Taken pt 4

Coming soon

They put me out to pasture six years ago. Thirty-one years with the Agency. Abandoned buildings, dead drops, names I still can't say out loud. They handed me a watch and a handshake whilst marching me down a deep grey corridor in Langley. I was supposed to disappear. I was good at that. But a man like me doesn't stay disappeared. The phone always rings. It rang last Tuesday, three in the morning, the kind of hour that only carries bad news.

A family. Ordinary. They found my number in an old ad I placed on some "hire a PI" page on the dark web a few years after my... retirement. A mother's voice cracked at the edges like old leather, barely holding the shape of words. Their dog, Bruno, a five-year-old spaniel, was taken right off the front porch in broad daylight. Clean. Coordinated. No bark, no struggle, no trace. I've seen that kind of clean before. I told her I only work human cases. She said nobody else would take it. I almost hung up. Almost. Giving up is an option for some people. But I guess I'm not "some people".