I couldn’t afford to fart around, skimming what little information I could from what was available to the public online. I needed help. I needed someone inside the system. I needed Officer Garth Smith, my favorite of Seattle’s finest.

Which was why I was lurking in the shadows across the street from the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday night. I could see Garth through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the entrance, manning the station’s reception desk. He was a sturdy, broad-shouldered fella who wore his Native heritage proudly. He still bore bruises from the attack at the Fremont Troll, faint but visible on his tan skin, but he looked good, considering he’d been in intensive care a week ago.

I was surprised they were letting him work at all, even if he seemed to be relegated to desk duty. Surprised, but relieved. Tracking him down would’ve been a lot harder if he was still convalescing at home. Mostly because I didn’t know where that home was.

Guilt riddled my conscience as I watched him work, shifting papers around, organizing things. It was my fault, him getting hurt. A Nejeret working for the Senate jumped him, having overheard us talking earlier that day. Garth “knew too much,” a leading cause of death in humans who get too close to Nejerets. He was the direct descendant of Chief Sealth, a legend in and of himself, who’d been tasked with the secret knowledge of our people almost two centuries ago. Sealth had passed that knowledge on, perhaps unwisely, which meant Garth knew way more about Nejeretkind than was healthy. Not that the Senate would care about Garth now—they had bigger fish to fry.

I huddled in the shadows across the street from the station for another hour in full-on creeper mode—hood up and hands stuffed into my pockets—watching Garth come in and out of view through the reception window. I’d gone nearly ten minutes without spotting him when he emerged from the door beside the reception desk and made his way toward the main entrance looking snug in his police-issued winter coat.

I waited until he was outside and heading up the block to follow him from my side of the street. I tailed him for another block and a half, until he slipped into a twenty-four-hour convenience store. A minute passed, then another. From across the street, I watched the time tick by on the register’s display. Another minute. Another.

“Shit,” I breathed. He’d given me the slip. He must’ve sensed someone following him.

Since the jig was up, I gave up any pretense of hiding and jogged across the street. I yanked the convenience store’s smudged glass door open and marched straight to the checkout counter. The clerk took a step backward.

“Where’d he go?” I asked, slamming my hands on the grimy counter. “The cop who was just in here—where did he go?”

Wide-eyed and hand shaking, the clerk pointed to a hallway lit by humming fluorescent lights in the far corner of the store.