“I love my son. I love Gavin with all my heart. If it was my life against his, I would die for him in an instant. He isn’t an evil person. He’s a sixteen-year-old child. He was trying to find himself, but he found Adam Pierce instead. You have to understand, kids idealize Pierce. He is their antihero—the man who walked away from his family and started a motorcycle gang. The bad boy charismatic rebel.”

Her voice turned bitter and angry, but she couldn’t help it.

“He used Gavin to commit this atrocity, and now a police officer is dead. The officer’s wife and their two children were burned very badly. They will kill Gavin, Connor. Even if my son walks out with his hands in the air, the cops will shoot him. He is a cop killer.”

Connor drank his coffee. His face was perfectly placid. She couldn’t read it.

“You don’t owe me anything. We haven’t spoken in twenty years, not since the family disowned me.”

She swallowed again. She had refused to follow their instructions and marry a stranger with the right set of genes. She’d told them she wanted to be in control of her own life. They’d obliged and thrown her out like a piece of garbage . . . no, don’t think about that. Think about Gavin.

“If there was any other way,” she said, “I wouldn’t bother you. But Tom has no connections. We don’t have power, or money, or great magic. Nobody cares what happens to us. All I have now are our childhood memories. I was always there for you when you got in trouble. Please help me.”

“What is it you want me to do? Do you hope to avoid his arrest?”

She detected a hint of cynical disapproval in his voice. “No. I want my son to be arrested. I want a trial. I want it to be televised, because after Gavin spends ten minutes on the stand, everyone will recognize exactly what he is: a confused, foolish child. His brother and sister deserve to know that he isn’t a monster. I know my son. I know that what he’s done is tearing him apart. I don’t want him to die, gunned down like an animal, without ever having a chance to tell the family of the people he killed how deeply sorry he is.”

Tears wet her cheeks. She didn’t care. “Please, Connor. I’m begging you for my son’s life.”

Connor drank his coffee. “The name is Mad Rogan. They also call me the Butcher and the Scourge, but Mad is the most frequently used moniker.”

“I know you—”

“No, you don’t. You knew me before the war, when I was a child. Tell me, what am I now?”

The pressure of his gaze ground on her.

Her lips trembled and she said the first thing that popped into her mind. “You’re a mass murderer.”

He smiled, his face cold. No humor, no warmth, just a vicious predator baring his teeth. “It’s been forty-eight hours since the arson, and you are just now here. You must be really desperate. Did you go to everyone else first? Am I your last stop?”

“Yes,” she said.

His irises sparked with electric, bright blue. She looked into them, and for a split second she glimpsed the true power that lay inside him. It was like staring into the face of an avalanche before it swallowed you whole. In that moment she knew that all of the stories were true. He was a killer and a madman.

“I don’t care if you’re the devil himself,” she whispered. “Please bring Gavin back to me.”

“Okay,” he said.

Five minutes later, she stumbled down the driveway. Her eyes watered. She tried to stop crying but couldn’t. She had accomplished what she’d come here to do. The relief was overwhelming.

“Kelly, honey!” Tom caught her.

“He’ll do it,” she whispered, shell-shocked. “He promised he would find Gavin.”

Chapter 1

All men are liars. All women are liars, too. I learned that fact when I was two years old and my grandmother told me that if I was a good girl and sat still, the shot the doctor was about to give me wouldn’t hurt. It was the first time my young brain connected the unsettling feeling of my magic talent detecting a lie to the actions of other people.

People lie for many reasons: to save themselves, to get out of trouble, to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. Manipulators lie to get what they want. Narcissists lie to make themselves seem grand to others and themselves. Recovering alcoholics lie to safeguard their tattered reputations. And those who love us most lie to us most of all, because life is a bumpy ride and they want to smooth it out as much as possible.

John Rutger lied because he was a scumbag.

Nothing about his appearance said, Hey, I’m a despicable human being. As he stepped out of the hotel elevator, he seemed like a perfectly pleasant man. Tall and fit, he had brown, slightly wavy hair with just enough grey on his temples to make him look distinguished. His face was the kind of face you would expect a successful, athletic man in his forties to have: masculine, clean-shaven, and confident. He was that handsome, well-dressed dad at the junior football league yelling encouragements at his kid. He was the trusted stockbroker who would never steer his clients wrong. Smart, successful, solid as a rock. And the beautiful redhead holding hands with him was not his wife.

John’s wife was named Liz, and two days ago she hired me to find out if he was cheating on her. She had caught him cheating before, ten months ago, and she’d told him that his next one would be his last.

John and the redhead drifted across the hotel lobby.

I sat in the lobby’s lounge area, half hidden behind a bushy plant, and pretended to be absorbed in my cell phone, while the small digital camera hidden in my black crocheted purse recorded the lovebirds. The purse had been chosen precisely for its decorative holes.

Rutger and his date stopped a few feet away from me. I furiously shot birds at the snide green pigs on my screen. Move along, nothing to see here, just a young blond woman playing with her phone by some shrubbery.

“I love you,” the redhead said.

True. Deluded fool.

The pigs laughed at me. I really sucked at this game.

“I love you too,” he told her, looking into her eyes.

A familiar irritation built inside me, as if an invisible fly was buzzing around my head. My magic clicked. John was lying. Surprise, surprise.

I felt so sorry for Liz. They had been married for nine years, with two children, an eight-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl. She showed me the pictures when she hired me. Now their marriage was about to sink like the Titanic, and I was watching the iceberg approach.

“Do you mean that?” the redhead asked, looking at him with complete adoration.