Subscribe now

“The dog did nothing in the night-time. That was the curious incident.”

—Arthur Conan Doyle, Silver Blaze

previous: about | chapter one | chapter two | chapter three | chapter four | chapter five | chapter six | chapter seven | chapter eight | chapter nine | chapter ten | chapter eleven |

My heart was pounding as I descended the steps of my lighthouse and stepped into the dewy morning fog.

I had gotten up early, knowing that Eze had breakfast in the main house before going into the office, even on Fridays.

A part of me wanted to avoid him, but another part wanted to unpack what had been said. What had happened last night at dinner.

I pushed the front door of the house open with my palm and the house let me in without a sound.

As I made my way to the cavernous dining room, I saw the long table was set for one.

One placemat. One glass. One folded napkin stranded in thirty feet of felled tree, the wood still giving off the faint nut smell of whatever oil they rub into it. The fog had flattened the light coming through the glass wall until there were no shadows anywhere in the room, and the whole gallery of it looked like a photograph of itself. It smelled like breakfast for eight. Butter, black pepper, coffee, something sweet with burnt edges cooling on a rack somewhere out of sight.

The little robot rolled out with its tray and its self-satisfied beeping and set down a latte and a glass of orange juice, rotated, and went back where it came from.

It was the only thing in that house that came looking for me.

I followed the noise through the stone arch into the kitchen, which in daylight felt like a different world from the witch’s cave Tini ran at night. The previous evening’s beeswax candles had burned down into their iron holders, the wax pooled and gone hard and pale. Something in Spanish going low on the radio. Onions already sweating in butter for a lunch nobody had asked for yet.

Tini was at the range with her back to me, scraping a pan like it had insulted her mother, tiny and wiry and tan, her apron ruined by nine in the morning.

“He didn’t eat,” she said, without turning around.

“Good morning, Tini,” I said.

“Four forty. Standing up. Black coffee and half a piece of bread, like a man in a train station.” She banged the pan into the sink and the water came up hissing. “I made eggs.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“The city.”

“Did he say when he’d be back?”

Tini turned around then. She looked at me a second longer than the question deserved, her bright eyes peeling me like the onions she was cooking, and I watched her decide to be gentle about it.

“No. But it will be before his birthday party tonight.”

She set a plate in front of me at the big wooden island—eggs, the heel of yesterday’s bread, three medialunas still warm and sticking to each other—because I had learned that in her kitchen you eat whether or not you asked to.

“He asked Marisol what time you come down in the mornings,” Tini said.

I put the fork down. “When?”

“Yesterday afternoon.” Water hissed into the sink again. “Then he left at four forty.”

So he was avoiding me.

Read more

Subscribe now

“You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.”

-Albert Camus, The Fall

previous: about | chapter one | chapter two | chapter three | chapter four | chapter five | chapter six | chapter seven | chapter eight | chapter nine | chapter ten

The fog hadn’t burned off when I went looking for him.

I found Eze in the kitchen garden below the east lawn, standing on the gravel between Amos’s raised beds with a coffee he wasn’t drinking.

Eze was dressed for the city—charcoal trousers, white shirt open at the collar, no tie yet—but his hair hadn’t gotten the memo, standing ungoverned like he’d been dragging his hands through it since dawn, and the shadows under his eyes were the same gray as the marine layer. The dahlias were still beaded with fog. Bees moved through the rosemary slow and heavy, drunk on the cold. Somewhere below the cliffs, the ocean kept working.

I’d dressed for a writing day—black jeans, an oversized black sweater with the sleeves shoved to my elbows, boots gone dark at the toes from the wet lawn. A strand of black hair had already worked loose from my bun, in keeping with tradition. I’d carried my coffee out with me because my hands had wanted something to do since breakfast.

I held out the envelope to him.

“This came at breakfast,” I said. “Technically it’s addressed to you, but it looks like whoever sent it wanted me to see it as well. Tini crossed herself with a spatula before she’d hand it over, and Tini has stared down health inspectors.”

Eze set his cup on the low stone wall and took the card. His eyes went down it once, fast, and stopped where I’d known they would—on the looping afterthought at the bottom, the plus one the whole valley is whispering about. The muscle in his jaw ticked.

“Dorian Ashcroft,” he said, and nothing else for a moment.

“Tell me about him.”

“Walk with me.” He took the path toward the greenhouse and I fell in step beside him, gravel crunching, our breath showing in the cold Bay Area morning. “He founded a company called Solace. An AI companion—a friend in your pocket. Someone who always picks up at three in the morning when no one else in your life does. Forty million subscribers.” He paused. “Most of them lonely. A lot of them young. Dorian is very good at being needed.”

“That’s either sweet or horrifying.”

“He’s been trying to worm his way into getting streams of our data for two years. Location data, specifically. He wants to know where his users are, who they’re with, how long they’ve been alone.” The gravel kept time under our feet. “My father told him no. Three times.”

“Did your father tell people no?”

“Almost never. Not people with checkbooks.” His eyes stayed on the path ahead. “Which is the part I keep coming back to.”

“So decline the dinner invite. Tell him the memoir has you busy.”

“I can’t.” Eze’s tone was clipped, his gaze stormy. “Eighteen months ago he bought four percent of the company and two board seats that vote the way he votes. I can refuse his data requests all year—I do. But I can’t keep refusing his dinners without handing him a grievance to perform for the other directors.” A breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “It’s politics. I hate politics. That’s what hurts me in all this, and Dorian knows that better than anyone.”

The path narrowed at the corner of the greenhouse and our knuckles brushed—an accident of closeness, nothing more. He moved his hand away. Not fast. Just final. And put an inch of fog between us that hadn’t been there before. I sucked in a breath, trying to size up this mystery that was Eze.

Was Eze… afraid of Dorian?

“And me?” I asked, hating how careful my voice came out. “Why does he want me at that table?”

Eze stopped walking. “I don’t know.” The words landed one at a time. “I’ve been turning it over all morning, and I don’t know, and I don’t like not knowing.”

“Okay. So I’ll smile and pass the salt and—”

“Rules for Thursday.” He turned to me, and the CEO was all the way on, the warmth gone somewhere I couldn’t track. “You don’t go anywhere in that house alone. You stay by my side. You don’t eat or drink anything that didn’t come from a dish we’re sharing. And whatever he offers you—money, flattery, a story about me—you look bored. Boredom is the only thing men like Dorian can’t buy.”

I stopped walking. “Hold on. What do you mean, nothing that didn’t come from a shared dish?” The edge in my voice arrived before I could file it down. “What’s he going to do, drug me at his own dinner party—”

“Lola.”

“What do I need to know about him, Eze? What has he done?”

“Just trust me.” Eze’s tone was quiet. The kind of tone that ended meetings.

The bees went on with their slow work. I wrapped both hands around my mug like it was a lifeline in the stormy sea of Eze’s emotions. The coffee had gone cold without consulting me, and I drank some anyway, because my body needed a job that wasn’t shaking.

Eze looked down at the invitation still in his hand. Then he folded it once and his fist closed around it—slow, deliberate, until the heavy cream stock gave. When his hand opened, the invitation was a tight crumpled knot, the watermark eye crushed blind, and I understood, finally, that the cold demeanor he wore this morning had never been for me.

“I’ve been bored by richer men than Dorian Ashcroft,” I said, aiming for flippant to fill the silence and landing somewhere just south of it.

He looked at me then—really looked, for the first time since the garden gate—and something raw moved behind the green before he shut it away.

“No,” he said quietly. “You haven’t.”

He tossed the ruined card into a nearby trash bin, picked his coffee up off the wall, and walked toward the drive, where Xavier already had the car idling.

I stood in the fog with my cold coffee, listening to the gravel give under his shoes, and wondered what the fuck I’d just been invited to.

Read more

Subscribe now

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

-William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

previous: about | chapter one | chapter two | chapter three | chapter four | chapter five | chapter six | chapter seven | chapter eight | chapter nine

We did the interviews in the evenings now, after the demands of Crane Industries unhooked its claws from him, in the main house library with the fog pressing up against the glass like an audience.

It was my favorite room on the property and I resented that I had a favorite room on the property. Two walls of books that had clearly been read, not decorated with. A fireplace that burned real wood, piñon and oak, the smoke sweet at the edges. Eze would shed the CEO in stages—jacket over a chair, cufflinks in a stone dish if he was coming from an event where he was required to dress up, and his sleeves rolled—and somewhere in the process the man underneath came up like a diver surfacing, and that was the man I interviewed.

That was the man I was supposed to be sinking. The man the FBI wanted behind bars. I put the thought where I put everything now—in the drawer inside me that was getting hard to close.

“Tell me about the trips,” I said.

Tonight he was on the floor, of all places—back against the couch, forearms on his knees, a glass of something amber abandoned on the rug beside him. My recorder sat on the coffee table between us, spool turning, and next to it the week’s crop of his father’s files, which he kept handing me like a man dealing out his own tarot. I faced him, my left arm on the sofa, a mug of tea to keep my head clear steaming by my stacked knees.

“Which trips?”

“Every year, before your birthday. You mentioned it twice and changed the subject twice. Third time’s the charm.”

Eze looked at the fire for a while. The light moved on his face and found the tiredness under the polished exterior, and I made myself keep my eyes on my notebook.

“My father didn’t believe in birthdays,” he said. “Cake, parties—‘sentimental infrastructure’, he called it. But every year, the week before mine, he’d pull me out of school, out of the company, out of whatever mattered, and we’d go somewhere with bad cell coverage. Iceland once. The Atacama. A lake in Hokkaido where the fog came down so thick you couldn’t see your own canoe.” A muscle in his jaw moved. “No staff. No security, which for him was like traveling without skin. Seven days a year, I had a father instead of a founder.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. That was the point. We fished badly. He lectured me about empires and I pretended not to listen. He measured himself two fingers of whiskey every night, never a third, and told me the truth about one thing—that was the ritual, though he never called it out. One true thing a year.” Eze picked up his glass and didn’t drink from it, watching the flickering fireplace through the glass with those entrancing emerald eyes of his. “Some years it was about the company. Once it was about my mother. The last trip—” he stopped.

The fire ticked. I kept still, the way you keep still when a wild thing walks into a clearing.

“The last trip, he told me he’d built the machine wrong,” Eze said. “Those words. Wrong from the foundation, he said, because he’d built it assuming he would always be the one holding it. He said the worst thing a powerful man can believe is that he’ll be alive tomorrow.” A breath, half a laugh, no humor anywhere in it. “Three weeks later he was dead, and I was left with his kingdom of secrets.”

The fog leaned on the windows. I wrote nothing, because some things you don’t make a subject watch you write.

“Your birthday’s in nineteen days,” I said softly. It was in his file. The first birthday of his life with no trip with his father on the other side of it.

“Is it,” Eze said, flat as slate, and knocked back the two fingers of whiskey in one motion, and I understood that he had done the math long before I had.

“For what it’s worth,” I said, “he doesn’t sound kind. Or patient. He sounds like a man I’d have hated interviewing.”

Eze laughed—startled, real. “He was neither. Not once, not ever. He was exacting and cold and he kept score of everything. And he was still my father. That’s the sentence no one is allowed to finish about difficult men. Everyone wants the first half or the second.”

“I write memoirs,” I said. “I only deal in whole sentences.”

His eyes came up from the fire to me, green gone dark in the low light, and stayed. The room got smaller the way it kept doing lately, the air developing a texture, and the recorder turned and turned on the table like a small chaperone.

“I know,” he said. “It’s why you’re here.”

Both meanings arrived at once, the way he liked to deliver them. I looked down at my notebook first. I always broke his gaze first.

I didn’t know what would happen if I didn’t look away.

A small part of me, growing larger by the day, yearned to find out.

Read more

Subscribe now

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”

-Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

previous: about | chapter one | chapter two | chapter three | chapter four | chapter five | chapter six | chapter seven | chapter eight

Kira interviewed the way rich men golfed—as a game she intended to enjoy whether or not she let you win.

We set up on the cliff terrace off the west wing of the property. The sun deck was a slab of warm stone hanging over the Pacific with two loungers, a bottle of something sparkling in a sweating bucket, and a wheel of cheese Tini had sent out like a dowry. The afternoon smelled of salt and cut grass and the cold mineral breath that came off the water when the wind turned.

Kira was wearing a flowing emerald sun dress with a black cardigan to ward against the cool afternoon breeze, her blond hair whisked up into a properly messy chignon with strands of hair kissing her face. Her effortless grace contrasted against my grey cable knit sweater and Blundstone boots. It was as if she was the sun and I was a dark stormcloud.

I set my recorder on the low table where Kira could watch it work, and clicked it on.

Kira looked at it like it was a cute dog. “You use tape. That’s either very charming or very sinister.”

“It can’t be both?”

“Everything I love is both.” She poured two glasses of the sparkling liquid into waiting glasses without asking and folded herself on her side onto the lounger, sunglasses up in her blonde hair, and aimed her whole attention at me. It was a physical thing, her attention, a warmth like standing in a window. I understood in the first thirty seconds why crisis-struck famous people paid her fortunes—being looked at by Kira felt like being forgiven.

“So,” she said. “Ask me things.”

