Wulf von Hannover sat at his desk in his small home office, a bunker-like room deep in the center of his house, and clicked an icon on the computer monitor. The wide screen curved around his desk so that he could view hundreds of stocks trading in real time. The computer whined as it dropped to a low-power state.
He stretched hard, arms overhead. The mass of stiff scar tissue on his back didn’t allow his right arm to extend as far as his left, but he grabbed his elbow and forced another few inches out of it.
The flurry of stock position adjustments that morning had left him dizzy, but he was taking a week off—a solid week, he insisted to himself—to marry Rae in Switzerland, three days hence. It was just the religious wedding because they had been legally married in France a few months before, just before they had discovered that she was already pregnant and Wulf’s life had changed.
A small smile curved his lips.
Utterly, utterly changed, and it would change again in six months.
He wanted to compress a young life into that time for his wife because she seemed so very young sometimes, not yet twenty-two, but he wanted to slow down time and watch these few months, savor every moment, because he would never forget even a glimpse.
Wulf stretched harder, lengthening his back and the hard bricks of his abdominals as the computer screen dimmed, turning off. The curved screen was almost as wide as his spread arms, well over six feet.
He faced a solid week without the psychotic flicker of stock symbols and prices, without manipulating the world through the ebb and flow of currency and capital.
However would he survive?
He would have to find a suitable diversion.
Or some suitable diversions.
Wulf smiled in the dark as he rolled his chair backward to leave his small command center. One last glance at the lower, right corner of the screen before it faded to black confirmed that it was nearly two o’clock and he had missed lunch.
No matter. He had just enough time to finish packing his toiletries before the cars left for the airport and his leased plane that would fly them to Switzerland. Their wedding clothes had been sent ahead with his sister, Flicka, after the final fittings yesterday.
Odd, his housekeeper Rosamunde hadn’t called him for lunch when Rae should have arrived home from her meeting with her professors. Rae was working on independent study projects over the summer, one research paper on behavioral interventions in autism spectrum disorders and one on multiple personality disorders, and these evidently required numerous consultations, even one on the very day that they left for their religious wedding in Switzerland.
Outside the door to his office, he followed the hallway that turned toward the main rooms.
Usually, cleaning of some sort was carried out in the afternoons, but the light brown furniture in the vast receiving room stood silent in the unoccupied space. Enormous potted plants, his belated addition to try to add some Black Forest lushness to the desert colors, waved in the air conditioning that poured cool air into the space, beating back the desert sunlight that blazed through the high wall of windows. The pool and courtyard outside warped subtly through the thick, bulletproof panes.
His stomach rumbled, and Wulf pressed his abdomen through his white shirt. He hadn’t worn a tie this morning and his collar was unbuttoned. Rae’s Southwestern casualness was rubbing off on him.
Lunch was his first order of business.
He turned past the grand staircase and meandered toward the kitchen, still peering around the conversation groupings for his staff.
Someone should be around.
Worry prickled the nape of his neck. His computer room was hidden, and staff weren’t allowed in except for basic cleaning in the evenings. He had been locked in since around four in the morning. Due to insulation and the separate cooling system in there, it was practically a bunker.
He might not have heard anything if something had gone wrong.
Wulf stopped, listening to the silence hovering in the formal entertaining room for footsteps or the metallic click of a gun cocking.
The high walls around the room were unblemished. The bulletproof glass was transparent, uncracked. The pool outside glittered blue in the sunlight.
No signs of violence.
His own footsteps tapped the cool marble floor as he walked toward the kitchen.
Murmuring traveled through the door before his fingertips touched it, and he relaxed fractionally. He pushed the door open, hesitating before he walked through the frame.
Inside the kitchen, his staff sat at tables and leaned against the counters, arguing very quietly.
Over by the coffeemaker, one of his most senior security people, Hans, sucked down coffee like he was drowning his sorrows. He poured himself another cup and turned, catching sight of Wulf standing in the door.
Hans announced, “He’s here.”
His staff swiveled and caught him in their stares.
Rosamunde, his house manager, stood over by the stainless steel ovens with her arms crossed, a scowl twisting her face. Most of the other housekeepers had lines of worry between their eyes.
Hans and Luca, the security men who should have been guarding his wife at her university, hunched their shoulders in their black suits.
God, no.
Wulf shoved everything away, and his heartbeat trod steadily in his chest, as calm as if he were on a ridge with a rifle in his arms.
He raised one eyebrow. “What happened?”
“We’re not sure,” Hans said.
“How are you not sure of what happened?” Wulf stepped into the kitchen. The door swung closed behind him.
Luca set his coffee on the steel counter and straightened. “We maintained a short distance, as Ms. Stone requested. Ms. Stone was approached by a college-age female, approximately five feet-eight with dark blond hair and wearing a long skirt and white blouse. After a very short conversation, Ms. Stone followed the female into the dense crowd between classes. We pursued, but they got into a white, older-model sedan, license plate A-K-G dash four seven nine. The other female drove away. Our car was parked in another lot, so we were unable to continue to surveil Ms. Stone.”
Wulf breathed naturally, watching the concerned frowns and tense body posture of his people. He tugged his phone from his breast pocket inside his jacket, but he had received no texts nor calls from her.
He tried calling her mobile, but it went to voicemail before the first ring.
Rae never turned off her mobile, ever. One of the few things that she had splurged on—and she did consider it a financial splurge, which had amused him no end—was a variety of cell phone chargers: car, rapid, and solar, and even an external battery that she kept in her old dorm room, just in case.
He texted, Are you all right? Call home or security line.
Wulf looked up at his people, and their guilty expressions told him that they had already tried all those easy options. “Have we tracked her mobile’s location?”
Hans said, “We are unable to receive a signal from her cell phone.”
“I see. What are our options?”
“We wait until she calls us, I suppose,” Hans said.
“Other options?” Wulf asked.
Luca and Hans glanced at each other.
Hans said, “General rule is that one has to wait three days to file a missing person report for an adult.”
Wulf tightened his hands. “I am aware of the rules that pertain to other people. I asked what our options are.”
Hans and Luca looked at each other again. “We can call her friends.”
“On the contrary,” Wulf said. “We’ll call our friends.”