When Jax and Shane made it to the Rowlands’ Pacific Heights estate, they drove straight into a hornet’s nest.

“Now that’s a sight,” Shane murmured, throwing the car into Park just as Grace Rowland barreled across the manicured front lawn. Her mother hot on her heels.

“Who would have thought Sophia Rowland could run with that stick up her butt,” Jax mused aloud.

“As much as I like the kid,” Shane laughed, “my money’s on her mom.”

Jax snorted, not about to disagree with him.

Sighing, she opened the car door.

“I’m an adult. I’ll see who I want!” Grace screamed, running past Jax, who’d exited the vehicle.

“Grace, you come back here. I—”

In a quick, powerful move, Jax reached out and grabbed the girl by the arm, yanking her backward. The velocity of the movement caught Sophia Rowland, who was gaining ground on her daughter, by surprise. Grace and her mother collided, then hit the cobblestone driveway with a resounding thud.

Shane looked at Jax as if she had grown a third head, then immediately reached down to help the Rowland women up. Inhaling deeply, Jax stepped back. Sophia speared her with a glare as she adjusted the scarf hanging askew around her neck. Seeing she was unharmed, Jax focused on Grace.

Shit.

Not only were Gracie’s pants torn and dirty but the collision had also bloodied up her right hand. Tears filled the girl’s eyes, refusing to meet Jax’s gaze.

---

“Oh, Gracie,” Sophia said when she saw the wound. Instantly, her standard I’ll-eat-you-for-breakfast expression transformed into one of genuine distress. She yanked the scarf from around her neck and hurriedly wrapped it around her daughter’s wound. Surprised by the show of maternal concern, Jax stepped closer and was rewarded with another heated glare. “Miss Cassidy, was that necessary? You could have killed us!” Sophia snapped.

Oh, good. The bitch was back. The bitch she could handle.

“Necessity isn’t the—” Jax stopped and frowned, then subtly sniffed the air.

Sophia’s scent . . . It was a complex blend of feminine flora, iron and dominant male. It caught Jax’s attention until she realized everyone was staring at her.

Shaking away her odd thoughts, Jax said, “My apologies, Mrs. Rowland, Grace. I meant only to stop the runaway train.” She turned sympathetic eyes to Grace. “I assume all this commotion is because you’ve told your mom”—Grace closed her eyes in obvious mortification—“about the picture and Mr. LeVech—”

“Not here, Miss Cassidy,” Sophia snapped. “In the house.”

Sophia wrapped her arms around her subdued daughter and led her into the sprawling Georgian-style mansion that was the Rowlands’ abode, leaving Jax and Shane to follow like paid help.

“You have an annoying habit of stunts like that,” Shane said as they trailed the limping women. “Do it again, Cassidy, and we can kiss this assignment good-bye.”

She looked up to find his angry eyes on her. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. I just wanted to stop Grace.”

“Next time, let me do it,” Shane groused. “You obviously don’t know your own strength.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Keep it up, and I’ll give you another demonstration.”

He held up his hands. “Easy. Save it for your boyfriend.”

What the hell—?”

But he walked ahead of her without letting her finish. And it really pissed her off. Cross was the furthest thing from a love interest that a man could be with her. That Shane would even joke about it made her want to hurt him.

She shook off her vigilante feelings toward her teammate, knowing she had to let it go. He could think what he wanted. If she was brutally honest, she had no regrets.

That admission bothered her more than Shane’s insinuation.

As they entered the cavernous house, Jax didn’t bother admiring the classic décor. She was already familiar with the full layout of the house, from the rug at her feet to the fixtures in the guest baths. All she wanted now—all she was going to focus on—were answers and strategic planning.

Dante strode angrily toward them. “Mrs. Rowland came unglued when the kid told her about the photograph and LeVech. When things appeared to have calmed down, I went to take a leak and the next thing I know the Rowland women are running and screaming out the door! I’m about done with this babysitting detail.”

That answered a couple of big questions. Sophia Rowland knew about the photo and lover boy. Jax slapped him on the shoulder and shook her head. “Thanks for taking one for the team, man.”

“What’s the word on LeVech?” Dante asked Shane.

“Not home. No one answering the phone this morning either. We’re going to head back over there as soon as we wrap up here.”

They followed the women deeper into the house until they finally stopped in a large study. They came face-to-face with a scowling Senator Rowland and Alex Maksim, his campaign manager. Rowland, however, seemed to be more vexed by Jax’s presence, then the fact his wife had been chasing his daughter down the street or that his kid was injured.. Maybe he was a derelict dad? Maybe he wasn’t the kind to fuss over a kid.

