That stops me cold. "What do you mean she asked for me?"
"I mean when I told her I had the perfect man for the job, she said, and I quote, 'Is it Finn McKenna? Because I've heard he's the best at making people disappear.'"
A chill runs down my spine. "How the hell does Nova Wilde know my name?"
"Good question. Maybe you can ask her when you pick her up."
"Frank, I don't do celebrity clients. You know that. Too much drama, too much attention, too many variables I can't control."
"Seven figures, Finn. Plus expenses. Plus a bonus if you keep her alive until the Bureau catches this guy."
Seven figures is enough money to buy that piece of land I've been eyeing, the thousand acres that border Grizzly RidgeNational Forest. Enough money to build the kind of off grid compound where a man can disappear completely if he needs to.
Enough money to set up the kind of security business that would let me stay in Montana permanently instead of taking jobs that drag me back into the world I left behind.
"Where do you want me to take her?"
"Somewhere isolated. Somewhere secure. Somewhere this bastard will never think to look." Frank pauses. "I was thinking Montana might be perfect."
Montana. My mountain. My territory. My rules.
The idea of bringing Nova Wilde to Grizzly Ridge is so outlandish it may just work. A Hollywood celebrity in a town where the biggest excitement is usually a bar fight at Murphy's Tavern? Where everyone knows everyone else's business, and gossip travels faster than wildfire?
But something else is stirring in my chest. Something that feels dangerously like anticipation.
"Send me the file," I hear myself say. "I'll review it on the plane."
"Already sent. The jet leaves from Billings in three hours. Don't be late."
The line goes dead, and I'm left staring at my phone in the darkness of my cabin. It takes three hours on the jet to get to Cali from Billings, and another two hours to drive through mountain roads that are probably icy as hell to even get to Billings.
I should call one of my brothers to let them know I'm disappearing for a while. But something stops me. Some instinct that says this job is different, that once I walk into Nova Wilde's world, I'm not going to be the same man who walks out.
Instead, I grab my keys and head for the truck. Whatever's waiting for me in Los Angeles, whatever danger is hunting Nova Wilde, I'll face it the same way I've faced every threat for the past ten years.
With deadly precision and no room for emotion.
The driveto Billings passes in a blur of dark highways and my own thoughts. By the time I'm boarding the private jet, I've read Nova Wilde's file three times, and each reading makes me more convinced that whoever's stalking her isn't going to stop until he has her.
Or until someone stops him permanently.
The photos are what get to me. Not the glamorous publicity shots or the paparazzi candids, but the surveillance photos taken by her stalker. Pictures of her leaving her house, getting coffee, talking on the phone. Pictures taken with a telephoto lens from impossible distances, showing a level of dedication and obsession that makes my blood run cold.
Someone has been watching Nova Wilde for months. Learning her patterns, her habits, her vulnerabilities. Planning something that's going to end with her blood on his hands if I don't do my job right.
The jet touches down in Los Angeles at dawn, and I'm met by a car that takes me through traffic-clogged streets to a mansion in the Hills that probably costs more than my entire hometown's annual budget.
The security is impressive. High walls, cameras, motion sensors, and guards at the gate. The kind of setup that would keep out amateur stalkers and garden variety criminals.
But I've spent enough time in this business to know that no security system is perfect. That a determined enough predatorcan find a way through any defense if he's patient enough, smart enough, and willing to wait for the right moment.
And this bastard has been very patient.
The guard at the gate waves me through after checking my credentials, and I park in front of a house that looks like it belongs in a magazine. It has glass, steel, and intimidating architecture designed to impress rather than comfort.
The front door opens before I can knock, and I find myself face to face with the woman I've been hired to protect.
Nova Wilde is even more beautiful in person than she is in photographs, which should be impossible but apparently isn't. With dark hair that falls in waves past her shoulders, green eyes that seem to see straight through me, and the kind of face that would launch a thousand ships and probably has.
