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Hayden sighs and I can almost feel the frustration radiating off him. “How fast can you get to Summit?”

I look at the time on my watch, which I forgot to take off when I flopped into my bed last night. 11:55. God, I’m never drinking with Xander again. “Uh, maybe twenty.”

“Great, get here now. I’ve called Xander too.”

I pause. “Hey, what’s going on?”

“You’ll see when you get here. I don’t think we should talk on the phone.” With that, he cuts the line, and I stare at my phone for a second, frowning. Hayden is not usually this cryptic. If he doesn’t want to talk about it over the phone, that could only mean one thing—someone might be listening.

The police.

Fuck.

Being back at Summit when it’s empty, the floors not sticky, and the couches being lathered in disinfectants to remove all sorts of fluids, bodily or otherwise, is strange. There is no pumping bass, no dancers in cages or neon strobe lights bright enough to blind, just silent cleaners darting back and forth with mops and latex gloved hands.

When I make it up to Hayden’s office, Xander is already there and for a second, I’m annoyed at how good he manages to look even after a rough night out.

But my attention is quickly torn away from him when I see the leaves of paper, dusty footprints and lone cables strewn all over the onyx marble floor like a tornado ripped through the office and disappeared.

“What the hell?” I breathe, catching my brothers’ attention.

Hayden, for the first time in a while, looks exhausted, his eyes dim and his usually impeccable clothes slightly rumpled—it’s only a small crease on his shirt but still unusual. “The police came early in the morning with a warrant to search the place,” he says in greeting. “They took anything they could.”

“For what?”

“The are investigating a death they believe happened here,” he says. “They got witnesses claiming they saw the girl in the smoking area a few hours before she died.”

This can’t be happening. The last thing we need is Homicide on us too. “Why would random witnesses suddenly speak up? There wasn’t a public investigation on this.”

“That’s the million-dollar question,” Xander says, arms crossed.

“I dealt with it,” Hayden says firmly. “We cleaned her up, erased the cameras and everything. There is no evidence that she died here. Those witnesses can’t be taken seriously either. They were drunk and high. It can’t hold up.”

“Maybe someone else gave them the tip,” Xander suggests. “One of your guys?”

Hayden shakes his head. “No, I trust all of them. They wouldn’t do that.”

Both their eyes fall on me, and I feel my chest squeeze because only one other person knows she died here.

“Why do you think the police care about some dead girl in a club, Rowan?” he asks pointedly.

I know what he’s insinuating, and I’m not going to play along. Blood rushes through me and for a second, I feel faint.

“Have you told Mum?” I ask, ignoring him.

“Not yet,” Hayden says, “I wanted to see how much of a fuck up this is before calling her in.”

“Oh, it’s a fuckup,” Xander laughs. “Let’s just thank the stars that this warrant wasn’t for The Serpentine.”

The Serpentine acts as a headquarters for The Snake. My mother’s office is there, not to mention files we’d rather not let the police get their hands on. Hayden shoots him a glare, but I’m only half listening to what they are talking about.

Hayden frowns. “You think this has something to do with Haze?”

I nod once. There was another body in our warehouse and if the police or Alex were to find out about that, that’s two bodies they can easily tie to us and manslaughter is a sticky charge to escape.

Xander frowns. “Am I missing something?”

I let out a quiet sigh. It was naïve of my mother to think I’d keep this from them. “A man was found dead in the Sying warehouse. Mum asked me to look into it, but all signs point to Haze. His body was already decomposing five hours in just like the others.”