Chapter 30 Louise
LOUISE
Unlike the other rooms in the house, the library seemed cloaked in darkness.
The shadows stretched from corner to corner.
Even the temperature dropped a few degrees here—enough to raise goose bumps along my arms. I hugged myself tighter, rubbing the chill from my skin as I wandered farther in, the faint scent of old paper and aged wood filling my lungs.
Thousands of books lined the towering shelves. Leather-bound spines gleamed in the low light. I stopped in the center of the massive room, looked around. I felt so small in there, like a grain of sand in the center of an ancient temple.
I couldn’t remember exactly where I’d found the secret door last time, so I started on the right, moving clockwise, my fingertips drift along the bindings.
Minutes passed, maybe an hour. The books, organized by genre and alphabetized to perfection, ranged from dusty encyclopedias and obscure biographies to thrillers, textbooks, and old foreign editions I couldn’t even read.
Not a single speck of dust on any of them.
When I reached the section around the letter R, my fingers bounced over a slight seam in the wood. My heart stuttered. A crack. There it was.
Glancing over my shoulder, then to the tall windows dusted with frost, I leaned in, tracing the line of the hidden door with the tip of my finger. It was narrow—too small to walk through without crouching. Not a room. A crawl space. A hideaway. A secret.
What are you hiding, Ryder?
I searched the shelves around the seam, running my hand under each one, hoping to find a button or lever. Nothing. No antique candlestick to twist. No false spine labeled “Secrets.” Just solid, cold wood.
Determined now, I began pulling books off the shelf, stacking them at my feet. Leather bindings thudded softly against one another until the pile reached my knees. Still nothing obvious. Then—my finger slid over a tiny hole. Barely visible unless you knew it was there.
Eyes wide, I looked around the room for something narrow to poke inside. Nothing, so I sprinted back to my room, yanked open my purse, and grabbed a bobby pin and my flashlight. Minutes later, I was back on the floor in front of the hidden door, heart thumping in my throat.
I jabbed the pin into the hole.
Click.
The faintest hiss of air escaped, and the panel popped forward an inch. My breath caught. I sat back on my heels, staring at the darkness beyond, the silence so complete it rang in my ears.
What was I about to uncover?
Cash? Guns? Drugs?
A shrine to an ex-wife?
A stack of bones?
A shiver ran up my spine.
Did I want to know?
Yes. Absolutely.
Clutching the flashlight between my teeth, I crouched lower, fingers wrapping around the edge of the narrow door. I pulled it open, the wood creaking softly on hidden hinges.
And I peered into the dark.
The beam from my flashlight swept across a black-walled compartment that looked like the inside of a high-security safe. Smooth steel walls. No windows. No vents. Roughly five feet square—big enough to hunker in, but not stand. It felt... deliberate.
Along the back wall, rows of matte black storage bins were stacked with military precision. Gun cases rested beneath them, their hard exteriors scarred and battered. But it was the object on the left that stole my attention: a large, heavy metal box with reinforced edges and a tarnished latch.
Heart thudding, I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled into the space, ignoring every internal voice screaming at me to back away. The air inside was different. Cold. It smelled of leather, gun oil, and money.
After wedging the flashlight into a corner to cast a wide glow, I knelt in front of the metal box. My breath hitched as I popped the lid.
Stacks of bound hundred-dollar bills filled the interior in perfect, untouched rows. The paper bands read $10,000 in neat black ink.
Ten stacks. Ten bundles per stack.
One million dollars. In cash.
I just sat there for a beat, stunned. The kind of stunned where you question if you're hallucinating. My pulse slowed. My fingers tingled.
I’m not proud of it—but for a solid sixty seconds, I considered stuffing my duffel bag. Just a couple bundles. No one would know. Ryder wouldn’t notice.
Tempting. But no.
I’d closed the lid and was shifting to the storage bins when—
Click.
The secret door shut behind me with a deep suction-like sound.
I froze.
Then I spun.
“No! No, no, no, no—”
I scrambled across the floor and threw myself at the door, palms flat against its cool surface. I searched frantically for a handle. A latch. A seam. Nothing.
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit!”
Panic surged through me in a violent rush.
I turned, back against the wall, lungs fluttering in shallow gasps. My vision tunneled. My skin prickled.
The silence was deafening.
I curled my fingers into my palms, trying to ground myself.
But there was no grounding. Because I was locked in Ryder’s secret safe room.
Ryder would find me. I had no doubt about that. He wouldn’t overlook stacks of books scattered across the floor of his pristine, alphabetized library. That thought brought a sliver of relief—but how long would it take? Hours? Days?
Tomorrow?
A colder thought slithered in. Is the safe airtight?
Followed by another: How long do I have until the oxygen runs out?
And just when I thought I’d reached peak panic, my bladder reminded me otherwise. I had to use the bathroom.
I groaned and let the back of my head thunk against the cold wall.
Damn it, Lou. Why am I always so… me?