Was all the fatherly concern just an act, then? Was he like every other scumbag politician, more concerned with his career than with his own flesh and blood? No wonder Grace had rebelled.

Jax closed the double doors to what she figured was the senator’s office behind her. She nodded to the senator, who looked none too pleased with her.

Grace sat in a chair while being tended by her mother. The senator finally moved around and asked, “Are you all right, Gracie?”

“Just a few scrapes, Daddy,” she murmured, not looking up at him.

“Sir,” Jax said, inclining her head toward the girl. Jesus, did they really think they could talk openly with her present?

“Sophia,” Rowland softly said, “take Grace upstairs and tend her.”

Sophia turned angry eyes on Jax, then up to her husband. She helped Grace up and walked her to the door. “I’ll be up shortly, Grace. Have Leti see to you until then.”

Jax couldn’t help but compare Grace with her big brother. Only their eyes linked them physically. Emotionally, they were both passionate beings, but in such different ways. Grace was all blind sunshine, while Marcus was dark moonlight. Grace was like an untrained puppy wearing her emotions on her sleeve. Marcus was like a Schutzen-trained rottweiler. Jax watched her walk slowly from the room, knowing by her expression that she wanted to argue her place among the adults but was smart enough to know she would lose. Marcus never would have asked. He would have refused to leave.

Sophia closed the doors behind Grace and turned to face the room. “I’m not leaving this room, Bill.” She stalked past Jax and sat down in the chair her daughter had vacated. Imperiously, she crossed her arms and legs, then looked hard at Shane, Dante, then Jax. “Not until you tell me what’s going on. I want full disclosure.”

Jax looked to the senator. It was his call.

He nodded.

“Full disclosure it is then,” Jax started. “Sir, if we may, I’d like to put the photograph and who’s behind it aside for the moment.”

“I think not,” Maksim said. “That photograph has to be dealt with immediately.”

Jax looked to Shane and Dante.

“I think you should hear Miss Cassidy out,” Shane said. “It might change our approach.”

“Go ahead, Miss Cassidy,” the senator said.

“I was offered the contract on Grace last night,” Jax stated.

A collective gasp went up in the room.

“By who?” Sophia demanded as she absently fingered her hair along her neck.

Jax wanted to smirk and say, “Your son. Payback is a bitch, isn’t it?” Instead, she looked at the senator. When he nodded, she said, “An assassin who has connections to the organization who has threatened the senator. But at the last minute, I was called off.”

Sophia stood and faced her husband. “What kind of threats against you, Bill? And why is this organization still in existence?”

“It’s complicated, Sophia. I only allowed you to believe there was a mild threat so as not to worry you. As I see you are now.”

“How can you not inform me of serious threats against you?” She wrapped her arms around her husband’s neck and hugged him to her. “Bill, please, let me in. I need to know what is happening so I can help.”

He caught her in the circle of his arms and smiled sadly down at her. “It’s much bigger than the both of us, darling. It’s why I called in Miss Cassidy and her team. We’ re going to flush the bastards out and fight fire with fire.”

“Did these bad people take that photograph of Grace?” she asked.

“We don’t know,” Shane said. “I went to speak with LeVech last night. He wasn’t home. We’ re going back there when we wrap up here.”

“My money is on Mercer,” Maksim said, shaking his head in disgust. “He has the most to gain by this. And unless we find a way around this mess, he’s going to be the next senator.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of it, Alex. My money is on Lazarus,” Rowland stated.

Sophia made a small sound, bringing Jax’s gaze to her. Absently, the woman rubbed her hair again. Why the sudden nervousness?

“He said three weeks,” Sophia softly said, interrupting Jax’s thoughts.

Before she could respond, Rowland did.

“How do you know that, Sophia?” Rowland asked, startling Jax. Sophia looked like a deer caught in headlights. Her perfectly painted pink lips formed a perfect O. “How do you know about Lazarus?” Rowland asked his wife again.

Sophia closed her mouth and straightened to rigid. She looked hard at everyone in the room, except her husband. When she finally did meet his gaze, she had the grace to blush. Jax didn’t buy the act. Delicately, Sophia cleared her throat. “I was worried about you, Bill. I overheard a conversation last month between you and a man you called Lazarus. Since that conversation, you have been walking around as if ghosts lurked around every corner.” She looked to Jax and her team, then at Maksim and back to her husband. “When you became so secretive and hired these people for protection, I assumed the worst. I see I was right.”

Rowland swiped his hand across his face. “You know how I feel about subterfuge, Sophia!”

“It’s not like I’m the enemy here, Bill! I’m your wife, and as your wife I will do anything and everything to protect you. Even if that means snooping around.”

