Chapter 2
TWO
Ryan lived in a one-room walk-up above the club.
It was barely bigger than the mattress he slept on and about as homey as a bunker.
Cracked tile floors, a barred window that didn’t open, and a fan that buzzed overhead like a dying wasp.
A tiny bathroom, not much bigger than a closet.
The air smelled of tequila and old cigarettes.
He locked the door behind him, bolted it and slid the chain across. Then shoved a chair under the handle for good measure.
He sat at the table, his laptop in front of him, the flash drive pinched between his fingers like it might bite. The cheap overhead bulb flickered once, twice, before settling into a dim, nervous glow.
Typical. Club Persephone could keep the tequila flowing but couldn’t keep the lights steady.
Ryan slid the drive into the port. One folder. One video. No label.
His hand gripped the mouse, and he clicked.
A video screen sprang open and immediately began playing.
The footage showed a small blue and white house set back in a well-tended yard.
A child’s bike lay abandoned in the grass.
Around the side of the house, a woman was hanging laundry on a line.
The video looked like it had been taken on a phone, from across the street.
The camera was steady, so Ryan guessed it had been shot from out the window of a parked car.
A boy ran into frame. The camera snapped to attention, panning until it had him fully in shot, then zooming in close. The kid was seven, maybe older. Soccer ball under his arms. Messy brown hair. Skinny limbs.
Ryan leaned forward, squinting. He didn’t recognize him.
The camera shifted its attention abruptly, focusing instead on the woman by the clothes line.
The footage blurred for a second, then sharpened.
The woman had turned to face the boy—and the camera—and was calling something out to him.
She was in her sixties. Long grey hair, big green eyes, high cheekbones.
Ryan’s chest went tight, breath catching. His hand squeezed the mouse like a trigger.
It had been many years since he’d laid eyes on his former mother-in-law, Diane Carmichael. But there was no mistaking that face.
She looked just like her daughter.
Kylie. His ex-wife.
Dead two years now, brutally murdered by cartel enforcers back in the States. She’d been caught in the crossfire of a world he thought he’d left behind. The guilt never left him. Neither did the rage.
Ryan leaned forward, stomach knotting. His eyes followed the camera as it panned back to the boy.
It had to be Noah. Kylie’s son. Her only child.
The resemblance was unmistakable, his mother’s auburn hair, her wild freckles scattered across his cheeks.
The footage zoomed all the way out again, taking in the quiet suburban scene. A boy playing with his soccer ball, his grandma hanging out the laundry.
Ryan kept watching, confused. Then he heard a soft, sinister chuckle. He could tell it was coming from whoever was shooting the video.
The screen went blank.
Ryan didn’t move. The silence felt thick and pressurized. His pulse thumped loud in his ears, like it was trying to fill the room.
He stared at the laptop. Waiting for something else. Another message. A command.
But there was nothing.
He stood up, fast. Paced once, then twice, rubbing a hand down his face. He wasn’t breathing right.
It wasn’t just the footage. It was the angle, the steadiness of the camera. The way it zoomed, not with curiosity, but with precision.
He sat back down at the table and gripped the edges with both hands. They’d found Diane. They’d found Noah. They’d found him.
And they hadn’t said a single word. There were no demands, no ransom, no names. Just a video and a laugh.
That was the message.
He stood, went to the door and rechecked the deadbolt. He shoved the chair harder under the doorknob, then crouched and slid the Walther PPK from the holster beneath his mattress.
He checked the mag and the slide, then he secured the holster under his shirt and slid the pistol into place.
The tequila bottle on the shelf looked tempting. He poured a shot, let it sit untouched. Instead, he went to the windowsill and unscrewed the lid of the dented coffee tin. Peeled back the foil false bottom.
The cash was still there. Enough to buy a bus ticket out of town, out of state, maybe even out of the country altogether. South—he would go as far south as it would take him to fall off the face of the earth.
He shoved the money back inside and closed the lid. Turned back to his laptop on the table. It felt like it was watching him.
Ryan didn’t trust the laptop. It was old—secondhand—bought in cash at a flea market south of Rosarito. But still, he’d plugged in their flash drive. That was a mistake.
He powered the machine down, pulled out the battery, and unscrewed the casing in three practiced motions. Snapped the hard drive from its slot and cracked it against the bed frame until it split open with a metallic crunch.
He tossed the remains into a grocery bag, then removed the chair from the door handle, unlocked the chain and deadbolt. Keeping his head down, he strode down the hallway, then down the backstairs that led to the rear door of the club. He unlocked it, then slipped out into the night.
The stink of the dumpsters greeted him from half a block away.
They were behind a Chinese restaurant and Ryan guessed they were due for emptying.
He gave the street a thorough sweep in both directions, then slipped down the side of the restaurant, lifted the lid and slung the grocery bag with the shattered laptop inside.
Then he made his way back to the club, glad for the hard lump of his pistol at his waistband.
Safely back in his room, he turned his attention to the flash drive.
It went easier. The plastic cracked like a wishbone between his fingers. The metal piece he dropped into the rusted drain in the bathroom floor. The plastic shell he burned over the gas flame of his stove.
By the time he was done, it was like the message had never existed.
But it had. And no matter how many times he cleaned the room, counted his cash, or wiped the sweat off his palms, he couldn’t stop seeing Diane. That house. The kid.
When he closed his eyes, he could picture Kylie on the last day he’d seen her alive. She’d been six months clean and sober. She’d looked happy. She’d looked like the girl he’d married on a bright fall day in Tellico Plains, East Tennessee.
His mind skidded forward to the last time he’d seen her, strangled to death in a dog crate. It had only been in a photo, but the image was burned into the back of his mind like a hot poker.
The fan buzzed overhead like it was shorting out his thoughts. He lay down on the mattress and stared at the ceiling. One arm behind his head, the other pressed flat against his chest like maybe he could keep whatever was breaking inside from leaking out.
He had no proof the boy was in danger. No name. No voice telling him what to do.
Just a video. And a memory that wouldn’t stop replaying.