The scene was surreal. A black shell, charred and smoking, rose from the rubble where Tiberius’s club used to be. An entire section of the western wall, where the bar had been, was completely gone. Smoke and dust filled the air. Lights flashed and cut through the haze from cop cars, ambulances, and fire trucks.

Ryan pushed through the crowd of curious onlookers then dipped beneath the police tape.

A beat cop off to her left saw her approach and waved. “Detective Winslet.”

“What have we got, Dominguez?”

“Initial reports from eye witnesses say that the place just exploded. The club was mostly empty, except for some daytime staff. Firefighters were able to get the blaze under control pretty quickly after arriving.”

“Any casualties?” Ryan asked, her heart in her throat.

The detective nodded, his gaze going behind her and to the left.

Looking over her shoulder, Ryan could see a trio of long, black body bags on the ground.

“Got a few, but no IDs yet. Staff who didn’t make it out in time, most likely. The rest of the injuries are minor. The EMTs are having a look at them now.”

Ryan’s stomach clenched at the sight of the bags. She refused to think about who they might contain, not yet.

Dominguez then pointed to the open back of one of the ambulances where Ryan saw a familiar face. It was the man who had escorted her to and from Tiberius’s office! He was sitting there with an oxygen mask over his face.

Ryan thanked the detective then sprinted to the ambulance. She skidded to a stop in front of the behemoth, who was nearly as wide as the emergency vehicle.

He looked at her, his eyes widening in both recognition and hope. “Detective Winslet.”

“Are you all right?”

He pulled the mask from his face. “Yeah. We were in the process of evacuating the building when the place blew.”

“Evacuating? Why?”

The man looked left and right before answering, lowering his voice. “Q got wind of something; said we had to get everyone out ASAP.”

“And Tiberius?”

“Took off; said he was going to find you and make sure you were safe. He didn’t find you?”

A wave of relief rushed through her. “No, I must have missed him. Where’s Q now?”

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice thick. “Last time I saw him, he was still inside. Said he wanted to make sure everyone was out. I’m not sure if he was caught in the blast or not.”

“Ryan!”

Ryan felt a huge wave of relief when she saw Tiberius running toward her. She didn’t think twice about wrapping her arms around him. Even in the midst of chaos, his presence centered her.

“Thank the gods you are safe,” Tiberius said, holding her tightly.

“I’m fine,” she assured him, stepping back, “but there were casualties.”

Tiberius frowned. “Who?”

“Q’s missing,” the security man said heavily. “Everyone else is accounted for.”

Tiberius’s face darkened, and Ryan felt a wave of worry crash over her.

“Don’t go jumping to conclusions,” she told him. “The bodies haven’t been identified yet.”

“I must know.” Tiberius turned on his heels, heading toward the casualties, but Ryan stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“It’s a crime scene,” she told him. “You can’t just walk over there.”

“I must know.”

She looked into his eyes and nodded in understanding. “Then come with me.”

“He’s with me,” she told Dominguez as they stepped beyond the yellow, plastic tape. Their feet carried them toward the area where three black bags were laid out on the ground.

“Quintus is not in one of them,” he said quietly. “Quintus cannot be in one of them.”

Ryan wondered if there was more to that declaration than the sheer desire for it to be true. She hoped, for his sake, that he was right.

Kneeling, Ryan took a deep breath and opened the first bag. The face that stared up at her wasn’t familiar. She looked to Tiberius, who shook his head.

“He is not one of ours.”

“Are you sure?”

“I know everyone in my employ, and he is not one of them.”

She moved to the second bag.

The face was unrecognizable, a jumbled mass of blackened, charred flesh. However, the ear that remained relatively intact and the tattoos still visible along his neck were enough for Tiberius to identify him.

“That is Enrico. He applied for a security position last week, but he was not hired.”

“Why not?”

“Questionable affiliations.”

Holding his breath, Tiberius reached out and stilled Ryan’s hand before she could check the third bag. He reached out to do it himself. With his thumb and forefinger squeezing the zipper, he closed his eyes.

“Please,” he whispered as he drew his fingers downward, “let this not be my brother.”

Ryan held her breath, too, feeling Tiberius’s anxiety and dread as if it were her own. Then, when his breath released in a whoosh, hers did, too.

The face that stared back at him with vacant eyes was not Quintus’s, but that of an unknown woman.

