PROLOGUE
ZETH
3 YEARS AGO
“Blondes.”
“I’m sorry? Can you repeat that? I don’t think I heard you correctly.” Michael sounds amused on the other end of the phone, his voice filled with mirth.
I close my eyes, holding my breath. I’m moments away from snapping at him, but I hold back. If I’m shitty with him, he’ll know something’s up, and I can’t be bothered sidestepping his questions, subtle though they may be. “Blondes,” I repeat. “I only want blondes at this month’s party. Petite ones. None of them over five’ five. And they should be curvy.”
“So specific,” Michael muses. “You’ve never given me such a long shopping list before, boss. You trying to replicate someone’s looks?” He pauses, and the gap in conversation is loaded with suggestion. When I don’t say anything, Michael flat out voices his suspicions. “You haven’t met someone, have you? Some short little blonde with blue eyes? Some missed connection? Because you know me, boss. I can find anyone. If you need someone tracking down—”
“I don’t. I haven’t met anyone. I just have something very…particular in mind.”
“You’re sure?” Michael’s almost laughing, doing a horrible job of hiding the fact. The problem is, he’s been organizing my little gatherings every month for so long, and I have never made any requests where the women are concerned. Usually, the parties are for singles and couples who are well versed in the lifestyle, and who are no strangers to debauchery and sin. In asking him to actively search for people who look a certain way, who might never have been to a party like mine before, was bound to set off alarm bells in my friend’s head.
And he’s half right; I am being very specific. It’s not that I’m suddenly obsessed with bottle blonde bimbos, though. It’s that the prospect of running my hands over a woman who’s tall, who’s brunette, who’s slender and willowy, with dark, emotion-filled eyes is the very last fucking I need right now. Not after the hotel room. Not after her.
I knew it was going to be different with her. I shouldn’t have watched her. I shouldn’t have gotten involved, demanded that I be the one to meet with her, to take her virginity. I should have fucking walked away. If there’s one thing I’ve learned working for Charlie Holsan, it’s that any action you take should always be from the head. Any actions from the heart should staunchly be avoided. And the moment you start listening to your cock, acting out of pure lust or attraction, is the moment you seriously need to regroup and get your shit together.
I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me, but the moment I saw her standing outside that elevator at the hospital, I’ve been treading water, trying to keep my head above water, trying to not think about her, trying not to drown in my thoughts of her, and it’s been impossible. I thought having her would quell this burning obsession, crackling away inside my chest, but fuck. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Now that I’ve tasted her? Now that I’ve sunk myself deep inside her, felt her virginity succumb to the pressure of my dick, forging a pathway inside her? I can’t get her out of my head. Every time I close my eyes, I’m back in that black, darkened room, and her hands are tracing over my face, my chest, my shoulders, my back, searching out and exploring the lines and scars of me that make me me. The memory overtakes me at least ten or twenty times a day, whenever I’m not concentrating or I allow my mind to wander.
“Just mind your damn business,” I grumble down the phone. “I want blondes. Redheads, if that’s all you can find. Just no brunettes.” I’m giving him more clues, I know I am, but I need to make sure he understands. I can’t have anyone reminding me of Sloane at the party. I just won’t be able to take it. It’ll be impossible to enjoy myself. The very thought of Sloane entering my mind in that environment won’t serve to turn me on. It will make me angry that I’m not with her instead of them. I have no desire to wander around the apartment for three hours with a flaccid dick, snarling whenever a woman tries to touch me. I need to fuck to forget her. I need to thrust my dick inside a multitude of women who are nothing like the doctor I saw at St. Peter’s; it’s the only way I’ll manage to shake myself free of this malaise.
“All right, all right,” Michael responds, his voice altering ever so slightly, becoming more serious. “I got it. Blondes. And what happens if I can’t find anyone that matches your criteria?”
“Then cancel the party.”
Silence.
More silence.
He’s even stopped moving. I can tell because there’s no background noise on the other end of the line anymore. Only the occasional small breath as Michael processes what I’ve just said.
“Are you sure everything’s okay?” he asks.
“I’m sure.”
“But you still won’t tell me where you are, or what you’re doing. Or why you trashed the warehouse yesterday morning?”
When I hired Michael, I had no doubt in my mind he’d make a perfect right hand man. He was all business. Had a reputation for getting things done, no matter the cost. And he didn’t ask too many questions. Over the months, the lines have blurred, though. He’s helped me more and more, been there for me to rely on whenever I’ve needed him. He’s…he’s slowly become my friend. And in turn, the questions have become more frequent. I could be a real asshole and ream him out, tear him a new one, cut him down where he stand right now and remind him that he is my employee. But…I kind of like having a friend. For the most part. Even when it is inconvenient and annoying to have someone prying in order to ascertain my wellbeing.
