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MADDOX

I shoot my eyebrows up. “What? Right now?”

“One of the staffers of Aces Underground wouldn’t have planted this note on you if it weren’t urgent, Maddox.”

“But we really should wait until morning.” I gesture to the window in Alissa’s living room. “I need you to be safe. It’ll be safer when it’s light out.”

“Obviously that would be safer, but that’s why you’ll come with me,” she says. “Besides, there will be fewer people milling about in the evening.” She points at the picture of the Monument Park waterfalls on her phone. “Besides, we’ll be right across from the airport. I bet plenty of light will be coming from there.”

“Then I’ll go alone. You stay here. I need you safe, Alissa.”

She grabs my hands. “Maddox. All my life, I’ve taken the easy path, the risk-averse path, the way forward that offered the least resistance. But you awoke something in me, a small flame that was dormant in me for years, the small flame that only ever grew when I performed an ornate flute sonata for a crowd of hundreds. The flame that I thought I extinguished when I decided to forsake my musical training for a more stable job as a nurse.” She places my hand over her heart. “But you brought it back, Maddox. Taking me to the club, telling me about your passions, kissing me”—her cheeks flush—“ fucking me.”

My own cheeks warm at her words. “But Alissa?—”

She holds up a hand. “No. No but Alissa , Maddox. I want to go there, and I want to go there tonight. And not just because there will be fewer people around, and not just because the lights of the airport should keep us well lit, but also because…” A wicked grin crawls across her face. “Because it is scary. Because it’s risky. And there’s no man I’d rather share an adventure with than you, Maddox Hathaway.”

Her words make my dick harden.

“Fuck, Alissa.” I brush a finger over her cheek.

“And if you come with me on this errand, I will let you do anything —and I mean anything —to my body when we get back.”

I swallow. I know I’m thinking with the wrong head. This is a fool’s errand. Some patron at the club probably put this note in my jacket and is pulling a prank on me.

But I don’t care.

I’m in.

Mad Maddox is in, too.

I crush my lips to Alissa’s.

The kiss is raw, feral, perfect.

I’m ready to forget this expedition of hers and fuck her senseless?—

But she breaks the kiss.

“Damn, Alissa,” I growl.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I intend to deliver on my promise to you, Maddox.” She leans into my ear. “Like I said, anything .”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I love this woman. This woman who turns me on like no other, who can nearly make me jizz my pants from a few whispered words.

And I think she loves me, too.

But it’s too soon to express those feelings. I’ve known her for all of three days.

I grab my car keys out of my pocket. “Let’s go.”

She looks at my keys and frowns. “Your Rolls-Royce might be a little conspicuous. We’ll take my car.”

“You have a car?”

She nods. “Of course I do. My father bought it for me when I moved to the States. Took me a long time to get used to driving on the wrong side of the road, but I’m a decent driver.”

“Then how come you’re always taking the train downtown?” I ask.

She raises an eyebrow. “The hospital doesn’t pay for my parking. Only the doctors get that privilege. And I’m sure as hell not tanking a third of my paycheck for a spot in a garage when a round trip on the L only costs five dollars.”

“Right, of course.”

Sometimes I forget that, unlike me, most people didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in their mouth. Luckily, my membership at the club entitles me to a spot in a nearby garage. Rouge takes care of her members.

Alissa puts on a puffy coat and leads me out her back door and down a few flights of exterior stairs. She points to a beat-up blue Nissan Sentra parked in a tiny spot behind her building. “That’s Molly,” she says.

“Molly?”

“Named for Gustav Mahler, of course. My second-favorite composer.”

“Another dead guy I’ve never heard of?”

“We’ll fix that soon. The finale of his second symphony is like opening the gates of heaven.” She unlocks her car with her key fob. “But that’s neither here nor there. Would you like to drive?”

I’ve been driving the Rolls for so long that I’m worried a modern car might feel weird, but I always prefer to drive, even if it’s not my car.

“If you don’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t mind.”

