I pressed, probed.

It was from when I’d fallen off my motorcycle during my aborted attempt at a university degree, but it felt thicker and weirdly sensitive. I took away my hand before I irritated it any more. Had to be all the medication they’d pumped into me directly after the accident—and the shit I was taking now. I couldn’t remember anything about the first few days following the crash but I knew they’d put me into a medically induced coma.

Probably because a branch—that was it, a branch—had punched through my chest.

Funnily enough, that grisly wound had mended far faster than my foot. No damage to the heart, though the lungs weren’t quite at full capacity. Right now, however, my most important organ was my brain.

Ten years was a long time, but it wasn’t long enough for the truth to disappear forever.

* * *

—

Once home, I left Pari talking a mile a minute to her mum and walked upstairs to my suite. With every step I took came the acceptance that no matter the depth of my loathing for my father, I’d never been able to cut ties with him. Part of me had always been waiting for a moment of revelation, an explanation of that scream, though neither one of us had ever brought it up.

The stakes had changed now, all the questions on the table.

I went straight into my bedroom, to my desk in front of the balcony sliders. Taking a seat, I booted up my laptop and input the passcode, then navigated my way to the encrypted file titled Ma.

Inside was the report of the private investigator I’d hired after my first big royalty check. The report wasn’t long, but it was thorough. The man hadn’t been afraid of pushing a few boundaries and he’d found his way into databases he had no business accessing.

No banking activity.

No sign of my mother on the voting rolls.

Lapsed driver’s license.

No evidence that she’d ever put down a deposit on a rental apartment.

Expired passport, with no indication of travel outside the country. I have no idea how he got that particular printout, but he’d attached it to the final report.

New Zealand was an archipelago—you couldn’t leave it without a passport unless you were on a private vessel that could evade the authorities. Maybe a yacht. But my mother had hated sailing. Despite that, I’d nurtured the vague, romantic hope that she’d hitched a ride to a distant beach where she could spend a quarter of a million dollars in peace. It wasn’t huge money by my family’s standards of wealth, but it would’ve set her up for a long time if she was clever about it.

I didn’t expect to find anything new in the file, but I was searching for information I could give the investigating officers. Just because I was doing my own digging didn’t mean I couldn’t also use the resources of the police.

In the end, I attached a decrypted copy of the report to an email, then dug out Constable Neri’s business card to get her email address. Then, I called her. Yet again, she answered at once. I wasn’t stupid. I knew the quick response wasn’t because I was the grieving son. That had very little to do with her attentiveness.

“Aarav,” she said. “What can I help you with?”

“It’s the other way around.” I leaned back in the office chair I’d ordered off a website, had delivered. “Two years ago, after I got some money in hand, I hired a private investigator to look into my mother’s disappearance. I’ve just emailed you his report in case it’s helpful.” It’d also show that I wasn’t hiding anything.

“Thank you,” she said after a small pause—she was probably checking her inbox. “I thought your book was a hit closer to three years ago?”

“Publishing works on strange timelines. No one expected Blood Sacrifice to go so big. My initial contract was for ten thousand.” To cut through the complexities of publishing accounting and put it bluntly, my publisher had been sitting on millions by the time I got paid; as a result, when the money finally came through, I’d literally become an overnight millionaire. “Book was also out for two months before it hit the first bestseller list.”

“Word of mouth?”

“Yes.” The kind of viral spread a small debut author with no marketing budget and a publicist who barely acknowledged his existence could only dream of. Before I knew it, my book was being translated into languages like Lithuanian and Hebrew, and my agent was telling me she’d brought a big film agent on board so I didn’t get shafted on the movie option.

The option turned into an actual movie that released six months ago.

Thanks to the movie agent, I’d received an executive producer credit and more big fat checks. And the money continued to come in from the various territories. It’d eventually dry up if I failed to produce a second book, but if I continued to follow Margaret’s financial advice about the money I already had, I’d be set until the day I died. Probably shouldn’t have bought the Porsche or the swanky city apartment right off the bat, but at least I had a couple of assets now.

“I’ve just skimmed the report.” Constable Neri’s husky voice. In another life, I’d probably have hit on her—or tried to seduce her to get information. But Neri wasn’t going to fall for that, so I’d taken the option off the table. I’d get what I needed another way. “I know this guy. He’s good.”

“The best.” I’d done my research before I hired him. “He never flat-out said my mother was dead, but I could see it on his face.” Still, I’d hoped. “If nothing else, it might help you confirm that she died the night she disappeared.”

“Do you have any issue with us talking to the investigator directly?”

“No. I’ll tell him to cooperate.”

“Thank you.”

I should’ve ended things on that polite note, but I opened my mouth and said, “Why did no one look into my mother’s disappearance at the time? Was it just because of the money?”