Ryan looked around, her eye catching on what looked like a partially intact security camera atop one of the giant hooks hanging precariously from the rubble. “What about the security cameras?” she asked. “Do you record footage on site?”

“Yes,” Tiberius said, “but we also have it streamed to an offsite server with all our other data in case this location was compromised.”

“Good. We need to access the videos from the last twenty-four hours.”

“Ryan, you must know that some of the things you might see on the video could put you in a comprising position.”

The fact that he had said “you” and not “me” was not lost on her. Could he really care more about her than his own interests?

“I’m already in a compromising position,” she told him truthfully, “but I’m only interested in anything that will identify who is behind this or what will help us find Quintus.”

Tiberius stared deeply into her eyes then nodded. “As you wish. However, understand that I must answer this grievous attack my way.”

His words reminded her of just who she was dealing with.

Just as Ryan was about to ask him point-blank about that, Haines and Kowalski pulled up to the scene, and with them, the two FBI agents who had been at the docks when they had found Phil.

Making a spur of the moment decision, she grabbed Tiberius’s arm and pulled him away from the scene before the others saw them. She refused to analyze the sudden urge to protect Tiberius, choosing instead to add it to the list of things she would deal with later.

When they reached the curb on the opposite side of the street, she released him.

“I must find Quintus.”

“I know you do,” she said grimly, “and I’m going to help you. Do you have the access codes for the security video?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“First, we’re going to stop by Betty’s and see if Q is over there. Then we’re going to use her computer to look at the security camera footage and see what it can tell us.”

He paused. When she turned to look up at him, she saw a smile ghost over his lips.

“You are helping me, possibly to your own detriment.”

“Yeah, well, don’t read too much into it,” she told him. “I still haven’t made up my mind about you yet.”

And wasn’t that the understatement of the year?

They made their way across the parking lot to Betty’s, where she was anxiously waiting. There was no mistaking the worry in her eyes.

“Ryan! Did you just come from Bait? Have you seen Q?”

“No, we were hoping he might have come here.”

“No.” Betty turned her gaze to Tiberius. “You must be T. Q talks about you all the time. Have you heard anything? Is he okay?”

Seeing her normally bubbly, sassy friend so upset was disconcerting, but Ryan wouldn’t sugarcoat the situation. “We don’t know.” When Betty’s eyes widened, she quickly added, “But he wasn’t among the injured, so that’s a positive sign. Can we use your computer to access the security footage?”

“Yeah, of course.” Betty led them through the kitchen to the back of the store where her office was located. The space was small but surprisingly neat and organized.

“There you go. Have at it. The password is cuntmuffin. I’ll be out front. I hope you find something useful.”

“Thanks, Betty.”

Tiberius took a seat at the desk and immediately began to peck at the keys. “The cameras run continuously. Every twenty-four hours, a new file is created, beginning around seven a.m.”

Long minutes stretched out to what felt like an eternity as she watched comings and goings at high-speed. Not many people came and went from Bait’s back entrance. A few waitresses briefly appeared to take a smoke break, and a bouncer brought out some trash and placed it in the dumpster, but nothing of importance until approximately ninety minutes earlier.

Ryan leaned forward in her chair, anticipation humming through her veins as she watched the screen. A lone figure came through the back door, head down, hoodie pulled over his head as he moved quickly across the alley. He paused, looked left then right, and then nodded to someone she couldn’t see. Something about the man’s build and the swagger of those steps looked familiar. It took a moment to recognize him, but she did.

Drew!

Drew disappeared out of the camera’s range, and then Quintus came out of the back door seconds later, obviously following.

Quintus hadn’t taken more than five steps when someone, not Drew, rushed toward him from off screen and tackled him hard to the ground. Quintus put up a valiant struggle, but a second, unidentified assailant joined the fray and put a stop to it with a solid baseball bat to Quintus’s head.

A string of unintelligible words spewed from Tiberius’s lips.

Horrified, Ryan watched as Quintus’s limp form was picked up and carried off in a fireman’s hold. Moments after that, the back of the club exploded.

“Wait. Go back a little ... That’s it ... Right there!”

Tiberius stopped the footage then rewound it to the sight of an unconscious Quintus hanging over the unknown man’s shoulder.

“Now zoom in.”

Her blood turned to ice when she caught sight of the edge of a wing, recognizing it for what it was—the eagle tat sported by Nez’s minions.

The good news was Quintus had not been in the club when it had exploded.

The bad news was he had been assaulted and kidnapped by Black Eagle’s men.