“Garth has a personal vehicle, does he not?” Dom said. That Dom, always the voice of sound thinking and clear reason.

I paused, then backpedaled to grab the set of car keys sitting in a carved wooden bowl on the kitchen island. Driving out of here would be a whole lot less conspicuous than leaving by foot.

A muffled feline yowl brought me up short just as I was passing through the doorway. Eva. I’d forgotten about her in all the chaos. From the sound of her desperate cry, she was somewhere back in the bedroom.

I hesitated. I could just go. I should go. Eva would probably be fine, and I sure as hell didn’t have time to wrangle a terrified cat. But even as I took a step into the hallway, I thought of Garth and how devastated he would be if I let something happen to her.

“Oh, come on,” I grumbled, dropping my burdens and rushing back into the condo. I grabbed the cat carrier from the laundry closet and ran into the bedroom. The gas was still pretty thick in there, and my eyes stung anew. “Eva?” I called out, coughing as I scanned the ripped-up, body-strewn space. “Here, kitty kitty . . .”

Another yowl. I was pretty sure it came from the cabinets under the bathroom counter.

I dashed into the bathroom and crouched down, opening one of the cabinet doors. Sure enough, there was the little calico cat, huddled in the back corner, relatively unharmed. Thank the gods . . .

I didn’t have time for caution. If she bit me, so be it. I would heal. I reached into the cabinet and yanked her out by the scruff. Thankfully, Eva was little more than a tense, trembling dead weight. I shoved her into the carrier and tucked the whole thing under my arm like an oversized football, then fled from the condo, snagging my leather coat, sword, and the trash bag on my way out.

I took the stairwell down to the basement and was already clicking the disarm button on the car alarm’s key fob before I’d even opened the door to the underground garage. I didn’t know what Garth drove when off duty, but not knowing didn’t make me miss a beat. I pressed the button over and over as I jogged farther into the garage, following the beep-beep beep-beep.

“Hot damn,” I said with a breathy laugh when I finally honed in on his car.

I’m not sure what I was expecting—maybe an SUV or a truck. Not the case. Garth owned a classic beauty, a black and chrome Mustang. The muscle car had clearly been restored and retrofitted with modern amenities like an alarm, because it couldn’t have been a day older than 1967.

Pushing stringy, tangled wet hair out of my face, I unlocked the driver’s side door and flung my bag, jacket, and the condemning trash across the center console to the passenger seat. I strapped in Eva’s carrier in the backseat before sliding into the car myself. After I stuck the key into the ignition, I shot a quick glance around, then twisted my wrist. The engine roared to life in the cavernous space.