ELLIE UNPACKED HER groceries in the kitchen of her studio apartment. She had been living in it for three months.
She listened to the satellite news on her phone, the anchorman talking about the wildfires raging across the state. They had brought out the Bible-thumpers. They were out protesting in droves, ranting and raving about how God’s judgment was upon them, punishing the sinners in California, the modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah.
Her smartphone chirped once. A text had been delivered. She glanced down at the counter.
The text was from the dry-cleaning-and-laundry service located two blocks from her building in Culver City. Her dry cleaning was ready for pickup.
The text was addressed to Faye.
That was her name now, Faye Simpson. Faye had an interesting backstory: she was twenty-four, born and raised in Las Vegas, and, until recently, had been a degenerate gambler. Faye’s thing was blackjack. She was a good but not great cardplayer and had racked up sizable debts before deciding, nearly one year ago, to tap the remaining equity from her dying mother’s small home—money her mother was using to pay for hospital and medical bills. Faye headed to the casinos, determined to win big and settle all of her accounts.
Faye lost every single penny.
Which forced her to come clean to her mother—not just about the money she’d technically stolen from the home equity line but also about the fact that she was addicted to gambling and now into the casinos for big, big money. Her mother had died heartbroken and disappointed in her daughter. Faye had hit rock bottom.
Faye had promised her dying mother she would get her act together, and she did. She religiously attended Gamblers Anonymous meetings in the basement of a Mormon church, and, working several jobs, paid off the loan from the funeral home to bury her mother and went on a payment plan with her creditors. When she had saved up a good amount of money, she packed up and headed to Los Angeles to search for a new beginning—and better earning opportunities.
Ellie’s attention was locked on the last line in the text: “Have a wonderful day!” An undercover LAPD officer worked at Clean & Dry. The word wonderful was code for her to drop whatever she was doing and meet her handler now. Something critical had happened—something that required a face-to-face.
Ellie went back to unpacking her groceries, taking her time—had to, because there was a strong possibility she was being watched right now. The LAPD believed her apartment, one of several Anton owned through various shell companies, was bugged with hidden mikes and cameras. It made sense. Anton had insisted she live here, and there was also the matter of the smartphone Anton had given her—the same model he gave to all his stickmen. Her phone, an Enigma Black, a model developed by BlackBerry and Enigma, the world’s top encryption company, was the same type used by spy agencies. Hers, the FBI had told her, came preloaded with special government-level covert software that turned it into a roving hot mike, allowing Anton to listen in whenever he wanted and, if he were so inclined, remotely turn on the phone’s camera. Every text and email she sent or received, every single phone call and every website she visited, was captured and recorded.
And because Anton required his people to have their fancy government phones on them at all times, he knew not only where they were at a given moment but also where they traveled throughout the day, the phone providing real-time GPS tracking information. Her new friends on the combined LAPD/FBI task force had discovered all sorts of interesting things about the technology Anton used to keep a close eye on his stickmen.
Live your life as though you’re on the world’s biggest movie set, her handler, Roland Bauer, had told her. Always stay in character, because someone is either watching or listening to you every single second of your day.
After Ellie finished with the groceries, she took her time straightening up a bit; then she grabbed her purse and a light white cashmere sweater and headed out. The weather was pleasantly cool but not cold. Christmas decorations were on display in store windows.
As she walked, she thought about Cody, wondered what he was up to right now, whether she was on his mind. She hadn’t seen or spoken to him in four months. No contact was allowed during what Roland called her burn-in period, to establish Faye Simpson’s cover, and she realized, again, just how much she missed him.
Her destination wasn’t Clean & Dry but a place three blocks away, a bar called the Alibi. Entering the bar was like walking through a time portal into the late 1990s: wood-paneled walls holding framed covers of vinyl records; autographed photos of dead actors and singers from insanely popular boy bands and the pioneers of a rock music category called “grunge”; and everywhere you looked, sprinkled on the shelves behind the bar and on the walls, these small stuffed animals called Beanie Babies. Everything old was new again, recycled like the movies, as though no one was happy with the present, everyone wanting to retreat into the past, when life had been simpler, maybe.
She was surprised to find the place so busy at three o’clock; then again, it was Friday. A pair of private security guards carrying ominous-looking Shockwave rifles, which fired nonlethal electrified rounds, manned the front door and watched the patrons to make sure no one got stuck with a needle.
