And suddenly I truly understood why Nick had insisted I remove my jacket earlier—so he’d know exactly who he was dealing with. And that point of commonality between us pissed me off.

“Yeah.” I reached for the lunch I’d barely touched, then realized I no longer wanted it. “We’re looking for a full name and the owner of a certain bank account. But those’ll be two different people.”

“Which do you want first?” Van bent to pick up a backpack I hadn’t noticed and set it on the extra bar stool.

“The name,” Cam and I said in unison. If we could find Eric Hunter’s full, rightful name, Cam could track him from that, while I made what use I could out of the strange blood samples. We’d come at him from two different angles, and hopefully arrive at the point where they met.

Van set up her laptop and several other pieces of equipment on the kitchen peninsula while Cam told her what we already knew and I…watched them. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t be with him—not like I wanted to be—but that didn’t make it any easier for me to see him with someone else. And the fact that he still wanted me clearly hadn’t stopped him from exploring his options.

They were obviously close—they laughed easily and seemed to share several private jokes no one bothered to explain to me. He knew what she liked to drink, and she knew where he kept the glasses, paper towels and extra notepads.

Conclusion: she’d been over before. A lot.

“Okay, let’s see what we can find on Mr. Hunter.” Van took her sweater off and draped it over the back of her stool, and that’s when I got my first look at her mark. A single greenish chain link. She’d served less than five years, based on the fact that she hadn’t earned a second mark yet, and the color green said she worked in some kind of unSkilled staff capacity. That could be anything from bookkeeping to housekeeper, but based on the equipment she’d unloaded, I was guessing Van served in a more technically apt position.

Did Tower have a dedicated hacker?

For several minutes, she clicked away at her keyboard while Cam finished his lunch and I stared at her arm, trying to guess how someone like that—someone beautiful and talented enough to have a zillion other options—had gotten mixed up with Jake Tower.

“Just ask me,” Van said, without looking up from her screen, and it took me a minute to realize she was talking to me. “I’d rather be questioned than gawked at.”

I glanced at Cam, and he nodded hesitantly. As if he was afraid I’d scare her.

“Okay…how’d you get your tattoo?” I glanced at her arm for clarification, in case she had any more I couldn’t see.

“The usual way. Ink and needles.” Van looked up from her screen to smile at me, but her clacking never stopped.

“No, I meant…”

“Why did I sign on?” she finished for me, when I let my question trail off.

Cam shot me an irritated look, but spoke to her. “You don’t have to answer that.”

Van shrugged. “Everyone else knows anyway.” She swiveled away from her equipment and met my gaze. “You want the long version or the short?”

“Whatever you want to tell me.” And I knew from Cam’s clenched jaw that it wouldn’t be a pretty story.

Van stared into my eyes as if she were assessing me. Then she shrugged again. “You look like you can handle the unabridged version. Here goes.” But then she turned to Cam, who popped the top from a bottle of Corona and handed it to her. Then he handed one to me. Van chugged half of hers, then glanced at me apologetically. “Goes down better this way.” She set the bottle on the counter next to her computer. “I grew up in the south fork. My dad was a gambler and a drunk, and when I was a kid, he lost the rent money once too often and had to borrow from some guy on the east side to keep a roof over our heads.”

The east side? That was Cavazos’s side of town. I took the first sip of my beer. How the hell had she gotten tangled up with Tower, if her dad was borrowing from one of Cavazos’s usurers?

“For a while, my dad made the payments okay, but then he lost his job, and we fell into the red pretty damn fast, and when he couldn’t pay, we got a visit from a guy with four interlong rings on his left arm.”

Four rings… “One of Cavazos’s thugs?” I asked, and she nodded.

“He brought some papers and said my dad had to pay his debt in blood—either his or mine. My dad was drunk, of course. Maybe it woulda made a difference if he’d been sober. But I doubt it. Either way, my dad sliced my thumb, then slammed my hand down on that contract before I even knew what was happening.”

“He sold you?” Horror engulfed me, growing deeper and darker with every breath I took. What kind of parent sells his child to pay off bad debt?

“Lock, stock and barrel.” Van took another swig on her beer, then propped her boot on the next bar stool. “They shot me up with something right there in front of my dad, and I woke up two days later with this.” She pulled her long skirt up to reveal a single ring tattooed on the inside of her left thigh, the faded grayish hue of a dead mark. “It used to be bright red.”

I could hardly breathe through my own horror and revulsion.

The ring meant she’d been bound to the Cavazos syndicate, a plight I could certainly sympathize with. Together, the color red and the placement of the mark—on her thigh—meant she’d been sold into the skin trade. As a minor. Against her will.