I started easy, the way I always did—the on-ramp questions, the ones that let a subject hear their own voice being interesting. How she met Eze (a Berkeley party neither of them was invited to, both of them hiding from it in the same stairwell). What he was like at twenty (“a haunted house with good manners”). The early Crane Industries years, Magnus in his terrible prime, the parties, the boats, the paranoia growing up around the family like ivy that eventually held the wall together.

She was a great interview. Publicists always are—they know where the story’s joints are, how to hand you a quote with the handle facing out. For an hour I filled tape with usable, glittering material and waited, patient as a fisherman, for the water under all that charm.

The wine helped. The second glass helped more.

“Can I ask the impolite version now?” I said.

Kira’s smile shifted—didn’t drop, shifted—like a boat’s motor kicking into gear. “Finally. Yes.”

“You and Eze.” I kept my voice at professional cadence. “Every photo I found, you’re on his arm. The tabloids ran you as the girlfriend at least twice. For the book—what are you to each other?”

She laughed, a real one, head back, loud enough that the nearby gulls eyeing our cheese wheel took off.

“God. Girlfriend.” She wiped an eye with the heel of her hand. “Lola. I have been on that man’s arm at a hundred parties because a beautiful woman on his arm answers questions before they’re asked, and answering questions before they’re asked is literally my profession.” She sipped from her glass, her French manicured fingertips making gentle tapping noises. “Also because his exes were mostly actresses, and actresses—” she made a gesture like a chef’s kiss with her whole hand, wistful and unrepentant. “I was significantly more interested in the starlets than in Eze. Significantly. Two of them I still see whenever we end up in the same city, and one keeps a drawer open for me in Paris.” Kira winked at me.

The relief that went through me was so fast and so total that it embarrassed me before it finished arriving. It must have crossed my face at speed, because Kira’s eyes—big, blue, professionally trained to read rooms for a living—caught it, held it, and understood it in one second flat.

She lowered her glass.

“Oh,” she said softly. Delighted. “Oh no. You should have seen what your face just did.”

“Don’t,” I said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You said ‘oh no.’”

“Those are barely words.” She leaned in over the cheese, conspiratorial, sunglasses sliding down into place like she was giving me privacy. “One question, off all the records, woman to woman. Does he know you feel like that?”

Read more

Subscribe now

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

-William Shakespeare, Hamlet

previous: about | chapter one | chapter two | chapter three | chapter four | chapter five | chapter six | chapter seven

I woke at dawn out of habit and spite, and that was how I saw her.

The fog had pulled back overnight, leaving the main house sharp-edged in the gray-gold light, and through my panoramic windows I could see straight down the hill into the kitchen’s wall of glass. A woman stood at the counter. Blonde, barefoot, hair loose and sleep-wrecked, wearing a man’s white dress shirt that hit her mid-thigh and nothing else that I could identify from four hundred yards.

She was drinking coffee out of a hand-thrown blue mug the size of a soup bowl, the kind potters sell at coastal art fairs. Comfortable. Easy in her skin. Standing in Ezekiel Crane’s kitchen at six in the morning like she lived there.

Like she’d come in late last night.

My stomach did something ugly and fast, like a fish flipped onto a dock.

The telescope stood in the corner of my room where I’d left it, pointed at the stars, all brass and patience. It would take three seconds to swing it down. Three seconds to know whose shirt that was, whose smile she was wearing over the rim of that cup.

I stood in the middle of my round room in my sleep shirt with my hands in fists, and I did not touch the telescope. Barely. The not-touching took actual muscle, like holding a door shut against wind.

It’s none of your business, I told myself. He’s your work. Your assignment. Assignments are allowed to have houseguests, and you are allowed to feel nothing about it.

I got dressed with the focus of a soldier and went down to breakfast to feel nothing about it up close.

…

The kitchen smelled like heaven had a griddle—browned butter, fried dough, dulce de leche warming in a pot. Tini was flipping something at the stove, and the blonde woman sat on the counter beside her—on the counter, in Tini’s kitchen, a territorial violation I’d have bet my Jeep was punishable by knife—swinging her bare legs and laughing at something with her whole chest.

Tini was laughing too. Tini, who had granted me, after a week of tribute and one felony, the right to stand near the doorway.

“—and he still has the scar,” the blonde was saying, “so no, he does not get to tell the story like he won—” She saw me and lit up like I was the person she’d come to see. “Oh my god. You’re the writer.”

“I’m the writer,” I said.

“Kira.” She hopped off the counter and crossed the stone floor barefoot, hand out. Up close she was worse—my age, maybe a couple years older, with an easy warmth that rich people almost never have, and big blue eyes—the same eyes from the museum staircase, the yacht, the midnight-blue tux photos I had spent a large number of unbillable hours not caring about. Her handshake was dry and certain. She smelled like sunscreen and vanilla and someone else’s vacation.

“Lola,” I said. “I thought you were in London.”

“I was. My client apologized his way off the front pages, so I caught the red-eye and came straight here to sleep in a real bed. London’s a panic attack with pubs—do you know what Whitechapel does to a person on a work night? I billed the hangover as a travel expense.” She stole a piece of fried dough off Tini’s plate and got her hand slapped, and grinned about it. “I hear I owe you an interview.”

“Your office keeps rescheduling me. I was starting to develop a complex.”

“My office thinks everyone’s a subpoena.” She bit the dough, studying me with cheerful directness over it. “So you’re the one writing him down. How’s he behaving? Actual answer.”

“He’s a dream client,” I said. “Punctual. Forthcoming. An open book.”

Kira barked a laugh loud enough to startle the pot lids. “God. You’re funny. He didn’t say funny.” She said it—he didn’t say funny—like there had been a briefing, like I’d been discussed over drinks in some warm room I’d never see, and my stomach tumbled again. In one sentence she’d told me she and Eze talked about me, and that she knew him well enough to receive his reports, and I hated the math I was doing—six in the morning, his shirt, a real bed. Whose bed?

“Sit,” Tini commanded me, sliding a plate onto the island. “Both of you. Eat before it’s sad.”

So I ate torta frita with warm dulce de leche across from the woman I’d spent a week resenting from photographs, and here was the problem, the real structural problem, which I identified somewhere around the third bite—Kira was impossible to hate.

She asked questions like she wanted the answers. She talked to Tini in half-decent Spanish and lost an argument about soccer on purpose. She had a crisis publicist’s gift for making a kitchen feel like a conspiracy of three, and when she mentioned Eze it was with the specific exasperated tenderness of someone who had known a man since before he was interesting—stories about a nineteen-year-old who read Rilke at parties, a twenty-five-year-old who bought a boat because a broker was rude to him and then gave the boat away.

Vacationing in someone’s affection. That’s what it felt like at that table. I understood, watching her butter Tini into a second round of tortas, that this was a professional charmer of a rank I had rarely encountered, and that I couldn’t tell where the charm stopped and the person began.

Neither could a killer, I noted, and the thought arrived like cold water down my back. Everybody likes Kira was a fact with two faces too.

Read more

Subscribe now

“Every murderer is probably somebody’s old friend.” -Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

previous: about | chapter one | chapter two | chapter three | chapter four | chapter five | chapter six

Kira canceled on me before I ever met her.

“Postponed, not canceled—there’s a difference, and apparently the difference is my job,” Hayden said over the phone, in the crisp tone of a woman who ran her mornings on cold brew, reformer Pilates, and an org chart. “Her office says she’s in London handling a client thing. Some actor said something on a podcast, you know how it goes. So we’re flipping the order. Conrad’s thrilled to be your first official interview for the book. His word. Thrilled.”

“I bet he is,” I said.

I hung up and stared at the fog pressing against the lighthouse glass, dreading it already. I had spent nine years being talked at by men like Conrad Doherty—the back-slappers, the too-tight handshakes, the ones who called you sweetheart in the first five minutes to put you in your place and remind you of his. I could handle him. That wasn’t the question. The question I kept turning over was what a man like Eze, who noticed everything, saw in a man like that. Loyalty, maybe. Or a habit. Twenty-six years is a long time to keep a friend.

Either way, Conrad had known Magnus Crane better than almost anyone alive, and the book needed him. Both books. The real one and the one under it.

Which is how I found myself that same afternoon—the storm blown out, the power back on, my knuckles still humming from the heavy bag—in a glass conference room on the forty-something floor of Crane Industries, watching Conrad Doherty choose his seat the way generals choose high ground.

He’d picked the room, Hayden told me on the walk over. Of course he had. The conference room hung off the side of the silo like a display case, glass on five of six surfaces, visible to three floors of employees who could watch us the whole hour without hearing a word. An interview conducted inside an aquarium. Whatever happened in here, there would be witnesses to the fact of it and none to the content—which told me Conrad understood surveillance the way the rest of this building did. As a thing you aimed at other people.

“Lola!” He came at me with both arms open like we were old war buddies, and I got my first real look at him in daylight. Conrad Doherty was built like the linebacker he must have been thirty pounds and twenty-six years ago—six-four at least, shoulders straining a salmon dress shirt, the heavy muscle of a college athlete now enjoying the spoils of a good living. Blond buzzcut going silver at the crown. A class ring he still wore. A face made for boat ads, gone a little pink around the collar. I braced for the hug and got a handshake instead, his grip recalibrated from our first meeting—gentler now, almost courtly. That worried me more than the crushing version. Men like Conrad didn’t soften. They simply adjusted their sights.

“Thanks for making time,” I said, setting my recorder on the table between us and pressing record where he could see me do it. The spool turned. He watched it turn.

“For the book? Anything.” He dropped into his chair and kicked back, boots nearly on the table, a man performing relaxation to an audience of Crane Industry employees looking in curiously from where they walked past the conference room. “Eze’s story deserves telling right. And nobody knows that story like me. Not the board, not the lawyers.” A pause, a grin. “Not even the pretty ghostwriter.”

“That’s why I’m here.” I opened my notebook, clicked my pen, and put on the expression that was my disguise. Of someone harmless. Wide-eyed. A woman who lived in other people’s sentences. “Let’s start at the beginning. You met him when you were, what, eight?”

“Seven. Summer camp in North Carolina, the kind rich fathers send their sons to so somebody else can teach them to be men.” He laced his fingers behind his buzzcut. “Eze was this skinny European kid who didn’t know poison ivy from poison oak, and I was the scholarship case with the wrong accent. Camp food chain had us both marked for the bottom. So we made an alliance.” He smiled at something far away. “Twenty-six years ago, and I’ve been watching his back ever since.”

“What was he like then?”

“Same as now. Watchful. He’d let you run your whole mouth, and then he’d ask the one question you’d been praying nobody would ask.” Conrad shook his head fondly. “Eleven years old, and he ran better interviews than the counselors.” “His daddy loved that about him. The old man used to say Eze was born knowing what everybody wanted. Just took him thirty years to admit that’s a weapon.”

I wrote it down because it was good, and because the book was real. That was the strange truth of my double life—the cover assignment and the actual assignment used the same pen, and lately I had stopped being able to tell which one I was working harder at.

“Tell me about Eze’s father,” I said. “Off the record if you want. I’m trying to understand him, not quote you.”

Conrad’s boots came off the table. A small thing, but I noted it.

“Magnus Crane was the smartest man I ever met and the coldest, and I loved him like my own father, which tells you what my own father was like.” He rolled his shoulders. “He built something nobody else could have built and he never once apologized for it. People want their geniuses cuddly now. Magnus wasn’t cuddly. He was right. There’s a difference, and this country used to know it.”

“You were close with him. Toward the end?”

“Close as anybody got.” Conrad’s eyes settled on me, friendly and flat at the same time, like a lake you’re warned not to swim in. “I know what you’re circling, by the way. You want to ask about Geneva.”

I kept my pen moving, casual. “I want to ask about a lot of things.”

“The week he died, I was in Huntsville. My mama’s knee replacement. Flew commercial, if you can believe it—Delta through Atlanta, five days, whole thing’s on my card statements.” He spread his hands. “In case the book needs it.”

The pen kept moving, but everything else in me went still.

I hadn’t asked. I hadn’t asked anything within a mile of it. I’d asked if he was close with a dead man he loved, and Conrad Doherty had handed me an alibi with flight routes attached, unprompted, wrapped in a joke, in a glass box he chose so the whole company could watch him give it.

Who volunteers an alibi nobody asked for? Eze had written that warning in fountain ink, on the list I still carried, and here was Conrad handing me an alibi I had not asked for, and it was gift-wrapped.

Read more

Subscribe now

“All warfare is based on deception.” -Sun Tzu

previous: about | chapter one | chapter two | chapter three | chapter four | chapter five

“Good first day?” Xavier asked, easing us out of the underground garage and into the gray afternoon.

“Good is one way to put it,” I said, treading carefully. Another staff member, another unknown level of allegiance to Eze.

“Hayden messaged me. Your interviews are getting scheduled, so I’m to bring you back to the property while she makes her calls.” His eyes found mine in the rearview. “Unless there’s anywhere you’d like to stop first.”

I’d been on the payroll one day and my calendar already traveled faster than I did. In Eze’s world, news moved through the staff like current through a wire—everyone connected, everyone aware, nobody needing to be told twice. “Back to the property is fine,” I said, and let my gaze drift out the window as we passed tech offices with logos like children’s toys. Xavier turned up the jazz.

I watched the intersections slide by, scanning. Looking for something blue.