Ryder’s reaction once he found me locked in his secret lair would likely match the level of secrecy this place guarded. I’d seen enough spy thrillers to know this was the kind of space people disappeared into. But if I was already here, I might as well learn just how deep this rabbit hole went.
So let’s find out…
I drew a breath, adjusted the flashlight, and crab-walked over to the bins. I opened the first.
Inside: passports. Stacks of them.
Each one bore a different name, date of birth, and background, but the face? Ryder. Or at least a version of him. In some, his skin tone was different. His eyes changed color. His hair was short in some, long in others. Bearded. Clean-shaven. One had a prosthetic nose. Another, sculpted cheekbones.
My stomach twisted.
Among the passports were matching driver’s licenses, gun permits, foreign currencies, credit cards… and keys. So many keys.
Eleven identities total. The man whose house I’d broken into had eleven different lives.
A chill rippled up my spine as I flipped through his travel history.
Egypt. Iran. Russia. Sudan. Kenya. Somalia. Mali. Greece. Spain. Morocco.
The stamps went on, a trail of countries I’d only read about in headlines. But none dated beyond twelve years ago. Every passport stopped cold.
Why?
I shoved that bin aside and opened the next.
Files. Dozens of them.
Many were printed in foreign languages I couldn’t read, but the formatting looked official—seals, stamps, watermarks. I skimmed the pages, scanning for something familiar. Then one name made my heart hitch.
Astor Stone, Inc.
I froze.
Was Ryder was connected to the same firm I’d visited days ago? But these papers suggested that the work Astor Stone, Inc. did went well beyond US borders, and appeared to be much more than a run-of-the-mill private investigation firm like its letterhead stated.
This was international. Covert. Lethal.
Another file caught my eye—stacks of stapled photos, each labeled with a name and a word: Target.
Each sequence ended the same way—with a final photo marked Deceased. The images weren’t censored. Blood-slicked floors, shattered skulls, men with vacant eyes and bullet holes between them.
My hands began to tremble.
What have I gotten myself into?
I placed that bin down with care, then reached for the one shoved furthest into the shadows. It was lighter than the rest. Only one folder inside.
I swallowed hard and opened it.
A black-and-white mugshot stared back at me.
Inmate Number 730576
Forrest City Federal Prison
Name: Jagger, Ryder T.
I gasped.
I knew that name.
Dear God, I knew that name. Everyone did.
Ryder Jagger.
The realization hit like ice water down my spine. I hadn’t even thought to ask his last name—I’d just followed him like a lost little lamb. If I had asked, I would’ve known.
And I would’ve run.
It happened twelve years ago. A story that dominated the headlines for weeks. It started as a local crime but spread like wildfire. Statewide. National. Unforgettable.
Ryder Jagger brutally beat and murdered a nineteen-year-old man.
Leon Ortiz.
The details had been too gruesome to forget. I didn’t know how I’d missed the connection—maybe the time had dulled the memory, or maybe I hadn’t wanted to see it.
The story had been sensationalized, every sickening detail leaked to the public because of how horrifying it was.
According to the reports, Ryder had waited outside Ortiz’s house for days, camped out like a predator.
When Ortiz finally returned from a camping trip, Ryder attacked. No weapons—just his fists.
He broke eight bones. Cracked his skull. Beat Ortiz until his face was unrecognizable—they had to ID him through fingerprints.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
The autopsy revealed that Ryder had cut off Ortiz’s testicles with a rusted switchblade while he was still conscious. Then—God help me—he shoved them down Ortiz’s throat. Held his nose until he choked on them.
And while Ortiz gagged on his own severed anatomy, Ryder strangled him.
The image made me gag. I clapped a hand over my mouth. My stomach roiled, bile climbing up my throat.
They’d found Ryder hours later. Alone. Covered in blood, staring up at the sky from the edge of a cliff. His legs dangling over the side. Serene.
The reason for the murder? Never released. Not that it mattered. The murder was so brutal and gruesome that the reason for it was irrelevant—in the eyes of the gossips. The public had made up their mind. Ryder Jagger wasn’t a man—he was a monster.
The mugshot slipped from my fingers, fluttering to the floor like an omen.
I stumbled back, hand still clamped over my mouth.
Do not puke. Do not puke. Do not puke...
I was in a house with a convicted killer. I had slept under his roof. Twice.
My thoughts swirled into a single horrifying epiphany.
Kara was eighteen when she was murdered.
Brutally beaten. Strangled.
My pulse thundered in my ears.
Could Ryder have killed her too?
I turned back to the bin of passports. The stacks of cash. The surveillance photos. The dead targets.
Could he be the String Strangler?
A chill licked across my skin like a blade of ice.
I didn’t want to believe it. I felt safe with him. But maybe that was part of it. Maybe that’s what made him so dangerous.
Because Ryder Jagger wasn’t just a man with secrets.
He was a man built of them—and I sure as hell wasn’t going to be the next.
With shaking hands, I crawled across the hidden room to the gun cases and began opening them, one by one.