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Ryan and his business partner, Everett, are the best around. So I put up with the fact that they’re not as afraid of me as they should be. Besides, there’s always the outside chance one of them could figure out how to access my offshore accounts, so it’s worth staying civil.

I suppose.

Ryan settles himself in a chair across from my desk and immediately puts his feet up. “I met up with Bev, the in-house tech person at your friend Liam’s firm.”

“Liam and I are not friends.”

Ryan looks startled. “That doesn’t matter.”

“Fine. Continue.”

“Okay. So as far as we’ve been able to determine, the trafficking ring in Belle Argo is effectively shut down. Everyone who was directly involved that we’ve managed to track down is ‘taken care of,’” he says with exaggerated air quotes. “And the few who couldn’t be found scattered like cockroaches. Likely no longer a threat, at least not here.”

“Good.” Good enough. These things never end clean, but I like knowing Belle Argo is safe for the moment, relatively speaking.

More to the point, I enjoy knowing the biggest threat in town is me. Has been since I put my own father down.

Probably why I didn’t mind so much disappearing Dean’s waste-of-space old man. Sometimes fathers suck. I’m a softie like that.

“Liam’s hacker says they weren’t able to track down all the people taken. We can assume they’re dead,” Ryan says with flat efficiency. “That illegal porn ring your escorts got tangled up in was being funded by a man named Rigby who conveniently fell off the map. Liam suggested they have it on good authority that he’s gone for good. Which makes sense, since digging into his finances turned up no recent activity.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure Rigby’s dead.” A few months ago, a couple of my escort who were clients of Rigby’s asked to borrow my cabin on the edge of Lake Jessup. It’s convenient for disposal, with its roughly four hundred gators per mile of shoreline.

It’s also cozy for hookups. But mostly the first reason.

Either way, nobody’s heard from Rigby since.

“And the drugs?” That one’s been sticking in my craw. Not that I’m some kind of saint. I’ve pushed my share of pills, but this shit was killing people fast. Offing your own buyers is bad for business.

“Well. As you already know, a wild animal unfortunately mauled the senator while he was out for a late-night walk.”

Daniel Corvus’s work, I suspect. Better that I don’t know the details.

Ryan clears his throat. “The, uh, senator seems to have had a few local people handling the rest of the operation. A couple of guys who were tasked with recruiting. Without him, the operation has fallen apart. Lucky thing he hadn’t yet scaled up much.”

My phone buzzes on my desk. The display tells me who’s calling, but I don’t answer. Some things even I won’t touch.

“Right.” Liam and I have dealt with all the names Ryan was able to give us from the drug operation. “The foot soldiers were mostly teenagers who were hooked on the stuff themselves. They sold to support their habits. They were victims themselves. Dropped ’em all at a rehab place on the East End. They’ll either get clean or take themselves off the map.”

“Depressing, but efficient,” Jalen mumbles.

Ryan nods. My phone buzzes again. I silence the ringer.

Another sip of whiskey slides down my throat. “Sounds like we’ve got it wrapped up as well as we can, yeah?”

“Crime is a game of whack-a-mole, you know that,” Ryan says with a shrug. He heads for the door. “I’ll let you know if I find more info. Oh and there’s some chatter about your competition from down south gunning for you again, so you should probably watch your back.”

War after the war. “I always do.”

There’s a commotion when Ryan approaches the door to leave. Heavy footsteps outside have me on my feet. “Don’t⁠—”

But he’s already opening the door. Something, or someone, falls through.

A lanky kid with messy blond hair. Jacob, the teenager who used to live next door to one of my escorts.

Ryan reaches out to catch the kid, missing what I see right away. “Gross. He’s covered in blood.”

Jalen shuts and locks my office door in a flash, though thankfully the laundromat I work out of is dead tonight. Nobody’s out there now aside from a single student who appears to be napping across a bench while his clothes dry.