Danny had a point. Not about the whole new-world-order bullshit, but the fact that the privileged and the elite had access to things that regular people didn’t. She wasn’t naïve about the way the life worked, especially when it came to crime—the one person with the best political connections and the best lawyer, sadly, had the chips stacked in their favor. But when it came to carrier blood and whatever chemical cocktail worked—if there actually was one—so much was still unknown because the whole process had all been driven underground, made illegal. Younger carriers had blood that was “fresher” and, it was believed, more powerful and longer lasting—which was why kids were being abducted in record numbers not only in California but across the country, imprisoned and forced to live out their lives like golden geese.

At least that was the operating theory. No one had ever found or seen one of these mythical “blood farms,” as they had been dubbed by the media, so no one knew for sure if they existed. The blood world in LA consisted of two main factions: Armenian Power X was a cartel that, on the surface, seemed more organized than the second faction, the Mexicans, who seemed to favor draining and dumping carriers.

“The blood I’d want to try,” Danny said, “is Pandora.”

You and everyone else, Ellie thought.

“Bye-bye, wrinkles and belly; hello, smoother and tighter skin, thicker hair, more muscle tone, and less body fat. But wait—there’s more! Order now, and we’ll throw in, free of charge, the most intense orgasms you will ever experience in your entire life.”

“If Pandora actually exists,” Ellie said.

“Blood Unit believes it does.”

“But there’s no proof. No sample has ever been found, and no one has ever been caught using it. For all we know, we could be chasing a unicorn.”

“There you go with we again.” Danny rolled his head to her and cracked a grin. “That’s what all this stop-and-frisk shit is all about, isn’t it? You’re doing a little R & D, hoping to find something, something big, so you can try to secure a spot on that unit.”

Ellie smiled. “Look at you, playing detective. How cute.”

“It’ll never happen.”

“You becoming a detective?”

“You working on the Blood Unit.”

Ellie’s throat clenched. “That’s a real shitty thing to say.”

“I’m just giving you the lay of the land. It’s not about how good or talented you are; it’s who you know and who you blow. You don’t strike me as the type who—”

“Danny, look out!”

The patrol car’s forward-collision warning system sounded. The vehicle automatically decelerated, Ellie’s attention locked on a black Labrador retriever that had darted into the road and, instead of running away, stopped and looked at them, its tail wagging.

Danny swerved to the right. The Lab didn’t move, and Ellie let out a small cry when she heard and felt the front-left corner of the fender hit the dog, the yelp it let out freezing her heart.