Jax watched his face crumble. He was on the verge of complete collapse.

“Sir,” Jax began, “I suggest you allow us to take Grace into protective custody. Not only for her safety, but for yours and Mrs. Rowland’s peace of mind. Until this is over.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Maksim said. “Then we can concentrate on this campaign.”

Rowland sat down behind his desk and looked solemnly around the room. “I’m not sure if I have the stomach for this anymore.”

Sophia Rowland stood up, strode over to a carved mahogany sideboard and opened it. She deftly poured what looked like a healthy shot of whiskey into a crystal tumbler and threw it back. She then grabbed a pack of cigarettes off the table and lit up. Irritated, she blew a long stream of blue smoke into the middle of the room. Then she began to pace the Aubusson carpet. “Bill, jump ship if you insist. But I’ ll be damned if I’m going to allow Johnny Mercer to push you out this way. He is the lowest of life-forms! How dare he use such underhanded methods?” Sophia turned on them all. “Has there been any word from him? A demand?”

Rowland nodded. Jax cursed under her breath and moved in closer. “You heard from him and didn’t inform us?”

“I was going to get to it. I received a cryptic email this morning, simply telling me to back out.”

“Let me see it,” Jax said, moving in on his laptop. The senator pulled up the email. The sender, [email protected], was probably a dummy addy. As the senator had indicated, the email simply read

back out now

Jax pulled her iPhone from her pocket. “Senator, please forward the email to [email protected]” He did so. A moment later, she checked her account and forwarded the email to Naomi with instructions to find out where it had originated. Who knew? Maybe they’d get lucky.

But she seriously doubted it.

“Could be anything, from anyone,” Shane said.

“It’s Mercer,” Sophia said, stubbing out her cigarette.

“Why are you so sure?” Jax asked.

Sophia looked to her husband, then to Jax, then to the ceiling.

“I’ ve had a few unsettling encounters with the man.”

“What kind of ‘unsettling encounters’ ?” Jax asked.

“Sophia, why is this news to me?” Rowland asked.

Sophia inhaled a deep breath, then slowly exhaled. “This seems to be our day of reckoning, isn’t it?” She lit another cigarette. “I, too, have kept secrets to protect you, Bill.” She inhaled and slowly exhaled, then casually waved her hand. “He propositioned me last year. I rebuked him, of course. He didn’t take too kindly to it. Especially when I told him a lowly mayor didn’t interest me.” She looked at her husband and smiled apologetically. “He made a few more vain attempts until, finally, I became stern with him and told him if he continued to pursue me, I’d expose him.”

Sophia looked directly at Jax. “He, of course, warned me that he would do whatever it took to see Bill humiliated.” She raised her glass, and in a rather dramatic salute said, “And so it has come to pass.”

The senator and Maksim started speaking at once. Jax held up her hand. “Are you implying,” she loudly said to be heard over all their voices, “that Johnny Mercer went to all of this trouble because you wouldn’t have sex with him?”

Sophia looked indignant. “Men have waged war over sex since the beginning of time.”

Jax gave the haughty socialite a quick up and down. She was fifty-two, a very well-preserved fifty-two at that, but Johnny Mercer struck Jax as the type who liked his women young, blonde and stupid.

Sophia was not young, and certainly not stupid.

Jax stared hard at Sophia. “What else are you not telling us?”

Sophia waved her manicured hand. “Why is it so hard to accept what I just told you?”

“You don’t seem like Mercer’s type to me,” Jax said. “The motives you’ ve given seem too petty for a man so driven.”

“Sophia,” Rowland sternly said, “what else?”

She shook her head and pursed her lips. “Last fall, before he declared he was running against you, I agreed to hostess a soiree for the Treasure Island Foundation. You were in D.C. and since it was for one of your pet causes. I didn’t think you would mind, so I agreed.”

“And the press leaked the night before he was running,” Rowland said. “I remember now.”

“Yes, well, I couldn’t be his hostess. I backed out. He lost face and tens of thousands of dollars and the developer he was wooing to revitalize Treasure Island.”

“So, it’s more like straight tit for tat then?” Jax almost laughed at the pun.

“I assure you, if it is Mercer, he’s not going to get away with this! None of it,” Rowland said, pouring himself a glass of whiskey despite the morning hour. It hadn’t taken long to relight a fire under Rowland. Jax was relieved. Despite what was happening, he did not strike her as a man who would quit anything, not while he still had a breath in his body.

“Maybe he already has, darling,” Sophia said.

“What? You’ re changing your tune already? Are you suggesting I back out of this election?”

“I’m suggesting you take Calhoun up on his offer.”

