“I’m more interested in his connection to the blood world.”

“Oh, I’m sure Kane is involved.”

“What about the woman who owns the Health and Wellness Center? Maya Dawson.”

“You didn’t google her?”

“Are you serious? I don’t google anyone, just in case Frank is tracking everything on my phone.”

“It was a trick question. You passed, by the way.” Roland plopped another dumpling into his mouth. “Dr. Dawson had a kid who was a carrier, her son, Bradford. He was six when he was taken. She was away at a dermatology conference in San Diego when someone, maybe a group of people, broke into her house during the early-morning hours. Kid was snatched from his bed and the husband was dead asleep when someone pumped a round from a .38 into the back of his head and turned his brain into scrambled eggs. This was twelve, maybe fifteen years ago? She’s at the conference, wondering why her husband hasn’t returned any of her phone calls or texts for the past few days, when San Diego PD came to the hotel and broke the news to her. She still doesn’t know what happened to her kid. No one does.”

Ellie thought about her brother and wondered if the woman had, like her, purposely gone into the blood world in order to find her son. Had she discovered Bradford was dead, or was she still looking for him now, fifteen years later?

“Dawson had some sort of nervous breakdown,” Roland said, “and squirreled herself away for a few months inside a private psychiatric facility in Denver. Then she decided to come back to LA, where she went from popping zits to running a high-end luxury facility that specialized in tit and nose jobs and laser peels and all that other fancy shit—and, I’m sure, blood treatments for discreet clients with deep pockets. You’ve met her, I take it.”

“Just in passing. What about the people shadowing me? You haven’t said anything.”

“They’re from a private security outfit owned by a gentleman by the name of Ron Wolff. Mr. Wolff, it seems, has found a good number of carriers who have been abducted. He also works with—or for—Frank and Sebastian Kane.”

“That’s . . . interesting.”

“It’s genius if my theory holds true. Would you like to hear my theory?”

“If Sebastian, Anton, whoever, abduct carriers, have them missing for a bit, and then Ron Wolff finds them, it gets Wolff in the good graces of the criminally overworked, underpaid, and overstressed LAPD. Cops are grateful for any help from the private security companies that are springing up all over the state. Ron Wolff offers to help the cops working the Blood Unit on other cases—maybe the carriers Frank and Kane have. Wolff can keep tabs on any developments in those cases.”

“Look at you, being a detective, putting all the pieces together,” Roland said. “I also have a solid theory as to why there’s all this security on you and your boyfriend, Max. He a good kisser, by the way? I tried to get you a good kisser.”