The envelope in my bag was already stamped and addressed, prepped before I ever left Arizona—postage paid, made out to Red Fox Publishing, the same fake imprint whose posters lined Matthew’s office walls. All it needed was the tape and a mailbox that didn’t belong to Ezekiel Crane.

Three blocks later, I found one.

“Stop the car,” I said.

Xavier’s eyes found mine in the rearview, concerned. “Are you okay?”

“Pull over. Now.”

I pointed at a gas station, and didn’t wait for a full stop before I was out the door, jogging past the pumps to the convenience store. Bells jingled as I pushed inside.

“Restroom key,” I barked, and the clerk handed over a key zip-tied to a wooden spoon. I nearly bolted back out.

Xavier was getting out of the car, but I waved the spoon at him and he hung back. I dipped around the corner of the building, out of his sightline—

—and straight toward the blue mailbox at the curb.

Tape into envelope. Adhesive strip peeled, seam pressed shut with my thumb. I pulled the blue door open, let the envelope drop, and swung it shut, my heart going like a speed bag. Somewhere inside that government-issue box, Eze’s voice was now lying in the dark, telling Matthew everything.

Now—time to support the lie. I stuck two fingers straight back into my throat by the ice machine. Slippery spit came up fast, along with what was left of that morning’s breakfast. It burned coming up, and I smelled the sour bite of bile as it hit the pavement with a splash.

When I slid back into the car, I let my shoulders sag and my face do the rest.

“Is everything okay?” Xavier asked, studying me.

“Motion sickness.” I gave him an apologetic smile, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand for the full effect.

Xavier nodded once and put the jazz back on. If he didn’t buy it, he was polite enough to keep his opinion to himself.

I watched the city give way to the climb into the mountains, freeway turning to switchbacks, the trees thickening around us until the light came through green. Ahead, over the ridge, the sky was stacking clouds in bruised layers.

My first act of deception was complete.

…

The storm made landfall around the same time I did.

Up in the lighthouse, rain came at the panoramic windows in sheets while I sat cross-legged on the round bed with Eze’s list spread in front of me, five names in strong, slanted fountain pen.

Conrad Doherty at the top, just like Eze had promised—start where it would hurt most. Below him, three names I didn’t recognize, dashed off in a hurry between a contract crisis and a flight to D.C.

And then the fourth entry. No title. No last name.

Kira.

Everyone else on the list got a first and last name. She got one word, the way you write down someone you’ve known so long that context would be an insult.

I pulled my laptop over and typed the name before I could talk myself out of it. It took two search results to find her: founder of a reputation-management startup, the kind of crisis management firm that made scandals evaporate for people whose names moved markets. Thirty-two. A TED talk with four million views. And photo after photo after photo—Kira in a silver dress on a museum staircase, Kira laughing on a yacht off Amalfi, Kira with her hand resting on the arm of a tall man in a midnight-blue tux.

Eze.

I closed the laptop. Opened it back up. Closed it again.

She was beautiful in the effortless way that took two hours and a team—blonde hair cut sharp at the jaw, big blue eyes that looked straight down the camera like it owed her money. In every photo with Eze they were leaning toward each other, tuned to a frequency the rest of the party couldn’t hear.

Is Kira his girlfriend?

The thought arrived uninvited, and I hated everything about it. It shouldn’t matter. It didn’t matter. Eze was a job with green eyes, and Kira was a name on a suspect list, and the flutter in my sternum was a professional interest in an interview subject, and I was a liar even in the privacy of my own skull.

Thunder rolled somewhere over the ocean. I told myself I wanted to interview her first because a person trusted enough to earn a one-name entry was a person worth studying.

That was even mostly true.

…

By dinnertime the storm had dug in for the night, rain coming sideways off the ocean, and I splashed my way to the main house with my hood up and my head down.

Angela was under the eave by the front door, smoking, watching the rain the way other people watch television. Her shift must have ended, because the apron was gone—and in its place, under an open rain jacket, was the Dior, cream silk swaying above her work boots.

She saw me clock it and lifted her chin, daring me to comment.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.

Angela exhaled smoke and almost smiled. “You eat yet?” She tipped her head toward the door. “Kitchen’s through the back. Tini runs it.” She took another drag. “Bring your spine.”

Inside, the modern cave of the house glowed against the storm, and I followed the thump of reggaeton and the smell of onions cooking in butter until I found the kitchen—a stainless steel paradise with a wall of Smeg appliances, copper pots hanging like church bells. A tiny woman was bopping around with a huge chef’s knife, tan and wiry with a bit of a crazed look in her eyes, chopping onions with fervor while tears rolled down her face and the beats of Bad Bunny rattled the pot lids.

She whirled around with her bloodshot onion-eyes and stared at me.

“What are you doing in my kitchen?” she demanded, the lilt of an Argentinian accent turning kitchen into kitshun. She swept her tears away with the back of a white apron stained from high-energy cooking.

I held out my hand. “I’m Lola. Eze’s new ghostwriter. I’m working on a book—”

“This is my kitchen. You stay out there.” She waved her knife at the stone arch of the doorway.

I stayed where I was. “I need a favor.”

“You need dinner. Favors are extra.”

“I need to know if anything about Eze’s food changes,” I said. “A new supplier. A new ingredient. A dish he didn’t ask for. Anyone who isn’t you touching his menu—I want to know about it.”

The knife stopped. Behind the onion tears, something sharp looked out at me. If I’d learned anything from three memoirs’ worth of monsters, it was that the fastest way through a rich man’s security was the food nobody screens. If whoever killed Eze’s father decided radio silence was over, it might start in a kitchen.

“You’re slow, escritora.” Tini turned back to her cutting board, unimpressed. “I’ve been watching his food since the day his father died. Nothing touches his plate that I don’t inspect first.” She said it the way other people mention taking out the trash—a chore, handled, not up for discussion. My opinion of her improved on the spot.

“Then I want a phone call when something changes. Anything. Even if it’s small, even if it’s nothing. And if someone else is trying to adjust anything—even to just change a meat delivery—I want to know who it is.”

“That’s different. That’s a favor.” She pointed the knife at me, not unkindly. “What’s your name again?”

“Lola. And I’m going to be here a while, and I’d like us to be friends.”

“I’m Tini,” she said. “Like the drink. This is my domain, so you play my rules.”

“Of course.”

“And if I’m going to do something for you, you’re going to do something for me, entiendes?”

“Sí. Yes. What can I do for you?”

“I live in one of the guest houses out back. The gardener—Amos—he has a parrot that keeps me up every night with its screeching.”

“Okay.”

“I want you to bring me that parrot.”

I blinked. “Why? What are you going to do with it?”

“Don’t worry,” Tini said, with a grin that did not make me worry less. “Just bring me the bird and we’re square.”

Kidnapping a parrot for a woman with knife skills and a grudge. Every job has its onboarding, I guess. “Deal,” I said, and we shook on it, her grip small and strong as a wrench.

She turned back to her cutting board, then flicked her eyes at me over her shoulder. “You eat in your room tonight. Storm food. I bring it to you.” A pot on the stove breathed out garlic and something rich and slow-cooked, and my stomach—empty since the gas station—answered out loud.

“Does anyone else come over to dinner?” I asked, aiming for casual. “Eze can’t eat alone every night.”

“Mr. Conrad, when he wants something.” Tini said Conrad the way you name a stain that won’t come out. “And Ms. Kira, when she’s in town. She likes my flan.” A pause, one eyebrow. “Everybody likes Ms. Kira.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m getting that.”

…

Kidnapping the parrot was the easy part—an errand I’ll be taking to my grave. The hard part was dinner, when Tini set a bowl of soup in front of me and called it chicken. It tasted like chicken. Mostly. I ate every spoonful. We were friends now, and friendship has a price. Somewhere out in the rain, Amos was calling a name into the dark that was never going to answer.

The call came while I was finishing said bowl of stew at the round table in my lighthouse penthouse, rain flogging the windows.

“Lola! Hi! It’s Hayden!” Her voice came through the Crane-issued phone with the wattage of a morning show, storm or no storm. “Eze asked me to get your interviews on the calendar. I was thinking we start you with Conrad—he’s around all week, and honestly once he hears it’s for the book he’ll talk your ear off—”

“I want to start with Kira.”

A pause. “Kira?”

“She’s on the list.”

“No, I know, it’s just—” Hayden regrouped, gloss reapplied. “Eze usually keeps her clear of company things. They go way back, so I assumed she’d be more of a color-commentary interview? For later?”

Way back. I turned the phrase over. “The early chapters are where the color lives,” I said, in my best craft-of-memoir voice. “I always start with the person who knew them best. You only get one first interview, and I don’t want it wasted on someone performing for the book.”

“Huh,” Hayden said, and there was something new in it—a first coat of respect. “Okay. If you say so. I’ll call her office and get back to you when it’s all scheduled.”

“Thanks, Hayden.”

“So exciting!” she chirped, and was gone.

I sat with the dial tone and the thunder, wondering what it said about me that I’d just spent professional capital to get in a room with a beautiful woman whose only crime, so far, was a photograph.

She’s a suspect, I reminded myself.

Sure she was.

…

The power went out at ten past two.

I knew because I was awake to see the clock die—sleep and I were on bad terms in the best of times, and the storm had opinions it kept shouting at my windows. One moment the lighthouse hummed with the low electric white noise you never notice until it’s gone, and the next, darkness, total, and the rotating beam above me swept its last arc and quit.

I reached for the Crane phone to text the Head of Staff. Dead. Of course—I’d spent half the night burning its battery looking up what little I could find about Kira.

Using what little the storm left of the moonlight, I felt my way down the lighthouse stairs, seventy-five steps of cold stone under bare feet, and pushed out into the rain. The main house crouched in the dark ahead—black, black, black, except for one soft gold light low against the hillside. The basement. A generator, maybe.

Like a moth to the flame, I went to it.

Inside, I traced my hands along the cool, uneven stone as I worked my way down the stairs toward the light. And then I heard it.

Thump. Thump-thump. Thump.

I knew that sound. A boxing glove meeting a heavy bag.

I came around the corner into a home gym lit by amber emergency lights—rows of equipment throwing long shadows, a boxing ring standing in the middle of it all like an altar. Eze was at the heavy bag in a tight black shirt and gray sweatpants slung low around his hips. A suit jacket lay dumped across a weight bench beside a tie coiled like a shed skin—D.C. discarded piece by piece. He was hitting the bag like it owed him something, and when he landed an especially hard punch, he winced, shaking out his hand as a puff of chalk drifted off the leather.

“You wrapped it wrong,” I said, the words out of my mouth before I’d decided to say them.

Eze looked up, and even across the gym I saw the surprise light up his eyes. “You’re here?”

“You’re my work. And the power’s out everywhere but here, so.”

I crossed the mats and gestured for his hand. He held out his glove and I pulled it off, examining the handwraps underneath. I was close enough to smell him—clean sweat and something herbal, eucalyptus maybe—still inviting even after I assumed was a day of long flights.

“Like I said. You wrapped it wrong.”

“Don’t tell me what—fuck.”

I shot him a look as he recoiled from my hands as I started to undo his binds.

“One of my past memoir clients was a professional boxer,” I said. “We’d do sessions while he trained.”

“Who was it?”

“You know I can’t kiss and tell.”

Read more

Subscribe now

"Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead." -Benjamin Franklin

previous: about | chapter one | chapter two | chapter three | chapter four

My mouth went dry as Eze plucked the moka pot off the stove, wiping away the coffee that had bubbled over the sides.

“I never screw the damn thing on tight enough,” he muttered, pouring the hot espresso into two stone cups flecked like eggshells.

He went to hand me a cup, and paused. “I surprised you.”

“You think your father was murdered?” The words came out low, and I tried to keep my voice from shaking.

“Sit down,” he said, setting the cups on the small round table in front of the loveseat by the kitchen, the one facing out over the office. I hadn’t realized I wasn’t following until I felt his hand on the small of my back, warm through my sweater, steering me toward the couch. My body answered his touch before I could tell it not to.

I sank into the plush blue cushions and reached into my bag for my notebook—the harmless costume of a woman here to take notes. Beneath it, my thumb found the tape recorder, the record button worn smooth from years of use. I pressed it as I set my cup down, the click swallowed by stone meeting wood.

Get me something admissible, Matthew’s voice rang in my head.

So I would.

“What proof do you have of your father being murdered?” I asked.

“Proof is not the problem.” Eze settled beside me, close enough that I caught the coffee on him and, underneath it, something warmer. Cedar, maybe. His voice had dropped to a hush even though we were alone. “I know he was murdered.”

“But how do you know? The news said it was a heart attack.”

Eze took a sip of his espresso, his eyes locked on mine. “He was speaking at a conference. We were supposed to talk the night before he gave his keynote. There were… sensitive details he was going to cover about Crane Industries and he wanted my opinion on how to handle it. We never had that conversation, and I think it was in someone’s best interest for him to not share what he was going to.”

“You think someone was trying to keep him quiet?”

“I know the board wasn’t happy with him. There were grumblings of a mutiny. That they might try to get him removed. And then before I know it, his body came home embalmed, and my father’s security detail—men he trained to document everything down to what he ate for breakfast—have a forty-minute gap in their logs the night he died.” Eze said it flatly, the way you say a thing you’ve repeated to yourself so many times it’s lost its temperature.

“Gaps happen.”