“Just make sure everything’s ready for tonight,” I growl. Hanging up the phone, I stare down at the screen for a moment, slumped back into the driver’s seat of the Camaro.
I tried to calculate how many people I’ve killed before I called Michael. I sat here and I really tried. As far as I can tell, it’s thirty-seven. Thirty-seven people, all sent into the great beyond at Charlie Holsan’s behest. I’ve never taken a person’s life because I lost my temper and wanted them dead personally. I’ve never robbed someone of whatever remaining years they may have had to suit my own personal agendas. The killing has always been the end result of a command.
Next, I sat here for a long time, breathing down my nose, head swimming, wondering how many people the girl in the hotel room has saved. I nearly leaned out of the car door and threw up at that. But enough. Enough of that. Where are thoughts like that going to fucking get me?
My eyes cut to the row of storefronts before me, out of the Camaro’s windshield: a laundromat; a Chinese restaurant; a liquor store; and a bail bondsman. To the right hand side of the mini strip mall, a set of stairs rises up to four separate doorways and their offices beyond. The one I’m looking for is second along: Eli Hofstadter, Private Detective and Investigative services. I find it faintly amusing that this little corner of Rainer Valley caters so perfectly to the criminal element. You have the liquor store, where cons can buy the booze to make them reckless and stupid enough to break their parole terms. You have the Laundromat, where violent aggressors can wash the blood out of their clothes. You have the bail bondsman, who will go after them when they break said terms of parole and are due to go back inside. And then you have the P.I. guy with the penchant for bad takeout upstairs, who charges through the nose to find delinquent fathers who refuse to pay child support to their angry baby mommas. Shame for Eli Hofstadter he didn’t stick to that particular line of private investigation.
It’s been so cold lately that the banks of snow shored up against the curbs of the parking lot have all compacted and turned to ice. I’m careful as I climb out of the Camaro and make my way to the stairway, my breath forming great pluming clouds of fog before me, my lungs prickling and balking at the bitter snap in the air. The stairs creak and groan as I make my way up, each step caked with at least an inch of slick, glassy ice.
I raise my curled fist and knock on Hofstadter’s door. He was on the phone inside; I heard his muffled voice a moment ago, droning on in that nasal way of his, but at the sound of my knock he falls silent. An eternity follows, where I wait at the door and Eli waits inside, presumably hoping that I’ll simply go away if he keeps me out in the cold long enough. When I don’t turn tail and head back down the stairs, I hear him say, “I’ll call you back in a minute.”
A series of hacking coughs echo around the space beyond the door, and then a groan, followed by loud grumbling, which grows closer and closer. The door opens. Eli looks me up and down, beady, cloudy brown eyes traveling up and down my body before shuttering with suspicion. “You’re here for work? I don’t need extra guys. I have a full roster.”
Charming. He thinks I want to rough people up for him. Play bodyguard to him when he sticks his nose in places it’s not welcome. If I had any doubt which side of the moral line Hofstadter walks as a P.I., I sure as hell don’t anymore. It’s literally impossible for me to like this disgusting fuck any less. A sour, unpleasant tang fills my mouth—the taste of rage. “We spoke on the phone,” I say simply.
I know how deep my voice is. I can hear it reverberating inside my skull every time I open my own mouth. I’ve seen people pale so thoroughly at the menacing timbre of my voice that they’ve looked like they’re about to pass out. Eli is no exception. He swallows, the wattle in his throat bobbing like a goddamn turkey’s on Thanksgiving morning.
“You.” An accusation. “I believe our business is at an end, Mr. Mayfair,”
Huh. So he’s remembered my name. Unsurprising, really. I paid him a small fortune to win the bid on Sloane. I also threatened him with extreme violence if he screwed me over in any way. Or if he tried selling her to anyone else after me. I know how these motherfuckers work. He’ll have told her just once. And then, when she’d completed the task, he would have turned around to her and demanded a second and a third time, until she wouldn’t have even blinked at handing over her body in exchange for what she needed. It’s a trick (and a currency) as old as time.
“You’re mistaken,” I tell him, my words forming more fog that hangs in the air between us. “Invite me inside.”
He blinks, half closing the door, using the wood a shield between us. “I’m afraid I have an appointment with a client shortly. Now isn’t a convenient time. You’ll have to call and schedule a ARGGHHH!” He yelps as I spring forward, planting my hand on his face, fingers splayed wide, shoving him back inside his office. He staggers back three or four steps, unbalanced, his great bulk threatening to send him crashing backwards into the coffee ring stained table that sits in the middle of the room.