The sight of the guards didn’t disturb her. Like everyone who lived in LA, she had gotten used to seeing them in bars, restaurants, malls, hospitals, airports—everywhere, even libraries. Still, she couldn’t escape the reality that she and everyone else in California were now living in a new version of the Wild West—only cowboys now drove cars and carried futuristic-looking shotguns and pistols.
Roland Bauer sat in his usual spot in the back, at the far end of the long bar, watching football highlights on ESPN on the wall-mounted TV directly across from him. He didn’t look at her as she approached, and she didn’t look at him.
What she did look at was what he was drinking: a bottle of Molson. A bottled beer meant she hadn’t been followed, that it was safe to approach.
Anton’s men had followed her a lot in the beginning, during those first few months when she had started working for him as a stickman. He’d had her thoroughly vetted, and while the backstory of Faye Simpson had added up, as Police Commissioner Kelly had promised her, repeatedly, that it would, it didn’t mean Anton trusted her. So he put people on her, to watch as she went about sticking people, finding out if they were carriers. Crowded places that served booze—bars, nightclubs, and concerts—these places had been her hunting grounds because, Anton had explained, they were the safest, the people there often so drunk or on their way to it that they didn’t feel the needle sting from a sticker. She focused on the fat ones. They hardly, if ever, even knew they’d been pricked.
Faye Simpson had collected samples without any incident, and she had discovered two carriers. The pair were undercover federal agents. Roland had supplied her with the same sticker devices Anton used, which proved they were actual carriers. She turned the devices, along with the carriers’ names and addresses, over to Anton.
Roland was still lying in wait for the moment Anton would go after them. When Anton did, the agents, tagged with special biologically implanted GPS trackers, would, hopefully, lead them to the one thing no one in law enforcement had, so far, managed to find: a blood farm.
Ellie slid into the seat beside Roland and, looking inside her purse, made sure her Enigma Black phone was tucked inside the special Faraday pouch woven into a side pocket. The pouch blocked RFID and cell signals, so she and Roland could talk privately without Anton or anyone in his crew eavesdropping.
Roland kept his attention on the highlights as he spoke. “Anton’s promoting you.”
Ellie read the bar menu. “To what?”
“He’s found a carrier, and he wants you to help collect him.”
Collecting a carrier was a big step up—a way to get closer to Anton’s inner circle and, hopefully, discover the names of the big players, maybe even the names of what they called the “blood barons”—the actual heads of the blood cartels. She felt excitement—and some apprehension, too.
“One of ours?” Ellie asked, referring to the pair of undercover agents posing as carriers.
Roland shook his head. “Don’t know the target’s name yet,” he said, “but it’s a guy.”
She didn’t ask how he’d come across this information, because she knew Roland had bugged Anton’s condo and his car. The FBI couldn’t bug his phone, because it was encrypted, and Roland wasn’t about to try to go the legal route and secure a wiretap, because the Feds didn’t know if Anton had any judges or cops on his payroll.
Roland drank slowly from his bottle. She’d been told he’d run a ton of successful undercover ops over his nearly thirty-year federal career, and everyone spoke about him with mystical reverence—Yoda dressed in Dockers, sockless in boat shoes, and the type of bland polo shirts and button-downs you bought at buy-one-get-one-free sales at Target. Ellie thought he deliberately picked out the clothes so he’d blend into the background, look, with his rimless eyeglasses and shaved head, like a middle-aged accountant. Get up close, though, and you could see the wiry strength in his torso and the steel in his eyes.
“It’s going down tonight,” Roland said, placing his empty bottle on the bar.
“How are you going to track this guy?”
“I’m working on that. You up for this?”
“Absolutely.”
“Might not be able to extract you in case shit goes sideways.” He took out his wallet and went through his bills, still not looking at her.
“I’m ready,” Ellie said.
Roland turned his head to her. When she met his gaze, Ellie thought he seemed disturbed, maybe even sad, as if he had glimpsed into the future and had seen tonight’s outcome.
The carrier’s name was Mackenzie Reynolds. He was twenty-three years old, a Silicon Valley brat who had been born and raised Los Angeles. Anton had supplied her with pictures and his destination. Tonight, Mackenzie was supposedly meeting up with some friends at a trendy bar in Beverly Hills called Viva, home of the fifty-dollar martini.
Ellie worked her way through the bar, searching for her target.
