Max reminded her, on a daily basis, that the two of them were constantly being shadowed. Watched. It wasn’t safe for her to meet with Roland.

That changed during her fifth week on the job. Late Saturday morning, Roland was smuggled in an SUV driven by Max’s mom. Once she drove into the two-car garage, Roland entered the house. The blinds had been drawn in advance, in case someone was watching.

And someone was watching. Like during those first months with Anton, Frank had put people on her to make sure she checked out. Like Anton, Frank had moved her into a place closer to where she worked, a beautiful sunlit apartment she suspected was bugged. And like Anton, Frank had given her a copy phone, which she also suspected came equipped with all sorts of hidden software that tracked her movements, listened in on her conversations, monitored each and every email, call, and text she sent and received.

Roland was in a gregarious mood, his dry wit on full display as the two of them ate Chinese takeout on plastic plates in the upstairs bedroom. “He’s an interesting guy, our Frank,” Roland said. “On paper, he’s pretty vanilla. Forty-eight, lives in Beverly Hills, drives a Buick. Owns a conservative mix of stocks and mutual funds, decent balance, nothing that will raise any alarms. He’s funded his portfolio using income from his job, which is in IT—you know, computer servers and cybersecurity, shit like that.”

“And he can afford to live in Beverly Hills?”

“He works for a real estate company called Kane and Associates. He’s got a deal in place where he lives there. They don’t outsource the company servers. Everything’s in-house—literally. The real estate company operates out of a converted house.”

“He using the company to launder his blood profits?”

“Hard so say at this point. To find out, we’d have to conduct a proper forensic accounting audit. That will come later. We’re more interested in the guy who owns the company, Sebastian Kane. They’re close friends, he and Frank. Grew up together in the same shitty neighborhood in East LA. Both were raised by single mothers. From what I’ve read, Frank never met his old man. His mother died when he was twelve—heroin overdose—and Kane’s mother took Frank in so the kid wouldn’t be kicked into the foster care system.”

“And this Kane guy? What’s his deal? Anything interesting?”

“Oh yes, most definitely.” Roland wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “When Kane was nineteen, he killed an undercover cop working in one of the big taco gangs running guns and drugs in East LA. It was self-defense—guy was protecting his girlfriend, this smoking-hot Latina.”

“Good to know.”

“Don’t go all ‘Me Too’ on me now. I like to be thorough and descriptive.” Roland grinned as he dipped a dumpling into a container of soy sauce. “The judge assigned the case had to play along with LAPD and side with the cops, and Sebastian got handed life without parole. Two years into his sentence, some pro bono liberal lawyer who worked for the Innocence Project thought nineteen-year-old Sebastian Kane got a raw deal because of being brown, and decided to take up the cause, do a little digging, and discovered someone on the jury was married to a cop. Showed bias. The real kicker was that the judge knew the deal about the juror and turned a blind eye. Case was overturned, and Sebastian was free to go.”