Rock sat in a lounge chair at one corner of an unused outdoor fireplace and gestured to the seat across from him. “Please.”

Wolfe reached down for his knife.

Rock lifted his right hand, showing a detonator with a green blinking light. Coils of some kind attached the device to his hand, so that nobody could take it away.

Wolfe’s gut clenched. “You wired the place.”

Rock smiled, revealing his too long left canine. “I do love things that go boom.”

Fuck. The happy group in the restaurant behind Wolfe had no idea. He started to turn back, to run, to do something, when Rock whistled. “Just sit.”

Was there a choice? Wolfe turned back around, pulled out the chair to sit, staring at the man he’d once considered a brother. Rock had let his buzz cut grow out, but his eyes were as sharp and blue as ever. The beard was new. Today he wore a gray golf shirt and khaki pants that showed muscle and brute strength. Wait a minute. Was that a hickey on Rock’s neck? “How did you find me, Gary?”

“What? No nicknames any longer because I killed a couple of morons in the desert?” A scar down Gary’s throat moved, right beside the hickey, when he talked.

“No. You don’t deserve a nickname.” Wolfe would never call him Rock again, and he deeply regretted holding that throat wound together on a mission until they could get help. “How?”

“The gods favor me, as you should know by now,” Gary said.

Wolfe forced his body to remain relaxed when all he wanted to do was leap over the fireplace and break Gary’s neck. The detonator no doubt had a dead man’s switch, so if he tackled Gary, the bomb or bombs might explode. “How so?” he asked, wanting confirmation.

Gary looked past him to the restaurant. “Luck. It always finds me.”

Wolfe sat quietly, his mind spinning. Luck? If it was luck, then Gary hadn’t been looking for Wolfe. So the only way he could’ve found him would’ve been through Dana? The pit in his gut now made sense. “Heroin,” he murmured, the puzzle still not quite fitting together.

Gary focused on him again. “What about it?”

Candy’s notes. The drugging. Albert Nelson’s ties to Frank Spanek. The missing CEO—Theresa Rhodes. Heroin tracked over the southern route. Serena’s deciphering of Candy’s notes and finding heroin in them, in a story about Theresa Rhodes Ah, crap. The pieces all swirled around, hinting at the danger of the ticking explosives as everything dropped into place. Finally. “Nice hickey.”

Gary studied him. “Thanks.”