Ryan holds one hand up to the girl—a plea for help if ever I’ve seen one. The stance of the girl, the way she’s holding her own hands to her chest, makes me think she’s going to run from him. But she doesn’t. She surprises me and takes a step forward. More dark shapes appear on the screen—Raphael and his friends. I watch the girl getting grabbed. I watch those fuckers dragging Ryan back into the alleyway. And then there’s nothing.

“She was going to help him.” I hear myself say the words, but they don’t really register. Not until I find myself saying them again. “She was going to help him.” I take a deep breath. “So now we need to help her.”

ALEXIS

Ramona is a tall, slender woman with the traces of what might once have been a hair lip. If it was, her surgeon was very talented. Raphael hands me over to her with a clipped and considerably angry burst of Spanish, and then I’m whisked away. The woman has to be in her late twenties, though the tired look in her eyes gives her the appearance of someone much older.

“What you done to piss him off?” she asks, though she doesn’t really sound like she’s interested. A good job, really, since I have no intention of making small talk with her. The sugary sweet smell I caught outside is even thicker inside the house. We walk down a long, narrow corridor, and Ramona stops at the end, opening a door on the right. Inside, a confusion of pastel tulle awaits—dresses upon dresses, hanging on rack after rack. An entire room full of forgotten prom dreams.

“What size are you, girl?” Ramona asks. She smacks some gum. I don’t answer. She rolls her eyes and storms into the room, yanking a yellow dress off the closest rack and thrusting it out at me. I can see the label—size six. My size. I take it from her, because I sense she’ll only go get Raphael if I don’t and I do not want that.

“How long have you been here?” I ask.

“Five years,” she replies. “Five loooong, boring-ass years. Come with me.”

She takes me upstairs and down another long, corridor, right to the end again. She opens the door to the room that must be directly over the prom room. Most worryingly, she opens it with a key. “Go on. Inside.”

Inside, I go.

“Get washed up. I’ll be back in an hour to do your hair and shit. Don’t go trying to jump from the fuckin’ window or nothin’. Had a girl do that one time and her damn legs exploded.” With that very cheerful parting word of warning, Ramona closes the door, locking it behind her.