Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 114793 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114793 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
The screen showed two missed calls—one from Marcus and one from Matty.
I stepped out onto the porch, shut the door behind me, and returned Matty’s first. He picked up before the second ring finished.
“You’re gonna want to sit down,” he said, skipping the hello.
“Well, that’s always a great start.”
“I’ve been digging and so has Marcus. We’ve cross-checked everything we’ve got on Maddox, and unfortunately, he’s worse than we thought.”
I leaned against the porch railing, my heart rate already ticking up. “How much worse?”
“Really bad. A couple rival developers who tried to report code violations on his builds stood out. One ended up with federal fraud charges six weeks later. The other—get this—disappeared after a boating accident. Except that there is no official record of the boat, the accident, or even his filing a complaint. He's just gone.”
“Jesus.”
“There’s more." I started to wonder if I shouldn't have dug out a bottle of whiskey to take this call. "A union rep went missing five years ago after filing a claim against one of Maddox’s subcontractors. Another guy, a zoning official, got divorced, fired, and arrested for assault, all within a month of trying to block one of Maddox’s permits. Every time someone gets in his way, something happens, and it's always fast, clean, and undocumented.”
“And nobody’s talking?”
“They’ve either been paid off, or they're too scared to open their mouths. The guy’s got deep pockets and dirt on everyone. It’s a one-person protection racket, except with corporate branding and high-end suits.”
I let that settle for a second. “What about the search for Gabby?”
“That’s the other part.” Matty's tone made my hackles rise. “He’s upped the bounty.”
My grip tightened around the railing. “How much?”
“Mid five figures, maybe more. It’s hush-hush, all done through back channels, but Maddox wants her found. And fast.”
“Any sign he knows where she is?”
“Not yet, but he’s asking the right kinds of questions. He’s narrowing the search, and he will find Gabby if we don’t get ahead of this.”
I exhaled hard. “And where's Maddox right now?”
“Out of the country,” Matty said. “He left two days ago to some offshore real estate meeting or something. He’s got a guy running things while he’s gone, a second-in-command type called Clayton Barris. He's ex-security and has absolutely no morals. He’s in charge of finding Gabby now, and from what I’ve heard, he’s not subtle.”
Fucking perfect.
After he told me the rest of what he'd found, I hung up and headed back inside, where Gabby was sitting cross-legged on the couch with a towel on her head and a book she definitely wasn’t reading.
She looked up as I stepped in. “Ruh-roh, that's a bad news face.”
“Worse than that.”
I sat across from her, leaned forward, and gave her the short version—Maddox’s buried history, the missing people, the quiet payouts, and now, the price on her head getting higher by the hour.
Her face didn’t change much at first, her muscles just tightened. Like her body was trying to keep all her reactions in check to conserve emotional fuel.
She was listening hard and processing everything I was telling her.
When I finished, she leaned back and blew out a breath.
“So… it's not that great, really,” she muttered.
“Nope.”
“And Maddox is out of the country?”
“For now, but the guy he left in charge is worse. Think ‘mercenary with a clipboard.’ And he doesn’t care who you are, just what you’ve got.”
She nodded slowly. “So, what now?”
I looked at her. Not the sunburn, not the sarcasm. I looked at the woman, the one smart enough to dig this stuff up and brave enough to run when it got too dangerous.
“Now,” I drawled, “we figure out how to end this in a way that doesn’t leave you at the bottom of a construction site in a fresh pour of concrete.”
She blinked once. “Cool, so something slightly better than death. Great.”
“We’ll come up with something.”
“We have to,” she said. “Because if I’ve come this far just to die looking like a lobster and wearing bucket-bath shame, I swear to God, I’m haunting you.”
I gave her the smallest smile. “Deal.”
But beneath it, my gut told me time was running out.
The first warning was the silence. It became too quiet, too suddenly, as if the woods had taken a breath and decided not to release it. There was no birdsong, no buzzing bugs, just stillness and the low hum of something pressing against the air.
I’d been to this place enough times to know what that meant. Something—or someone—was moving out there.
I stood from the table where Gabby and I had just finished laying out our options, which had ranged from “brilliant but risky” to “dumb and probably fatal.” My hand instinctively went for the small black case tucked behind the pantry shelf.
Inside it was my Glock 19. It was clean and familiar, but most importantly, it was loaded.