I open the passenger side door for her.

She gets inside. “Always the gentleman.”

I get in her car and start the engine. It takes a second to roar to life—God, this car could use a tune-up—and then I pull out of her narrow parking spot and drive onto the city streets.

“Can you pull up Monument Park on the GPS?” I ask her.

“Already on it.” She places her phone on the hands-free mount above her car’s stereo.

Because it’s late at night, the drive doesn’t take long. Rush-hour traffic to O’Hare is normally brutal, but we make it in a cool twenty minutes. Alissa’s radio plays the local classical station, and she hums along, her eyes closed.

I park at one of the hotels along I-294. We walk across River Road to Monument Park. Even in the chilly winter air, the waterfalls are pouring over the stony structures. It’s pretty loud, and I guide Alissa a few steps away from the falls so we can call the number on the top of the note. I dial the number and put it on speaker so Alissa can hear.

It rings once, twice, three times. I fear it’s about to go to voicemail, revealing that this is indeed some elaborate prank to embarrass the son of the disgraced former Mayor of Chicago, when the call clicks.

It’s an artificially low voice, clearly distorted in the same way it’s done on the news when a person’s identity is being obscured.

“Are you there?” the voice asks.

“I think so,” I say. “Monument Park in Rosemont, right?”

“Yes.”

“Cool. Now what do we do?”

A pause, and I hear the shuffling of papers in the background. Finally the person returns, reciting in a singsong voice. “ North on the river, you’ll find a nice clearing. The darker it gets, the closer you’re nearing. Quadruple the instants you’ll say ‘good God damn!’ This won’t be a picnic, you’re likely to scram. ”

Alissa leans into the phone. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Another pause, and then the voice utters three more words. “Bring a spade.”

The call drops.

“Bring a spade?” I ask. “How can we bring May with us? We’re looking for clues about her, just like the riddle indicated.”

Alissa strokes her chin for a moment. “A spade…”

“Are we supposed to go back to the club and grab one of May’s coworkers? Maybe they’ll know where to go.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t think so. I think it’s a play on words. The word spade can have other definitions. I think this guy means to bring a spade as in a shovel.”

I drop my jaw. “You mean we’re supposed to dig for buried treasure or some shit?”

She nods. “Or some shit, I’m assuming. The evidence we’re looking for. The crown that’s interred. Rouge has probably buried it somewhere in the forest preserve.” She gestures to the roaring waterfalls. “The first riddle gave us our starting point, and then this new riddle is directions from here.” She grabs her phone and opens the notes app. “What was it he said again? North on the river …”

“ You’ll find a nice clearing, ” I finish for her. “ The darker it gets, the closer you’re nearing .”

“And then something about good God damn.” She wrinkles her nose. “It was odd.”

“ Quadruple the instants you’ll say ‘Good God damn!’ ”

“Right. And then”—she shivers—“ This won’t be a picnic, you’re likely to scram. That last part gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

“If we need to get a shovel, we’ll have to buy one,” I say. “But we might have to wait until morning. I doubt that Menards is open this late.”

She shakes her head. “We don’t have to. I have a couple of shovels in my trunk.”

“You do?” I raise an eyebrow.

She chuckles. “Nothing suspicious, I assure you. I think I told you that I was helping my friend Dinah with some gardening a few weeks back. I brought some shovels to help and never took them out of my trunk.”

I rub at my forehead. Damn. That was my last shot at convincing Alissa to wait until morning for this wild goose chase.

But I paste a smile on. “Okay, let’s get back to the car, and we’ll figure out what the hell the rest of that riddle means.” I rub my hands up and down my arms. I don’t feel any fear. Not exactly. Just…apprehension. Like if we take one more step, we’ll never turn back…and our lives will change forever. “What do you think we’re going to be digging up?”

She shakes her head. “No idea. It could be evidence that Rouge is trying to hide, showing that she’s up to something menacing. A payment for some unseemly business. Or it could be”—she grimaces—“something far worse .”