Zed's brows hitched, and I caught the way his hand shifted to the gun at his hip. Fucker.
"I should probably go," Lucas murmured, picking up his shirt from the kitchen floor and pulling it over his perfectly formed arms.
If I’d been any less distracted, I'd have probably told him to stay. After all, we still had all of Monday before he started work at 7th Circle... But the murder of one of my Timberwolves trumped anything else. Worse yet, I'd been so distracted that it'd all happened right under my nose.
Distracted. So fucking distracted. I couldn't afford that weakness.
Lucas had to go.
As if he could sense the murderous tilt to my thoughts, Lucas threaded his fingers into the back of my hair, tilted my face up, and kissed me. It wasn't a casual peck, either. It was one of those deep, possessive-level kisses that told me he was flipping Zed off.
Fucking hell. As if Zed gave a crap who was warming my bed; he barely even saw me as a woman most days.
"I'll text you," Lucas told me when he released my hair.
"Don't," I replied, my voice hard. "Delete my number."
Lucas just flashed me a wide, mischievous grin, then gave a nod towards Zed. "Boss. Sorry, didn't see you there."
Zed snorted. "Sure you fucking didn't." His hand was fully resting on the butt of his gun now. "Fuck off, kid. The adults are talking."
I bit my tongue, refusing to entertain that little comment. Lucas was two years younger than me, hardly a kid, but whatever. We really did need to talk business, and I wasn't comfortable doing that with Lucas around. Not until I knew whether he could be trusted.
Zed's attitude didn't seem to bother Lucas, though. He just finished buttoning his shirt and sent me a lust-filled glance on his way out the door.
Silence reigned as the door closed behind Lucas and the locks reactivated. Then Zed's eyes narrowed at me in an accusing glare.
"Really, Hades? You're fucking strippers now? You can do better than that." His tone was total judgment, and my temper flared cold within me.
"Oh, fuck right off, Zed. You've screwed how many of our girls over at Club 22? Quit throwing stones from inside your glass house, my friend; it makes you look jealous." I was just taking swipes to piss him off, but his eyes flashed with a darkness that I didn't expect. Maybe things had gone sour with his flavor of the month already and I'd struck a nerve.
His jaw clenched, and he gave an angry shake of his head. "I'm not throwing stones, Hades. But you haven't even done a background check on that guy, and he's here? Inside your home, where Seph lives? What the hell is going on with you this weekend?"
Guilt rippled through me at the truth in his words. I was acting reckless. Stupid. Distracted. It wasn't good enough. I needed to be better than that, above it all.
Fucking hell. I needed to kill Lucas.
"I'm getting dressed," I announced, ignoring Zed's pointed comments. "Tell me the rest of it, then call a meeting with all the heads in the area. It's time we all had a chat."
He followed me through to my bedroom, eyeing the mess of tangled sheets on my bed with thinly veiled rage. Whatever had his panties in a bunch, it had nothing to do with me. He could take all that baggage elsewhere because I wasn't interested in becoming an outlet for his personal drama.
I crossed over to my huge walk-in closet and pulled out some fresh clothes but blew out a frustrated sigh when nothing but silence followed me.
"Talk, Zed. Fill me in on everything you know." Anger colored my own tone of voice now, and every passing second had me feeling more and more murderous.
Sonny-boy had to have been killed sometime last night—while I was busy sulking about my rejection from Cass or fucking Lucas in a supply room. Or maybe while I’d slept off all my many drinks after Zed dropped me home. Either way, it had been while my back was turned, and that simply couldn't happen.
"We don't know all that much," Zed said after a moment's pause.
I shrugged off my robe right there inside my closet, even though I’d left the door wide open, and pulled on some fresh underwear. There was no time to shower, but it hadn't been all that long since my last shower with Lucas, so... fuck it.
Irritation pricked at my skin, and I had to take a calming breath before responding to him. "What do we know, Zed?"
I glanced out of my closet and found him with his back turned to me. I expected nothing less, given how carefully respectful he was around me these days.
"Just that he'd been shot all up, riddled with bullets. Same with the room he was found in, so it's likely that's where he was killed." He scrubbed a hand over his short hair, and I could tell he was frustrated as hell. We were used to being in charge in every situation. This lack of information must be burning him as badly as it was me.
I took a moment to consider it as I dressed in skin-tight leather pants and a black lace top that showed my bra underneath.
"Why did no one hear the shots?" I asked, grabbing a pair of high-heeled ankle boots from my shoe wall and coming out of the closet.
Zed stiffened a fraction of a second before he turned around, and I gave him a suspicious look, then looked past him to my dresser... or the mirror above it. Had he been watching me?
"You look—" he started, then caught himself and clamped his mouth shut tight.
I gave him a confused scowl as I sat on the end of my bed to put my shoes on. "You're acting fucking weird, Zed. What gives?"
He let out a long exhale, shaking his head. "I know. It's this shit with Sonny-boy; it's got me all fucked up, boss." He paused again, rubbing the back of his neck as I zipped up my ankle boots and stood up. "The cops claim they found PCP on him."
I blinked several times. "Excuse me. Fucking what did you just say?"
Zed grimaced. "They—"
"I heard you the first time," I snapped, stalking across to the hidden panel beside my closet. Pressing the release, I opened my weapons safe and loaded myself up. Not that I needed a huge amount of firepower on my person—that's what I had Zed for—but it didn't hurt to get my own hands dirty every now and then. It reminded anyone who might be eyeing my throne exactly why I'm Hades.
"It's not what we think, boss," Zed told me firmly as I slammed my weapons safe shut again and made my way back to the kitchen. I'd left my Desert Eagle there, and there was no way I was leaving the apartment without it. Not now.
I stuck it in in my shoulder holster, then gave Zed a hard look. "Of course it's not. That's not even remotely possible. But someone wants to send us a message, and that in itself is bad enough."
Angel dust had been wiped out of my territory for five years, now it was resurfacing in the most suspicious circumstances? Not a coincidence. No freaking way. But the most likely culprit, the one who might want to send a message to me... he was dead. I'd shot him myself.
So who the fuck was playing the part of his ghost?
8
Zed drove and I sent out summons from my phone on the way to my chosen meeting point. It was an old church and had been the Timberwolves’ base of operation when my father was in charge. It was also a solid three-hour drive away from Shadow Grove in the heart of old Timberwolf territory.