“Not in my father’s world. In my father’s world, gaps are made.”

I drank. The espresso was quite good, which annoyed me. “And you hired me. Not a private detective.”

Eze smirked. “Is that so hard to believe? You must be pretty good if all of your past clients ended up in jail.”

The cup stopped halfway to my mouth. Did he know—

He laughed at whatever crossed my face. “Relax. It’s clear you have as much luck as some magazines’ thirty-under-thirty lists. Your agent sure knows how to pick them. And I picked you because of your writing. I’m not just talking about the ghostwritten memoirs.”

My stomach tumbled, but for a different reason this time. “You thought because I’m a good writer, I can solve a murder?”

“No, Lola. I think you’re a great writer, not just a good one. And great writers see things the rest of us don’t.” He leaned in, and my heart did something I chose not to examine. “Your debut novel—” he shook his head, a faraway look crossing his face. “You picked up on things that should have stayed buried, and you gave them a name. That makes you an exceptional observer. Whatever that gift is, I need you to use it to help me find the person who killed my father before they come after me.”

“You’re in danger?”

Read more

Subscribe now

"We are all watched over by machines of loving grace." -Richard Brautigan

previous: about | chapter one | chapter two | chapter three

My night terrors required my mind to be doused in melatonin to reach dreamland. That night I didn’t draw the blinds—I slept better knowing the sun had my back—and so the rotating lighthouse beam circled around me constantly, throwing shadows into every corner of the round room.

Somehow, I drifted off, and the early morning rays replaced the milky spotlight beam.

I sat up in bed, still fully dressed under the silk sheets.

Luxury is a trap.

Before scorching Arizona summers of my high school, I had grown up in Ohio winters, used to the hard labor of shoveling snow and near-freezing squeaky wood floors of our Columbus home, built inside a converted bank in a stout, drafty brick building. My father used to warn me against giving into the finer things in life, speaking of them as if “god-fearing” and “poor” needed to own real estate in the same breath to ring true.

Nothing could trap me—at least, nothing beyond my current bargain.

My autonomy was my sole comfort. I had everything I needed in my pen to build and protect my world. Nothing else mattered. Or, that’s what I had so desperately tried to convince myself of all these years of solitude.

I rolled over in the silk sheets, reaching for the old school tape recorder, my fingers grazing the play button, a specially selected tape inside—

—but I stopped myself. Not now. I needed to get going. It was my first day on the job, after all. I popped out the old tape, sliding it in a case and placing it on my side table.

As I got out of bed, the light glinted off the telescope in the corner of the room. But instead of pointing to the sky, it was aimed downward.

Curious, I walked over to the metal contraption and pressed my eye against the viewfinder.

Through the lens, I could see a rustling of curtains in the main house. The curtains moved slightly, and beyond them I could make out figures—a corner of a bed—which is when I realized:

The telescope was pointed directly at Eze’s bedroom.

I stepped back and pushed the telescope’s sight up toward the sky.

It felt like there were more traps here than just luxury.

…

When I turned on my phone—not my phone, actually, but some new square touch screen I’d been gifted upon arrival, with my sparse contacts list already loaded should I need anything—I had a text from a contact named Head of Staff, with an itinerary for the day.

The itinerary began with breakfast in the main house, followed by a meeting with Eze at his office at 10:00am. A burst of butterflies let loose in my stomach. It begins.

When I opened the wooden wardrobe to hang up my clothes, I was faced with a Dior cream dress that must have been worth thousands of dollars. Disgusted, I pulled off the note attached to it.

It’s quite European to dress nicely, you know.

-Eze

What a waste. I shut the wardrobe and unpacked a black turtleneck sweater and my usual black jeans and a pair of smooth black boots, getting dressed methodically, taking my time to keep my nervous system in check. I stuffed my electronic tablet and tape recorder into my boxy black leather shoulder bag, ready to go.

One last look at the wardrobe—on second thought, I grabbed the dress and stuffed it into my bag, too.

…

As I made my way down from the lighthouse and stepped outside into the morning rays, the landscape around me sprang to life.

Eze’s property was made up of lush rolling hills leading to a treeline thickened with fog like heavy cream. Seagulls and salty morning air wafted in from the cliffs behind me.

As I approached the main house, I was struck by how organic and natural the design felt—the outer walls almost looked like porous pumice stone, as if the house had been carved from the earth itself and was just as much a part of the landscape as the trees and cliffs behind me.

When I reached the front door, I placed my hand on the wood surface to push it open—there was no handle anywhere—and stepped inside a home that felt like a gallery.

Inside, I smelled the scent of breakfast and eggs mingled with fine sauces and spices. A wooden table carved from what must have been a beautiful felled tree was covered in an untouched buffet of warm food, all of it waiting for me.

I pulled up a chair made of the same wood that was molded to the human form, all soft rounded edges instead of the sharp perfection of normal chairs.

Before I could dive into the breakfast, I heard a beeping noise.

A small squat robot the size of a trash can had rolled out to greet me. A hot latte and a crisp glass of orange juice balanced on the wooden tray on top of the robot.

“Thanks,” I said, taking the drinks from the robot and setting them in front of me. The robot gave a self-satisfied series of beeps before rotating around and rolling back in the direction of the kitchen. Leave it to the tech billionaires to automate everything.

I didn’t spend much time contemplating the state of Eze’s home as the smell of the food overwhelmed my senses. I dove in, ravenous, scooping tiny deviled eggs cut into dainty shapes onto my plate. Such beautiful food prepared for a table of one.

After I finished eating, the Eze-issued phone in my pocket buzzed. A message from the Head of Staff: Car’s outside waiting for you.

I looked around and spotted a camera in the corner of the room. I was being watched. Of course I was. This mansion hadn’t always belonged to Eze—it was his father’s, after all. The eye in the sky of the entire world. I had to assume I was under constant surveillance. I placed my napkin on the table and stood.

As I pushed open the front door, I saw my first human of the morning: a grumpy-looking woman wearing an apron on her beanpole frame and years of hard work as wrinkles on her face stood outside smoking. She looked to be in her early forties, maybe, with sun-tanned skin.

“Hi,” I said, and she looked up, bored.

“Hi,” she said, sizing me up, a slight accent I had trouble placing. Maybe Argentinian?

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Angela,” the woman said, her defenses up like a raised cat’s hackles.

“Nice to meet you, Angela. I have something for you,” I said, reaching into my shoulder bag and pulling out the Dior dress.

I tossed it to her. She caught it, stunned.

I started walking toward the driveway. “Thank you,” Angela called after me, and I could hear a hidden warmth thawing her cold tone.

“Sure,” I said. Giving away Eze’s stupid gifts might come in handy. The staff were the ones who actually ran this place and they might be useful.

I reached the round dirt driveway where Xavier’s car was idling. I opened the car door, tossed my bag into the backseat, and jumped in after it.

“Let’s go,” I said, and Xavier nodded, starting up the car.

I put in my headphones, closed my eyes, and psyched myself up as we started the drive to Eze’s office.

Into the belly of the beast.

…

I was whisked away from the property by the SUV and descended into the dark leafy green tunnel as I was removed from the bubble of La Honda and plunged back into the concrete-and-freeway world that was San Francisco proper.

Eze’s office was a massive compound on the fringe of the city, a modern sleek stronghold. I was half expecting there to be a moat with electronic crocodiles outside the smooth cement walls. But as the black sedan slowed by the guard tower, I spotted something much more sinister than medieval torture or defense mechanisms, like an array of smooth glass orbs embedded in the walls of the perimeter.

The all-seeing eye. Another reminder that I was here to infiltrate and destroy a place of evil, a glass-and-data lair of which Eze had inherited the modern throne and the scepter to go along with it. He wasn’t his father—not yet—but he had chosen to wear his father’s crown. That was damning enough evidence for me.

The guard who emerged from the guard tower wore all black, and, strangely, a plague doctor mask. Not quite, I realized, as the mask lacked a long beak. But the mask had huge bug eyes, and as the driver rolled down the back window and the security guard approached me, I shrank back.

Those eyes were facial recognition cameras. I recognized those orbs from a news piece I had seen about Crane Industries and their state-of-the art cameras that did more than just see. They monitored body heat, were nearly as clever as x-ray vision, peeling back layers of what was on the other side of the lens with a kind of design I barely understood. And here I was, seeing it up close.

Just as quick, the bug-eyed guard stepped back, nodded, and the driver rolled up my window, my heart wanting to sprint from my chest.

Xavier started driving forward toward the seamless concrete wall.

He drove and drove straight at the wall—

“Wait!” I cried, waiting for the collision of the car with the solid concrete.

But there was no crunch of metal against cement, no crumpling of steel like tissue paper.

Instead, the road beneath us dropped—

—and my stomach flopped like a fish out of water as the car hurtled down—

—down—

—down—

—into the depths beneath the building as I realized there had surely been hinges on a platform below the car that had given way to an underground parking garage with a drop so steep it may as well have been a roller coaster.

We must have been descending floors at a breakneck pace, but I was so disoriented I had no idea how deep underground we must be when the car finally leveled out.

I was trying to rein in my gasping breaths when the car stopped in total darkness, just headlights illuminating a single, neon-rimmed door glowing ahead of us.

“We’re here,” Xavier said with a kind of nonchalance that made me think he did this every day.

Get it the fuck together, Lola, I said to myself, and took a deep breath as I opened the car door.

The moment I did, tiles lit up on the pavement below my feet, a glowing path to the singular arc, the white neon lining the door welcoming me.

A glimmer above caught my eye. As I walked to the door, I saw another orb, another set of eyes watching me.

As I reached the arch, it turned red and a drawer spit out at me.

“Phone and smart products, please,” an electronic voice demanded of me.

“I need these,” I said.

“Devices will be given on loan past this point,” the electronic voice replied.

I placed the Crane-issued phone, my headphones, and my electronic tablet in the drawer and removed my hands just as it snapped shut.

I started to walk through, but the arch flashed red again.

“All smart devices—”

I whipped my tape recorder out, a fresh tape inside.

“This is a dumb device,” I said, waving it in the direction of the nearest black orb. “I can’t send a text with this.”

The red arch pulsed, thinking. Then it warmed green.

“Welcome to Crane Industries, Lola Whitman,” the cold voice said, and more floor tiles lit up and directed me to a pair of opening doors of an elevator that parted with a soft ding.

I stepped inside and the elevator doors closed. The elevator ascended smoothly without the press of a button. In fact, there were no buttons, not even emergency switches, which I felt was probably illegal.

It was a subtle reminder to guests that Crane Industries was above the law of building codes. Potentially above many more laws as well.

I was feeling petty, so I reached for my phone instinctively to snap a photo of the empty elevator interior to cause some overdue building inspections. But I was reminded by the emptiness in my pocket that I was without a lifeline here.

No way to even call for help. Intentional, of course, I assumed.

I nearly lost track of time with how long the elevator was ascending for. Was I going to step out into the clouds?

With another polite ding, the elevator doors slid open.

Sure enough, I was greeted by sunshine and clouds—or perhaps the infamous San Franciscan fog—caressing the panoramic windows.

“Lola,” a brunette with wide eyes and a slicked-back pixie cut ponytail cornered me here. “I’m Hayden.”

She held out a hand for a very professional handshake. Her blazer felt formal for a tech company, but the others milling around also were dressed in a sharp corporate style, suits pressed so clean they nearly looked painted on. It looked at odds with the way Eze had presented, and matched more closely to the images I had seen of his father.

“I’m Lola, but you knew that,” I said, a bit awkwardly as my gaze returned to Hayden.

“I do,” Hayden said, her chipperness eclipsing my uneasiness. “This way.”

Hayden led me past a cavernous lobby, the windows only showing blue and white.

How high up were we?

“Crane Industries’ headquarters was built to model a new lighthouse. Our late founder Mr. Crane—may he rest in peace—insisted that we think above the fray as to always make decisions un-muddied by the noise of daily life.”

Oh, this girl has guzzled the Kool-Aid, I thought to myself. And what did the Cranes have with lighthouses?

“Seems like he really liked lighthouses,” I said, trying to muster some enthusiasm so it didn’t come across like sarcasm.

Hayden just nodded. “It’s what the logo of Crane Industries was modeled after. Again, to bring light to the darkness of the unknown.”

“Love that concept,” I said sincerely—after all, I was here for that very reason. “How long has Eze been CEO?” I asked.

I saw Hayden bristle. “Ezekiel took over as the interim CEO just over four months ago.”

“He must be eager to get going on this book,” I said, fishing as we continued to wind through hallways before coming to a stop by a smooth wall.

“Mmm,” Hayden replied, giving me nothing, and touched the backside of her hand on the wall, a panel sliding open in response as the wall glowed green.

“Is that…?”

“Loose keycards are a security risk. All of our access chips are embedded under our skin,” Hayden replied as she led me up a spiral staircase.

I silently cursed Eze’s father for his steadfast approach to security. Not having access to any electronic devices and being dependent on Hayden or another member of Eze’s staff with microchips embedded into their bodies for access to rooms was not ideal as far as snooping around went. No wonder the FBI was so eager to offer me a frothy deal when they realized what kind of access I could have into this fortress.

I arrived in a windowless alcove, all sandstone except for an oak desk with a computer monitor glowing with a logged out screen.

