Hamilton “Hammer” Reese ran.

At five in the morning, on a cold, winter morning, when most people were just beginning to think about getting out of bed, he was on his third mile.  As the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, he no longer had the protection of the agents at SPS, who used to run with him.  But he had his own protection in the form of Ozzie Jones, a muscular black man with movie star good looks that could rival Hammer’s, and he was running with him.  Oz was a former Green Beret, and a former SPS agent who became the lead agent in charge of Hammer’s security when he headed the CIA.  He was the only man on the face of this earth that Hammer trusted with his life.  When Hammer left the government, he took Oz with him.

After miles four and five, Hammer called it a morning.  Oz, who had a pain in his side by the time they arrived back at Hammer’s picturesque Canadian estate in the Laurentian mountains of Montreal, shook his head.  “You’re trying to kill me, Boss,” he said.  “I finally figured it out.  Runs like this every day?  Oh, yeah.  Murder.  That’s what this is!”

Hammer laughed, and they both went into the main house.

After grabbing a couple bottles of Powerade from the frig, Hammer stood at the center island and tossed one of the bottles to Oz.  Oz sat at the center island across from Hammer, and they chugged down half of their drinks.  Then Oz broached the subject.

“I saw Reggie yesterday,” he said.

Hammer looked at him.  Both men were exhausted.  “And?”

Oz chugged down more drink and then looked at the man who was his boss, and his best friend.  “May I ask you a question?”

“You know you can.”

“What’s your relationship with Reg?”

“You know what my relationship is. Why would you ask me that?”

Ozzie shook his head.

“What, Oz?  What happened?  Did she tell you what she wanted?”

“She was bitching because you didn’t show up.  You know how she is.  She’s not herself if she’s not bitching about something.  But since she wasn’t going to tell me what she wanted, I told her I needed to use the restroom, and then I was going to get up out of there.  So I walk down the hall looking for the bathroom, and I open this closed door, figuring that was the place I needed to be.  But it wasn’t.  It wasn’t a bathroom.  It was a shrine.”

That baffled Hammer.  “A shrine?”

“A fucking shrine, Boss.”

“To whom?” Hammer asked.

“To you,” Oz said.

Hammer was surprised.  “To me?”

“It creeped me out, I swear it did,” Ozzie said.  “I mean, I know Reggie’s different.  The girl is not your standard issue anything.  But damn.”

“You didn’t think to take any pictures, did you?”

Oz smiled.  “Great minds think alike,” he said, pulled out his cellphone, and handed it to Hammer.

When Hammer saw the photos and newspaper clippings and life-size posters of himself on the wall, he was creeped out too.  “What kind of bullshit is this?” he asked. “What the fuck is she pulling?”

“She’s pulling you closer, she hopes,” Oz said.  “She figures if she dreams it up, it just may come true.”

Hammer shook his head and took another drink.  “I’m going to have to have a meeting.  Me, her, and Amelia.  Like now.”

Oz looked at Hammer.  “Does she even know Amelia is in your life at all?  And I mean beyond being the mother of your son?”

“She knows.  I think.”

Oz shook his head, drained down the last of his Powerade, and left the bottle on the counter.  “I wouldn’t want to be you,” he said.  “At least not where Reggie Dell’s concerned.  Good luck,” he added, and headed out of the door.

Luck, Hammer thought.  What the fuck was that?

Oz, who lived in a luxurious guest house on the property, wasn’t two minutes out the door when Hammer began to feel the effects of his morning run, too.  So he drained his remaining drink, and made his way upstairs.

By the time he had jumped in the shower and was getting out, his cell phone began ringing.  He grabbed a towel and walked over to his nightstand. He picked up his phone and checked out the Caller ID.  When he saw the name, that it was coming from Amelia’s home phone, he quickly pressed the button.  “Hey,” he said.

But it wasn’t Amelia.  It was Rowena Harper, their son’s live-in nanny and bodyguard.  “I am so sorry to disturb you this early in the morning, sir,” she said. 

Hammer was surprised to hear from her.  And concerned.  “Is my son alright?” he quickly asked.

“Oh, yes, sir.  He’s right here with me.  He’s fine.”

But Hammer was still concerned.  Because another person in that household had his heart, too.  “And his mother?” he asked.  “Is she alright?”

“That’s why I’m calling, sir,” the nanny said.