“What…? What the fuck?” he cries. The inside of his office is dimly lit, composed mostly of browns and cream walls that were probably once white. The cramped space stinks of sweat and stale cigarette smoke. An overflowing ashtray sits on the floor by his desk, which is cluttered with empty takeout boxes and countless dog-eared stacks of paper. Eli’s chest heaves as he watches me taking in his little corner of heaven.
“Wow.” I curl up my top lip in disgust. “Looks like your cleaner hasn’t been by in a while, huh?”
“Screw you, Mayfair. This is my office. I can keep it however I want.”
I shrug, moving over to the cracked leather chair that sits opposite his own at his desk. I sweep the pile of papers that are perched on top of the chair to the floor, and then I sit myself down. Eli’s eyes are bugging out of his head. He looks like he’s about to have a heart attack.
“Sit down,” I say, my tone as congenial as possible. “You and I are going to have a conversation.”
“I would like you to leave. I’m serious. I have a client, and I—” He stops talking the instant I turn my head toward him and he takes in the look of murder of my face.
“Sit. Down. Eli.”
He squirms inside his skin as he slowly makes his way around his desk and collapses into his chair. “You got what you wanted,” he says, panting. “You got the girl. What more can you possibly want from me?”
I glance down at my right hand, casually studying my fingernails. “I want the file. I want to know what’s inside it.” I don’t know when it happened—when I decided I was going to look for Sloane’s sister. If I’m being brutally fucking honest, it was probably the second I laid eyes on the woman. I might not have known what dark secrets were looming over her at the time, but I saw the look of pain and suffering on her face, that look of sheer desolation, and a part of me recognized that I would do anything to take that away.
Eli huffs a laugh down his nose. A manipulative shadow flickers in his eyes. “Well… you know exactly what the girl had to pay for that information. You footed the bill, after all. What are you willing to hand over in exchange for—”
“What is your life worth to you?” I ask, sighing.
Eli pales a fraction further; his already pallid skin is starting to take on a sickly green hue. “Well. Everything, of course.”
“Then I’m willing to give you everything, as you so eloquently put it. I’m willing to leave this room without severing any of your major arteries,” I say in a bored tone. I return to picking at my fingernails.
“Mr. Mayfair, please…understand. This kind of information is not easy to come by. If I simply gave it out to anyone who came in here and threatened me, then…” He shrugs his shoulders, a wheedling, conniving expression on his face.
“I take it you understand the concept of bargaining?” I ask. “That’s what you’re trying to do right now?”
He pauses, and I can practically hear the stiff, rusted gears inside his head whirring. He’s trying to decide how he’s meant to respond, trying to ascertain if this is a trick question. After a drawn out moment, he nods just once, his double chin wobbling. “Yes.”
“So tell me. If someone offers you everything in return for something, how can they possibly give you more? Surely any other deal they strike with you will be…less.” I shift my gaze to his face, letting him read the roiling storm of anger I’m barely managing to contain within myself, despite my apparently calm demeanor. He rocks back into the cradle of his chair, as if he’s just witnessed something purely terrifying.
“Yes. Y—yes, you’re right,” he stammers. “Forgive me.”
“I’m a very talented man,” I growl. “Unfortunately forgiveness is not part of my repertoire.”
“Yes. Yes, well…” He clears his throat, shifting uncomfortably. “What little information I have is in that filing cabinet there. I’ll get it for you now.”
“Don’t trouble yourself.” I rise out of my chair before he can even brace himself against the surface of his desk to heave himself up. He opens his mouth, his whole form radiating annoyance, but he pauses, obviously thinking better of saying anything when I shoot him a scathing sideways glance.
The filing cabinet is locked. I pick up the letter opener perched on the edge of Eli’s desk and jam it into the gap at the top of the drawer.
“Hey! Hey, you don’t need to do that. I have the…key.”
The draw pops open, the metal front of the top drawer denting a little as I bully it open. Inside, surprisingly ordered, neat, alphabetized suspension files are labelled in clear, blocky handwriting. I find Alexis Romera’s file in the second drawer down. It’s thin. Too thin. Removing it, I carry it back to Eli and sit back down. Inside the file: one sheet of paper.
I stare down at the brief, typed report in front of me, frowning in confusion. “What is this?”
“It’s…it’s the missing person’s report for Doctor Romera’s sister. It’s everything the police have on her disappearance.”
“You’re fucking kidding me, right?”
“Police reports are hard to come by, Mr. Mayfair. It took some serious work on my part to obtain that piece of paper.”
