“What do you mean, he’s gone?” Odin Titan barked into the phone. It was just after 11:00 PM in Las Vegas, and after he’d been unable to reach his brother, Canaan, on the phone, he called Duncan Gilchrist.

The auction was set to reconvene in just under an hour, and Odin needed to touch base with his proxy in Austria to go over the game plan.

“Odin, I was supposed to meet Canaan for breakfast this morning, but he didn’t show,” Duncan explained. “He was with a woman last night, so I figured he was sleeping in this morning and he wanted to skip breakfast, you know?”

“A woman? What the fuck. Come on, Canaan!” Odin was furious. “Okay, so he missed breakfast, what about after that?”

“I called him again, then I went to his room. I had hotel security open it. He hadn’t been there since turndown was performed by housekeeping. His bed wasn’t slept in or, well, nobody used the bed. He’s gone. Just gone. It gets worse, Odin.”

“How?”

“I can’t contact Raven, either. I wanted her to go over the hotel’s security feed, but she’s gone dark. Nothing.”

Odin staggered back and fell onto his sofa. “Shit. I don’t know. The woman, who was the woman?” Odin opened his laptop and fired off a message to Atlas and one to Nolan Weston.

He needed help, fast.

“She was at the auction,” Duncan said. “Redhead. Didn’t catch her name, she was a knockout. They left together.”

“Of course they did,” Odin said. “This whole fucking thing was a setup. It didn’t smell right from the minute I heard about it.”

“Should I notify local police?” Duncan asked.

“Sit tight. I have to think…” A balloon popped up on Odin’s screen; Atlas indicating he’d be right over. “No, no police, they wouldn’t have a clue anyway. Richard Hunt is in Salzburg. Matthias lives near Munich, if he’s not on assignment he may be our best bet. Just get to the auction and follow the plan. We’ll work Canaan and Raven from this end. You focus on the Gutenberg. Updates every thirty minutes, even if there’s nothing to update. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Gilchrist responded.

Odin dialed Raven’s number, but the call went directly to voicemail. He tried Matthias, but received the same response. Likewise, Nolan Weston didn’t answer. Finally, he called Canaan, hoping for some sort of misunderstanding.

Canaan had always been a free spirit, but this didn’t feel like that.

Nothing.

Atlas called Odin during his short drive, and Odin filled him in. As he hit valet parking at Arroyo Place, he made an attempt to reach Nolan Weston, to no avail. He then moved through his mental rolodex to Annalise Rubidoux, but got no response from her, either.

Atlas felt sick. Ever since the events at the safe house in Las Vegas and the ambush in Milan that nearly cost him his life, he’d been completely retired from the 007 world that had put his family in such danger. He’d devoted himself entirely to little Lea and beautiful Piper, concentrating on being the best husband and father he could be, all while trying to double the size of his brood.

At first, he felt guilty as word would filter back to him of covert ops in far-flung places, and anytime one included a friendly casualty, he wondered if maybe things would have gone down differently had he been there. It took a long talk with veteran spymaster Richard Hunt, practically an uncle to Atlas, to convince him that he was lucky to have the opportunity to have retired more or less whole and that he should enjoy the beautiful family he was building.

He thought he’d miss the action, but Lea’s wonder at the world around her and his own appetite for Piper’s luscious curves kept him completely occupied and happy. He’d only handled a gun once in over six months, a trip to a desert shooting range, at Piper’s request. It was something she missed from their time in Alaska.

After an afternoon spent firing automatic weapons at boulders and bottles in the desert, Piper mounted her man in the twilight atop a butte behind Frenchman’s Mountain. A coyote in the distance answered her screams with a series of howls when she climaxed atop Atlas’s thick cock again and again.

Atlas dispelled thoughts of that night in the desert as he left the elevator and walked into Odin’s penthouse.

Odin held a finger to his lips to indicate the need for quiet, since Clara and both twins were asleep for the time being.

Atlas nodded his understanding. “What do we know? Give me facts and we can build from there.”

