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Con remained quiet as he drove, not sure of what to say. He wasn’t a horny teenager anymore and he knew that the kiss was just a way to keep him from being recognized.

But it certainly felt like something more.

Sure, they’d attended the party under false pretenses using aliases, but Martin was the one who had gotten the FBI involved and it was his house, his party. If they’d been caught, all they had to say was that they were working on the case, trying to understand the players, trying to identify one or more suspects.

It wasn’t ideal but it wasn’t the end of the world, either.

Con sighed.

He wasn’t sure what was going on with him these days.

You’re just a lonely man, Con. Your wife left you, your job is in shambles, and it’s that time of year again.

He always got squirrelly around the anniversary of his sister’s disappearance. But, for some reason, this year felt particularly trying.

“You were right,” Alex said unexpectedly.

Con startled and raised an eyebrow, unsure of where his partner was going with this.

“Someone is exploiting them— all of them. I heard them talking…”

He glanced over at his partner. She really did look beautiful, especially in the moonlight, which was incredibly bright tonight, illuminating half of her face in an ethereal glow.

“Go on.”

“I couldn’t tell exactly who was speaking, but the others were telling Martin to just pay a 250k ransom. They said… they said that all of them paid it and so should he.”

Con nodded. He was glad that she hadn’t brought up their ‘interaction’ and with his focus back on the case, it took his mind off everything else.

For now.

“I only saw Adon and Thomas. Who else was there?” he asked.

“Martin, of course, and I think the editor?” she shrugged. “They called him Ed.”

“Squat man? Out of shape? Looks like the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons?”

Alex paused and Con wasn’t sure if she got the reference.

“Big gut, Cheetos fingers. Has—”

She smiled.

“I know who that is. And, yeah, it was him. Anyways, they were pissed that Martin had called in the FBI—like I said, they just wanted him to pay up. But he was adamant. The others were concerned that when we found the pirated films we’d also find the hidden videos.”

“Which we did.”

“Right. But Martin didn’t think that we would and if we did, that we wouldn’t do anything about it.”

Con bit this lip. He wasn’t sure what to do with Adon’s video. He wasn’t a fan of the rampant cancel culture that permeated social media, the fact that you could take something out of context and use it to ruin a person’s life. He’d once heard a political activist speaking out against racism. They literally said during a small Q&A session, “To say that immigrants who come to our beautiful country are lazy, that they don’t work, that they’re a drain on the system is just plain wrong.”

Someone removed ‘to say that’ and ‘is just plain wrong’ and reposted the middle part without context.

Even after clarifying, apologizing, and reposting the entire clip, the politician was still forced to step down.

It was insane.

But what Adon had said in that eight-second video… high or not… was reprehensible.

“Ed was curious about what blackmail material they had on Martin, but Martin just shrugged this off, said they had nothing,” Alex continued. “And when someone is adamant—”

“—the opposite is often true,” Con finished for his partner.

“Right. I think maybe tomorrow when we go to meet Martin, we visit Ed and Adon as well. Speaking of which, what do you want to do with Adon’s video?”

“Not sure yet,” Con admitted. “I think the best course is to keep it to ourselves for now.”

“I agree. One more thing, they mentioned a Charles…?”

Con nodded.

“Charles Conway. Another producer of the pirated films. He’s on Martin’s list of people who had access to the movies before their release.”

“Well, they said that Charles paid and then fucked off, left the country. The way they were talking, I get the impression that he isn’t coming back anytime soon.”

Con scratched the back of his head. Then he loosened his tie.

“Charles’ secretary mentioned that he was out of town for a week. I’ll reach out again.”

“There were five names on Martin’s list, right?”

“Including him, yeah.”

“Well, if what the men at the party were saying was true, then every one of them was blackmailed. And everyone paid, except for Martin.”

Con considered this.

“According to Martin only three of the new releases from last year were pirated. But there are five of them.”

