Chapter 9
ELLE
I’m thinking that this is all some kind of twisted game that Nico Vitale is playing with me.
First, he disappears from the alleyway after mysteriously saving my life but not my mother’s.
Then, he pulls me into another side street just a few days ago with no other purpose than to get me to back down from chasing the answers I seek.
And now, there’s this—clues left in random places throughout the Vegas Strip for me to find as if he and I are playing a silly game.
Except that the rules in this game are ever-changing, and the consequences of playing it might prove deadly.
The first clue that I see is a note slid under my apartment door. It’s a tiny slip of paper, so small that I almost missed it. Fortunately, my eyes don’t miss much of anything. The note has a single word scribbled on it—meet.
I stare at it for a few seconds, wondering if it’s supposed to be some sort of invitation.
If it is, then it’s missing all the pertinent information, like where, when, and who it is that I’d be meeting.
Although I already know that the note is from Nico.
Call it a sixth sense, but I feel uncannily connected to the Ghost, despite how much I fucking hate him for not saving my mom.
Two days have gone by since that first clue before I find another.
The Ghost either enjoys making me wait, or he’s trying to buy himself more time—for what, I have no idea.
I have to hand it to him, though, because the second clue is impressively done.
Just as I reach for my latte on the barista counter of my favorite coffee shop on my way to do some more sleuthing around, the barista motions to a second drink next to mine.
“Oh, that one’s yours too,” she smiles.
“I only ordered one drink,” I say, confused.
“Yeah, but some handsome man paid for this one for you, too,” she says with a grin as she looks around the café, hoping to point him out.
She obviously doesn’t know who she’s dealing with, because the Ghost can’t be found when he doesn’t want to be.
“I’m not sure where he went,” she says with a wrinkled brow.
“But anyway, the drink is yours. Enjoy.”
I thank her and take my two cups to a window seat and sit down.
When I pop the lid off the second drink, there’s a tiny image drawn with sprinkled sugar on top of the latte foam.
Clever. He must have just done this because it doesn’t take long for the sugar to sink.
The fading image is a simplistic little desert scene, complete with a scorching sun and a single cactus.
Who knew that the Ghost was an artist too?
I chuckle to myself and then drink the latte. It’s delicious.
Meet him in the desert? Is that what the Ghost’s cryptic clues are trying to say?
I guess he wants to be sure that I can’t actually trace any of this back to him—smart.
But the desert outside of the city doesn’t exactly come with a roadmap, so I do not know how to find him or when to find him—until I receive the next and final clue. The last one is the boldest by far.
I don’t even notice it at first when I get back to my apartment after a long day of working on multiple case profiles at once.
I’ve been spending so much time with my obsession over Nico that I’ve barely been keeping up with the rest of my work.
When I sit down at my desk inside my home office, nothing seems to be out of place.
But when I glance up at my evidentiary board hanging on the wall, I see it.
There, right in the middle of the web of notes and articles and photographs, is something that I didn’t put there.
I stand up and walk toward it, seeing before I even reach for the white envelope that it has my name on the front.
When I open it, there’s a GPS location and a military time.
I guess this answers the “when and where”.
Now, all I need to do is decide whether I’m going to go.
The GPS pulls up a very remote location in the desert outside the city.
I’ve never been out there myself, but from what I can see based on the online maps, there doesn’t appear to be very many actual structures out there.
So, unless it’s something that Nico has kept off-grid for a while, or something that totally blends in with the surroundings, I’m not entirely sure what I’m walking into if I decide to go.
I look at the envelope again. I’m not the best at military time, but I’m pretty sure it lines up with tomorrow at sunset.
That means that I could find myself out there in the desert after dark without anyone knowing where I am if something happens.
I suppose I could tell someone, but if I did, I’m sure Nico would find out about it somehow, and then he might call this off.
Even if it is some sort of trap that I’m walking into, it’s the closest that I’ve gotten to actually being able to meet with him.
Not counting the few minutes that he pulled me off the street the other day.
I get up and pace around my apartment for a few laps as I deliberate what to do. But even though it takes me several minutes to talk myself out of going, I already knew from the moment that I got the third clue that I’d accept this chance.
