Creak.

   Sure enough, that person tried again, and this time, the door started swinging open.

   Someone was outside—and they were coming in.

   * * *

   I dropped the marker, palmed a knife, and darted over to the door, plastering myself up against the metal wall beside it.

   A second later, a woman wearing dark clothes and a toboggan slipped into the container, her head moving back and forth as she looked around.

   “What in the blue blazes is she up to now—”

   I didn’t give the woman time to finish her muttered sentence. In an instant, I grabbed her shoulder, spun her around, shoved her up against the wall, and raised my knife to her throat.

   Lorelei Parker looked back at me, her pale blue eyes steady on mine. “Is this how you greet all your guests, Gin?” she said.

   I hissed out a breath. “Sorry. I thought you were someone else.”

   “Don’t be. I came prepared.”

   Something jabbed into my side. I looked down. Lorelei had one of her elemental Ice guns pressed up against my stomach. Even though the weapon was only loaded with a single bullet, it would still do plenty of damage, especially in that spot.

   “Touché,” I murmured.

   I dropped my knife from her throat and stepped back. Lorelei slid her Ice gun back into the holster on her belt.

   “How did you know that I was in here?”

   “I was doing a final check of the yard before leaving for the night, and I noticed that the padlock was open on the container. So I figured that you were probably in here.” She jerked her head at the door, which was wide-open now. “You might want to close that. And lock it from the inside next time, if you don’t want people sneaking up on you.”

   I gave her a sour look, but Lorelei merely arched her eyebrows in a chiding response. So I shut the door and slid the metal bar down, locking us in the container.

   Lorelei Parker was the smuggler supreme of the Ashland underworld, ready, willing, and able to get anything for anyone at any time. Weapons, cash, gold bars, art, designer fashions, exotic animals, fancy food and wines. If there was a black market for it, then Lorelei knew where to get it and how to best bring it into Ashland on the sly. She was also one of the few allies that I had in the underworld, despite the gun she’d just pulled on me.

   Lorelei glanced around, taking in the tables and chairs that dotted the inside of the container. “You’ve been busy since the last time I was in here.”

   “Well, I just had to decorate my new fancy digs,” I snarked back.

   “Assassin chic. I like it.” She grinned. “You should come do my office in the warehouse while you’re at it.”

   Given her smuggling interests, Lorelei had coveted the shipping yard for a long, long time. With Dimitri Barkov dead, she’d quickly and quietly taken control of it, paying off what was left of his crew to vacate the premises and bringing in her own people. Since I was the head of the underworld, such a move needed my approval, and I’d been happy to give it. All I’d asked in return was for one shipping container to call my own.

   Lorelei was the only one who knew about my container. Not because I didn’t trust my other friends, but because Tucker and the Circle could be spying on all of us, and I hadn’t set up shop here just for them to realize what I was doing. More than that, I actually wanted to have something concrete to show my friends before I brought any of them here. Especially Bria and Finn, who wanted—needed—answers as badly as I did. Sometimes, I thought that we were like the three blind mice, desperately running around, searching for answers about our dead mothers, and all of us likely to get chopped to pieces by Tucker and the rest of the Circle.

   Lorelei wandered over to the board, staring at all my scribblings and fiddling with the end of her black braid, which trailed out from underneath her royal-blue toboggan.

   She snorted and pointed at the devil horns on Tucker’s photo. “I didn’t realize that you were such a talented artist.”

   “I just wish that I could get my hands on him in person,” I muttered. “I’d paint his face all interesting shades of bloody then. Better than Picasso.”

   Lorelei eyed me, hearing the anger and frustration in my voice. “You’ll find Tucker eventually, and the rest of the Circle too. I have faith in you.”

   “And why is that?”

   She shrugged. “Because you, Gin Blanco, are the single most stubborn, determined person I know.”

   My eyes narrowed. “That sounded suspiciously like a compliment. Why are you being so nice to me all of a sudden?”

   “Because we’re friends, sort of, and that’s what friends do, right?” Her voice was casual, but she didn’t look at me as she said the words, and her mouth was set into a tense line, almost as if she was afraid that I would dismiss her soft sentiment outright.

   “We are friends, sort of,” I said in a strong voice. “And do you know what else friends do?”

   “What?”

   I walked over and picked up the marker that I’d dropped on the floor. I handed it to her, then grabbed another one for myself, along with a bottle of gin and a couple of plastic cups from the metal rack.

   “They have a drink and draw really bad caricatures of all their enemies,” I said. “What do you say to that, friend?”

   Lorelei looked at the gin, the marker in her hand, then at me. Her pretty features creased into a grin. “I say that sounds like a grand old time, friend.”

4

   Lorelei and I spent the next hour doodling on the dry-erase board before she finally put her marker down, saying that she needed to go home and check on Mallory, her grandmother. We said our good-nights, and I turned off the lanterns, locked up the shipping container, and drove home myself.

   I took a shower and went to bed, although I spent a good portion of the night glaring at my bedroom ceiling, still cursing myself for letting Fedora get away. Once again, the Circle had been three steps ahead of me the whole time, and I still had no new information about them.