I can’t quite seem to make my brain engage. I can’t quite seem to tear my eyes away from the sheet of paper I’m holding in my hands. “Police reports are very easy to come by, Eli,” I say slowly. “Very easy. Any idiot can get a hold of a police report. And this…” I hold up the sheet of paper for him to see. “The information in this report was all supplied to the cops by Sloane and her family. “So…” I narrow my eyes at him. “You took her virginity, forced her to fuck a stranger, for information she already knows?”
A glimmer of amusement travels over Eli’s bloated, repulsive features. A tiny smile hovers at the corners of his mouth. “Come on, Zeth. You know this game as well as I do. You know how life works. Supply and demand. Survival of the fittest. The strong preying on the weak. It’s the way of the world. The natural order. I have bills to pay. Overheads. I saw an opportunity and I took it. You can’t fault me for that. And...and what do you care, anyway?” he rushes out. “You got to fuck a beautiful woman. A virgin. I didn’t even know she was a virgin. I would have charged double if I had.” He laughs shakily, winking at me, like I ought to be thanking my lucky stars that I got the deal of the century.
There are no words to describe what’s happening inside me as I contemplate his nervously amused expression. Great chasms of fire are renting open inside me. Night pours in, blackening my vision, clouding my mind. My ears roar, the sound of fury and deafening rage destroying my ability to hear the words that spew out of Eli’s mouth as he shrinks further and further back into his chair, away from me.
I’m no longer myself. I am something else. I’ve courted the darker side of my own soul for years now, gone toe to toe with it, played a dangerous game of control with it as and when I’ve need to, giving it more of myself than I should in times of anger. I have never, never, not once succumbed to it entirely.
Until now.
I wait. The room tilts and spins as everything sharpens, my focus constricting, my senses suddenly alive. The smell pouring from the discarded Chinese food cartons dotted around the office, quietly rotting, is raw and offensive to my nose, but the reek of Eli’s fear is enough to overpower the decay.
“What…what are you going to do?” Eli’s eyes shuttle toward the door, over my shoulder. He’s planning his escape route, wondering if he can get past me. I almost laugh out loud.
“What do you think I should do?” I reply.
“I think…I don’t know. I’ll refund you,” he says quickly. “Yes, I’ll give back your money.” Relief. He looks relieved, as if the promise of my returned money will clearly be enough to staunch the tide of my wrath. It’s what he understands, after all: greed. When I fail to give him the appeased look he’s oh-so-clearly expecting, a twisted realization settles on his face.
“And what about Sloane?” I ask. “What do you propose to return to her?”
“Look. You’re the one who fucked her,” Eli retorts. “You’re the one who…who did the deed. If you made it bad for her, then—”
“I’ll pay for my own sins when I show up at hell’s gates, you sick fuck,” I snap. “For now, let’s just worry about you and your sins.”
His mouth opens and closes, gulping at the air like a fish. God knows what excuses he’s about to come up with. None of them will be sufficient. None of them will be enough to justify what he has done here.
The telephone on his desk begins to ring, shrill and loud, cutting the tense silence inside the office in two. Eli eyes me, then lurches forward, hand reaching for the receiver. I get there before him, placing my own hand on the phone. “Let it ring out. No more calls for you, my friend.”
“I’m still running a business,” he argues. “I have to…” His words die on his lips. He knows it’s pointless now. He must see it written all over me. The phone continues to ring. And ring. And ring. Eventually the answering machine kicks in. A cool, friendly, feminine voice fills the silence.
“This is the Eli Hofstadter Private Detective and Investigative Agency. I’m afraid no one is available to take your call right now. Please leave your name and number along with a short message after the beep, and we’ll be sure to get back to you as soon as we can.”
I think I jump as hard as Eli when her voice echoes out of the tinny speaker. Sloane. She sounds desperate. Torn. On the verge of tears. “Eli, this is Sloane Romera. I’ve been calling you for the past twenty-four hours. I really need to speak to you. It really is…vital. I did as I was asked. I went to the hotel. Everything went…smoothly.”
Bile rises from my stomach, burning at the back of my throat.
Smoothly. Everything went smoothly. Eli said something truly awful a moment ago. He said, “If you made it bad for her…” I didn’t make it bad. I made it as enjoyable as I could. I was careful. I was gentle. I would never have been so demanding of her if I’d known it was her first time…
Sloane pauses. It sounds like she’s trying to master her own emotions, to stay calm. “I really need the information you promised me, Eli. I have to go and get my sister. The police aren’t doing anything. She’s out there, all alone, and no one’s looking for her. I have to find her.”
I glance down at the missing person’s report still sitting in my lap, and something cold and terrifying snakes through my veins. This is what he’s planning on giving her: absolutely nothing. Just more heartbreak and hurt.