Not only was the place a total sausage fest, but the guys in here, most of them in their forties and fifties, judging by the looks of them, were smug corporate types really interested in rattling off their list of financial successes, where they lived, and what kinds of cars they drove, as if laying out all these details was their ticket to getting laid. Ellie supposed it worked, though, because she saw a lot of women around her age actually reacting to this bullshit, giggling and fawning and flirting, looking to trade their bodies and youth for a lifetime free of financial worry.
Finally, she spotted him. Ellie eased up next to him and sparked up a conversation. It went well—so much so that he asked if he could buy her drinks, maybe even dinner. When she said yes he called his friends and told them that he wouldn’t be able to meet up tonight.
For the next two hours, over drinks and fancy appetizers, Ellie worked overtime, pretending to be dazzled by the story of how he had used a good portion of his trust fund to successfully invest in a lot of up-and-coming start-ups, Mackenzie telling it in such a way that he expected her to drop her panties right then and there. He was good-looking and he knew it, gave off that cocky frat boy vibe, like the world had been created solely for him, and when one a.m. rolled around he pretty much told her she was coming back to his place for a drink.
Ellie said yes. She had to get in his pants. Her job depended on it.
Mackenzie had had too much to drink, so instead of driving he ordered an Uber. She’d had a good amount of booze herself—top-shelf bourbon, all of it paid for by McDouche, as she privately called him. During the drive, while they made polite conversation, Ellie spent most of her time inside her head, strategizing the quickest way to knock him out and get him ready for pickup.
Mackenzie had been the perfect gentleman at the bar and in the car. That changed the moment they entered his house, which wasn’t really a house but a mansion in Bel Air. There was no way a twenty-three-year-old dickwad could have afforded such a palatial estate. He took her to the pretentiously titled “drawing room,” complete with its own bar and a pool table. Ellie saw her opening and took over the bartending duties.
“Sit,” she said. “Tell me what you like.”
“Right now I’d like for you to slip out of that dress you’re wearing.” His smile was more creepy than confident, although Ellie suspected it had worked on a fair share of women with low self-confidence and major daddy issues. “But I’ll settle for a Scotch whisky on the rocks. The Glenmorangie.”
“I’m seeing, like, five bottles with that name.”
“Go with the 1981 Pride, the Highland single-malt Scotch whisky. And only use two cubes. You don’t want to water it down. That’s primo stuff—and expensive.”
As Ellie poured the drinks, her hands carefully concealed from his view, she slipped into his glass the pair of white tablets Anton had supplied her. She had taken them from her purse, back at the bar, right before they left. The Rohypnol dissolved easily and quickly.
Ellie sat down next to him on a stiff sofa, the kind designed more for looks than for comfort. As they sipped their drinks, he let her in on his latest venture with some company that she had no interest in. Ellie nodded politely, keeping an eye on his glass. She needed him to drink it all for the pills to work, but all he did was keep sipping.
He put his glass down and made his move.
Shit. Ellie playfully stuck out her foot, put her stiletto on his stomach, and, smiling coyly, said, “How about we make a toast first?”
“To what?”
“To a night that’s gonna blow your mind.”
“I’ll drink to that,” he said, and did.
“I need to use the bathroom for a moment.”
The one off the drawing room seemed like the size of her entire apartment, and everything in there was immaculately clean. She removed the phone from her purse and sent a text to the gangly Asian guy who had picked her up this evening and driven her to Viva. She had met him several times; he supplied her with sticks, and she supplied him with the names of carriers. She didn’t know his name. Never would.
Ellie waited five minutes, making a show of flushing the toilet and running the water before she left.
McDouche was still awake, standing at the bar, waiting for her.
“One more drink,” she said.
He grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and pushed her up against the wall and kissed her. The kiss was rough and sloppy, and he mashed his teeth against hers. She tensed—not only from the implied violence in it and the way he was groping at her but also because she couldn’t stop thinking of Cody.
McDouche sensed her hesitation. He relaxed his grip and moved to her neck, kissing it, and when he reached her ear, his breath hot and smelling sweet from the Scotch, he whispered, “Don’t worry—my mom’s not home.”
Ellie almost laughed out loud. “Your mom?”
“Yeah. She’s in Palm Springs for the weekend. We have the whole house to ourselves.”
“You live here with your mom?”
“I work out of here when I’m in town. Have my own office upstairs.”
She was about to ask him another question when he kissed her hard. Not the way Cody did with care and affection but simply out of lust, like she owed him this. She decided to play along for the moment, moaning at the appropriate times, trying to act as though this were the single most exciting sexual encounter of her life.
