Michaela blinked, and her breathing quickened, but she closed her mouth and stared into my eyes from about four inches away.

“I’m not sleeping with your husband,” I whispered, where only she could hear. “But someone is. Several someones, at my last count. If you have a problem with that, maybe you should have tattooed fidelitas on his arm.” For emphasis, I flicked the loose short sleeve covering her own marriage vows. “But since it’s a little late for that, you’re going to have to learn to live with his games. Or better yet, beat him at them. But leave me and my friends out of it. Or else I’ll make sure you have plenty of time to think about your mistakes, while you’re recovering from whatever damage I manage to inflict before Ruben decides to pull me off of you. Got it?”

With that, I marched into the kitchen and returned the steak knife to the block while everyone else gathered around the table. Without Michaela, who wasn’t allowed to join the group until she learned to play nice—an ironic declaration, coming from her husband.

“Why the hell would he take her to his own home?” Cavazos demanded, jumping right to the point. Which I appreciated.

Cam shrugged. “To keep her close? Maybe even to keep her happy. She’s not old enough to use as a donor yet—I don’t think he can, until her Skill manifests—so maybe he’s planning to keep her there until it does.”

“In his house? Like a part of his family?” Cavazos scowled, and I realized that for him, the fight had just gotten a little more personal. It pissed him off that his mortal enemy had spent more time with Hadley than he had.

Cam stared at the table, obviously trying to figure out how to answer without breaching his service oath. “I can’t say much about Tower’s home or his family, but I can say that he doesn’t run things quite the same way you do.”

“And how do I run things?” Ruben was accustomed to dealing with people who couldn’t freely give information and he knewk the right questions.

“From the outside looking in, you seem to keep your family separate from your business. Tonight being the unfortunate exception,” Cam said, with a backward glance at Michaela. “Some people don’t mind mixing the two. Some homes don’t house only family.”

“His employees live with him?” I asked. Like most people, I’d heard a lot of rumors about Jake Tower, but that wasn’t one of them.

“Some people have some employees they trust as much or more than they trust their own family, and it’s helpful to have them close at all hours,” Cam said, hiding behind a thin but effective shield of vagueness.

“Evidently one of those employees is a Jammer,” Anne added, and Cam looked relieved to let her take over, saying what he clearly couldn’t. “The pull from Hadley’s name died before we even drove off.”

“Maybe he moved her,” Michaela said, obviously interested in spite of affectations to the contrary.

“No,” Anne insisted. “The pull died all at once. It was there one minute, then just gone. If they’d moved her, it would have faded or at least changed direction. She’s being Jammed.”

“That’s going to make her hard to find once we get in,” I said.

“The real problem is getting in,” Cavazos said, and I nodded. Cam looked as if he wanted to say something, but there wouldn’t be much he could contribute to a conversation about breaking into his boss’s home.

“Cam…” I began, and he stood. He already knew what I was getting at.

“I’ll be in the bedroom with my headphones on….”

“Why?” Anne asked, and I answered for him, as he trudged down the hall, disappointment clear in the slump of his shoulders.

“Because if he actually hears our plans to breach the Tower syndicate, he’ll have to report it.”

“He already knows we’re going after Hadley. Won’t he have to report that, too?” she asked.

“If he had to, he’d have already done it,” I assured her. “But I suspect he’s found a loophole for that one—he hasn’t officially been notified of Tower’s new business venture, so he’s not obligated to defend it.”

“Oh.” Anne smiled. “Ironic, isn’t it? Tower’s trying to keep things top secret, but by leaving Cam out of the loop, he’s letting us into his house.”

“I doubt it’ll be as easy as ‘letting us in,’” Cavazos said, and suddenly I regretted discussing contract loopholes in front of him—I didn’t want to give him any pointers on how to narrow the inevitable gaps in his own boilerplate. “If his home security is set up anything like mine, there will be armed guards at every entrance, and those guards may be Blinders, so if you try breaking in the old-fashioned way, you’ll find yourself shot and bleeding out in absolute darkness.”

For a moment, I was surprised that he’d reveal so much about is own security measures. But he wasn’t saying anything I didn’t already know, and unless he was willing to completely cut Anne out of Hadley’s life—and he wouldn’t be; it wouldn’t be in his daughter’s best interest—Anne would likely soon be spending some time at the Cavazos estate.

“Okay, but your wife’s a Traveler, right?” Anne said, and I was pleased that she’d been paying attention, even when she’d looked too distraught to focus. “Surely she can get us in. One at a time is risky, but it’s better than not at all.”