Hammer’s heart squeezed.  The thought of Amelia in any kind of trouble always created a surge of panic inside of him.  “What’s wrong?” he asked.  “Did something happen?”

“Well, sir, she left last night.  She told me, as she always does when she goes out, what time she would be back.”

“Go on.”

“She said, before she left, that she would be back by five this morning, sir.  If she couldn’t make it back on time, she would definitely phone me.  That’s the routine we have worked out, and she always sticks to it.”

“She’s not back?” Hammer asked.

“No, sir,” the nanny responded.  “And she has not phoned.”

Hammer’s heart began to pound.  Amelia was a lot of crazy shit, and drove him crazy as hell, but she always kept her word.

“She told me,” Rowena continued, “that if I didn’t hear from her by daybreak, I was to phone you.”

Hammer was pleased that Amelia would make him, rather than her big brother Mick Sinatra, her default contact.  But it also made him wonder if whatever she left to do last night was shit Sinatra didn’t approve of.  But what made her think Hammer would approve of it?  He worried about her ass as much as Mick did.  He would even say more so.

“Did she say where she was going?” Hammer asked the nanny.

“No, sir.  She never does.”

Hammer exhaled.  That was Amelia too.  And it would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack in that big-ass country called America.  But that would be the case only if he wasn’t the former Director of the CIA, and he wasn’t Hammer Reese.  “I’ll send a team over to provide extra security for you and my son,” he said.  “But you do your job.  Make certain he’s protected.”

“He is, sir.  Don’t worry, sir.”

Then Hammer ended the call and immediately phone Oz, ordering him to call their guys and get more security out at Amelia’s estate.  Then he called his pilot and ordered him to get his private plane ready for takeoff, as he hurried to his closet.

But then his phone rang again.  He answered without checking the Caller ID.  It was early morning and Amelia was missing.  He knew what it was about.  “Yes?”

“They lost her, sir.”  It was Ken DeSousa, the man he put in charge of Amelia’s shadow security detail.  Shadow because she didn’t know such a detail existed, and they were to follow her in case she needed protection.  But there were not to spy on her. 

“Explain.”

“There was an ambush on Potomac.”

Hammer’s heart pounded with fear.  What the fuck was she doing on a rough street like Potomac this early in the morning?  “Was she hit?”

“We don’t know, sir.  There was a shootout.  She took off, the way she was supposed to, and her security detail tried to handle it, but they were getting hammered.  Our men wanted to follow Miss Sinatra, but they came under assault too.  We were nearly wiped out.  Only myself and one other man on our detail survived.  None of Miss Sinatra’s men did.  But I assumed the threat was neutralized at that chokehold.  I assumed she had made it safely home.”

“A lot of fucking assumptions,” Hammer said.  “Your ass should have stayed with her.  I don’t pay you to bail out her team, I pay you to stay with her!  That’s the reason I hired your asses.  That’s the fucking point!”  Hammer was reeling now that he knew for certain something horrible had gone down.

“I apologize for that, sir,” DeSousa said, “but we were under instant assault.  We had no choice but to stay and fight.  We assumed she made it out okay.  But we just got here, to the house, and Rowena’s telling us she’s not here.  Ro’s telling us she hasn’t heard from her, either, sir.”

Hammer exhaled.  What the fuck did they think was going to happen?  She was the target.  They weren’t letting the target get away!

“And another thing, sir,” DeSousa said.

“What?”

“I called for backup during the assault.  They came too late to help us, but they were on the streets, searching for Miss Sinatra.  They used the GPS of her phone and found her Bentley.”

Hammer’s entire body went still.  “Damage assessed?”

DeSousa knew what he meant.  He wanted to know if there were any bullet holes in her Bentley, or any blood.  “No damage,” he said.  “But they had apparently forced her to leave her cellphone with her Bentley, so we couldn’t track her.”

Hammer exhaled again.

“They were pros, sir.  Without question.  They had a layered scheme.  And the guys we iced?  We never seen any of them before.”

Hammer closed his eyes.  Not good.  Not good at all.  “Get every man on the streets,” he ordered.  “I want them to get me intel, and I mean I’d better have it by the time my plane is off the ground.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Ken?  I don’t mean get every available man on the street.  I mean get every fucking man I have on my payroll on the street.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You stay at Amelia’s with my son.  I’m already sending backup over there, too.”

“Yes, sir.  And I am so sorry this happened, sir.”

“You ought to be,” Hammer said angrily, and ended the call.