Chapter 1 : My Number One Suspect

*Gabrielle*

His lips met mine and everything else seemed to fade away. The noise of the party that was going on around us, the real reason I was here, the fact that I didn’t know this man or what he even looked like….it all didn’t matter.

All I could think about was the feeling of his lips on mine. Automatically, I opened my mouth and allowed him to deepen the kiss.

The way his tongue felt against mine made my head spin… and his taste. His mouth tasted like champagne and strawberries. I grabbed the back of his head to press his mouth closer to mine, digging my fingers into his hair. The stranger’s lips were strong, and he took control of our kiss and wrapped his arms around my waist. Usually, I wasn’t the kind of person to give over control to someone else, but this man clearly knew what he was doing.

When he bit my lip lightly, I moaned into his mouth. I knew I should end the kiss—this was not the kind of thing I was here to do—but it just felt too damn good. I was losing myself in the feeling. A sensation in my lower stomach began to build. If he could make my body react like this with just one kiss, I wondered what it would feel like to have his mouth on other places on my body…

Holy shit. How in the hell did something feel this good? I didn’t even know it was possible for a simple kiss to make someone lose any glimpse of reasoning they had. This kiss made the Earth and time as I knew to stop moving. The only thing that mattered in this infinite moment was how this stranger made me feel like the most desired woman in the world.

I wanted to live in this moment forever. A small part of my mind was wondering what in the hell had come over me. I never thought like this. I wasn’t an emotional person and I’d never even had a serious boyfriend. How could one kiss make me feel so many things?

This kind of thing just didn’t happen to me. I didn’t lose myself in moments. I never let my guard down or forgot where I was, especially when I was working. But for some reason, this man, this kiss was different.

When he pulled away, I was able to take a deep breath and began to think clearly again. I shouldn’t have allowed that to go that far. I was here for a specific reason and I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted. I stepped away from the stranger and looked at him for the first time.

Hang on…

I recognized him.

Holy hell.

I had just shared a passionate kiss with my number one suspect.

***

– Three days earlier –

“What the hell do you mean I’m off the case?” I demanded angrily.

The chief of police, Leonel, adjusted his red tie from behind his desk and cleared his throat, unbothered by my outburst.

“Mrs. Clarke, there is no case. We’ve been wasting funds on this for nearly a year and it hasn’t gotten us anywhere. I’m sorry, but we simply can’t afford to spend money on this,” he explained. “You’re also too close to it. It’s too personal for you to get involved any deeper.”

Personal? Of course it was personal. The dead woman was someone I knew. Or rather, someone I used to know.

Ugh. This was why, when I graduated at the top of my class at the police academy, I dropped out as a cadet. Instead, I began working for Davis & Markham, a private investigator company that took on hard cases and often worked closely with the FBI. This way, I could still take on the kind of cases I wanted and make a difference without all this bureaucratic bullshit.

And now, I was in the face of it, being taken off a case for caring too much. I knew it wasn’t right for a detective to be emotionally involved in their case. It could cloud their judgment, and they could make simple mistakes that shouldn’t be made.

But there was no way I was going to rest knowing that Sara’s case laid in someone else’s hands.

“So, what? You are just going to keep allowing women to go missing and sit there and not do anything to stop it?” I asked him, leaning forward in my chair.

I was pushing my limits here. I could be ruining an important relationship, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. This case was too important.

“Many people go missing every day, Mrs. Clarke. We need to focus on the ones we can find,” Leonel said, turning his attention to some papers in front of him as a clear sign he was dismissing me.

That’s when I realized I was fighting a losing battle.

I stormed out of his office without saying goodbye. I wasn’t known for my manners. I walked back to my company's headquarters which was a half-mile away from the police station. It was humid out today which added to my already sour mood. The sidewalk was busy, but I expertly weaved in and out of the crowd.

My company’s building was white and unassuming with no sign on the front of it. With the kind of confidential and high-profile cases we took on, we tried to blend in as much as possible. I walked in, my anger rising with each step I took.

Leonel could throw me off the case under his jurisdiction, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t pursue it myself. My boss, Lisa, wasn’t often around and she let us take the kind of cases we wanted as long as we yielded results.

And I would yield results. Failing was not an option.

There wasn’t anyone in the office besides my friend, Bridgette, who was typing away on her keyboard like usual. Bridgette was the tech expert in our group and was usually on call if an investigator needed information quickly. She could hack into the databases with the tightest security. In fact, she’d be the type of person to make some of the most knowledgeable hackers in the world impressed.

Bridgette and I were working together on the missing women's case for a while now, and we hadn’t discovered much so far. We did discover that all these women had one thing in common though. They were part of a secret society named The Golden Hive, and were always given a different name, so as not to be tracked or found, making our jobs even harder.

We couldn’t find out anything more about this society other than that. To the outside world, they barely existed. According to our research, The Golden Hive looked like a regular, legal club from the outside. We had been stuck forever with no new information, and that was why Leonel had thrown us off the case.

But I had a plan – one that, to the normal person, would seem so outlandish, but to me, was almost expected – and I only needed Bridgette’s help to execute it. I sat at my desk in my cubicle, and sighed loudly so she would know I wanted her attention.

“Yes, Gabrielle?” she asked with a raised brow, not looking up from her computer.

“That asshole threw us off the case,” I told her through clenched teeth.

That got her attention. She lifted her eyes to me, and I could see the same frustration that I was feeling printed in her face.

“Are you kidding me? What do we do now?” she asked in a low voice, although the office was empty.

“I’m going to go undercover. I’m going to join The Golden Hive,” I said with resolution.

Her green eyes grew wide. Bridgette was the closest person I had in my life. I was married to my work and it didn’t allow me a lot of free time to go out and meet people, friends, or potential love interests. This didn’t bother me though. I wasn’t interested in getting to know many people because most people weren’t interesting enough for me to get to know.

When I first met Bridgette, I had tried to keep her at arm's length like I did with everyone else, but her bubbly personality had won me over. I knew she truly cared for me and was just worried about my safety.

Just like I was for Sara’s.

Going undercover was always risky, but especially in a case like this where I couldn’t have any contact with the outside world, even Bridgette, I might never make it out. Of course that scared me, but this case was too important for it to stop me. I knew what her response would be before she even spoke.

“No, you’re not! It’s too dangerous, Gabrielle. From what we know, you have to give up your whole identity to join. You have to cut off all contact with the outside world!” Bridgette exclaimed, disbelief and fear in her voice.

“I’m aware of the risks. But if I don’t do this, who will? The Golden Hive has been running for who knows how long?” I pointed out.

Bridgette's eyes studied mine. Finally, she groaned, giving in, knowing that she couldn’t convince me into changing my mind.

“Alright, fine, I’ll go along with your crazy plan, but at least wait a day until we make a real plan. We need to work on your fake identity before we contact the society, and I can try to dig up some more new information that I might have missed,” she told me.

“You’re the best,” I beamed, then let her get back into her zone.

While she worked, I studied two pictures that I had on my desk since I started working on this case. One was a photo of a young woman who was presumed dead. She was the reason I latched on to this case in the first place. I hadn’t seen Sara in over fifteen years, but I immediately recognized her blue eyes and the sad look on her face when I bumped into her photo.

Sara and I grew up together in an orphanage. We immediately bonded because both of us were given up at birth and grew up with the cold absence of love. Sara was like a big sister to me. We did everything together and she taught me so much during the time we were together. She was the only 'family' I had growing up.

Until she was adopted when she was sixteen. I thought of her often, but I never saw or talked to her again. Then I came across her missing picture. She was under a different name—Lila Garcia—and her look was altered completely. I knew it was her though. I would have recognized Sara anywhere. But her previous life was completely erased, as if orphan Sara had never existed in the first place. As if she was a figment of my imagination.

I started digging. It consumed my days and nights in a way I simply couldn’t let go. I discovered many women who this had happened to. All of them were missing and some presumed dead, like Sara. That was the point when alarm bells rang in my head.

I would find out what was going on at The Golden Hive.

I picked up the second picture on my desk. I stared at the handsome face grinning back at me for a long time. The man had a beautiful light brown complexion, green eyes, and the most chiseled jawline I had ever seen. Just from the picture, I could tell that he was tall, probably around six foot two.

I was sure he was used to getting everything he wanted because of his looks. If that didn’t work, then he could simply throw his money around to get what he desired. He was a billionaire who owned multiple technology companies and was big in the stock world.

I’d never met this man, but I felt rage building up inside of me from just looking at his picture. I wasn’t sure how, but he was somehow involved with the secret society. From Bridgette's deep and thorough research, we discovered that he had been a part of The Golden Hive for a long time.

I was pretty convinced he had something to do with Sara and many other women's disappearances. We didn’t find anything from anyone else yet, so this was pretty much the only lead I had anyway.

Even if he didn’t have a hand in them, he probably knew about what was happening, and that made him just as guilty as the people who were running the show. I would bring this man down and anyone who got in my way while I infiltrated The Golden Hive.

My number one suspect. Dante Faust.