Potentially.

Time to go inside.

Layla got a fresh lesson in pain as she opened her door and tried to straighten up from the leather seat, her arm letting out a scream as the broken bone ground against itself.

Recovery breath. A number of them.

And then somehow, she got herself out of the car.

Had the mansion always been so far from the parking area?

Walking around the fountain wasn’t so much a case of putting one foot in front of the other, but shuffling over the cobblestones and trying not to pass out. When she got to the stone stairs that led up to the cathedral-size doors, she wanted to cry. Instead, she surmounted them one at a time.

Pulling open the vestibule’s door, she realized she’d made two mistakes: She had left her car door unshut . . . and she was, in fact, going to have to interact with someone—there was no getting into the house this way without putting your face in the security camera and waiting for an answer.

Glancing back at the Mercedes, she didn’t have the energy to go back there and close things up.

And trying to get around to the staff entrance by the garage was—

That was where things ended.

As her mind labored over her limited options, her body pulled its own plug out of the consciousness socket: Lights-out and gravity did their business on her, the stoop rushing up to greet her with a hard, hard embrace.

That she did not feel.

TWENTY-FOUR

It was four a.m. when Assail drove his bulletproof Range Rover out to the Hudson River’s edge. The lane he was on was about as wide as a pencil and as smooth as an obstacle course. Beside him, Ehric was silent, the male’s forty sitting out on his thigh, a twitchy trigger finger ready to squeeze rounds off at the drop of a hat.

A quick glance in the rearview showed him that Ehric’s twin, Evale, was likewise on the alert and prepared for anything.

They had been working with the importers for how long now? Nine months? Longer? He couldn’t remember. But only a fool let their guard down.

About twenty meters farther up on the “road,” he was going to come to the shallow clearing on the shore. The procedure was the same every time: He would stop the SUV in the tree line and turn it around so that if anything untoward happened, he could get out fast with either his money or the drugs. Then he would wait with his males, typically about ten minutes, before the trolling boat putt-putt-putt’d into view.

His cousins were wearing bulletproof vests. He was not.

They were sober. He was not.

Neither were a surprise. He never bothered with any kind of chest guard, and as for the second one? At this point, he would have to be unmedicated for several days to get the cocaine completely out of his system.

As he drove along, he found his mind drifting, the image of another kind of shore, a different sort of body of water, presenting itself and refusing to leave.

He saw a beach. The ocean. Palm trees. All of it glowing in the moonlight.

He saw a lone female walking along the sea’s lapping warmth, her arms locked over her chest, her head down, her aura that of a survivor who had regrets—

“Watch it!” Ehric barked.

Assail shook himself back into focus just before the Range Rover ate an oak tree for Last Meal—or more likely, it would be the other way around.

Fortunately, the trip was over minutes later, and he managed the K-turn just fine, crushing the dry underbrush until the SUV’s prodigious front grille was pointed outward. There were no headlights to kill; the complete lack of running lights inside and out had been another of the modifications he’d ordered up along with the lead-deflection package.

The engine went quiet and his two passengers got out. Before he joined them, he palmed up a vial from the inside of his wool coat’s pocket. Quick twist. Spoon up.

Sniff. Sniff.

And two for the other nostril.

After a quick huff to make sure everything stayed where it needed to be, he got out of the warm interior himself. Returning his stash to its safe place, he brought his coat around his body. The night air was very cold, and fallen leaves crunched under his boots as he joined his cousins.

There was no talking.

And yet their disapproval of his consumption rate was obvious in the grind of their lower jaws.

’Twas no matter to him, however. Whether they wasted breath on words, or simply glowered as they were the now, he had no intention of changing his usage.

The sound of a single-engine boat going at a slow speed came so quietly that, at first, one could not distinguish it from the ambient noises of the forest and the river. But soon enough, the troller came around the bend of the shore, flat and low to the water. There were two individuals sitting in its open hull, both dressed as nothing-doing fishermen in their caps and camo, only the black masks they wore hinting at anything nefarious. Fishing poles were likewise mounted on either side to promote the appearance of innocuous activity, the invisible lines trawling into the current, stretching out behind the stern.

The captain brought the humble craft in bow-first, toggling down on the engine so they landed with a kiss, not a punch.

The cousins closed in as Assail hung back, his own forty at the ready. The scents from the two human males identified them as different, but related, to the two that had come the last time. And the time before that. And so on.

“Where are the others?” Assail demanded.

The men stopped in the process of picking up three out of the five black duffels that had been hidden beneath a camo tarp.

Assail smiled thinly at their surprise. “Did you think I wouldn’t know?”

“I am brother,” the one on the left said in heavily accented English. “He is cousin.”

Assail inclined his head, accepting the explanation. In truth, he did not care who delivered his product as long as they did so on a timely basis, for an agreed price and potency, and without interference from human law enforcement.

So far, so good with this pair.

Moments later, Ehric and his brother accepted the bags and walked off, one facing forward, the other backward so they provided each other cover.

“A moment,” Assail drawled. “If you don’t mind.”

The human men stopped again, and he felt their anxiety sure as if it were a reverberation on the surface of a table, the transfer of energy traveling easily through the air that separated their bodies.

“What else is under there?” he said, pointing to the tarp. “There are two more duffels, are there not.”

The smaller of the pair, the cousin, jerked the cover back into place and went around to the boat’s controls.

“The schedule next month,” the other said. “The same?”

“I’ll be in touch with your bosses.”

“Very good.”

Just like that, they were on their way, putt-putt-putting against the sluggish current of the cold water—with someone else’s merchandise along with them.

Frowning, Assail watched as they cut across the waterway, and proceeded parallel to the opposite shore.

A moment later, he returned to the Range Rover, and when he knocked on the front passenger-side window, Ehric put the thing down.

“Yes?” the male said.

“I’m going to follow them.” Assail nodded in the direction of the boat. “They’re dealing with somebody else. I want to find out who.”

With a curt nod, Ehric dematerialized over into the driver’s seat and put the SUV in gear. “I saw that, too. Call if you need aught.”

As the Range Rover took off, Assail turned away and strode back to the water. Closing his eyes, he had to fight his cocaine buzz in order to calm himself, and it was a while before he could spirit himself away on the cold wind. When he reformed some kilometers down the river, he waited until the boat came into view once more. The men were oblivious to his presence as he stood in stillness among the colorful trees and contrasting brown vegetation, watching as they progressed by.