If I were listening to my professional profiling insight, then I would know better than to do something this reckless. After all, this man is a notorious, infamous assassin. The Ghost is a killer.. I know it’s dangerous, but I don’t give a damn. I need answers.
I can hardly wait until the following evening as I watch the hours tick down. It’s like waiting for Christmas morning, except instead of presents under the tree, I’m hoping to get answers.
I drive out of the city and deep into the desert until the city looks like a tiny miniature model in my rearview mirror.
When I think that I’m getting close to the coordinates, I see something up ahead—a small, dull, sand-colored building that does indeed blend in out here.
It looks like the perfect safe house for an assassin who doesn’t want to be found.
No one would have reason to venture out this far away from things to begin with.
And even if they did, they’d likely either not see or not care about a house like this.
He really does have a knack for staying invisible.
I park the car and walk up to knock on the front door, but when I do, there’s no answer.
After knocking a few more times, this time even louder, there’s still no answer.
I’m positive that I’ve gotten both the coordinates and the time correct.
I walk around the house to see if maybe he’s outside, but there’s nothing here besides the house itself, not even a car. It looks like no one is even home.
The inside of the house is dim as I press my face against the front window to look inside.
There aren’t any interior lights on. Perhaps something happened that held him up.
Seeing as though I came out all this way, and that he isn’t even here, I guess that makes this a prime opportunity for me to do some snooping around.
Luckily, I always keep a crowbar in the glove compartment of my car.
It’s one of the few useful skills I learned from my dad.
Honestly, they come in handy in more ways than you’d expect.
After grabbing it and returning to the house, I go around to the back and find a window to pry open.
I’m sure this isn’t exactly legal, but then again, I don’t think either Nico or I are playing by the rules.
Once I get the window open and crawl through, I step inside and find myself standing in the middle of a dark, modern-looking kitchen.
Funny, it looks a lot less humble on the inside.
Even with little light, I can make out the sleek appliances and the small blinking of a security camera in the ceiling’s corner.
For a second, it crosses my mind how odd it is that a house with a security system wouldn’t have an alarm go off by someone prying open a window and breaking inside.
I’m just about to think that maybe the Ghost isn’t as impressive as everyone thinks he is, when a shadowy figure steps out of a dark corner.
I let out a small shriek and jump out of my skin.
“Breaking and entry?” he asks with a dry grin on his face. “That seems beneath you, Elle Monroe, doesn’t it? I was thinking you had some moral high ground, but I guess I don’t need to worry about that anymore.”
“You’re the one who invited me here,” I say as I put both hands on my hips.
I refuse to be intimidated by Nico, or at least I refuse to let him think I am.
I don’t want to give him that kind of power over me.
He already knows he controls too much space in my head.
“So, this was your plan all along, then, was it? You wanted me to break into this house, which I’m guessing is probably under surveillance and might even be locked like a trap now that I’m inside.
And all the while, you’re just waiting here in the corner for me to come, like a spider in a web. ”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“And what if I’d decided not to come?” I ask, angry that he has the upper hand right off the bat.
“I knew you would come,” Nico says. His voice isn’t teasing now. He’s dead serious. “You’ve been chasing me for far too long to give up now. You want answers more than you want pretty much anything else. That means you had no choice but to come get them from me.”
“Is that what this is about?” I ask skeptically. “Did you bring me all the way out here because you’re finally going to give me some answers?”
He hesitates for a moment before responding. And when he finally does, his answer once again sounds dead serious. “Perhaps. Either that or maybe I’ll figure out another way to keep you from continuing to dig around in my business.”
I’m not sure what “other” way he might be implying, but the thought of it serves to remind me that Nico is an assassin. And if the Ghost’s reputation is to be believed, he’s a ruthless, brutal assassin at that.
Suddenly, I feel a tinge of regret about having been so quick to come here alone. I knew it was dangerous, but I chose to come anyway because sometimes danger is the only way to the truth.
“You don’t scare me,” I say, feigning confidence that I don’t fully feel. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Maybe you should be,” he says. “I thought you were smarter than to assume that you’d be safe alone with me.”
So did I. Something about the way he said that makes a heat fill my chest, and I can’t tell if it’s fear or something much more intense and dangerous than that.