Jax nearly collided at the end of the long alley with a frantic Shane. “Damn it, Cassidy!” he bellowed, grabbing her by the arms and practically shaking her. “I was worried sick. Why didn’t you call out your location? And what the hell was Cross doing there?”

Jax shook her head and grabbed his arms. “Dante, do you copy?” she asked.

“I copy,” he said. “What the hell happened?”

“Boys, you are not going to believe this,” she said, shaking her head. Hell, if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes she wouldn’t believe it either!

When she was done replaying the entire episode, they didn’t believe her.

“A vampire?” Dante asked incredulously.

“He took how many rounds?” Shane demanded.

Jax shook her head. “I know, it sounds like a bad episode of The Twilight Zone, but I’m telling you, this guy is for real. If he hadn’t arrived on-scene when he did, I’d hate to think of what would have happened to me. I owe the guy, and that really pisses me off.”

“Godfather is never going to buy this,” Shane said, shaking his head. They were almost back to the Vet Building.

“I’ll talk to him,” Jax said, wondering how the hell she was going to convince Godfather of what she had witnessed tonight, when she could barely believe it herself!

“We’ll discuss Cross later. Dante, what’s going on, on your end?”

“I took immediate possession of the envelope and instructed the senator and his staffers to mingle and act as if all was well. But as the evening began to wind down, the senator began to wind up. Prepare yourself, Cassidy. He’s pissed, scared and demanding answers.”

She could handle Rowland.

As they came upon the Vet Building, Jax grabbed her pumps from the courtyard and slipped them on before they hurried to the anteroom. Half a dozen heads shot up, including the senator’s. He looked as if he had seen a ghost.

“Sir,” Jax said as she approached. “If you would excuse everyone but my team from the room, perhaps we can make some sense of what’s going on.”

He stood, his hands fisted, his lips drawn thin. “I trust every person in this room.”

Jax smiled wanly. “I don’t. Please, do as I asked. I can’t help you if you refuse to follow my orders.”

“Now look here!” he spouted, taking a step toward her.

Jax tossed her head back and stepped into the senator’s space. “With all due respect, sir,” she calmly began, “I just spent the last hour fighting for my life against the thugs who left you that lovely calling card. Please, empty the room now.”

Anger and fear wreaked havoc with the senator’s handsome features. Reluctantly, Rowland curtly nodded to his staffers as well as his security detail.

Where was Sophia Rowland? Jax wondered. Were there trust issues between the senator and his scheming other half?

Jax drew in a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Dante, the envelope.”

He pulled a plastic bag with the envelope in it from the back of his jacket. Carefully he handed it to her. Gingerly, Jax extracted the single photo from it. She cringed for the second time. Rowland made a sound reminiscent of an animal in pain.

The photo was of Grace Rowland, naked and snorting cocaine with a naked man three times her age.

“I’m sorry,” Jax said softly.

Rowland’s head snapped around and his eyes narrowed. “It’s Photoshopped!” Rowland defended as he stood up and began to pace the room. “Gracie would never do drugs! Or have sex with a married man! She wouldn’t do that to me!”

Jax understood his pain. Trust. Such an elusive animal.

“You said he’s married. So you know the man?”

Rowland swiped his hand across his face and closed his eyes for several long minutes. “Alan LeVech, my daughter’s high school counselor.”

Jax nodded. Shane and Dante stood quietly by; when she looked at them, they evaded her gaze, almost making her smile. Apparently, this touchy-feely stuff was outside their scope of skills. Not that it was her forte, exactly, but they were happy to have her do the hard work.

“Either LeVech is in on this or—” Jax looked closer at the photo but could discern nothing in the background but a rumpled bed. “Do you recognize the setting?”

Rowland dragged his eyes from the floor to the photo. He swallowed hard and shook his head.

