It’s pathetic but I’m beginning to take this personally now. I thought Lacey liked me. I thought she did think of my as family in some weird, warped way. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sure Zeth will take you to see her as soon as he can.”

Lacey covers her face with her hands, sucking in deep, erratic breaths, sobbing harder now. “Not good enough. Not. Good. Enough!” Her hands fly down, and Pippa sees what’s happening long before I do. Or maybe I do see it, but I just don’t believe it—Lacey coming at me, her mouth pulled down in grim determination. Pippa’s taller than I am, and stronger too, no doubt. I would have been able to hold my own, but Pippa practically takes Lace off her feet as she tackles her into the wall of the corridor.

“Get off me! Get the fuck off me, bitch! I’m gonna kill you!” Lacey roars. I stand there, watching them struggle, completely confounded.

“Sloane, a hand?” Pippa calls through gritted teeth. She’s managed to pin both of Lacey’s wrists behind her back, but the girl’s putting up a valiant fight. I step into the breach, grabbing hold of Lacey’s ankles. I get a kick to my injured arm and a shock wave of pain blasts through me, so sharp and potent, I gag. Pippa and I manage to carry Lacey’s screaming butt into a room at the back of the apartment. It’s the room I found Zeth sitting alone in the dark when I first came here. There are no windows, no other ways out of the room bar the entrance we just came through. It’s sparsely furnished, too—only a bed and a small side table, along with a wardrobe and a soft sheepskin rug on the floor. Pippa and I half carry, half drag Lacey to the bed where we put her down, and then Pippa has hold of me and she’s dragging me out of the room before Lacey can even get to her feet. The door slams closed, and Pippa is holding the handle shut.

“Do you have keys for this thing?” she grinds out.

“Uh, yeah. Yes, hang on.” I run back through the apartment, snatch the keys from the countertop where Zeth left them, and hurry back. It takes me a solid minute to find the right key, during which time Lacey kicks and screams and pummels her fists against the other side of the door, demanding to be let the fuck out.

“Do you have any sedatives here?” Pippa asks.

“Do you think I’d have let you stitch me up without any proper pain relief if I had my medical bag with me?” I snap. Now that the door’s locked, Pippa backs away, holding up her hands.

“Just asking. My incarceration in this ridiculously over-the-top apartment would be a whole lot more bearable without that noise going on.”

She’s right. It’s going to be a nightmare sitting here listening to Lacey lose her mind. I stalk through the apartment, wondering if I should call Zeth back. He told me she has these breakdowns but I wasn’t prepared for this. Not to this scale. Not being so abusive, and apparently out of nowhere.

“I hate to be saying this yet again, Sloane,” Pippa says, following behind me. “But are you sure your new friends are the type of people you want to be associating with? I mean, with the police—”

I turn around and stab my finger into her chest, trying to breathe through my spike of anger. “Don’t you even mention the police. You were the one who called the police.”

Pippa looks like she’s about to defend her actions—god help her if she does—but the sound of a ringing alarm prevents it from happening. No, not the sound of a ringing alarm. It’s a ringing cell phone. Both Pip and I see it at the same time—the blocky cell phone Lacey was holding in her hand. It’s on the floor, lit up, flashing and playing that infamous old school ringtone that used to drive people mad all over the world. Lacey must have dropped the phone in the struggle.

I pace over and pick it up, and Lacey goes silent—she must be able to hear the phone. On the screen, three words are blinking up at me:

The Old Man.

My stomach drops through the floor. I know who that is. I’ve heard Zeth call him that before.

“Sloane? Sloane, let me answer the phone!” Lacey screams from behind the door. “I need to answer that. It’s for me!”

It literally feels like the insides of my head are exploding. Seriously? Seriously, this is who Lacey has been talking to? Part of me just can’t accept or believe it. Won’t. I hit the answer button and hold the handset to my ear. My blood runs cold as soon as I hear the voice.

“Knock, knock, sweetheart. You be a good girl and come and let me in, why don’t you?”

I have to admit, I was as surprised as Sloane I didn’t get my hands bloody this morning. Andreas did give up Julio’s cell number without a fight; a brief conversation about loyalty—he still insists they know Charlie and I are working together—and one look at those fucking paperclips and Andreas Medina was an open book. He told me Julio and his boys were out somewhere near Mount Rainer, but he couldn’t give me a specific address because they’re moving around. Fucker better not have been lying.

Michael and I almost at Mount Rainier, when I finally get through on the cell number Medina gave me. The line rings three times before someone picks up. “¿Hola?”

Definitely the right number.

“Hola,” I reply. “Quiero hablar con el jefe, por favor.” Hi, I wanna speak to the boss, please. I put just enough pep into my voice to sound like a cheerful Mexican telesales operative. I don’t normally do pep; my teeth feel itchy.

“Who is this?” the person on the other end of the line asks in a thick accent.