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“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 in person.

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 I do know comes directly from him, as well as the files we had from the initial investigation back then.”

“So there was an 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 dealer wants you to look.

Douglas was a master at looking at the exact spot the dealer didn’t want 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 the fuck has three-quarters of a million dollars to buy a rundown factory at twenty-seven?

Especially someone who didn’t come from money.

That was the line Douglas was following when he realized there was a chemical signature. ”

“What happened, then?” I asked. “Why did the investigation stop? Lincoln was obviously never arrested.”

Anita took a bite of her burger, checked her phone, then leveled her gaze at me. “Lincoln Masters showed his true colors, that’s what happened.”

“Sounds dirty,” Nate said.

“Very,” Anita said, her eyes darkening. “Douglas made a bit of headway with his superiors and got one of them to authorize bringing in a specialized pathologist to work on the blood samples and try to trace it to Lincoln’s factory.

The guy had great credentials and did some contract stuff.

Douglas even paid to have the guy fly in from out of the country.

” She rested an elbow on the table and smirked.

“At that point, Lincoln had sold the original plant and purchased a state-of-the-art facility. Anyway, it didn’t take long for Douglas to realize he’d stepped in shit.

You see, some of the people Lincoln was now hobnobbing with were connected to the force.

The police commissioner, the mayor—everyone who was high up.

One of them must have mentioned the case when they were around Lincoln.

“First thing that happened? The pathologist Douglas brought in vanished. The guy was gone .” Anita snapped her fingers for emphasis. “Didn’t even pack up his hotel room. Clothes were still everywhere. Same thing happened to one of the lawyers Douglas was working with.

“Then came the big splash,” she continued.

“Lincoln had a little boy. Kid was maybe three? He’d knocked up that model I was telling you about.

Both shifters, by the way, and he’d been spotted arguing with her after a party one night.

Maybe the stress of knowing the cops were on his tail had him drawn tight.

That night? The model does a swan dive off the balcony of her penthouse suite.

Boom. ” She smacked her palm on the table, making me flinch.

“Oh my God.” I gasped, putting my hand to my mouth.

“Yeah. Of course, Lincoln had an ironclad alibi and witnesses saying he wasn’t there. After the fight, he’d gone to have drinks with friends at a club. Plus, our lovely victim had a shit-ton of heroin in her system. So much that, had she not hit the pavement, she’d have been dead, anyway.”

The backs of my eyes stung. The more I heard, the more the Masters men sounded like demons. Evil men, with no morals other than to watch out for themselves. From what I’d seen, Rick was just like his father.

“After that week of disasters, Lincoln up and moves away. Took his little bundle of joy up north and joined the Toronto-Ottawa pack. After that? Crime goes down, the mayor looks good, no one wants to do much. Douglas gets told to shut it down and leave it alone. Most likely, a few of Lincoln’s rich friends pulled some strings.

To tell the truth, I’m surprised Douglas survived at all, much less kept his job. ”

Glancing over at Nate, I wondered what my life might have been like with Rick. Rich, powerful, and glamorous, but fucking miserable. An image flashed through my mind. Us having a fight and him throwing me off the top of a building, my arms pinwheeling as the pavement rushed up to meet me.

I’d been on the wrong path; that was obvious now. Looking at Nate, I thought maybe I’d found the right path. Now, I had to hope and pray that fate would allow me to follow it.