Andre looks like he’d rather chew glass than agree to that. His possessive streak is a mile wide, and letting Blue have the upper hand goes against every instinct he has. But he looks at the miserable dog on my foot, then at the map on the screen.
"Fine," he grunts. "We try it your way. But if she tries to drug me again, I'll tie her to the bed for a week."
"Promise?" Marcus jokes, dodging the swat Andre aims at his head.
"Pack the gear," I tell them, closing the laptop. "And grab the dog’s sweater. It’s cold in the city."
I look down at Skipper. "You ready to go see mom?"
Her ears perk up instantly. She lets out a sharp yap and spins in a circle, her tail a blur.
"Yeah," I whisper, a tightness in my throat. "We are too."
We’re coming for you, Demi. And this time, we’re not just stealing your dog. We’re stealing the one thing you’re terrified to give up… yourself.
Chapter 2 – Andre
The rental van we’ve set up as a monitoring station is beginning to reek like stale takeout and Marcus’s overpriced energy drinks. It’s been six weeks since we left her in Santa Monica. Weeks of watching her through a lens, tracking her and waiting after we found her again, hoping for the moment she finally breaks and comes to find us. I’m running out of hope that that will happen. Once we found her in San Francisco again, we were going to approach her right away but after some recon, we all decided to wait some more and watch her develop the con she’s working. When we finally go to her, we want to have as much information as possible to make our case of her taking us on as partners, as a team. I’m honest enough with myself to admit that a lot of that decision was pushed by me due to my stubborn pride. I wanted Demi to want us, to come to us. Yeah, I’m a dick.
We all thought if we gave her space after we laid out how we felt and what we wanted from her at Christmas she would realize we all fit together perfectly and she would agree. Taking Skipperwas just a fun way to continue the game we’ve been playing since Halloween. Now, after six weeks of waiting for her, I’m starting to think this game is coming to an end and she really doesn’t want any of us the way we want her.
I scrub my hands over my face as I stare at the monitor, watching the grainy footage of the Horizon Wellness lobby when she walks in. She’s wearing a cardigan the color of oatmeal, a mousey brown wig and glasses that are two sizes too big for her face. She looks small. She looks ordinary.
It pisses me off.
I really thought she’d come after us. I thought the fact that we had her dog would be the tether that pulled her back to us… to me. But Blue is stubborn just like me. She doesn't want to deal with us yet so she’s focused in on her job. It's ironic in a way. Her not coming after us to get Skipper, must that mean a part of her trusts us. I wonder if she realizes that?
"She’s heading to the breakroom," Damon says, his voice flat. He’s been staring at the office camera feeds for too long, but I can see the tension in his jaw. He’s just as disappointed as I am that Demi hasn’t come to us yet.
"She’s been in there at least three weeks that we know of," Marcus mutters from the back, tossing a stress ball against the ceiling of the van. Thud. Thud. "When are we going to end this? We know she’s after Horizon. We just don't know why yet. Why this specific company? What’s her angle and why does she want to hit them?"
"We wait," I tell him, my voice like gravel. "She hasn't seen us. She doesn't know we're here. We follow the con until she hits a wall. And when she hits it, we'll be the ones there to help her break through. She needs to know we’ll stand by her, help her in all of this if she just gives us a chance."
I watch her on the screen as she refills a coffee pot. She looks tired. My hand twitches, wanting to reach through the monitorand pull her out of that building. We aren't giving up on her but I’m losing my patience so if she won't come to us, then we’re coming to her… soon.
Chapter 3 – Demi (February 7)
I've decided that my own personal version of Hell smells like stale coffee, photocopy machine ozone, and the crushing despair of hundreds of minimum-wage cubicle workers. And if the devil has a face, it isn’t a horned beast; it’s a perfectly coiffed, forty-something woman in a white power suit named Dr. Aris Thorne.
I stare over the top of my monitor, my fingers flying across the keyboard as I mindlessly input data into the Horizon Wellness server. To anyone watching, I’m Martha, the efficient, slightly invisible temp with mousy brown hair, muddy brown eyes and oversized glasses who started three weeks ago. I’m the girl who refills the copier paper and remembers how everyone takes their coffee. But under the desk, my knee is bouncing with a nervous energy I can’t quite suppress.
Across the open-plan office, the double glass doors to the executive suite level elevators slide open. The temperature in the room seems to drop ten degrees as Dr. Thorne steps out. She’s flanked by two security guards who look more like privatemilitary contractors than mall cops, with thick necks, earpieces, and suits that struggle to contain bulky muscles.
My stomach twists, a cocktail of pure, uncut rage and a tiny dash of fear. Aris Thorne, the CEO of Horizon Wellness. The media darling who graces the covers of Forbes and Time as the visionary behind the "Holistic Health Revolution."
Bullshit. It’s all a carefully crafted lie from an evil cunt who climbs higher on the backs of the dying and strips everything from their families to increase her bottom line. She’s a predator in Louboutins. She pioneered the "Debt-to-Life" model, a sinister little program buried in the fine print of hospital intake forms. It essentially allows her conglomerate to buy up medical debt for pennies on the dollar and then aggressively seize assets from the deceased’s estate to "recoup costs." It also pads those debts with made up charges to increase the debts owed.
They took everything that was left after Mom died, when I was drowning in grief so thick I could barely breathe, Thorne’s collectors came like vultures. They took the tiny life insurance payout. They took the car. They would have taken the clothes out of Mom's closet if they could have resold them. It wasn’t until months later when the grief cleared enough for me to see straight that I took a deep dive into all the paperwork and found the bogus charges that had been added to our debt. But it was what they did to my mom in the days leading to her death that sent me to the dark web to really start digging into the owner of Horizon and had me adding her name to my list.
I watch as Thorne stops at a manager’s desk, her smile tight and practiced. She touches his shoulder, a gesture that looks benevolent but is purely a power move.
“Your greed killed them all,” I think, the words of my spray-painted messaging echoing in my head. Lamott’s greed kept the medication my mom needed to stay alive out of reach, stealing years we could have had together from us. Hensley was ascumbag who denied care from people who paid for coverage faithfully when they needed it most. And then there’s Thorne. She’s the monster who picks the bones clean after you’re dead. She is my White Whale. The final name on my list.
And she is proving to be a bitch to hunt.
I drop my gaze back to my screen as her eyes sweep the room. I can’t risk eye contact, not today, not yet. I’ve spent six weeks in San Francisco, living out of Betty in a damp industrial park, slowly infiltrating her empire. I’ve gone from janitorial staff to data entry, inching closer to the digital fortress that is her private server.
"Martha, did you finish the intake logs?"
