Ian laughed, but Kori only nodded. “Sometimes when you’re tied too tightly to the people you care about, the strings get tangled. You can either cut them loose or pull them tighter. I’m sure you can figure out which one we chose, based on the knot we’re in now.”

Yeah. They were tied so tightly together I couldn’t tell where one relationship ended and the next began—siblings, lovers, friends, caretakers, defenders and coworkers. They were everything to one another, and I could see that sometimes those bonds chafed, but from where I stood—a single thread dangling alone in the wind—their tangled knot looked pretty damn secure.

“So, do you think he’ll find anything in that notebook? Do you think it’s even possible?”

Ian and Van looked to Kori for an answer, and I found myself doing the same. Kori shrugged. “It’s more than possible. I never knew Noelle to be wrong. But the chances of anyone figuring out what she was talking about in time to be useful are slim to none.”

“It’s a good thing you didn’t put money on that, because I’d own every cent you have right now,” Kris said, and I could practically hear the smile in his voice. When I looked up to find him standing in the kitchen doorway, his index finger marking a place in the closed notebook, I could also see the spark of excitement in his eyes.

“You found something?” The rational part of me wanted to be happy for him. That other part wanted to poke him in the eyes to get rid of that spark, put there by a dead girl he’d loved and who might be trying to tell him to kill me, either to put an end to the Tower empire, or because even in her grave, she was a jealous bitch.

My money was on the latter.

Kris nodded eagerly. Kori scooted over and he sat next to her on the couch, then set his journal on the coffee table, open to a page about a third of the way through the notebook. “Ned said they were moving everything to a warehouse, right?” Kris said, and I nodded. I was the only other one who’d heard Ned. “Well, there it is.” He underlined a passage several lines from the top with his finger.

We all leaned in for a closer look, and I had to read upside down from my chair on the other side of the coffee table. Fortunately, the line was short, and Kris’s script was a neat, masculine cursive, with long narrow letters. Easily legible.

“Blood in the trees,” Ian said, echoing the phrase as it played in my head. “What the hell does that mean?”

Kris rolled his eyes and snatched the printout of Tower’s real estate holdings from his sister’s hands. “That one. The warehouse on Sycamore Grove, in the south fork. See?” But no one saw. “It’s the only one with trees in the address.”

“Kris, that could mean anything....” Vanessa said, but he spoke over her.

“Look. It’s in here again.” He flipped more pages to a point farther back in the notebook, marked by his own folded copy of the property list. “‘Hidden in the grove.’”

“Kris, there’s no rhyme or reason to this.” Kori frowned at the notebook. “It looks like those two phrases were spoken months apart.” But it was closer to a year, if the glimpse of the dates I’d gotten could be trusted. “How do you know those two are even related?”

“I don’t.” Kris leaned back on the couch and crossed his arms over his chest, and I did not think about how, the day before, I’d seen him without a shirt. And touched his stomach. I didn’t think about that at all. “What I do know is that we’re looking at a list of more than twenty warehouses, and those are just the ones Vanessa’s been able to verify as Tower’s. But nothing else on that list sounds like anything I’ve found in here after reading and rereading the damn thing for nearly two hours. But two of these phrases could be pointing at the warehouse on Sycamore Grove.”

He flipped back to the first passage and spoke over another objection. “Blood in the trees.” Then he looked up, eyeing each of us expectantly. “We’re looking for a blood farm. A hidden blood farm.” He flipped back to the second passage, still marked with his index finger. “Hidden in the grove.”

“It can’t hurt to look.” Vanessa shrugged and closed her laptop. “We have to start somewhere, and that’s one of only two properties that won’t take us into Julia’s territory.”

Kris sat up straight on the couch, enthusiasm echoing in his very bearing. “Which is more evidence that Elle was right. Julia knows we’d expect her to hide her most valuable assets in her own territory, where it’s easier to protect them. Relocating to the south fork is ballsy. But then, so is Julia.”

“The south fork?” I glanced around the room in question.

“The south side of town, defined by a fork in the river that divides the city,” Ian said. “Tower rules the west side. Cavazos has the east side.”

“They’ve been fighting over the south side for years,” Kori added. “But so far, neither has a foothold. The south side is your best bet if you want to avoid syndicate entanglements.”

“So, if the blood farm is on Sycamore Grove, Julia’s effectively hiding it in plain sight?”

“Well, I doubt she hung up ‘Coming Soon’ signs or set out a welcome mat.” Kris smiled at me, and I looked away, and when he continued, his voice was...different. Disappointed, maybe. But not angry. He wasn’t mad that I’d lied to him, but I’d almost rather see his anger than his pity. “But she’s definitely hidden it where we’d be least likely to look for it.”