“Okay, so unless you want to confirm the authenticity of this picture with your daughter, Senator, I’m going to go on the assumption that someone, most likely Mercer or someone who really wants him to win the election, took this picture. It’s obvious what they intend to do.”

Rowland put a hand to his temple and shook his head. “Mercer is a smarmy piece of shit, but he’s not this stupid. He knows by circulating a picture of a minor this way, I could have the feds up his ass on a child porn charge so fast he wouldn’t know which side was right or left.”

Shane coughed. “Sir, hardly a child.”

Rowland speared Shane with a daggered glare. “She just turned eighteen. Do you have children?”

“No, sir!” Shane vehemently denied.

“Then you don’t understand a parent’s desire to protect their child from every bad in the world.”

Rowland turned dismissively away and looked at Jax. “Regardless of who is behind this, I don’t believe this is authentic. I want my daughter brought in here to look at it. When she denies it, I’m—”

“Senator, I’m sorry to interrupt, but whether it’s real or not isn’t our primary concern right now.”

Rowland’s face turned red. “What could be more of a concern than—”

“You seem to be forgetting that there’s someone else who might have delivered this photo.”

“Who else?” Rowland asked. “Who else would want to drag my name through the mud and use my daughter to do it?”

“The same man who threatened to kill her,” Jax offered.

Roland sat down and dropped his head into his hands. He moaned and rubbed his eyes, then looked up to the three of them. “This is something Lazarus is more than capable of, but I’m no use to him if I no longer hold my Senate seat. He wouldn’t jeopardize it at this stage. He knows there’s no way I can recover from something like this if it goes public. Lazarus is a lot of things, but impatient is not one of them.”

“He’s up against a wall at the moment. He needs funds, funds that only you can provide. He’s showing his entire hand, and if you still resist? If he can’t have you, no one will,” Jax said.

Rowland ran his fingers through his thinning blonde hair and stood. He looked as if he’d aged twenty years in the space of an hour. “Bring my daughter to me, but keep my wife out of this. This would kill her regardless of its authenticity.”

It took some wrangling to get her away from the clutches of overzealous supporters, but after twenty minutes, Grace Rowland was finally brought into the anteroom. She knew immediately something was wrong. Her blue eyes darted from her father to Jax, then back to her father. “Daddy? What’s wrong?” She flew into his outstretched arms. A hard lump formed in Jax’s gut as she stepped toward the table with the plastic-enclosed envelope.

“Grace,” Jax slowly began, “I’m going to show you something. But before I do, I need for you to understand the importance of your complete honesty with me.”

“Oh, kaaay,” Grace carefully said, looking to her father for support. He nodded imperceptibly. Shane and Dante had the forethought and common courtesy to move across the room. The senator looked away.

Jax slid the photo out of the envelope. Grace gasped. Rowland groaned and turned farther away from his daughter and the incriminating photo. “Is it legit?” Jax softly asked.

Grace’s cheeks flared red, her head dropped and her blonde hair hung down, covering her face. Slowly she nodded.

“Damn it, Grace! Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Rowland roared.

Silent tears stained her cheeks. Jax slid the photo back into the envelope. Rowland strode to the window.

“I love him!” Grace shouted at her father’s back.

Jax groaned and rolled her eyes. Shane and Dante stood, stoic, on the other side of the room, but she read the same can-this-get-any-worse? look on their faces.

Rowland turned, barely containing his fury. As a father, he was outraged. As a U.S. senator, he saw his entire life’s work slipping away because his teenage daughter had an infatuation with an older man.

“How long has this been going on?”

Grace stood straight as a sudden infusion of indignation filled her. “Long enough for us to make plans. He’s leaving his wife.”

“The hell he is! His ass is going to jail! Not only for sex with a minor but for the cocaine!”

“It’s mine!”

Oh shit.

Rowland’s face blanched. “Do I mean so little to you young lady that you would buy drugs and cavort with a married man?”

