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Anita chewed at her lower lip, trying to hide a smile. “You could say that. Like I said, we go way back.” She rolled her eyes, a self-indulgent smile on her lips. “When we were young, JC was quite the ladies’ man. He was a few years younger than me, but that didn’t matter. He and I had a connection. We, uh, had some fun times in high school, if you get my drift. Had I not gone off to college and met my mate…” She sighed. “Who knows. Anyway, back to business. Where were we?”

“They tell us you’ve had some experience with the Masters family?” Nate prodded, trying to get the conversation back on track. “Why don’t you tell us what you know about them?”

Our server arrived a moment later and set our plates down. As interested as I was in what Anita knew, my new shifter metabolism screamed at me, and I began eating before the first word was out of her mouth.

“I amveryfamiliar with Lincoln Masters.” Anita scowled. “He’s one slick son of a bitch. My old partner spent over twenty years trying to catch that bastard. When he retired, his one regret was never tossing Lincoln’s ass in jail. I joined the department when I was twenty-one, right after leaving my mate.When I got promoted to detective, he mentored me. I’ve decided to pursue this in honor of him, but I have to say”—she shook her head wearily—“he was right about Lincoln being slippery.”

“What’s so hard about finding out what they’re doing?” I asked.

“The Masters Foundation, for one,” Anita said, popping a fry into her mouth. “It’s a front. A well-financed and managed front. The foundation is used to create shell companies to hide Lincoln’s other holdings. One of the biggest shell companies is a legitimate business. A construction company. Keeble and Jax.”

The name sent a bolt of excitement through me. Lenny Nash had worked for that company, along with his cousin. The Masters Foundation owned that company? I’d assumed they were partners. This was a direct link from Lenny to Rick.

“There’s accounting firms, logistics companies—hell, they even own a chain of gas stations out near Montreal. That, and everything in between,” Anita explained. “We’ve tracked several interesting things that looked to be leading back to Lincoln Masters. Some are pretty gruesome. Murders, disappearances, corporate takeovers, anything you can imagine.”

“Then go to your superiors,” I urged, jabbing my finger into the table for emphasis. “Go after this guy.”

“All my evidence is circumstantial or tenuous at best. When looked at from a distance, it seems like I’m connecting dots that aren’t there. It only becomes obvious when you really drill down and dig. That isn’t enough for a warrant or official investigation. Besides, there’s the pack dynamics I have to worry about outside the human police force.”

“What?” I glanced from Anita to Nate, who now looked like he was sucking on a lemon.

“Lincoln Masters left the Detroit pack he’d been born into and joined up with the Toronto pack right before the laws changed,” Anita explained. “Those new rules made it apain in the ass for shifters to change packs, and damn near impossible for lone wolves to be accepted into one. He slipped in right before that. He’s become a pretty influential member of that pack. If I were to level accusations against him and possibly trigger a human investigation into his dealings without incontrovertible proof… you know what would happen.”

“War.” Nate tossed his fork down bitterly. “JC’s hand would be forced if enough pack elders took offense to what Anita did.”

“A pack war?” I asked dumbly. “That’s a thing?”

“Not usually,” Anita said. “Pack warfare only happens between smaller packs. Regional conflicts aren’t that unheard of. But”—she held up a finger—“packs the size of Toronto-Ottawa and Detroit? That hasn’t been seen in at least a hundred years. The only way I can go after Lincoln Masters is if I catch him red-handed. At that point, no one could question it.”

“What have you found?” I asked, trying not to think of the disaster a full-scale shifter war would look like.

“Drugs,” Anita said with a shrug. “Lincoln Masters made his money on drugs. It’s honestly the craziest success story I’ve ever seen. Not only because of the sheeramountof money he made, but because of how well he hid his identity while he did.

“About twenty or twenty-five years ago, a huge surge in crack cocaine, heroin, and meth swept through Detroit, Buffalo, and Cleveland,” she went on. “The main drug flooding the streets was meth, though. Law enforcement in all three cities were struggling to find the supplier and producer. The only thing we had to go on was this weird rumor of a drug kingpin known only as… wait for it… The Wolf.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Nate said, letting out a derisive laugh.

“Yeah. Really original name. Anyway, The Wolf stayed hidden by using his own shifter junkies as employees and enforcers. We arrested a few, but they’d never seen him inperson. The stories they told us?” Anita shook her head and shuddered. “It’s really bloodcurdling. They’d be picked due to their strength, size, or power. The Wolf or his lieutenants would then start offering them drugs for free. They’d be separated from their friends and packs until they were walking the line of being feral. They became extremely loyal to him. Not because of any love or respect for the guy, but because they needed a fix and got it for free if they obeyed.”

“Jesus,” Nate muttered, and rubbed his forehead.

I pushed my plate away, my appetite suddenly gone. This sounded eerily similar to Lenny Nash’s story. Was Lincoln doing the same thing in Toronto, or was Rick behind it? Following in his father’s footsteps to create a monster to bite and change me?

Anita held her hands up. “This all happened before my time, but my partner told me all about it. I’ve been pursuing it more as a hobby than an official case since he retired. What Idoknow comes directly from him, as well as the files we had from the initial investigation back then.”

“So therewasan official investigation?” I asked. “The Detroit PD actually went after Lincoln?”

“More or less,” Anita said with a pained expression. “We found some stuff in the bloodwork of a few folks who overdosed. Chemical signatures that we thought could help us pin down who The Wolf was. My partner had a hunch it was Lincoln Masters?—”

“Wait,” Nate said. “How the hell did this partner of yours make that connection?”

“If Douglas, my partner, hadn’t been seventy years old, he probably would have finished the deal. See, the whole force was looking at the usual suspects. Cartel guys, Italian and Russian mafia, even street gangs. What Douglas did was look at the bigger picture. It’s part of what he taught me,” she explained. “It’s like a shell game. Most people are looking where the dealerwantsyou to look. Douglas was a master at looking at the exact spot the dealerdidn’twant you to look.” She gulped some coffee before continuing. “Lincoln Masters was a nobody. A guy who’d had a couple run-ins with the law early on. Shoplifting when he was a kid, a few parking violations, nothing that would connect him to a million-dollar drug ring. Except that he suddenly surged into the Detroit upper class. The guy went from working part-time at a garage to hobnobbing with the rich pricks that run the city. He went to galas, operas, concerts, auctions. He was spotted at red-carpet events and even dated a Detroit-area model for a while.

“This all began right around the time the drug surge happened. Douglas found a couple guys and one woman who were possible suspects, all having come into money around the same time. They had some shady stuff going on financially. He started digging deeper. It only took a couple weeks for him to zero in on Lincoln Masters as his top suspect.”

As she spoke, I tried to put Lincoln’s face on the body of this shadowy drug kingpin. It was difficult. When I’d met him at the gala, he’d looked like any other wealthy, snobbish asshole. He hadn’t appeared dangerous or vicious; he’d only acted like a dick who thought he was above me. The fact that I’d come so close to tying my entire life to a family like that made my stomach turn.

“Once Douglas focused on Lincoln, some things became clear. He’d purchased a very small chemical processing plant about a year before the increase in street drugs.” Anita shook her head in wonder. “The guy wasn’t even thirty at that point. Who thefuckhas three-quarters of a million dollars to buy a rundown factory at twenty-seven?Especiallysomeone who didn’t come from money. That was the line Douglas was following when he realized there was a chemical signature.”

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