“Could be that unique copies of the same movies were uploaded, and each contained different blackmail material,” Alex suggested, following along with his train of thought. “Although, I only found one version of Quantum Guardians .”

“Or it could be that one of them is lying, that they weren’t blackmailed.”

“Well, Adon was, that’s for sure,” Alex said. “I think we can cross him off the suspect list.”

“Agreed. I’m thinking that maybe three of them were extorted last year and after they paid DLean69-420 or whatever the hell his name is took the movies down,” Con said, thinking out loud. “Maybe Martin knew about the extortion then, maybe not. But this year he hears about it or perhaps DLean reaches out with a warning and a demand for cash. Martin is scared that his dirty laundry is going to be aired next.”

Alex nodded in agreement.

“It would explain why he got us involved preemptively. I’ll go through the other videos from the Midnight Matinee computer, see what I can find.”

“Good idea.”

The car went quiet and a few minutes later, Con pulled up to Alex’s hotel room. She hesitated before getting out and then said, “Tonight was exciting.”

Con shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“Yeah. You—you want me to pick you up tomorrow?”

Alex, fully out of the car now, turned back to face him. She was still smiling.

“I’ll get an Uber. See you.”

“See you.”

Con made sure that she got into her room safely before driving away.

Tonight was exciting.

What did she mean by that?

Even he had felt the undeniable rush of adrenaline at the party. But was that what she was referring to?

Or was it something else?

Get it together, Con, he scolded himself.

He was tired, exhausted, even, and knew that he should just go home.

But the thought of returning to his lonely, empty house was depressing.

No, he wasn’t going home. Not yet.

Instead, Con took out the piece of paper that he’d scribbled on while Alex was watching the pirated films.

Then he punched the GPS coordinates into his phone.

Just under two hours later, he reached a small, dirt road, a single-lane highway slicing through the Mojave Desert.

The road was flanked by mostly flat terrain, but there were some dunes to the west. The moonlight cast deep shadows over the desert, mostly from yuccas, Joshua Trees, and cholla cacti. Pervasive creosote shrubs stretched across the landscape like devil fingers.

Part of him didn’t want there to be a rock outcropping. Part of him wanted this whole hidden Matthew Nelson Neil audiobook message to be a sham, just the man continuing to taunt Con about his missing sister.

Better yet, that the differences were just errors and nothing more.

But as Con’s cell phone notified him that he was nearing his destination, he spotted it: a large, eight feet wide by four feet tall chunk of rock to the east, breaking the otherwise flat terrain.

It wasn’t Giant Rock, but it was damn close.

Con’s breath was coming in shallow bursts as he pulled over, making sure his car was well off the road.

He stared at the rock for several minutes, his heart thudding in his chest.

Then he grabbed his phone.

A sleepy-sounding Beth answered on the fourth ring.

“Con? What time is it?”

“Late.”

“Is… is everything okay?”

No, definitely not.

“I still love you, Beth. And… and I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry for—”

“Please, Con. I have a big day tomorrow. I need my sleep.”

He wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard someone snoring in the background.

“I know, I know.” His breath hitched. “It’s just, I’ve been thinking and—”

The line went dead.

Con exhaled, put his phone away, and got out of his car. He walked around to the trunk and opened it.

Inside, he found the pair of gloves and the shovel he’d placed there earlier that night before picking up Alex. He took these out and started the half-mile trek to the rock outcropping.

Somewhere far away, a coyote howled, long and loud.

***

What are you doing, Alex? she asked herself. What in the hell are you doing?

She’d nearly invited Con into her hotel room for a drink.

Nearly, but she hadn’t.

It’s the champagne , she told herself. That’s all it was .

Alex slipped out of her cocktail dress and got into something more comfortable. Then, as she removed her makeup, she called Tori again.

“Alex?”

She could tell by the sound of her friend’s voice and the loud background that Tori was out and that she was probably drunk.