“Ezekiel is expecting you,” Hayden said, and placed the back of her hand to touch the wall as it slid open to reveal Eze’s office beyond, Hayden abandoning my side to lower efficiently into her desk chair with the ease of someone used to mounting Pilates reformers.

But I wasn’t paying attention to Hayden now.

I was staring at the sight before me.

Ezekiel Crane stood facing a wall of glass, a mountain of a man with his broad shoulders. But this wall of windows did not face out to the endless horizon—it faced inwards, towards the belly of the silo-like office.

As I approached Eze and the doors slid closed behind me, I saw what he saw. Windows looks into workshops, corner offices, other floors where the employees of Crane Industries worked in their polished suits or blue jumpsuits as I saw sparks flying from floors that were dedicated to building and creating what I imagined were the orbs that were mounted on every corner of the building.

“Twelve days,” Eze said, standing next to me as we looked out on the office together.

“What?” I asked, confused.

“Every worker you see in this building. They only have twelve vacation days per year to celebrate birthdays, weddings, anniversaries. To see the world. The rest of their days they spend in this silo, building the future of American security. What do you think of that?”

I turned to him, searching the depths of his green eyes, as lush as the forest he lived in. “I think that’s pretty standard when it comes to devoting your life to a cause like building Crane Industries,” I said, picking the most neutral thing I could think to say.

Eze’s expression was unreadable. He stepped past me, and I felt my breath catch as his imposing frame slipped past my own as he headed to the small black granite countertop across from his desk where a stovetop and vacuum-sealed cans of espresso waited by trendy misshapen stone mugs.

“Espresso?” Eze asked.

“Sure,” I said, never one to turn down a caffeine source.

He rolled up his sleeves—a nicer shirt than the linen I’d seen him in. A suit jacket lay discarded on the sofa by the door. Was Eze wearing a costume here? Playing a role?

“It’s an impressive office,” I said. “A lot more formal than the other Silicon Valley companies.”

“Impressive?” Eze murmured, tipping beans into a hand grinder. His eyes cut to me. “What about this office is impressive?”

I raised an eyebrow, leaning against the counter. “Um, for one we’re in the fucking sky a million floors up.”

“I don’t think you’re impressed.”

I froze, but tried to play it off. “What do you mean?”

Eze turned the crank, slow and even, the beans cracking under it. “I don’t need to be flattered like your other clients. My ego is not so fragile. I want to know what you really think. No lies.”

If you lie here, he’ll know.

Okay, so I needed a different approach. I took a steadying breath. “I’ll shoot straight, then. You said your memoir was different. What do you want to be different about your story? What impact do you want to have with it?”

He tapped the grounds into a steel moka pot, screwed it shut, and set it on the burner.

He turned his whole body to me this time, and I felt the entire weight of his attention. The intensity was almost too much—my pulse kicked at the way this man looked at me, looked through me, picking apart the carefully constructed exterior that had served as my armor on every job before this one.

“Lola, I must confess that I haven’t told you the whole truth about why you’re here.”

Behind him, the pot began to tick on the burner.

“So tell me,” I said, nearly breathless as Eze took a step toward me.

“You’re not here to write my book.”

“Then why am I here?”

A thin hiss rose from the stovetop, steam forcing its way up through the grounds.

“You’re here to help me solve my father’s murder.”

The moka pot boiled over.

🌁 read ch 5 now

Share

Subscribe now

“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”

-Friedrich Nietzsche

previous: about | chapter one | chapter two

My life had been all travel, all the time. Jet-setting to meet clients, joining them on trips as I tried to capture chapters that seemed to slip through their attention as they popped bottles on private jets.

Distracted. That’s how they all were. Important, rich men who finally got a taste of the finer things and then gorged themselves on it. They built gilded leaning towers of Pisa that I toppled with a gentle kick. Their worlds were so chaotic they didn’t see the way their bills were stuffed into the pockets of those working for them behind their backs. They didn’t see the full extent of their wastefulness until it was too late, until I led the Bureau to their door.

That was not how Eze’s world was run, as I was just about to find out.

I had just enough time to speed back to my desert loft, where I threw shades of black into my suitcase—I found that it was easier to focus on writing if my clothes didn’t have to match—and upturned everything to find my ancient manual tape recorder. I packed it into a leather laptop bag, much too large for my slim laptop, but I liked how masculine it looked. Away everything went, along with a digital legal pad.

That’s all I got to pack before headlights rolled through the dust and lit up my panoramic windows in the night.

“I’m coming!” I yelled, and took one last look at the home I rarely inhabited before locking up and heading toward the towering Escalade.

Leaving for a new project was always something beautiful. I felt the tickle of nervous excitement, and in my mind’s eye saw a neat, locked treasure chest of a human mind I was about to crack open.

Some people become writers because they are trying to uncover a truth within themselves. Not me. I became a writer because there was a bigger truth I needed to unlock—but to do so, I had to rummage around the hearts and dreams of others.

I was driven to the Scottsdale airport, where a private jet waited on the dark runway.

Private jet, as it turned out, was an understatement. I walked into what felt like a Swiss hotel. Dimmed mood lights, white leather seats, granite countertops in the galley, and lighting calibrated to the passenger’s natural circadian rhythm to combat jet lag.

A flight attendant greeted me on the tarmac, taking my suitcase. She wore a tight smile—a practiced guard against any pesky microexpressions that might betray her true feelings in her line of work.

“Welcome aboard, Lola Whitman. I’m Claire, your air hostess tonight.”

“Thanks, Claire,” I said. I had come across my fair share of female staff supporting these men, and almost all of them had grown hardened skin to contend with the hunter-prey energy that proliferated in these spaces. There was no immediate rule of law on a private island or a jet over international waters—and who were you to go up against Goliath in any case less than murder? The margin for error goes to zero if you dare reach for a slingshot.

It was part of the reason I did what I did. I knew what it felt like to be helpless, and I would never be in that position again—and I would slay the beasts that went after the gazelles, one drop of ink at a time.

As I settled into my seat—a plush, soft leather that once belonged to a quivering animal’s flesh—Claire handed me a glass tablet that lit up with the words Welcome, Lola in script font.

“Please fill out this survey so the Crane household staff can be up-to-date on your accommodation preferences before you land,” she said, the phrase robotic and oft-repeated.

Like footsteps in mud that had been walked through so many times they’d stiffened into concrete.

“Thanks,” I said, accepting the glass of champagne she offered alongside it, drinking it too fast but not caring. I flipped through the questions as the plane took off.

What temperature do you prefer your bedroom to be at?

What dietary restrictions do you have? Check all that apply.

What is your dress size?

I rolled my eyes and skipped the last question. I wasn’t here to play dress-up. If Eze thought he could win me over with gifts, he was in for a rude awakening.

I finished the survey and stood up, wandering the cabin, getting my first real glimpse of Eze’s world—or, the world his father had left for him. Pristine, tech-forward, not a hair out of place.

“Can I help you with anything, Ms. Whitman?” Claire asked, appearing out of nowhere.

“Yeah. How long have you worked for the Crane family?”

“A few years.”

“When’s the last time you saw Eze behaving badly?”

Claire blinked, caught off-guard. “I—I don’t know what you mean. Mr. Crane is a wonderful boss.”

I nodded. “Sure he is. Has he seemed different lately, though since stepping into the role of CEO? Anything I might need to know going into all of this? Woman to woman?”

Claire looked around, as if checking to see whether anyone else might materialize in the empty jet, and her uptight expression slipped.

She leaned in close. I smelled her deep vanilla perfume as her lips parted near my ear and she whispered, “Don’t lie here. He’ll know.”

Before I could react, her professional mask snapped back into place. She straightened up. “Anything else I can get you, Ms. Whitman? Coffee? Sparkling water? Anything to eat?”

I shook my head. “I’m good.”

The jet rumbled as it hit a wave of turbulence.

***

Time moved too fast. The jet touched down and I was being ushered into another dark Escalade before I could process everything happening in the clockwork world of Eze’s.

Moonlight dripped through the tunnel of trees as the black car climbed up, up, up narrow streets, crawling toward La Honda. Tech billionaires could hide in the hills with estates that crept deep into the woods, away from prying eyes.

It was close to midnight, and I was clutching an acidic energy drink that tasted like burnt lemons as my stomach turned.

Don’t lie here. He’ll know.

Claire’s words echoed in my mind as the car wove down winding roads.

This is the last one. Then I’ll have my freedom.

The same mantra I had repeated at the beginning of the last job, I remembered while my nerve endings danced, the butterflies having a full disco in my stomach. This is the last one, and then I’ll go build myself a proper home. Maybe in the desert, maybe elsewhere. And I’ll write whatever I want, whenever I want, and drink tea and tend to a spice garden and make sourdough bread from scratch and gossip with friends about who’s sleeping with who. Maybe I’ll go shoot targets in the desert with Tabur and his friends if I get bored of gossip.

Despite the nerves, despite the dread, there was excitement. Adrenaline. A desire for a worthy opponent. Maybe Eze would be that for me. Or maybe I’d be disappointed by him the way I had been by Brett Wolf and his fake smile.

Either way, I was here for the kill. And I was ready to topple Eze from his empire if that meant earning my freedom.

The car slipped around a final bend before turning abruptly off the main road and pausing at a huge wrought iron gate with the letter “C” emblazoned in gold. The driver rolled down his window—and I was hit with a breath of fresh sea air that tasted of salt and pine needles. The driver flashed his ID to one of several cameras at the entry gate. After a moment, the wrought iron gate creaked open.

The Crane estate was not an estate. It was a compound. A sprawling, modern mansion made of slabs of cement and glass that sprang out of rolling grassy hills, a lighthouse watching over the buildings below as they sank into the deep forest beyond the main circular driveway.

The driver passed the circle drive of the mansion and headed toward the lighthouse. The car slowed to a stop at the foot of the tall building, and I opened the door and jumped out.

As I surveyed the landscape, my eyes moved to the cliffs that dropped straight down to the ocean and a small beach below.

And then my gaze stopped on a masculine figure, bathed in moonlight, completely naked and standing at the edge of the cliff above the water.

My breath caught in my throat. Even from a distance I recognized the towering figure, his bronze skin glinting like a midnight Adonis.

What is he doing? I thought, watching the figure hold perfectly still at the edge of the cliff.

Then he turned, as if feeling my eyes on him—and in a second—

—dove off the cliff.

“STOP!” I yelled, an instinct pulling the scream from my lungs before I could fully think.

The driver, holding my suitcase, walked over to me.

“Don’t worry about him, miss,” he said. “Shall I bring your bag upstairs?”

I stared at where Eze had just stood. “He—he just—”

“Mr. Crane prefers not to be watched during his cold exposure therapy,” the driver said, turning toward the modern wooden barnhouse door at the base of the lighthouse.

After one more glance at the horizon, I followed. Cliff diving at midnight. Not a wellness trend I was familiar with.

The tiny elevator of the lighthouse rose to the top floor and opened with a ding into a circular penthouse with panoramic windows that took my breath away.

Even the bed was shaped like a large circle, no sharp edges anywhere in the room. Everything was warm and plush—thick rugs and blankets on every surface—except for the cold mosaic tile that led into a small bathroom with a claw-foot tub overlooking the ocean, the horizon stretching on to infinity.

The driver set down my suitcase as I stepped into the space.

“There’s a remote on the side table to close the window shades, which I recommend at night so the lighthouse’s beam doesn’t keep you up. There’s a meal schedule on your desk, and everything is served in the main house. If you’d like anything brought here, just ring the head of staff or follow the ordering instructions on your room’s touchpad. Any questions?”

I watched the lighthouse beam sweep the darkness in slow circles. It was hypnotic.

“No, I’m good.”

“Glad to hear it. My name is Xavier, one of the drivers here, so you’ll see me around. Goodnight, Ms. Whitman.”

“Just call me Lola.”

He blinked, and then nodded. “Sure thing, Lola,” he said, and stepped back into the waiting elevator.

As soon as the elevator doors closed, I went to the window.

Outside, climbing up the path from the beach, was Eze. Stark naked, his skin glowing under the moonlight, all strong lithe lines of a man who must have spent summers soaking in the Mediterranean and somehow felt just as at ease in this foggy forge.

As if on cue, he stopped—and looked up at the lighthouse. Looked directly at me.

I stepped back from the window, my breath caught in my throat. In that moment, I knew one truth deep in the core of my bones.

I needed to be careful around Eze.

🌁 read ch 4 now

Share

Subscribe now

"I can resist everything except temptation."

-Oscar Wilde

previous: about | chapter one

The knocking woke me even when the morning sun didn’t.

No one knocks at my door—because my front door doesn’t exist. Not on a map, not on a government record. I built this cabin at the heart of unmarked land that I bought with what the FBI paid me to be undercover as their ghostwriter—their informant. But because my home exists nowhere, I know exactly who is at my door.

I pushed myself off the tatami mat I had laid out at the top level of my loft. I bought the mat and ditched my mattress after a trip to Kyoto where I stayed in a traditional Japanese home. I liked how sleeping on the bamboo mat made me feel—like I was maybe one with the earth, part of it, perhaps. Grounded instead of spinning out of control like the rest of my life. Or maybe it’s because, deep down, maybe a part of me didn’t think I deserved the comfort of a mattress. But that trip to Japan was so far in the past. Before my life ended. The FBI wouldn’t let me out of their sight now, even as they fed me new identities and passports they made sure I stayed under their thumb. I had different names and photos and drivers licenses I’ve stashed in drawers like hidden treasures. I’m allowed to live other people’s lives—just not my own.