“Maybe, Daddy,” Grace spat, “if you had been around more, I wouldn’t have strayed! Here’s a newsflash for you: Your perfect little girl is not so perfect after all!”

Jax inserted herself between the raging, heartbroken father and the defiant teenage daughter. “Sir, Grace. Please, this is not going to help clean this mess up.”

“There is no mess to clean up! Alan and I are moving in together next month, just as soon as he leaves his wife. There won’t be anything anyone can do,” Grace defiantly stated as she moved past Jax for the door. She wheeled around and pointed an accusing finger at her father. “Not even a U.S. senator!”

Something inside Jax snapped. Maybe it was the devastated look on the senator’s face as the daughter he cherished and loved above all others slapped him in the face for his dedication to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Maybe Jax was angry that this girl was throwing away something precious, something Jax had never had—a father who cared. Maybe it was none of the above, maybe she just didn’t like the way the spoiled little brat spoke to her father.

“Sir,” Jax softly said, “may I have a private word with your daughter?”

Rowland looked at her, still stunned.

“Sir?”

He nodded. Jax turned to the defiant teenager, gripped her by the elbow and steered her into the small room off the anteroom. She shut the door soundly behind her and took a deep breath.

“Grace, I understand what you’re going through—”

“No! You don’t!” Grace shouted, shaking her head. Jax was about to say she did, but Grace waved her off. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to be perfect 24/7? To have no friends? No boyfriends?”

Sadly, Jax could relate. “More than you know. But listen to me. You must end it with LeVech. Your father is a very important man, Grace. He must win this election. If he doesn’t? There will be hell to pay in more ways than you could imagine.”

Tears erupted. “I didn’t mean to hurt my father. I just want a normal life.”

Jax felt compassion for the girl. She moved closer and patted her shoulder. “I know, Grace. But you need to fix this. Let’s get past the election and see what happens, OK?”

The girl nodded but said, “I’m not breaking it off with Alan, but I promise not to see him until after the election.”

Jax let out a long breath. “Fair enough. Now let’s get back in there and calm things down.”

As they came back into the room, Grace softly said, “I’m sorry, Daddy.” But she made no move to him when he held out his hands. Slowly he lowered them.

“Grace,” Jax asked, “were you aware you were being photographed?”

“No,” she softly said, looking at the floor.

“So that leaves two conclusions. One, the love of your life planted a camera, took the pictures and is now blackmailing your father—”

“Alan would never do that!”

“Which brings me to conclusion number two: Someone knew about the two of you and planted the camera.”

“It wasn’t Alan,” Grace defended.

“Who knew the two of you met—where is this place?”

“He has an apartment.”

“Who aside from the two of you know about it?”

“I don’t know, he said it was just for us.”

“Well, someone else knew about it. We’ll find out who.” She glanced at the senator, then said to Grace, “Please do not contact your boyfriend until we’ve spoken with him.”

Grace nodded.

“Grace, give me your word,” Senator Rowland said.

Grace lifted her chin meeting her father’s hurt gaze. “I promise.”

Jax looked to Dante and said, “Have HQ give us the 411 on LeVech, maybe he’ll listen to the true voice of reason.”

Jax strode over to the table with the photo and slid it back into the envelope. She sealed the plastic bag and handed it to Shane, then looked up at the silent senator. “Dante will escort you home while my partner and I go to speak with Mr. LeVech. We’ll be at your place nine tomorrow morning for a briefing.”

She strode out of the room knowing Shane would follow.

Jax flew down the marble stairways, her adrenaline pumping hard and fast, infusing her for the third time that night with energy she could barely contain. She held her breath all of the way down to the front entrance, where she expelled it in one long, harsh woof.

“What a clusterfuck!” Shane, said, hurrying to keep up with her.

No kidding. “The implications to national security aside, Shane, the entire episode sickened me. I’ll bet you my next round of hazard pay the only thing LeVech wants from Grace Rowland is a meal ticket.”