Her finger hovered over the last digit, and I could practically feel her gaze on me. “That’s my birthday.”

“Huh. Weird.” I dropped a glob of sour cream on my fajita, then folded the tortilla over its contents and took a bite without waiting for her response. Not that she had one, other than a slight flush not caused by the spicy food.

I watched as Liv navigated her way through my phone menus. She never looked up at me, which was how I knew she really wanted to.

After less than a minute, she held my phone up so I could see my own contacts list, and the only number listed there. “How the hell did you get my personal number?”

I took another bite, then spoke around it. “It’s listed.”

“No, it isn’t. And I change it every year, to make sure it isn’t just floating around out there, through random people I called years ago.”

I shrugged. “It’s listed somewhere, or how else could I have it?” Of course, it wasn’t in any public listing I’d found, but I knew people—like Van—who knew how to get things.

Liv frowned. “Is that it? What about all your syndicate buddies? What about Van?”

I slid the meat platter toward her, and she finally picked up the tongs. “We’re not allowed to program syndicate numbers. They all have to be memorized. And we delete the recent-calls list daily.” All to keep from incriminating one another, of course. It was part of my nightly routine.

Set alarm. Brush teeth. Purge the call lists from my phone…

“And you’re sure you don’t recognize this one?” Liv spun the notepad around so I could see the unidentified number she’d jotted down. The one that had called Hunter, been called by Hunter and later had texted Anne’s address to him.

“Nope.” I took the tongs from her and loaded her tortilla myself, since she obviously wasn’t going to. “But that doesn’t mean anything. I don’t have the personal phone numbers of every initiate in the city.” Thank goodness. And since most of my work was done at Tower’s personal request, very few of the other initiates had my number, either. “Check my recent calls, if you don’t trust me.”

I tried not to be hurt when she only hesitated a second before taking me up on my offer. Then she slid the phone back to me, having obviously learned what I already knew, that in the past twenty hours—as far back as my current call list went—I’d only called Van and Anne.

“Do you know Jake Tower’s personal number?” she asked, picking up the fajita I’d rolled for her.

“Oneof them—and that’s not it. But I’m sure he has at least a couple. There’s no way the number his wife and kids call is the same one his employees use. And that probably goes for anyone in the top tiers.”

“Great. Another dead end.”

“What about Payne?” I said while she chewed. “It sounds like he’s either a professional associate or Hunter’s only friend.”

Liv wiped her mouth with a paper towel—I rarely wasted time, thought or money on napkins. “I did a search for him, but all I’m finding is an announcement of his arrest in one of the local papers.”

“What was he arrested for? Is there a picture?” I may not know the personal phone numbers of every syndicate initiate, but I’d recognize most of them on sight.

She stared at the screen again, scrolling with the mouse pad while she chewed. “Armed robbery.” More scrolling. “The police pulled him over for a traffic violation and smelled pot, so they searched the car and found twelve thousand dollars worth of jewelry in the trunk, all taken during a B and E reported the night before.”

“How much time did he get?”

Liv read a little further, then her eyes widened. “None. He was found innocent, when nearly twenty different people claimed to see him at a party eighty miles away at the time of the robbery.”

“He’s a Traveler?” If that were the case, he could step into one shadow at the party and out of another one anywhere else within his range—including the jewelry owner’s house—in less than a second. Then he’d be back in no time, establishing his own alibi.

Liv shrugged. “Or maybe he had a transfusion, too. Maybe that’s how he and Hunter know each other.” She set down her half-eaten fajita. “I’m going to call him. From Hunter’s phone. Maybe he doesn’t know Hunter’s dead yet.”

“And you think he’s just going to confess to robbery, and perjury, and the use of black-market superpower injections?”

Liv smiled, and my pulse raced a little faster. “This ain’t my first rodeo, cowboy.”

She returned Payne’s last call while I dribbled salsa onto a fresh tortilla, and he answered on the third ring. Liv pushed the button for speakerphone and warned me to be quiet with a shh finger against her lips.

“Who the hell is this?” Payne barked over the line. His voice was low, but not unusually so, and had no discernible accent. I’m pretty good with voices, and I’d never heard his before.

“Hey. Um…my name is Grace,” Liv said, and I was amused to see that even her mannerisms changed with the character she was playing. “I found this phone on the sidewalk and I’m trying to find the owner. Your number was in the recent-calls list, so can you, like, tell me whose number I’m calling from?”

It was everything I could do not to laugh.

“Where’d you find the phone?” Payne asked. Which meant he either wasn’t buying her Good Samaritan act or he wasn’t willing to give out his frnd or coworker’s name to a stranger. Either way, he was smarter than I’d hoped.