Not yet.

The knocking grew louder on the steel door below, and I groaned. “I’m coming!” I yelled, crawling on all fours for the ladder that leads down to the second level, knocking some empty beer cans down in the process by accident.

I may sleep on a tatami mat, but I’m definitely no monk.

My black hair was slung up in a messy bun and I wore an oversized Yale t-shirt and flared black sweatpants that fit like a glove but have seen better days. I vaguely remembered wearing them when I used to take dance classes at school—again, in a life that was once my own. I can’t remember the last time I’ve done something for fun beyond drinking myself into slumber.

My feet landed on the cement floor, and I squinted in the bright light of the desert morning. I had this home built out of an old mining hut, and it was a single room with floor-to-ceiling windows that show the desert in all of its splendor across my acreage, my Jeep parked outside. On the ground floor I had a single writing desk with my grandfather’s typewriter—a bright yellow thing with keys that make the most delicious clickety-clack sounds across the paper—and my laptop with my leather laptop bag hanging on a metal hook by the door. The front door was industrial steel, slightly misshapen in a wabi-sabi kind of way with large deadbolts. A small kitchenette and bathroom stood opposite the big windows and my writing desk, with a farmhouse sink and small rectangular windows so I could watch the hares run from predators as I grilled my morning bacon. The circle of life unfolding all around my small home.

A perfect place to be a recluse in-between jobs.

As I pulled open my front door, I’m face-to-face with Matthew once more. He holds up two cups of coffee stamped with the fancy logo of a nearby roaster he knew I liked. “I brought you some morning juice.”

“I didn’t order delivery. Goodbye,” I started to close the door, but Matthew stuck his foot out, stopping it.

“And I’ve got your ticket to freedom. Let me in and let’s talk.”

I frowned but opened the door wide enough for him to walk inside. “As much as I love writing books for the FBI, I’d appreciate you sticking to your end of the bargain.”

Matthew sat down at my small dining table—just a steel round table and two chairs, fit for a cafe in Europe instead of a real dining table. “I think you might want to see this.” Matthew set down the coffees and tossed a file on the table.

I sat down, wary, and opened the file. I started to read, and sucked in air as I realized what I was reading. I looked back up. “Is this real?”

Matthew nodded, running a hand through his boyish hair that was getting too long. “I had the director sign it personally. I told him what happened yesterday and the courage you showed in getting the information we needed to arrest Wolf. He agreed that this next book will be your last, and to ensure that the money you leave with after this job is enough to set you up for whatever life you could dream of. And as long as you get satisfactory evidence this time, we won’t hold you to the outcome of the trial.”

Relief washed over me, followed by annoyance. “You couldn’t just call the last one good enough? I’ve done three books.”

Matthew withdrew another file from his briefcase. “I would, but you’ve got one last thing you can do to help your country, Lola Whitman.”

My heart sunk, and I knew exactly what was going to be in that file. I just knew.

“Open it,” he said, his eyes shining.

I opened the file and saw exactly the man I had been expecting grinning from photos ripped from magazines and surveillance footage. Ezekiel Crane. Photos of him with actresses, socialites, on red carpets at the Cannes Film Festival. All of the colors of him as a globetrotting playboy, now thrust into the spotlight for a different reason following the death of his father.

I snapped the file shut, shoving it back across the table. “I won’t do it.”

Matthew’s gaze hardened. “He’s harmless, Lola. He’s just a wayward party boy who is now cosplaying CEO of his father’s tech company.”

“Harmless?” I scoffed. “He seemed very aware of what he was doing when he approached me yesterday. I don’t appreciate you giving out my phone number, you know—I just recently got that burner and I’m sick of changing all of my passwords—”

Matthew nearly spit out his coffee. “He what?”

I froze. “You didn’t know?”

“Ezekiel Crane approached you? Why did you tell me?”

“I thought—I thought you knew—”

“My office was trying to get a hold of me all day yesterday with his call but I was too caught up on the Wolf opp with you. But if you found you—on his own…” Matthew grinned. “This is better than we could have even hoped for.”

“What does the Bureau want with him if you think he’s just some airheaded son of a dead tech billionaire?”

“We have a few government contracts with his company—”

“Not that you spy on Americans or anything,” I cut in.

Matthew shook his head. “Obviously that’s illegal.”

“Obviously,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You can be real with me, Matthew. It’s clearly not in my interest to write a hit piece on the FBI at this stage,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

“It’s just that we don’t think the way that Eze has started running the company is completely above board. There’s something not right about it and we’ve been trying to find a way in for months since he took control after his father’s heart attack. And if he approached you directly, it means his mind is made up on working with you,” Matthew said, his eyes gleaming. I could practically see him dreaming up his future promotion at the Bureau.

“Well it’s too bad I turned him down,” I said nonchalantly, reaching across the table to grab a coffee and take a sip, relishing the hot liquid as it tumbled down my throat.

“You did not,” Matthew said, his eyes wide.

“I did. Because I’m not writing his book. Give me someone else.”

Matthew’s eyes narrowed. “That’s the thing. The director’s offer of honoring your freedom after this case—it’s contingent on you giving us enough to work with on Eze.”

I felt a lump grow in my throat. “You promised—”

Matthew slammed the table, jostling the coffee and spilling a few drops as he stood. “We’re the government, Lola! You think we have to honor our promises when you get to walk away scot free from what you did all those years ago because of our deal? You have to do what you’re told or all of this ends badly for you! Don’t you understand that?”

My breath caught. “I… I just…” I felt like a little girl being scolded by her father. Rage and shame shook the bars of my proverbial cage, and I couldn’t figure out how to organize what I was feeling into words.

Matthew must have seen what his anger did to me, and he sat back down, masking his irritation and putting on his handler-voice. “I’m sorry. I know you’ve been through a lot in the past twenty-four hours. I know you want all of this to be over. How about you take the day and think about it? Get back to me tomorrow morning. We can talk then. Sound good?”

I just nodded, trying to close the dam on the emotions that threatened to burst out of me, my eyes vacant. I barely noticed as Matthew picked up his briefcase and left, closing my front door behind him as he drove away in his shiny black escalade.

In the silence, I felt the world closing around me, and I slid off the chair to the cold cement floor. I placed the side of my face on the cool ground. A tear slipped down my cheek and I wondered if freedom would taste like I had hoped if the road there was paved with cold compromises in service of my captors.

***

The Roadrunner Bar was a little sticky and the air a little stale, but there was a dartboard and I needed the practice—and didn’t mind some extra cash. With an IPA by my side, I took the tiny projectiles and started tossing them at the board.

I had spent the day picking at some leftovers in my fridge, staring out at the desert life outside my window as the sun passed overhead. I had avoided drinking for a majority of the day by instead focusing on counting the birds that flew by. I liked counting birds. Especially pigeons, which were in short supply in Arizona. I liked the conspiracy that pigeons weren’t real, that they were flying cameras created by the government to spy on its citizens. After all, have you ever seen a baby pigeon? The thought made me smile even though I was of no higher stature than the pigeons. I was just rented eyes and ears, but didn’t even have the ability to fly away.

Eventually, I had found myself able to put on clothes—an all-black ensemble of a tank top, jeans, and inky cowboy boots, which I had bought upon my forced relocation to Arizona to fit in with locals, who I found out mostly wore Uggs or converse, but I kept the boots anyways. I found myself presentable enough and managed to run a brush through my dark hair before stepping out into the 90-degree late afternoon, keys in hand to head out to the Roadrunner, my usual haunt.

I cradled a dart between my thumb and index finger. Through the dust particles lit by the setting sun, I could feel a set of eyes on me. With deadly precision, I threw the dart, hitting the bullseye.

I heard a whistle. “What a shot, miss. Looks like you could use a challenger.” I looked up to see Tabur, standing there with a smile and two shots accompanied with two limes.

“I don’t know, I might just take all your money,” I said with a grin, accepting the tequila he handed me. We clinked glasses, taking bites of our limes before tossing back the shots.

“I may not look it, but I’m a strong competitor,” he said as he set down the empty glass, barely affected by the alcohol.

“Oh yeah? How much do you bench?”

He looked me up and down with a smile and a cock of his head. “How much do you weigh?”

I rolled my eyes at his attempt to flirt, only to be interrupted by—

“Bets, taking your best bets! Race is in twenty!” the bartender yelled.

“They’re still running the Dirtway?” I asked Tabur. “Didn’t the Sheriff shut it down?”

Tabur looked at me. “You been away a little too long from home, girl?”

“Not long enough to bet on this race, boy.” I took out a roll of twenties from my worn canvas bag that had seen many a bar and bookstore. “$100 says you lose everything on a lemon again.”

“Make it $200. I see too much city girl in you these days.”

My eyes flickered back to him in surprise. “What makes you think I’ve been in the city?”

“The way you move.”

“Oh?”

“You’re always impatient, looking for a distraction or somethin’. Which, I could help you with—”

“I’m not looking,” I said, and noticed his face fall imperceptibly, but I valued my friendship with Tabur too much to lead him on.

“So what are you looking for?” Tabur asked, and I felt the false bravado drop from his voice like a curtain. It felt like I wasn’t looking at the grown man before me anymore, but the kid from my hometown.

“I’m looking for what I’ve always been. My next story.”

“What a pretty little distraction.”

Tabur picked up a dart and threw it at the board, and it landed next to mine, nestled in the red of the bullseye. I wondered why at that moment I felt a pang of homesickness.

***

The Dirtway was our wild west equivalent of a scene out of The Fast and the Furious. Out back behind the cowboy bar was a stretch of desert with a flattened dirt track—a mix of dirt and paved roads with a variety of obstacles and barrels of fire lighting up the course to keep things interesting.

Battered muscle cars and souped-up Mad Max-inspired go-carts revved their engines in anticipation as a small crowd of ruffians started to form in the haze of the dirt and dust. These people spent every last dime fixing up their race cars—but you could still spot duct-tape bumpers and cheap repairs. Paychecks didn’t stretch far here, but the races were just as vicious as any I’d seen in other street races, and I’d seen a few. Women traded tube tops for cowboy boots and jean shorts, an eager audience scoping out which men were betting the most on their chosen car to win.

Tabur and I made our way to the edge of the track as the last of the cars started to roll up to the starting line—and that’s when I saw him.

Eze. The setting sun caught the glint of his half-smile and tousled his auburn hair as he walked over in an expensive-looking t-shirt and tailored pants, a stark contrast to the salt-of-the-earth bikers and flannel-wearing desert dwellers despite him clearly trying to dress down.

He approached, but passed me, handing a thick envelope stuffed with bills to the bar owner. “$10,000 on the Mustang,” he said, nodding toward a bright yellow car with glowing rims.

I laughed at him. “That driver never wins. Charitable of you to make such a generous donation to The Roadrunner.”

Eze turned to me, his expression unruffled. “What driver did you bet on?”

“Dirty Dave. He fears nothing but the depths of hell and wins every time,” I said with full confidence. Eze was on my turf, after all.

“If you’re so sure, let’s bet more than just money,” he said.

“What did you have in mind?” I asked.

“I win, you take on my book. You win, I walk away.”

I hesitated, feeling Tabur’s eyes on me.

What a nice distraction.

“So?” Eze said. “Afraid you can’t pick a winner?”

He knew how to stoke the competitive edge in me, and I felt the anger bubble up in me. “Deal,” I said.

Eze held out his hand and I took it. We shook, his firm grip and piercing green eyes softened only by the quirk of a smile.

“I look forward to working with you.”

Before I could say anything, Eze whispered something to the bar owner and then disappeared into the billowing clouds of dirt as the roaring engines revved up a dust storm.

Tabur and I pulled out bandanas, covering our noses and mouths as the crowd peeled back from the starting line, bracing for the race to begin.

“That was Ezekiel Crane,” Tabur said, his eyes wide. “He was at the bookstore today… what’s going on, Lola?”

“He wants what he can’t have,” I replied. My casual response hid the sharp increase in my heart rate.

As the dust settled and two women with makeshift checkered flags—simply different colored napkins from the Roadrunner stitched together—approached the starting line, I saw Eze shake hands with the driver of the yellow Mustang, take his helmet and keys, and…

…get into the car himself.

Eze was going to race.

“He didn’t just—” Tabur started.

“He did,” I said in disbelief.

The flags went up, and the bar owner called out, “Ready…”

Dirty Dave rolled down his window, making lewd gestures at the other drivers who smashed their horns and screamed back at him. At the far end of the starting line, Eze’s eyes slid towards mine. He winked at me, and I felt my face go hot.

“Steady…” The hodgepodge lineup of cars—from Hummers to crazy Burning Man vehicles with custom upgrades to match custom dents on their fenders—roared impatiently.

“GO!” The bar owner pulled out a gun and fired at the sky with a crack! as the women lowered the flags and the cars sped across the makeshift dirt racetrack.

The crowd turned away as the dust kicked up and the headlights blazed in the inferno of desert soil. Headlights like bloody specters in the early evening.