I left my gun in the car down in the parking lot. I didn’t bring a weapon with me. I knew threats alone would be enough to convince Eli to give me what I wanted. Like I told him a moment ago, though, I’m a resourceful guy. I’m still holding the letter opener I used to bust open the filing cabinet. I turn it over in my hand, testing its weight.
Eli’s eyes go wide. “Please,” he whispers.
Please isn’t going to cut it. Nothing will. My body is numb as I lunge across the desk, sinking the letter opener into his chest. The blade is dull; it takes an extraordinary amount of pressure to force the steel through the fat fucker’s shirt and into his body. The metal grinds against bone as it scrapes past his ribs.
The surprise on Eli’s face isn’t something I’ll be forgetting any time soon. He coughs, flecks of blood flying from his mouth. “Fuck…you…” he hisses, looking down at the point where my hand is thrusting the letter opener into his body. “Mother…fucker…”
“So, yeah. If you could please call me back when you get this message, Eli, I would be really grateful. I’m sure you can understand how…how worried I am. Please. Imagine if it were your sister who’d been taken… I just… I need to find her.”
Sloane’s sadness must ring in Eli’s ears as he dies. It rings in mine as I withdraw the letter opener and I plunge it back into his body again, this time lower, into his swollen gut. Then again, in his chest, in his side, in his neck. He coughs and gasps as I stab him, his eyes wild with fear. I feel nothing. Over and over again, I drive the steel into his body, until the coughing and the gasping grinds to a halt.
My vision narrows. I can hardly see straight. The adrenalin, awash in my blood, demands that I keep going, that I keep on forcing the weapon into Eli’s wrecked body. I suck in a shallow breath of air, staggering back from his body.
Fuck. Holy fucking shit.
There’s blood everywhere. It’s sprayed all over the walls, pooling on Eli’s desk. His mouth is hanging open, a black maw of shock, displaying yellowed, uneven teeth and a mouth full of filings.
Goddamn him. And goddamn me, too. There’s no remorse as I remove the missing person’s report from Alexis Romera’s file and place it back into the filing cabinet. I’m about to walk out of the office and leave when I catch sight of something on Eli’s desk. My name. More precisely, the initials, ZM. There aren’t many people with the initials ZM. I shift around the desk, running my hand over the disorganized piles of paper, my stomach rolling uncomfortably when I realize my name appears everywhere: police reports, rap sheets, witness reports, hand written notes, hundreds of them, all documenting facts and information about me that Eli was obviously collecting. No photos, though. That’s why he didn’t recognize me when he answered the door.
This is seriously damning shit. If I leave the papers here and the cops eventually come knocking, I’m going to be their number one fucking suspect. Groaning, I cast my gaze around, until I find what I’m looking for tucked out of the way beside the ratty, threadbare sofa at the end of the room: a document box. I grab it—mercifully empty—and I quickly gather up the papers on Eli’s desk, along with the ones I dumped on the floor so I could sit down.
Thanks to my driving gloves I won’t be leaving any fingerprints, and the likelihood I’ll have lost any rogue hair is slim to none thanks to the hood I still have raised over my head. Now that I have all the papers, there will be little to connect me to this crime. I consider closing Eli’s eyes, leaving him in a more dignified death pose, but I quickly discard the idea. Let the fucker remain staring wide-eyed into the abyss.
No one sees me leave the office. No one sees me throw the document box onto the back seat of the Camaro and drive way. I’m unnoticed as I drive up into the mountains, the roads choked with snow, the Camaro’s wheels slipping and sliding over the treacherous, winding roads.
I shiver like a madman as I strip out of my blood soaked clothes and burn them amongst the trees. The contents of the documents box add further fuel to the fire. I use handfuls of snow to clean the blood from my skin, and then I get dressed, changing in the set of spare clothes I carry in the Camaro’s trunk for this specific purpose.
Hours later, a sea of perfectly blonde, perfectly tiny, beautiful women dance and writhe, kissing and licking at each other’s skin, trying to excite me, to garner my attention as I sit in an armchair at the apartment. My head is filled with images of Eli Hofstadter’s last moments, though. It’s filled with the sound of a woman’s voice, begging for the information she earned by selling her body to a stranger.
I get up and I walk out of the apartment, ignoring the women who stroke their hands over my suit as I pass them by. None of them are good enough. None of them are Sloane Romera.
As I make my way back to the warehouse, a riot of confusion and emotion tugs me in a thousand different directions all at once, the smell of Afresia haunting my senses—a perfume worn by a woman I have sworn never to lay eyes on again.