Chapter 3
Astor
“What’s going on?”
Cillian clicks a button on my desk, sending the shades sliding over the windows to ensure privacy.
Something’s up.
“Power up your monitors.” He joins me behind the screens, but we don’t sit. “Now bring up your personal email.”
Cillian has access to my entire life. Every email, text, and phone call is filtered through him before it reaches me. I trust the man with my life—and I have.
“There.” He points to an email with no subject. “That one. Open it.”
The face of a pale, stunningly beautiful blonde fills the screen. The woman is gagged, mascara-stained tears rolling down her face. A thin line of blood runs from her left nostril, puddling on a severely swollen upper lip. She’s wearing a white nightgown and is tied to a metal chair. She’s staring directly into the camera.
Into me.
My stomach drops to my feet.
“Read the message.”
I blink, tearing away from the photo and focusing on the words of the email. It reads:
Your wife misses you, Astor. I know this because she calls out for you in her sleep. She cries for you when I hit her. She screams for you when I fuck her.
Meet me tomorrow in Vegas, at the Dungeon, at ten p.m. The doorman will be expecting you.
Come alone.
If you alert the police, the Feds, or send any of your mercenaries, I will slit your wife’s throat and live stream her bleeding out on social media for the entire world to see.
I look forward to seeing you, Astor. It’s been a long time.
“Is the picture real or generated by artificial intelligence?”
“It’s real,” Cillian confirms. “I ran it through multiple programs. It’s definitely not AI. That’s Valerie for sure.”
“Who’s it from?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Did you trace the email address?”
“Untraceable. The email was sent from a bogus account over a bogus IP address.”
“Where are they?”
“I can’t trace the location without a viable IP address.”
I straighten, fold my arms over my chest, and stare down at the picture on the screen. “How the hell did someone find out Valerie is my wife?”
“Marriage records are public. Even though we made an effort to conceal it, anyone with significant hacking experience—which is pretty much half the population these days—could figure it out, I’m sure.”
I squint at the email. “It’s been a long time,” I mutter, repeating the last line.
“So, it’s someone you’ve met at some point.”
“Which is completely useless information.”
“Right. When was the last time you spoke to Valerie?”
“Seven months ago.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Longer than that.”
“Was she still living in the safe house you set her up in?”
“Yes. She knows she’s not allowed to leave—actually, that’s a good point. Check the security cameras at the beach house where she was staying.”
“Step back.”
Cillian pushes me out of the way, which takes little effort considering the man is six-foot-five and as thick as a refrigerator. He sinks into the chair and begins opening multiple files and programs.
“Is she still on her meds?” he asks, his fingers flying over the keyboard.
“Yes. I get an update from her doctor every three weeks. He refills her prescription and takes a blood sample to ensure she’s taking them.”
“Good. How is she? I mean, mentally?”
“The same.”
A dozen different views of my secret oceanfront property fill the screens. It’s a small three-bedroom bungalow on a cliff that overlooks the Pacific Ocean, surrounded by twenty acres of gardens and manicured woods.
“Start with three weeks ago,” I say. “That’s the last time I received a communication from her doctor, who visited her at the house.”
Cillian fast-forwards through the footage.
I watch my wife come and go. Outside, inside, back and forth, over and over again.
Small and painfully skinny, her long blond hair hangs in tangles down her back. The white robe she practically lives in is dingy and stained. In most of the footage, regardless of the weather, she’s barefoot, her skin almost as pale as her robe.
She looks ethereal, ghostly almost, seemingly gliding over the ground as she walks.
Occasionally, she gestures to some phantom object in front of her, her fingers fluttering madly as if she’s trying to communicate something. She walks the grounds, even in the night. When the camera catches her face, her eyes reflect like a cat’s.
To say it’s unsettling is an understatement. There is no pattern in her movement, no intention in her step. She simply meanders through the property for hours at a time.
As I stand there watching her, an eerie feeling comes over me. I see myself in her. Wandering aimlessly with a heart as heavy as a brick.
Day after day, my estranged wife cries as she walks, wiping away her tears with a wad of tissues she keeps in her pocket.
All alone.
Day. After. Day.
