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“It wasn’t like that. We were still small-time back then. We didn’t have the funds to go globe-hopping and assassinating people. Jesus . No, we only made him believe we were going to do it.

“The guy folded like a card table. Must have really loved those two. He begged us to kill him instead of going after his family. Lincoln told him we needed a good chemist.” Eric shook his head.

“Lincoln was always going on about tweaking the drugs to do something special for his kind and people like him . Never did figure that out. After over twenty years, he never explained it. Callum agreed, as long as we assured him that his family would be safe.”

I recalled the scent of the drugs, how something was not quite right about them.

Something off . Then the strange and manic effect they’d had on Rick.

Had Lincoln altered the meth to specifically target shifters?

It would explain how he’d turned people like Lenny Nash into controllable ferals so fast.

“Where is he now?” I asked, urgency taking hold. “Where is Callum Donaldson? Is he still alive?”

Eric gave another one of those nonchalant shrugs, and it was all I could do not to drag him across the table and beat the shit out of him.

“As far as I know,” he said.

Now I couldn’t hold back. Lunging forward, I grabbed his shirt and yanked him forward. Eric let out a strangled cry of terror as I pressed my face close to his.

“Listen to me, you little fuck. I’m done with the games. You know what I want to know. Spit it the fuck out.” I slapped him across the cheek before shoving him back into his seat.

“Easy, Nate,” Ollie warned.

“Jesus fucking Christ !” Eric bellowed. “I’m gonna tell my lawyers about this.”

“You fell,” Ollie said, shrugging one shoulder. “You hit your face. Happens a lot. Now, answer the man.”

Eric glared at Ollie, rubbing his cheek where my finger marks stood out red and sharp. “He sold him, okay?” Eric said.

“What do you mean he sold him?” I asked derisively.

“That’s what I mean,” Eric said. “He’d finished perfecting the cocktail Lincoln wanted and sold him to a Russian group about three years ago.

They wanted to replicate the formula, and Lincoln wanted to move his labs out of the country.

Got a good price for him, too. Now, the drugs get made over in Siberia or some shit, and they get to use our recipe for their own sales.

” He gave a small shudder. “I wasn’t involved in that deal, and I don’t know the contact Lincoln used.

I don’t know where the scientist is now.

I’m telling the truth,” he added, giving us a pleading look.

Bitter disappointment speared through me. Russia? That might as well be another world.

“Get him out of here,” I said, waving at Eric. “He’s given us all he can.”

“Let’s go, shithead,” Ollie said, grabbing the man under his arm.

The two disappeared, leaving me alone to stew in my emotions.

How would I tell Cameron about this? We knew where her father was, but not how to find him.

Could I go to Russia? Spend a year or two traveling around and doing what I did best?

It might work, but the mere thought of being away from Cameron for so long made me sick to my stomach.

Before I could sink into total depression, a memory came back.

It was faint and obscure, but became more vivid as I zeroed in on the shipping manifest I’d found next to the gas canisters at the garage in Detroit.

The writing had been impossible to read, but after what Eric had said, I now recognized it as Russian Cyrillic.

Ollie came back in a few minutes later to find me pacing the floor, an excited gleam in my eye. “You look less upset than I thought you would.”

“Did you guys seize all of Lincoln’s businesses?” I asked.

“We did. Well, the pack did, anyway. Why?”

“What about the garage in Detroit?”

“Nate, are you going to tell me what you’ve figured out or not?” Ollie said.

I explained what I’d found, and how that connected to what Eric had told us. Finally, when I was done, Ollie waved for me to follow him.

“Come into my office. We’ve got shit-tons of stuff in a file. Thousands of documents were photographed and scanned. We might find something.”

Fists clenching and unclenching in excitement, I hurried after Ollie. Deep down, I could feel how close we were.

And after nearly two hours of combing through all the shit JC and Ollie had confiscated, we found what we were looking for.

“That’s it!” I yelled, pointing at the computer screen. “I remember that heading.”

The scanned form was an almost exact copy of the shipping form I’d seen. Every single letter was in blocky and unreadable Russian.

“Let me run this through a translator.” Ollie clicked a few things with his mouse, highlighting the entire sheet and running it through some software.

Within seconds, we could read it.

“That’s an address,” Ollie said, pointing at the screen.

“Are there more of these forms?” I asked. “So we can make sure it always comes from the same place?”

Sure enough, all the forms had the same address—a location in central Russia.

“Hot damn.” Ollie stood and pounded his fist on my back. “Looks like this investigation is going international.” He pulled his phone out. “Let me call JC, see if he can start working back channels with some pack alphas in Europe.”

“Yeah,” I muttered.

Ollie walked into the hall, his voice fading as the door closed. I barely breathed as I stared at the screen. There was still a lot that had to be done before I could call this a victory, but something about this felt big .

Swallowing, I found my throat dry. Could this be the thing that finally healed all the old wounds in Cameron’s family?

If we did find her father and brought him home, then all our lives could begin on a fresh footing.

Not just mine and Cameron’s, but her mother, brother, and father’s as well. It was almost too much to hope for.

Ollie leaned back into the office and grinned at me. “JC’s making the calls. We’re gonna find this guy. I promise, Nate. He’s coming home if it’s the last thing we do.”

My face broke into a smile, and I pulled my phone out to call Cameron. It was time to make her day.