The group of cars sped around the first hairpin turn of the Dirtway—one skidding out into circles, losing control—

—but the yellow Mustang decelerated in time, drifting around the corner—

—neck and neck with Dirty Dave—

—the two speeding down the desert, weaving between cacti on the homemade course—

—toward the last turn, the onlookers screaming and hollering—

—just as the yellow Mustang gently bumped Dirty Dave’s car—

—which sent him spinning into endless donuts as Eze cut ahead—

—the crowd took in a collective gasp as Eze made it back down the straightaway, headed for the finish line.

The yellow Mustang crossed the line and the crowd broke into excited hysterics, swarming the vehicle as Eze stepped out and locked eyes with me, a boyish grin on his face.

But the sound of another car speeding up broke apart the crowd as Dirty Dave started accelerating behind them—straight at Eze.

The crowd jumped out of the way, and a SMASH of metal on metal as the yellow Mustang was flung across the dirt, barely missing Eze, who had shoved members of the crowd out of harm’s way.

Silence fell as the other losing cars crept up and the onlookers watched Dirty Dave kick out his now-busted door… and raised a revolver at Eze.

“You cheat!” he yelled. “You think you can come out here an’ pull shit like that? Go home, pretty boy.”

“I expected more of you, Dirty Dave,” Eze taunted, unfazed at the barrel of a gun he was staring down. “But with your chosen name I guess I should have known you weren’t good enough to win fair and square.”

The bystanders spread out, a reverence of old traditions of the West as the two men squared off, Eze defenseless in the face of Dave’s revolver.

“Fuck you!” Dave roared, his hand shaking as he cocked the gun.

“Why don’t you drop your weapon and fight like a man?” Eze said, calm as ever.

“Who is this guy?” Tabur whispered.

“I don’t know,” I whispered back, trying to square the circle that was billionaire playboy and casual racecar driver Ezekiel Crane. Who was he to walk into my desert and be more of a cowboy than the locals, even without a weapon?

The bar owner pushed through the crowd, brandishing his own firearm that had been only ceremonial at the start of the race.

“Dave, drop your fuckin’ pea shooter and admit you lost, fair and square,” he said, casually pointing the gun at him. “I have your parole officer on speed dial and I ain’t afraid to bring Diane into this.”

Dave narrowed his eyes, but lowered his gun. He spit into the soil, cursing under his breath. Some men feared nothing more than the wrath of their own wives.

The bar owner nodded, re-holstered his gun, and wiped dirt off his jeans before turning to Eze. He tossed him a burlap sack of cash. “You won, fair and square, man.”

Eze shrugged and turned to the owner of the car, handing him the bag of winnings. “Thanks for letting me borrow your ride.”

Sirens cut through the night air, and the crowd dispersed like wild animals taking cover before a storm.

Eze caught my gaze once more.

Who was this man?

***

I slid into the booth of a late-night diner as police lights reflected off the windows, speeding past toward a race that had already been won by the man sitting across from me.

I shielded myself from his gaze with the supersized laminated menu. When the waitress came over brandishing her stainless steel coffeepot, I looked up.

“Black coffee and biscuits, please,” I said as the waitress filled up the cups in front of us with acidic smelling coffee.

Eze’s eyebrows rose at me. “Coffee at this time of night?”

“Is there a better time?” I challenged, handing my menu to the waitress.

“Anything for you, sir?” the waitress asked, but he just shook his head. As she left, he turned his attention back to me, resting his folded hands on the plastic table in front of us as his piercing gaze studied me. “Are you going to honor your side of the bet?”

“Seems hardly fair considering I was missing a key part of your resume as a racecar driver.”

Eze shrugged. “Everyone has hobbies in Silicon Valley.”

“Hiking and hotpot wasn’t thrilling enough for you?”

“I’m not from the Bay Area. Not really.”

I rolled my eyes. “Right, you’re European. Part Italian, right? Your American accent fooled me.”

“I have taste. And I appreciate art. And I read books that have nothing to do with science fiction or productivity. That’s a dead giveaway I’m not really of the tech scene, is it not?”

My eyes moved over his olive skin, his sun-threaded hair. He did look like he saw too much sun to be a slave to a computer terminal. I raised my hands. “So I don’t know anything about you.”

“You will soon.” Eze reached into his pocket, pulling out a small piece of paper and a pen, and slid them across the table to me. “So, Lola Whitman—what’s your number?”

“I told you—”

“Whatever it is, I’ll pay it. I want your help, and I think you’ll find my story… compelling, to say the least. I’m on a timeline, so we’ll need to move fast. You’ll be back to your life before you know it.”

“Why me?”

“Because I know you’ll get what I’m trying to do, Lola.”

“What exactly are you trying to do?”

Eze looked out the window, a faraway look in his eyes. Then he turned back to me, and I caught something I hadn’t seen before in his expression—a rare vulnerability that made me sit up slightly straighter. “People write memoirs to chronicle something. An achievement, a lesson, a hardship overcome. I’m not really interested in all that. I don’t need my ego to be stroked—there are other people I could hire for that. I could tell you that I’m trying to leave a legacy, but that’s not it, either.”

I frowned. “Okay. So why, then?”

“I’m trying to solve something,” Eze said, picking his words with care, rotating his coffee cup in small circles with his long fingertips, the steam twisting up from his cup. “You’ve written memoirs for people who are important, but they aren’t at the global table. Not in the way that I am. But I won’t survive the pack of wolves I’m running with if I don’t get my story straight. I need you, Lola.” He took a breath and leveled the full power of his gaze at me.
“So. What do you say?”

I looked at him, considering. There were a lot of layers to this—more than I’d admit, even to myself.

Finally, I pressed pen to paper scribbled down my number. When I was done, I folded it and slid it back across the table, watching him.

He took the paper and unfolded it. I watched his expression bloom into surprise.

He looked up at me. “Is this a fucking joke?”

I grinned, feeling satisfied that I had rattled him. “I used to tell jokes. Then I turned twelve,” I said, taking a sip of my coffee. I nodded at the paper. “This is serious business.”

Eze’s surprise melted into a mischievous half-smile. “I like how you play, Lola.” He tucked the paper into his jacket pocket, then pulled out a small envelope and slid it across the table to me. “Your plane leaves in an hour. We start work tomorrow, and the book needs to be done in three months. Have your agent send over the paperwork and I’ll get everything signed and sent back to you before you touch down in SFO. Deal?”

“Deal,” I said, surprising myself with the confidence in my voice.

Eze nodded and dropped a few hundreds on the table just as the waitress returned with my biscuits. She looked confused as she watched him saunter out the door.

I held up my mug. “Can I get another one to go?” I handed her Eze’s cash, and she took them in surprise and nodded. “Thanks. I’m going to need it.”

Let the games begin.

🌁 read ch 3 now

Share

Subscribe now

“There are no ghosts in the world, save for the ones we make for ourselves.”

-Sherlock Holmes

I hated deserts, but I hated the man standing in front of me more.

Behind him the Arizona sun was bleeding out over the golf course—a violent, gorgeous wash of color above eighteen holes of impossible green that had no business existing out here, sucking a fortune in water out of the dirt just so men like Brett Wolf could swing a club in paradise.

And swing he did. His wolfish grin caught the flash of the camera, the same grin that let him bed the cart girls and the wives of his competitors right under the nose of his valium-addled wife.

“So strong, Brett! Now swing it like a winning shot,” the photographer goaded.

I watched from the shade of the country club awning, water bottle sweating in my hand. Men like him don’t need encouragement. But when he glanced over, I gave him the same demure smile I’d worn the entire time I’d worked for him, and he beamed back, muscles straining against his golf shirt.

“Stay focused Lola,” a voice buzzed in my earpiece.

Scratch that. I hated the two-timing golfer cheesing for the camera, but I hated the voice in my ear more.

I faked a cough and turned away to feign a sip of water while I talked into my earpiece. “Shut up, unless you’d like to come out here and take my place.”

The male voice chuckled. “I don’t think I’d appreciate the view as much.”

Rage bubbled up like magma under my put-together surface. My hands tightened around my leather notebook and my Pilot G-2 until I thought I’d snap them both.

“Okay, that’s a wrap! Great work, Brett,” the photographer said, going in for a high five. “This is going to be an epic cover.”

I smoothed my face, severing the connection between my soul and my body. Finish this job and then you’ll be free, I reminded myself. At the reminder of what lay on the other side of this assignment, I felt a flip of my stomach. I shoved the emotions down. Focus, Lola.

Brett sauntered over to me. “Sport Standard magazine cover—not bad, eh? We’ve come a long way since you started writing my book, don’t you think?”

“I can’t believe the journey is almost over. By the way, the publisher is doing their final review of the book and I need to go over some details with you. Can we chat for a bit?”

Brett nodded, and I felt his gaze dip from my eyes to my body. As a writer on the cusp of entering my thirties, I knew where men’s eyes wandered, and I took advantage of it. I’d learned to dress my wildness down: a black flared skirt, oxford shoes, a white blouse unbuttoned just so. Hair the flat black of my mother’s side pinned back into something tidy and forgettable, though strands of it always worked loose by the end of a job, like it knew better than I did. I was built willowy, all length and no softness, and there was a feral quality to me I’d never quite ironed out—something that vibrated just under the surface, that made people lean back before they understood why. So I covered it up. Wore thick black-rimmed reading glasses I didn't strictly need, perched low like punctuation. A notebook held to my chest, a pen clicked open and ready—the harmless costume of a woman who lived in other people’s sentences. Dark eyes I kept wide and patient instead of hungry. And a smile I drained all the rage from, so I could appear interested, not bloodthirsty.

Because I was bloodthirsty.

But so was Brett. And I needed to be careful as I finished this job, as he couldn’t sink his teeth into me before I went in for the kill first.

“Here, let’s go somewhere quiet,” Brett said, and placed his hand on my lower back, leading me back into the quiet clubhouse and through some back staircases, into VIP areas that he navigated with an ease that made me queasy. How many women had he led back into places like this? Somewhere quiet where he could exert his power? But he was more than just a womanizer. Something more dangerous, and I needed him to show his monstrous side to me. Just for a moment.

Brett led me into a wood paneled room with a bar cart. He motioned to a small loveseat facing floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the golf course.

“Y’know Lola, when my agent told me I should work with a ghostwriter on my book, at first I was offended. I know I may seem like some big dumb athlete, but I thought I could actually write this thing myself,” he said as he poured an amber liquid into glasses from a crystal decanter.

I opened my notebook, running my hands across blank pages to calm myself. “Everyone can write a book, but it doesn’t mean it’s the best use of time. It’s the same way that everyone can build their own house, but doesn’t mean they should. A memoir ghostwriter is like a good architect. We make sure everything’s constructed correctly.” The practiced words leave my lips. My script running as planned.

Brett picked up the two glasses, walking over to the loveseat beside me. He sat down closer than I expected, his knee touching my bare one, and I summoned everything within me not to reflexively jerk away.

“Yeah yeah, I know you have to say that,” he said with a grin, handing me my drink. “Cheers.”

I put on my professional smile, clinking my glass to his and then faking a sip. I set the glass down on the mirrored side table before us, and unclicked my pen, reminding him of the business I was here to attend to. “As I mentioned earlier, the publisher needs me to confirm some details before the book goes to print.”

“Shoot,” he said over another sip of his drink, his eyes shining in a way that made me want to retreat.

Here we go. “On June 2nd of your first year going pro, you mentioned vacationing with your first wife in Greece. But I think we got that date wrong, didn’t we? You went to Athens with her closer to the fall because you hate how hot European cities get that time of year. Isn’t that right?”

He frowned, his eyes assessing me. “That could be right.”

“I think it must be right, because when I went back through our project files I found this email with the plane tickets your assistant bought for June 2nd. But they weren’t for you and your wife. Tickets for you—and your lawyer—to the Cayman Islands.” I flipped to a back page of my notebook where folded pieces of paper and unfolded them, handing them to him. “Do you remember now?”

Brett gripped his glass tighter, and I wondered how much pressure it would take for it to shatter. “What does this have to do with the book?”

“Go in for the kill, Lola,” that tinny male voice buzzed in my ear.

“You weren’t going for a vacation though, were you? You were going to open an account. An offshore account that you would then pay one Ricky Sumner from. Ricky, of course, is the hitman who you hired to kill the husband of your soon-to-be second wife. A California senator, actually, so quite a high-profile hit to make in the name of love. Do I have that right?”

There was a weird twinkle in Brett’s eye. He stared me down before knocking back the rest of his liquor. Then he set the glass on the table. “No one does anything for love, Lola. Maybe you’ll learn that one day.”

“If it wasn’t for love, what was it for?”

His wolfish grin spread across his face, and he reached over to brush a strand of my ink black hair out of my face. “It was for the money.”

“Get him to admit who it was,” the voice urged in my ear.

“So someone paid you?”

“You’d love to know who, wouldn’t you?” he said, his smile twisting. “Didn’t you ever learn the price of curiosity, Lola?”

Suddenly, he lunged at me. I tried to duck away but he was too fast, his athlete reflexes and strong hands pressing me back on the couch as he straddled me.

“What a waste,” he growled, and his hands went for my throat, closing around my windpipe.

I thrashed against him as he shook his head, his expression too calm as he choked me. As if he had done this before. “You have the cute writer thing going for you. You and I could have had some fun together. But you just asked too many fucking questions.”