Rowland and Sophia stared at each other, while Jax processed Sophia’s words. Was she saying? . . .

“He’s made his choice,” Rowland snapped.

“Only because you turned him down,” his wife reminded him.

“I’m not rehashing this, Sophia. We settled this matter long ago. Don’ t—”

“No, you don’ t,” Sophia snapped back at her husband. “We need this now. Give Mercer what he wants and you can have more.”

Shane leaned forward and spoke in Jax’s ear. “Richard Calhoun, the GOP presidential front-runner?”

Jax nodded, then asked, “That’s who you are talking about, isn’t it? Richard Calhoun?”

Sophia nodded. “The one and only.”

“It would solve a lot of our problems, Bill,” Maksim said.

“The choice has been made. There’s no going back.”

“Bill,” Sophia pleaded. “There is still time. There won’t be an announcement until next week. Please reconsider.”

“What offer?” Jax asked.

“Vice president of the United States,” Sophia Rowland declared triumphantly.

Holy shit.

Senator Rowland scowled. “I told them I wasn’t interested. I’m still not.”

“How could you not be interested in the veep job?” Jax asked.

Rowland sat down behind his desk. “I can do more as a senator than as a lame duck vice president.” He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes, then looked at them with bleary eyes. “It’s a moot point. Calhoun has chosen his running mate. My only concern now is to salvage my daughter’s reputation, get reelected to a fourth term as U.S. senator if it’s still possible, and get Joseph Lazarus off my back. Now, tell me how we’ re going to do that?”

“For starters, we take Grace into protective custody.” Jax looked to Dante. “Can you arrange that?” He nodded. “Good, then Shane and I will head over to speak with LeVech. If he’s in this alone, we’ re golden. If not, we’ ll find out who he’s sleeping with and go from there.”

“What about Mercer?” Sophia asked.

“First things first, Mrs. Rowland. There’s no sense in getting his antennae up if he has nothing to do with this. He’s being watched. If he blows his nose, we’ ll know it.”

“I agree,” Rowland said.

“Then let’s get to it,” Jax said, heading for the door.

“He’s dead,” she whispered as they approached LeVech’s front door.

“Who?” Shane asked.

“LeVech,” Jax murmured.

The front door creaked open against the late morning breeze. Shane pulled his pistol. Jax shook her head. “You won’t need that.”

Shane looked at her like she was crazy and kept his weapon drawn. First Shane entered. Almost immediately, she heard him cursing.

The blood scent was so strong, so pungent, that it clogged her nostrils. As she stepped into the foyer, she nearly gagged. Blood splattered in high arches across the soft green walls. Lying naked in a pool of his blood was LeVech, his groin mutilated.

“Whoever did this was pissed,” Jax said as she stepped to the fringes of the room where there was no blood. Farther down in the short hallway was a woman lying facedown in her blood, her neck severed so severely that it lay at a ninety-degree angle from her shoulders.

Other than the two bodies and the blood, the house looked to be in perfect order. “From the lividity, it looks like maybe twelve hours. What time did you arrive last night?”

“Right after midnight,” Shane said.

It was noon, so the couple must have arrived home shortly after Shane’s visit. Whoever had done this to them hadn’t been far behind.

“Jesus. This runs us straight into a wall,” Jax said, walking the perimeter in order to stay out of the blood.

She squatted and looked closer at LeVech. Her skin crawled. “Look,” she said, pointing to the groin injury. “It looks like claw marks. Like an animal did this.”

“Or made to look like an animal did it,” Shane said.

“Mercer or Lazarus?”

Shane looked pointedly at Jax. “One has a senatorial seat to gain, and the other stands to lose it.”

“Let’s go chat with Johnny Mercer.”

“But first let’s go through the place and make sure there is nothing that can link LeVech to any Rowland,” Shane said.

Less than an hour later, with not one thread to tie to any one of the Rowlands, Jax called in the details to Naomi, who called the cops on a blocked number. When Jax hung up, she looked up at Shane. “Let’s get out of here.”

As they drove back to the city, Shane looked over from the steering wheel and asked, “How did you know they were dead before we got out of the car?”

She swallowed hard but didn’t flinch away from the question. “I could smell them.”

“How?” Shane asked, eyeing her cryptically.

“I-I got some of Cross’s souped-up blood in me. Apparently, it makes me more aware.”

“Jesus, Cassidy. What if he has AIDS or something?”

She looked over at him. “Trust me, that is the least of my worries.”

He opened his mouth to ask her more, but she shook her head. “Shane, after last night, I’m pretty sure Cross is going to make an introduction. I need you to trust me when it comes to handling him.”

“I trust you. It’s him I don’t trust.”

“That makes two of us.”