“Well, I’m not leaving here until I talk to someone, so I guess it’ll have to be you.” Luke clicked his tongue, as if encouraging a horse, and used his left hand to gesture at the gate. “Let’s go, muchacho. Open up.”

Luke counted five seconds, waiting for the gate to slide open, showing nothing but cool despite the jitters he still felt inside. He was about to punch the button again when the voice came back.

“I’m going to need to see some ID.”

Luke nodded, surreptitiously wiping a thread of sweat from his brow. He leaned to one side and yanked Colton Stone’s ID from the ass pocket of his jeans, not issued by the Los Angeles Police Department, but by Sparx Movie Props & Magic. It was good work, with the detective’s photo on one side and his shield on the other. A little souvenir from the shoot.

Luke held it up to the security camera, one eyebrow raised impatiently. His hand was unnaturally steady, as if an invisible scaffold supported it from beneath.

He waited seven (very) slow seconds before, finally, the gate beeped twice and rolled back on its tracks. Luke pocketed his ID, removed his foot from the brake pedal, and started up the driveway.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Quiet on the set.”

That was the rehearsal. Now it was showtime.

The voice belonged to the stocky dude with the shaved skull. Xander Cray. The berserker. He stepped outside as Luke parked the Camaro next to the black SUV, poised on the front steps with his arms folded. He looked older than Johan, closer to forty, but with the broad shoulders and cut biceps of a man half his age.

Luke killed the ignition, pulled a manila envelope from inside the glove compartment, and stepped out of the car. Xander didn’t move to greet him. He’d rooted himself to the front step, forming a barricade between Luke and Johan’s domain.

“And you are?” Luke said as he approached.

“Alexander.” There was a yellowing bruise on the left side of his head, probably where Kitty had whacked him with her skateboard. Good for Kitty. “Everyone calls me Xander.”

“Xander Cray?” Luke hooked his right thumb into his back pocket, the move opening his jacket in front and briefly exposing the pistol strapped just above his hip. He’d bought the holster that morning. The pistol was his .38 Special snub, finally liberated from its lockbox by way of Jay’s Lock & Key Service in Echo Park.

This move—flashing his sidearm—was deliberate, of course. Colton Stone did it twice in Out of Midnight, and both times the schnook he’d confronted spilled the beans. Luke didn’t need Xander to spill anything, only squirm a little. It worked.

“Yeah,” Xander said. His gaze had flicked to the sidearm the moment it came into view, and his shoulders dropped slightly. “Yeah, that’s me.”