I slapped at him, scratched at him, but spots started appearing in my vision as his fingers dug deeper into the flesh of my neck. His monster finally unleashed, finally visible for all to see.

The edges of my vision were starting to darken, and I felt a flash of panic—where the fuck were they?—when I heard it.

A crash as the door flung open, the heaviness of boots as people swarmed into the room.

“FBI, HANDS UP!”

Suddenly, the pressure was released from my neck, and Brett rolled off of me.

I fell to the ground next to the couch as the FBI agents in their black jackets emblazoned with yellow lettering surrounded Brett and the couch. I gasped for air, crawling away from him.

A pair of boots stopped in front of me, and as activity continued to swarm in the room and I heard the clicking of cuffs and reading of rights, a man’s face appeared in front of me.

“Are you okay, Lola?” a boyish looking agent asked.

“Get me out of here, Matthew,” I wheezed before my world went dark.

My job was done.

***

I awoke on a different couch, A/C blasting.

“She’s awake,” a female voice said, and I opened my eyes to see a paramedic with rubber gloves reaching over with two fingers to stretch my eyes open, blinding me with a flashlight. “She looks good.”

I swatted her hands away. “Good?” I croaked out. “He choked me. I almost died.”

I pushed myself up to sitting as the paramedic handed me a miniature water bottle, uncapping it for me.

“That’s what the hazard pay is for,” FBI Special Agent Matthew said, sitting behind his desk. The walls were lined with bookshelves, with big posters on the wall featuring books and bestselling accolades, all emblazoned with the Red Fox Publishing House logo.

“You couldn’t even bring me to a real hospital? You had to bring me back to your fake offices?” I said, rubbing my sore neck as the paramedic packed up her things, snapping off her rubber gloves and tossing them in the wastebasket.

“Which is why I called Hannah,” Matthew nodded at the paramedic who nodded and ducked out of the office, leaving me alone with Matthew. “You know we’ve got to keep your cover intact.”

“I’d like a raise,” I muttered. Then, everything came rushing back to me. “Wait—that was it. That was my third book. I’m done,” I said, emotions hitting me as I jumped to my feet, realizing that my obligations were completed—and then freezing as I caught Matthew’s stony expression.

“You should know that I fought for you,” he said softly. “You got Wolfe, dead to rights, but the last one—the last one didn’t hold up in court. I told the Bureau it wasn’t on your performance. That he got off on a technicality, not on something you didn’t lock down. But they said you didn’t get enough admissible evidence, so you still are under contract for one more book with us.”

My legs gave out underneath me, and I fell back to the couch. “That was supposed to be my last assignment. You promised,” I whispered, feeling like a child.

“Lola. I’m sorry. I know these books have been hard on you these past few years. But I mean it when I say that the next one will be your last. One more book ghostwriting job with a new target, one more successful sentencing. Then you’ll have your freedom, a fresh start with nothing hanging over you. Can you do that for me?”

For him? Fuck him, I thought, the underground spring of my anger bubbling up again. Matthew believed I saw him as a lifeline. That I was doing this for him, my handler. But I wasn’t. I was doing this for myself, for my freedom. Freedom he dangled above me like a dog with a bone.

“I need a ride,” I said.

Matthew nodded. “I can get Abby to drive you home.”

“Not home,” I said.

***

I needed the bookstore the way some people need church.

I had Matthew’s fake secretary Abby help me hide the blossoming bruises on my neck with her concealer and then drop me in the parking lot of The Cracked Spine, where my car was parked. I had left it here because it was my second home—and because I never drove myself to operations if I could help it. Driving gave me anxiety.

Abby drove away as I opened the trunk of my Jeep, reaching in and grabbing a canvas bag full of rejects—a book on existential philosophy and romantic love, a slightly racist collection of travel essays by Ian Fleming as he slept his way across Asia, and a recipe book I had never gotten around to actually cooking anything from. The top room in my desert loft was filled wall-to-wall with books, and to make room for new reads I had to cull my collection, which proved to be a sometimes emotional experience. Patience was not a virtue I possessed, and recipe books had a way of making me accidentally-or-not-so-accidentally light things on fire when my frustration boiled over.

I breathed in the warm desert night as I brought my bundle to the bookstore squished between a Hobby Lobby and a Goodwill.

As I walked, I noticed a nice black sports car in the parking lot, which was very out of place for this area of town. I felt the urge to drag my keys across its shiny lacquered paint—what were rich people doing shopping at a used bookstore?—but decided against it. They might be dropping off valuable books.

I pushed through the double doors and dropped my stack on the counter. A small cloud of dust rose from my pile.

On the other side appeared Tabur, popping up from underneath the counter, built like a cowboy with rugged handsomeness and a well-trimmed beard.

“Back again, she is,” he said. He looked at his watch. “Bit late even for you.”

“Yeah, I’ve got to make some sacrifices to the book gods so I can sleep, so I’m glad you’re open late,” I said. The Brett Wolf job still sat behind my sternum like a stone I couldn’t dislodge, and I was searching for a feeling of familiarity. I hoped Wolf was enjoying rotting in a prison cell tonight. “How was your weekend? Make it up to the res?”

“It was good to see family,” Tabur said, and then quickly changed the subject, flinching at some recent memory I could feel but didn’t push on. Tabur was of Native American descent, and I knew his family on the reservation was a complicated, sore subject. My nosiness was not rewarded outside of the memoirs I ghostwrote, so I held my tongue.

“How’s the book?” Tabur asked, his eyes scanning me.

“Oh, y’know. Perpetually unwritten,” I said. The lie came easy—easier than breathing, sometimes. The reality of what I actually did for a living wasn’t something that would bring me closer to the people I interacted with on a daily basis. So I kept the fiction alive, that I was a writer who never really wrote, books dying slow deaths on a hard drive that never saw the light of day.

A lie that was maybe just slightly less lonely and sad than my indentured servitude to the FBI, perhaps.

Tabur scanned the last of the books and printed a receipt, circling my total store credit. “Here’s what you’re working with. I hope you find some inspiration in the stacks,” he said with a smile that reached his warm maple eyes. “We got some good new reads in. Including some books on Russian gulags—weren’t you curious about that?”

“Shh, don’t speak too loudly or the Russian spies will know I’m on to them,” I said, stuffing the receipt into the faded jeans I had changed into before leaving Matthew’s fake publishing offices.

“Aye aye, cap’n,” Tabur said with a salute.

I turned to the endless maze of old wood shelves in front of me, tote bag tucked under my arm. I liked old bookstores because they played dead—slain trees offering ink-stained wisdom from authors either six feet underground or drinking their way there. After the day I’d had, the quiet felt like medicine.

I passed books stolen or donated from libraries, books with weird stains, books with curling, yellowing pages.

And then I ended up in my section. Memoirs. A one-stop shop for one-sided stories, embittered and empowered perspectives. Books with vulnerability and books with vanity. Human memory was so fragile that many of these books were nearly fiction, even if the author believed every word. I understood that more than most.

I crouched down to the lower shelves and ran my fingers across the spines, smiling as I noticed a few of my own books cozying up to one another—entire chapters of my life wrapped up in other people’s stories. Stories that had put them behind bars, my tiger stripes earned with every good deed I’d done to put monsters where they belonged. After everything, I needed the reminder that it had been worth something. That I had produced something real, even if no one would ever know it was me.

But as I was practicing my ceremony of remembering to forget, a figure approached.

“Finding some good books?” a voice asked. Low and magnetic.

It sent a shiver down my spine as I stood and turned toward it.

Toward him.

He looked like he’d stepped off a Florence side street and into the wrong century. Tall enough that I had to lift my chin to meet him, and he wore the height the way he wore everything else—loosely, like it cost him nothing. Sun-warmed skin, linen pants, a linen shirt buttoned to the throat and rolled at the sleeves, as if he’d just set down a basket of olives or abandoned an espresso going cold on some sunlit corner. His mouth tilted—not a smirk, something quieter and more amused, like he’d already decided I was worth the trouble of finding out. Then his eyes found mine, green and unhurried, and the amusement sharpened into something closer to attention. It was the kind of gaze that took inventory. The bookstore lights caught the gleam his watch, and the watch told me what the linen tried to soften: money, and a great deal of it. I knew what money made people capable of—I’d built a whole life on knowing it.

One thing was for sure. This man was not of the desert.

“Lola Whitman, are you not?” he asked, his accent American with just the barest undercurrent of something European tinging his words.

Oh, shit. The FBI had me basically under witness protection in-between jobs. How did he know who I was?

“Who’s asking?” I shot back, kicking myself immediately for confirming I was exactly who he was looking for.

“A fan,” he said, a smug smile creeping across his lips. What about this man had me off my game?

I turned and walked down the row. “I don’t know what those are. We survive off of A/C here.”

He followed me in an easy, casual way. Like a lion who knew his prey couldn’t outrun him, so he took his time.

“I’m looking for a book,” he said, his fingers caressing the spines like they were the bare backs of cherished lovers.

“Good for you,” I shot over my shoulder.

“It’s the one you’ll write for me.”

I spotted something on a shelf and yanked it out. “Are you sure it’s not this one?” I tossed him Writing for Dummies.

“Maybe in another life,” he said, unfazed, setting the book down on a shelf with a lazy flip of his wrist.

“I don’t know, it might suit you in this one,” I replied.

“It took me a while to realize you were the one who wrote the best of these,” he said, waving at the memoir section. “But I don’t understand why you didn’t get more attention for this one.”

He stepped across the aisle to another section, pulling out a small book. Before he could withdraw it, I put my hand on the spine, forcing it back into the shelf. I wasn’t emotionally ready to face that book. Not after the day I’d had. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know you’re the best in the world,” he said, a glint in his eye. “And I know you haven’t written under your own name in nearly a decade. Instead, you’ve been lending your pen to others.”

“I’m not for sale.”

“That’s not what I asked,” he said.

“You didn’t ask me anything,” I said, putting my hands on my hips, trying to keep a strong front.

“I asked for your name.”

“Which you already knew,” I pointed out.

“That’s true,” he said with a playful smile. “Normally, my team would just talk to your book agent about all this, but he’s ended up being fairly… elusive the past twenty-four hours since we reached out. Which means you should fire him, as book agents are supposed to get you jobs, not avoid them. Isn’t that right?”

My stomach dropped. This man knew too much. Which meant he was endangering my secrecy. How much did he know about me?

“I’ll cut to the chase,” he continued in that too-casual, too-warm late-night radio DJ voice. “I’d like for you to ghostwrite my memoir. How much would it cost to have you write my book for me?”

“More than you have,” I said.

“I don’t know anyone with more than I have.”

“Didn’t anyone teach you that wealth is more than a number?”

He smiled, seemingly enjoying this. “They tried. And failed. So what is it?”

“What?”

“Your number. Everyone has one,” he said.

“I threw away my cell phone. It’s a distraction from slowly drinking myself to death in the 112-degree heat.”

“Oh really?” He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a square next-gen phone I didn’t even recognize. He pressed a button and lifted his gaze back to me, his bright green eyes steady.

I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket.

No.

I turned and walked quickly down another aisle. And another—only to find him at the end of it, strolling casually toward me. Unbothered. Like this was a game, and he had all night to play with me.

The exhaustion of the day rose up in me then—Brett’s hands around my throat, Matthew’s face behind his desk, the words one more book ringing in my ears—and I felt the last of my patience dissolve.

“Who are you?” I demanded, sick of playing games with men who thought their priorities outranked mine.

He held out his hand. “Ezekiel Crane. Nice to meet you.”

The pieces came together instantly. News headlines flashing before my eyes. Ezekiel was the world’s youngest billionaire—and an infamous playboy, spending summers getting caught by the paparazzi on Capri with some rising starlet or another. His father, founder of Crane Industries, had been found dead of a heart attack at some international security conference overseas after demoing a new surveillance software. A company built on the data of vast networks of cameras in public and not-so-public areas. A company that had been handed to the heir of the digital throne, Ezekiel himself.

Standing in front of me in this used bookstore was Silicon Valley royalty. Not a man—a prince of surveillance capitalism, inheriting the throne of his fallen father.

Dangerous. So very dangerous.

But I couldn’t find it in my body to run away. To slap away his outstretched hand. Something deeper in me was unfurling—that morbid curiosity that made me so good at getting strangers to spill their guts. The same thing that had gotten me into this mess in the first place.

God. Damn. It.

I shook his hand. “Lola. But you knew that already.”

“I did. And my people will call yours,” he said. “Maybe they’ll answer this time.”

“I didn’t agree to anything. I’m not writing your book.”

He tightened his grip on my hand, that half-smile lighting up his eyes. “You will.”'

🌁 read chapter 2 now

Share

Lola Whitman has built a career disappearing into other people’s stories. As a memoir ghostwriter, she’s invisible by design.

Then Ezekiel Crane walks in — billionaire, tech CEO, defense industry darling — and asks her to write his memoir. He’s charming, he’s dangerous, and he’s hiding something. So is she.

let me be your ghost is a serialized romantic thriller novel about deception, desire, and what happens when the most powerful man in the room decides he wants to know who you really are — and you’ve got secrets to keep.

New installments published weekly here on 💡 Sutoscience — see you in your inboxes soon.

read now: chapter one

Learn more about serializing fiction on Substack here: