Lady Leo studied him for a long moment. He could feel her assessing him the way a predator assesses another predator, not for threat but for capability. Whether he was good enough to be trusted with this. Whether he was fast enough to be worth waiting for.
"You have forty-eight hours," she said. "After that, I find my son my way."
"With respect, that's not enough time. If the sharks sold him to someone outside the city, I need to trace the money, find the buyer, and confirm the location before I move. Rushing that gets people killed. I need a week."
"A week." The word came out of her like something she wanted to bite in half.
"Five days. That's my minimum for a clean investigation with a clean evidence chain. If I go in too fast on bad intel, your son is the one at risk."
Lady Leo's fingers tightened on the stem of her martini glass. He watched her run the math — the mother's math, which was different from the cop's math, which was differentfrom the businesswoman's math. Three calculations happening simultaneously behind eyes that had never once in their life accepted a timeline they hadn't set.
"Five days," she said. "Not six. Not five and a half. On day six I stop waiting and you will not like what that looks like."
"Understood," he said. "I'll need one more thing. Something of Amani's. Something with his scent on it."
Bethany disappeared into a back room and returned with a plastic bag containing a pair of tiny black shorts. "These are his. From his locker. He—" She faltered. "He wears them every shift. They're kind of his thing."
Nero took the bag. The shorts weighed almost nothing. Somewhere out in the desert, the person who wore those was in the hands of someone who'd paid to have him delivered, and the last thing that person had done before it happened was text his mother that the frittata was good.
He sealed the bag and put it in his shoulder case. "I'll be in touch within the hour."
He turned to leave, then stopped. Turned back.
"We'll find him," he said. He said it to Lady Leo but he meant it for Bethany, whose composure was held together with nothing but willpower and the certainty that if she fell apart her mother would not forgive her for it. "I'm good at my job and I don't stop until I'm done. We'll find him."
Lady Leo's expression didn't change. But a fraction of the fear gave way to something that might, in better light, have been the beginning of trust.
"Forty-eight hours," she said again.
Nero nodded, once, and walked out into the sunlight and heat.
He called Harold from the parking lot. Harold was a hound shifter, the best tracker on the force, and the only partner Nero had ever worked with who didn't annoy him within the firstfifteen minutes of a shift. Harold was also the only person Nero knew who could follow a scent trail that was twelve hours old through a neighborhood that stank of diesel and salt water and still tell you which way the target had been facing when they stopped moving.
"Nero, I hear we've got a case." Harold's voice was sleep-rough. Sunday morning. Nero didn't care.
"Sharks kidnapped Lady Leo's kid. Twenty-year-old male, lion shifter, name's Amani. Taken sometime between four and four thirty this morning. I need you on Alder Street in the warehouse district in thirty minutes with your nose on."
Harold was quiet for a second. Then: "Lady Leo's son. Jesus. She must be losing her mind."
"She gave me forty-eight hours before she goes private."
"Then we better move fast. Twenty minutes."
Harold was there in fifteen. He pulled up to the curb near the club in his personal car, a sedan that smelled like dog treats and old coffee, and unfolded himself from the driver's seat. He was tall, long-faced, with perpetually disheveled brown hair and the look of a man who was always one cup of coffee behind where he needed to be. But his eyes were sharp and his nose was sharper, and when Nero handed him the evidence bag with Amani's shorts, he opened it and took one long, focused breath.
"Lion," Harold confirmed. "Young. Male. Healthy. Spent a lot of time around alcohol and leather, which tracks for a bartender in a kink club." He closed the bag. "Shark scent is distinctive, dirty salt water and fish. They're all over this town though, so I need more than that to separate the ones we want from the ambient stink."
"The route from the club to his apartment runs along here." Nero pulled up the map Bethany had shown him. "Four blocks. He walks it every night. Same time, same path."
"Consistent pattern. Easy to stake out." Harold shook his head. "Stupid brave of him to walk alone at four in the morning."
"He's a lion. They don't think anything can touch them." Nero pocketed his phone. "Let's see what you can find."
Harold walked the route. Back and forth along the sidewalk on the club's side first, then crossing the street, methodical and unhurried, his head moving in the small, precise adjustments of a hound locking onto a trail. Nero watched from a distance and let him work. Don't rush a tracker. Don't talk to a tracker. Waited until they had something and then listen.
Half a block down from the club, Harold stopped. His nose wrinkled. Then he waved.
Nero crossed to him. "What?"
