A snapping finger. 

More lost time. Great. How? Where is here? The air is dry, definitely desert. I’m outside, but under shade. It’s hot, beating down. I’m bound, blindfolded. 

“Mister Jones,” a woman’s voice. “Time to wake.”

“No, you want my father.”

“Always the wit.”  A new voice. Warring.

I’m expecting men with guns. I’m always ready for them. Instead, there was a young woman. Not an overly attractive women. They would send a bombshell to seduce a hard boiled mug like me. No this was different. This mousey chick said one word: “Ignatius,” and it all went black.

So the cult, if you could call it that was remarkable in that nobody had heard of it. It seems that somehow they were scrubbing the text of the net of all references of itself. Weird. My stringers refunded my deposits, and within fifteen minutes of ending our calls, there was a knock at my door. That was fast.

I hired a research stringer in Vietnam, and contracted with another firm in Mexico 2. I was careful to pay extra for private searches and not scrimp on the integrity scores of the outsorcers. 

Need rest. I must’ve slept a good 20 hours when my alarms started going off.  I love the modern age.

Money will buy anything, he always said.  Keep a cache of cash ready for emergencies, and make damn sure that your people will have access when you need it. That bag comes off my head,  the sun shines through that narco-haze. I wanted to hug my dad, gods keep him.

Kev was my fixer up in the Bay Area. He had access to my own personal insurance fund, a few hundred K, Amero. I’d figureed that I’d cocked it up too far for any of it to do any good. 

Looks like ol’ Kev was able to get something off.

There’s this whole religious underpinning to his whole racket.  Was this a cult? The way his people would look at him, were they mindless followers? Didn’t seem like it.  I’m not really sure how long I was in that cell when they took me out and brought me to daylight.

Like all criminal masterminds, Herr Warring is surrounded by fools. Being the smartest asshole in the room strokes a genius’s brain-phallus. Me, I like people who are my equal. But, I’m not trying to be a great man.  Masterminds blabber on forever if they think you’re smart.  Keep him talking.

Not sure how long I’m unconscious.  Awoken by a bucket of ice cold water across my face. In iron cage in a room made of rock. A hole in the corner. Stinks. Blood dried on face, body. On an extra hard and rough section of floor. Why aren’t I dead? 

I am beaten around the face and neck more times than I can count. I black out a number of times. Then they put a bag over my head. I’m taken down, down, elevator, tunnels. This place goes deep. The rock around here is volcanic, right? Must be real expensive.