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I keep replaying the scene in the garage, dreaming about that moment. I never thought she'd let me have her like that so soon, but fucking hell, she is a lot of woman, made just for me. And her pussy… God, her pussy. I let out a groan and she frowns in reaction, yet doesn’t look at me.

She's so beautiful, even while she’s doing mundane things like eating, and I can stare at her all day long. My cock is semi-erect now. This is going to become a problem if she won't let me touch her again. When the truth came out about my stalking tendencies, I thought she was going to lose it, but she was reasonable. Damn it, I must have played this really well on my end, since she accepted it without any outward drama. I thought, maybe this is just the beginning of something really special. But that thought has been put on hold…

"Stop staring at me while I'm eating. It's creepy, Laszlo," she says as she finishes her food and gets up, moving past me and rolling her eyes in a way I find adorable. She's wearing her scrubs, ready for a long shift at the hospital today, so I won't bother her. I've checked her schedule earlier on, because this is the kind of husband I am—the caring one, who buys his wife's hospital to make sure her workplace is secure.

"Have a good day, ma macabre, and try not to work too hard," I tell her when she's at the door.

She turns back, glares at me, and then leaves, shutting the door behind her—I mean, slamming it hard. She must be in a little bit of a mood, but that's understandable since her period is due in a couple of days. Yes, I'm also the kind of husband who knows when to expect the worst, but I took matters into my own hands. I told Dolores to prepare her food with primrose oil in there, so that eventually, when her period starts, her PMS symptoms will be less severe.

After she's gone, I go back to the kitchen, wash my hands, and head downstairs to the mortuary to work on Charles. Manon doesn't know this, but he's already in my fridge, and my company is handling the funeral. My men managed to convince his mother after the police notified her that her son was beaten up by a local gang to rob him, on my property. They took his ring. So far she has no clue her son’s girlfriend actually married the undertaker. I heard she’s not big on listening to the news and is quite the recluse. Everything in its own time.

That said, the woman seems to be a piece of work. She screamed like a hyena in pain for a few minutes then calmed down, as if nothing happened. I guess, in the scheme of things, she took the news well. I do not understand people. They’re strange.

I switch on the light when I reach my station in the basement, and immediately notice that things on my desk are out of order. I was here two days ago, working on another body, sewing the skin on the stomach that was torn during a bad accident.

The light flickers, and I look up at it, tensing up. I scan the room again. There is dust on the counter by the sink. Dust. There is never dust down here. I wipe my finger through it and stare at the gray smear like it's going to tell me something, and of course it doesn't.

My first thought is that someone was here because several of the newly washed towels are on the floor, and the place smells odd—not the usual clinical smell of bleach, but a tangy and metallic odor, as if someone had spilled blood all over the floor and didn't clean it. Dolores doesn't come here; she knows the basement is a no-go zone for her, and only a few of my inner circle show up here, only rarely.

I stand very still and try to think, but I can't, because nothing in this room is where it's supposed to be. The tools should be lined up, largest to smallest, edges square to the tray. That is how I leave them. That is how I always leave them. I don't leave scissors lying open. I don't leave scalpels loose. Someone has touched everything, and my whole body is starting to hum with this reality.

I go to the body. I already brought Charles out of the freezer a short while ago. He is as I would expect, covered, but the sheet is wrong—pulled back a few inches more at the top, like someone lifted it to look at his face and didn't bother to put it back the way I always insist it should be. My hands are shaking now. I fix the sheet. I smooth it down at the corners the way I like it, and it doesn't help because the fridges are behind me and I can feel them. When I turn around, one of the doors is half open.

Half open.

I never leave them open. Never. The cold is leaking out into the room. I walk over, pull the door and slide the tray out. It’s empty. The others are closed but I check those, too. Nothing's missing, nothing's moved, but that isn't the point. The point is the door was open, and I never leave them like that.

Someone stood down here in my basement, in my one quiet place, and went through my tools and my sacred space. Was this Manon? Was she here?

No. It's impossible. She doesn't have the combination. I lock this door with a code. My heart goes like a fist against my ribs.

I close the fridge properly and start cleaning. I can't stand it another second. I pick the towels up off the floor, fold them and put them back. I gather every scalpel and every pair of scissors to lay them out again, largest to smallest, edges square, the way they're meant to be. I wipe the dust off the counter, then wash my hands and scrub the smell of that metallic tang out of my nose as best I can. Only when everything is back in its place, when the room looks the way it's supposed to, do I let myself go back up the stairs.

I take my phone out in the kitchen and call Rafe.

"I need you to check something for me," I say. "Manon. Did she get to the hospital? Confirm she's on the floor."

"I saw her arriving and walking through the door, but give me a minute to confirm she's in the building, boss." He hangs up.

I put the kettle on because my hands need a job. I take it off again. Five minutes, and my phone rings.

"Boss." His voice is careful. "That's the thing. She got there—my guy's got her on the hospital cameras, driving in, parking, walking through the front doors in her scrubs, badge and all. And then, nothing. She never badged in, never made it to the floor. She's not in the system, nobody paged her, and nobody's seen her since the lobby. She walked through the front doors and she’s just—gone."

So she wanted to be seen. She parked where the cameras could get her, walked in so there'd be a record of it, and then vanished from a building full of people who'd have noticed a struggle. She walked out of that lobby on her own feet. I'd stake my life on it. What I can't stake anything on is what happened after the last camera lost her, whether she got into a car because she chose to or because someone put her there. Not knowing which is worse than either answer would be.

That is so much worse than being taken, because being taken isn't a choice, but this was.

I hang up without saying anything because I don’t trust myself, and go up to my office where I start making calls.

I call up my men, my allies. I tell them to drop whatever they're doing and find my wife, and when one asks me where he should start looking, I ask him if he's an idiot because if I knew where to start looking I wouldn't need him, would I? So I hang up on him.

I pull up the surveillance on my monitors—the house, the gates, the street cameras, the hospital feed Rafe's man already flagged—and watch her walk through those front doors again and again, in through the glass, not looking back once, and then nothing.

I click through feeds that should have her in them and don't. My whole face goes hot, along with the rest of me.

Dolores comes in with a double shot of espresso on a little tray and sets it down next to me. Then, in a fit of rage, I sweep the whole desk. Files, folders, the espresso, all of it goes flying, and the little cup shatters against the wall and leaves a brown streak running down the paint.

"What is wrong with you?" Dolores says, hands on her hips, unflinching. She’s been with me forever, and has no problem with chiding me.