“Sorry, didn’t know you were busy.”

“No, hold on—Ben, stop, give me a second. It’s Alex.”

She heard Ben jokingly refer to her as ‘Alex the Bigshot Agent’ and smiled.

Alex liked Tori’s boyfriend. He was a nice guy. Not nearly as smart as she or Tori, but he’d make a good Agent one day.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Alex said.

“No, wait, I want to hear about your night.”

She heard Tori walking, opening a door, then another. Judging by how the music was muted now, Alex assumed that her friend found her way to a bathroom stall.

“What’s going on? How was the party?”

“You’re not gonna believe what I did tonight.”

“Let me guess, it has something to do with your hot partner?”

The smile melted off Alex’s face. Tori didn’t know how close to the truth she was, and Alex suddenly changed her mind about what she wanted to say.

“No, nothing like that,” she lied. “I was just hobnobbing with some celebs, that’s all.”

“Really? Who did you see?” Tori’s voice brimmed with excitement.

“A girl never tells.”

“Oh, c’mon. I bet you saw Ryan Reynolds. Or maybe Tom Hardy. Alex, if you hung out with Tom Hardy, I will kill you.”

Alex laughed.

“Not sayin’,” she teased.

“You’re such a bitch. A lucky bitch. I bet my first assignment is going to be like somewhere in Alaska. Can you imagine?”

“Could be worse.”

“How?”

“I dunno, Utah, maybe? Investigating a soaking epidemic?”

This set Tori off. The girl started to howl and, eventually, Alex joined in with her.

When the laughing fit passed, “I miss you, Tori.”

“We miss you too, Alex. And we’re so fucking jealous.”

“Your turn will come. Have a good night.”

“Night, bitch.”

Alex was still grinning when she hung up.

She brushed her teeth, chugged some water, and crawled into bed.

That night, she dreamed of her partner Constantine Striker.

***

Con could barely lift his arms. His gloves were shredded, and his palms were raw.

The first foot or so of the desert earth was soft, but after that, it was like clay. Hard. Impenetrable.

And he’d found nothing.

Not a scrap of clothing, not a bone, no single piece of evidence that his sister had ever been here, let alone buried at the base of the rock.

But eleven years was a long time. A long time for the sands to shift, for animals to feast.

If The Sandman had buried Valerie here before being arrested, if she truly was the convicted serial killer’s first victim, then there was no guarantee that there would be anything left.

“Fuck you,” he hissed. Then he spat a thick paste on the sand. “ Fuck you .”

Con was surrounded by holes, none of them particularly deep, but there was a hell of a lot of them. He tried to suckle some water out of the bottle he’d brought with him, but it was bone dry. Dejected, annoyed, and so exhausted that he could barely move, he slowly picked up his things and walked back to his car.

His phone had long since died and when he plugged it back in and powered up again, it immediately started to buzz.

He had fourteen missed calls.

All of them were from Special Agent in Charge Marcus Allen.

As much as Con was inclined to ignore the man, as much as he wanted to go home and pass out, call in sick, do whatever he needed to rest his sore body and mind, fourteen calls were a lot.

Even for Marcus.

Instead of checking his messages, Con elected to simply call the man back.

“Con, where the fuck are you?”

This was aggressive even for him, and the harshness of his supervisor’s words momentarily wiped away his fatigue.

“What’s going on? Is it Agent Frost?”

“No, it’s not Agent Frost ,” Marcus spat the name. “It’s your producer friend.”

“Martin Yeo?” Con was incredulous.

Did the CEO see him last night? Did he call to complain?

“Yes, Martin Yeo. Apparently, the man had a party last night. One of the servers found him early this morning.”

Con made a face, and he raised his eyes.

The sun was just starting to peek over the desert sand.

How could it be morning already? How could I have spent all night digging?

“Found him? Marcus, what are you—”

“He’s dead, Con. Martin Yeo overdosed.”