“Canaan went to his hotel room last night with a redhead. Mystery woman.”

“Sacher?” Atlas inquired.

“Yep,” Odin confirmed. “Duncan was supposed to meet him for breakfast and he didn’t show. Not in his room.”

“Right,” said Atlas. “You told me that on the phone. Raven too, right?”

“Correct. She’s completely dark.”

“I tried Annalise and Nolan,” Atlas replied, glancing down at his phone to confirm he hadn’t missed a call or text. “What about Matthias?”

Odin shook his head. “Nothing. Tried him, too. What other European assets do we have? That we can trust.”

“Richard, hell, he’s even in Austria,” Atlas offered.

“Haven’t contacted him yet, he may already know something’s happening if we’re not able to reach Nolan. He’s next on my list.”

“I’m not nearly as plugged in as I used to be,” Atlas reminded his brother. “But I have some ideas. My best idea is that we need to have feet on the ground in Vienna. ASAP.”

“I’ve got newborn twins right in the next room,” Odin countered. “I’ll do anything I can to help, but how the hell do I tell Clara I’m going to Europe on what might be a wild goose chase?”

“Piper can stay here with her until we get back,” Atlas suggested. “Or not. Whatever you feel like you can do. I’ll work my European contacts and arrange some local support for us. We’re going to need somebody coordinating anyway, especially if Raven’s off the board. You call Dad yet?”

“Not yet,” said Odin. “He was planning to visit in a few days to meet the twins. He’s still heartbroken over Achilles. I can’t tell him something happened to Canaan. But he’ll be calling soon to check on our progress on the Gutenberg Bible, so I’ll tell him. Maybe we’ll have news by then. You know how Canaan is, maybe he went out for a nightcap with the redhead and he’s sleeping it off somewhere.”

“If not for Raven, maybe. But even if something happened in Vienna,” Atlas countered. “Nolan and Annalise are pros. Pro’s pros. Not to mention Matthias. No, this is bad. This smells bad all the way around.”

“I’ll call Richard Hunt, you work your European assets,” Odin replied. Atlas nodded, heading for Odin’s office across the condo.

Twenty minutes later, the brothers reconvened in the kitchen over bowls of pineapple chunks and blueberries Odin had pulled from the refrigerator.

“I spoke to Richard,” Odin explained. “He had no idea. Nolan and his wife were vacationing in Paris. He tried Nolan and Camilla and they both went directly to voicemail. He’s on his way to Paris now. He had Annalise on assignment in Belgium. She’s dark, too.”

Atlas began to speak when Odin’s phone buzzed with a message from Duncan Gilchrist at the auction.

Odin typed in his reply then explained the situation to Atlas. “Duncan was able to get the house to delay the auction for one hour. But he hasn’t heard a peep from Odin or Raven.”

“Did you ever work with Oleg? Oleg Drenik?” Atlas asked Odin, who shook his head. “Crazy motherfucker. Ukrainian. Complete badass. I’ve seen him walk away from shit that would kill an elephant. Anyway, he’s in Bratislava. Slovakia. It’s maybe an hour from Vienna. He’s on a job there but he said if it wraps up the way he expects it to, he can be in Vienna before nightfall tonight.”

Odin nodded, reassured, but far from relieved. “Does this feel like QB to you?”

“I don’t know. I kept my ear to the ground about him for a while but it was quiet. Beyond quiet. Once he was gone, his entire organization, such as it was, just vanished.”

“What if it didn’t?” Odin asked. “What if they just regrouped and this whole time they’ve been plotting? Planning this whole thing. Waiting for us to get lazy, soft, build up a false sense of security, then strike when we least expected it? Is that possible?”

“There’s no QB,” Atlas insisted. “You killed him. His people weren’t loyal enough to him to pull this off. They’re loyal to money. We’re family. They were a bunch of mercenaries. Hell, his people would come work for us if the paycheck was right and they didn’t think we’d check their ‘employment history’.”

“You’re probably right,” Odin agreed. “No way it’s QB.”