When he reached around and fumbled at the zipper of her dress, she whispered, “Let’s go upstairs and hit the shower.”
“No shower.” He unzipped her dress.
“Let’s go upstairs, then, to your bedroom.”
The dress slid off her shoulders. Ellie panicked. The kissing and the way he pawed at her—she could justify those things because she was doing a job. But there was no way in hell she was going to sleep with him; no way in hell was she going to allow that to happen.
The dress pooled around her shoes. He stepped back to appraise her, Ellie standing there wearing her heels, panties, and a lace bra.
“Nice,” he said. “Very nice.”
He dropped to his knees in front of her. The drugs were kicking in. Thank you, Jesus.
His eyes grew wide and then he started blinking rapidly as he looked around, confused.
“Everything okay, baby?” Ellie asked, cringing inwardly at the word baby. He struggled to his feet. She helped him.
“I’ve got, like, vertigo or something,” he said.
“Probably drank a little too much. Let me get you some water.”
She helped him out from behind the bar, holding on to his meaty bicep as he staggered and swayed. Then he dropped to his knees. She let go, and he tumbled sideways, against the floor. She rolled him onto his back so he could breathe better.
He was stone-cold out, but his erection was still standing tall, at full mast.
“Mackenzie? Can you hear me?”
He didn’t answer. She hurried to her purse.
Before venturing out tonight, Ellie had collected a package from a secure drop. The package contained a syringe but no needle. She didn’t need to inject him; she needed him to swallow the syringe’s contents.
Quickly, Ellie shot the silvery liquid down into his throat. McDouche coughed a bit, then swallowed the latest advance in tracking: nanotechnology. Microscopic nanobots, normally used to deliver targeted drugs in the bloodstream, gave off a radio signature that allowed doctors to track their locations inside the body. The nanotechnology was currently being developed to turn people—kids and older parents suffering from dementia—into a walking biological GPS so they could be found in short time.
Currently, the range was limited. Less than a hundred feet. That was Roland’s problem now, not hers. She grabbed her phone and made the call to Anton’s man.
“He’s all yours,” she said when the phone on the other end of the line was picked up.
“Heard a lot of moaning in there,” the humorous voice replied. It belonged to her direct report—Nameless Asian, as Roland referred to him. “Papi show you a good time?”
How the hell did he hear the moaning? The answer broke through her pickled brain: her phone. The phone Anton had given her was bugged. Someone was always listening, always tracking her movements.
“Cameras?” Nameless Asian asked.
“One by the gate, another two near the front door. You want me to see if I can find the security system?”
“No, we’ll take care of it. Go unlock the front door—and kill as many lights as you can.”
“What about the gate? He used his phone to unlock it, and I don’t know the password.”
“We’ll take care of it.”
Ellie got dressed and shut off as many inside lights as she could. The outside lights were a different matter. She found the ones for the front door, but the lights on the front yard were solar powered. She couldn’t do anything about those.
Ten minutes later, while she was drinking a glass of water in the cool silence of the kitchen, she heard the front door open. Three men dressed in black, their faces covered in balaclavas, like they were bank robbers, stepped into the foyer and looked around, studying the layout. The tallest of the trio, a man with Asian-shaped eyes, said to her, “Where is he?”
Ellie didn’t recognize his voice. “Passed out in the drawing room,” she said.
“The what?”
“The big room with the bar and pool table.” She pointed to the hall. “Last room on the right—you can’t miss it. He told me he had an office upstairs.”
The other two dropped their bags and rushed down the hall. After removing Mackenzie from the house, they’d go through his phone and his office computer or computers. Right now Anton had another crew at Mackenzie’s Silicon Valley condo, doing the exact same thing, everyone working well into the night getting to know all about Mackenzie’s online life—passwords for his banking and investment accounts, everything. Once Mackenzie had been shipped off to his new life as a donor, Anton would assume control of all of his accounts, and electronically transfer his money through a series of sophisticated encrypted wire transfers, making it look like Mackenzie had, for reasons unknown, cashed out and disappeared. Anton had developed this side gig, flushing as much money out of rich carriers as he could.
Ellie said, “You want me to stick around and help?”
“Nah, we’re good. Go ahead and take off.”
“You sure? I don’t mind.”
“You did good work tonight,” he said. “Now it’s time for you to go.”