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But there’s still the old stuff, if you know where to dig.
Ugly rumors about sleeping with other people’s wives.
Husbands. Politicians. Celebrities. The works.
For small-town kingpins, they get around like hummingbirds. There are whole albums stuffed with photos of them dining with billionaire oil sheikhs, former presidents, corporate titans, wealthy global arms dealers.
No one ever seems to know what they’re doing there, of course, besides rubbing elbows and having a little fun gliding around yet another party. Charity might be the cover story, but there’s always something darker behind the scenes.
Those parties are never just parties.
How damned deep does their influence really run in certain circles?
What kind of power do they have to make a real scandal disappear?
1992. A male movie star found floating dead in his own swimming pool after an all-night party at his Hollywood mansion. The list of drunken attendees was a who’s who of the nineties—and Montero was a guest of honor.
Lucia, his wife, was totally absent. The implication in the headline was that before the actor was found accidentally drowned, he and Montero were fighting over a certain dark-eyed, dark-haired Latina music star.
1995. A younger Montero brooding in the background of a drug bust that put several dozen young stars in jail. Sure, they got out on bail in a day, and house arrest was the worst of their rich-people punishment, but Montero wasn’t even hauled in for questioning.
Did I mention the bust was at that damn house up the hill?
It just keeps coming, year by year, sin by sin.
More accidents.
More overdoses.
More unfortunate slip and falls and accidental gun discharges and drownings and unexplained disappearances, always with one thing in common.
Somehow, there was always Montero and a dark-haired woman involved. Most of the time she was just a passing interest, hanging on his arm instead of his wife.
But sometimes, she was the one who disappeared.
A rising actress named Carla Oneida, 1996. A party on a yacht in Boston Harbor. Over two hundred people on the boat, yet somehow, no one was around when she and Montero went strolling on the deck. She slipped and fell overboard. Her body was never recovered.
A singer named Marjorie Denton in 2001—supposedly vanished hiking, but she’d never been known for hiking trips. She was known for getting her way with rich men to pay for her every need, and her latest sugar daddy? Take a good guess.
So many more.
And even though his name comes up again and again as someone connected to the dead and missing women, the man was never implicated.
Never accused.
Only by yours truly, and maybe the one person I might be able to get on my side—Captain Grant—if he’d man up and stop running away from his past.
My sister didn’t just walk off and leave me at seventeen, all alone, our parents dead.
Celeste never would.
Not even if Ethan Sanderson tried to run off with her and elope under new names.
Not even if Montero promised her a billion dollars if she’d just up and run.
Celeste didn’t leave me.
She was taken.
First by the world he seduced her into, lavishing her with expensive gifts and attention, making her feel special.
Then by whatever the hell he did to her next.
I almost don’t want to know.
But I need to.
I need to know my sister’s fate.
Just like I need to make sure it doesn’t happen again, when I don’t trust for a second that Montero Arrendell ever stopped his debauched ways.
He’s just adapted with age and the times.
A trio of handsome, charming young sons makes for perfect bait.
Think of the Arrendell brothers as talent scouts, luring his prey to him.
That’s why I don’t like the way Ulysses has been eyeing Delilah lately one damn bit.
Another dark-haired, beautiful young woman with stars in her eyes.
For all her Big Apple worldliness, there’s an innocence there that would make her the perfect prize for a warped fuck like Montero.
I won’t let that happen.
I also can’t concentrate with a trio of jackasses talking over my head, not that it’s ever stopped them before.
“Do you guys mind?” I snap.
“I do,” Captain Grant Faircross says, stroking his thick, silver-peppered brown beard. He’s a bear of a man, taking up so much space in our tiny dispatch area. “Remind me again why we’re not telling this girl’s parents she’s dead? She was only twenty-two. Barely out of the damn nest. If that were my daughter, I’d be hysterical. She’s been missing for God knows how long, and we’re just sitting on it?”
“You, hysterical?” Micah says dryly. “Very funny.”
Next to Grant, Junior Sergeant Micah Ainsley is a ghost—pale blond-white hair, white skin, you’d almost expect his eyes to be white too, but they’re kind of an icy blue-grey. He’s stronger than he looks, too. I’ve seen him push a stalled truck up a hill, but that’s just what Micah does.
Always doing too much, pushing too far, and right now he’s trying to push Captain Grant’s buttons as he says, “Think that GED failed you, Captain. I don’t think you know what hysterical means.”
