Chapter One

Simone Jones

Los Angeles. Summer. My office baked like an oven while an ancient, dented fan spun on my desk. Occasional dips into a half-empty bottle of booze quenched my thirst like a cup of sand.

I stared out from the open fourth floor window and squinted against the white washed concrete glare. It didn’t pretend to be anything else but light and heat, unlike the people I dealt with in my previous job. Most folks want simple in their professions. Not me. I created intricate fantasies for people, and I loved it. Everything was great, until I got blackballed and was forced into getting the goods on cheating spouses just to put bread on the table. The hours and the clients stank, and I wanted my old life back. But little did I know the complicated, torturously dangerous path I would take.

She didn’t even knock on the office’s half-glass frosted door with my stenciled professional name and occupation. Just strutted right in with a body that would set any man on fire and so glacial a manner that the temp fell twenty degrees. A retro fifties style midnight blue dress clung to her like a second skin and a wide-brimmed, dark hat with spiderweb netting covered the top half of a forbidding angelic face. Ice-blue eyes pinned me into immobility while light blonde hair about her shoulders shone like a beacon. A somewhat cruel smile quirked at extreme edges of full lips red as a sunset while poised between fingers of a black, satin gloved hand was a lit cigarette. Her voice was just as smoky.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Hawk. If that is your real name? Garrett Hawk?”

“A sobriquet from my previous lamented career.”

“I’m glad you continue to use it. It’s how I found you. Or how my friends said I could find you. They said you were reliable and discreet once.”

My lips curled, remembering the past injustice. “I still am.”

“In spite of your current reputation, that’s what they said too.”

“They?” I said. “And they are?”

“People. People we both know. They highly recommend you. Said you wouldn’t disappoint.”

“Nice to have fans. I’m sure they have names too. Like you?”

She slid around and sat on the edge of my desk, right next to me. Smooth, graceful. She crossed a pair of shapely legs, slow and provocative, stubbed out her cigarette and removed another from a gold case. “Jones. Simone Jones.”

Of course. How many times had I heardthat last name. “All right, Jonesey. What’s on your mind?”

“I have a job for you. You’ll be handsomely compensated. And no questions asked.”

“A job. Well, that’s what I’m in business for. But I do have one question: What’s the job?”

Her lips parted, just enough to accept her unlit cigarette. I grabbed my lighter and torched it. Who did she want me to follow and photograph? A wandering husband? His mistress? Or maybe it was a muscle job? Lean on someone to “quietly” leave town? Other possibilities ran through my head, all of them depressing. She took a long drag, then held her cig up to one side with her other arm folded under those generous, well-shaped breasts. Her eyes narrowed and those ice-blues stabbed me like a knife.

“I want you to kidnap me.”

My lighter lid closed with a snap.

I said, “Sure.”

***

In my previous life I would take precautions, like check out the client, make sure they were giving me the straight scoop, then negotiate boundaries on what they wanted done versus what I was willing to enact. All nice, proper, legal and safe. But the money Ms. Simone Jones plunked down on my desk bought my total cooperation. No questions asked and so I didn’t. The w