Guilt grabs my throat like a vise. The goddamn guilt I feel daily for sending her away like I did, for orchestrating a life of solitude. Even though I was only doing what I thought was best for her, the decision still plagues me.
“Fast-forward faster,” I grumble, forcing myself not to look away from the woman I once got down on one knee for.
Suddenly, the screens go blank.
“What the hell?”
After clicking, checking, going back, and clicking again, Cillian looks over his shoulder, his brow cocked. “The cameras were cut.”
“The cameras were cut?” I vehemently shake my head. “No. That’s impossible. They’re programmed to alert me if they ever turn off. Why the hell didn’t it trigger the alert system here? Why didn’t we get a text? Cillian, what the f?—”
“I don’t know, man. Stop. Breathe. I’m seeing this for the first time, just like you are. I’ll look into it. I’ll figure it all out. When was the last time the security system was serviced?”
I blink. My non-answer is answer enough.
He nods, then squints at the screen, hovering the pointer over the time and date. “The cameras went black at 2:16 in the morning, two days ago.”
Twodays. Someone kidnapped my wife two days ago.
Cillian leans back in his chair and scratches his chin. “The email isn’t asking for money, so it’s not a ransom kidnapping. They’re simply asking for you to meet them ... What if it’s a trap?”
“To kill me?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t worry, you’re in the will.”
“Whew.” Cillian mocks wiping sweat from his brow, then falls serious again. “Do you have any idea who it could be?”
The list of men who want me dead—or at the very least, want revenge—is endless. Cillian knows this.
My company, Astor Stone, Inc., is a private investigation firm that operates in countries all over the world. Except it doesn’t. The private-eye angle is a ruse to conceal that, in reality, my company is secretly contracted by the US government to conduct paramilitary missions domestically and abroad.
I oversee a team of mercenaries, hand-picked by me, who are ordered to do what our government can’t—or is unable to, thanks to all the ridiculous red tape. In the simplest terms, we are hitmen, paid outrageous sums of money to run black ops for the government, with the understanding that they will deny all knowledge of us should one of us be exposed.
I’ve lost count of the missions I’ve overseen, of the men I’ve ordered to be killed, and killed myself. Of the enemies, their friends and family, who would want revenge. Like I said, the list truly is endless.
I crack my knuckles. “Well, there’s only one way to find out who it is, isn’t there? Las Vegas, here we come. Call Allan, have him ready the jet. We leave in the morning.”
“Don’t you mean we ride at dawn?” Cillian wags finger pistols in my face.
“Why does everything have to be a joke with you?”
“Because you are so damn uptight, Astor. I’d throw myself out the window if not for occasional comedic relief.”
I bite back a dozen smart-ass responses because he’s right. I am terrible company; I know this. I have one emotion—morose. Hell, I don’t even want to be around myself half the time.
“By the way, what’s the Dungeon?” he asks. “The email said to meet there.”
“It’s an exclusive bar under the Strip. Gambling, strippers, a Michelin-starred restaurant, secret rooms, every drug you could ever want, available in any form you could ever want it in. You know, your typical everyday blue-collar watering hole.”
“You said under the Strip?”
“Yes, literally underground. It’s an invite-only place. Has a secret entrance and everything. Very James Bond. Not many people know of it.”
“Only the rich and famous?”
“Precisely.”
“So, that tells us something about our crook—he has money.”
“Or enough notoriety to get inside.”
“You think he could be with the Mafia? Something like that?”
Shrugging, I consider the handful of missions my company has handled that involve Mafia-related crimes. I make a note to pull those files and study them on the flight over.
I begin pacing.
“Get some sleep, buddy.” Cillian pushes out of the chair and makes his way to the door, unbuttoning his shirt. “We’ll take care of this just like we take care of everything else.”
I grunt and turn to the window. Silence settles in the room, yet I feel Cillian’s presence lingering. When he finally speaks, his tone carries an ominous edge that makes me shiver.
“Vegas is where everything started, remember?”
“Yeah. I remember.”
“Let’s be more careful this time.”
The door closes, and a heaviness like a ball of grease settles in the pit of my stomach. A foreboding that something big is about to happen.
Again.