Page 5 of The Dark Before Light

“My brother-in-law is Kieran Hayes. If you can see him today, we’ll pay you triple your normal rate.”

I barely register the second half of her statement. My ears ring, his name the reverberation of a mighty bell. Closing my eyes, I breathe past the sudden sensation of a free fall.

If it were anyone else…

Shit.

“Okay, Gail. I’ll see him.”

After ending the phone call—that went on long enough my fingers feel frozen and my hair damp—I return to the table to find Mia gone, the bill paid, and my leftovers packaged. I shoot her a text thanking her and apologizing, then head to the valet outside.

Fifteen minutes later, I unlock my front door and step inside my personal oasis. For the first time in memory, however, I don’t feel any calming effects. The anxiousness that’s been simmering since speaking with Gail spikes as I look at my watch.

I wasn’t lying when I told her this isn’t how I operate. I normally conduct two hour-long video calls with prospective clients prior to booking. An essential getting-to-know-you period. There are good reasons why, too. Only one out of three actually commit after they learn what I really do and what’s required of them: complete surrender to the process.

But I don’t have weeks or even hours to prep. I have fifty-six minutes until the man known as the King of Silicon Beach—Southern California’s tech hub—arrives at my Marina Del Ray office.

The same man who, a lifetime ago, found a broken girl in a graveyard and told her someday the world would kneel to her.

Perching on the edge of my unmade bed with my phone, I open a browser and search his name for the first time in years. I scan various headlines before finally clicking on his Wikipedia page. My eyes linger on the included photos, even though they’re the least important detail and I already know what he looks like. You’d have to be living under a rock not to.

All the mismatched beauty I saw in a scrawny boy has found its home on the face of a king. Tousled, longish dark hair, straight brows, and heavily-lashed, piercing blue eyes. Strong, defined jawline and blade-like cheekbones. Hawkish nose. Lips a touch too full and sensual for his face.

No one would call him classically handsome or something as mundane as attractive. But likewise, no one would deny he has that unquantifiable something that causes eyes to linger and makes cameras love him. Even in his professional uniform of custom suits, he looks unkempt and a little wild. Like a wolf wearing human skin. It’s hard to stop staring at him, but I do.

I skim through his basic background, most of which I know. He’s thirty-five. Born and raised in Galway, Ireland. One brother, Alistair, older by fifteen months. His father was a mechanical engineer, his mother a primary school teacher. Both are retired now. He received dual undergraduate degrees in Physics and Electrical Engineering from Oxford. Relocated to California at twenty-three to pursue a Master’s in Microelectronics from Stanford.

At twenty-six, Kieran founded Lumitech with his brother. Nine years later, the cutting-edge microtechnology company has swallowed dozens of smaller startups and has a market cap of 150 billion dollars. They have contracts in automotive, aerospace, military, and industrial sectors, as well as a significant presence in mass-produced consumer electronics.

I open my Notes app and type:

Highly intelligent and driven

Strategist/analytical thinker

Likely respects creative thinking

Logic centered

I swipe back to Wikipedia. While Kieran’s family, education, and professional history is significant in the sense it gives me basic insight into the way his mind works, it’s not what I need. I find that under the section entitled Personal Life.

He met Elizabeth Foster, daughter of Hollywood producer Donovan Foster, seven years ago at a charity benefit. They dated for two months before marrying. Four years ago, she was tragically murdered in a carjacking ten minutes from their Beverly Hills home. There was an investigation but no arrests. The consensus of law enforcement was that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, a victim of senseless violence.

I remember hearing about her death—it was all over the news for days—but I’d forgotten the circumstances. Another detail comes back to me, and a quick search confirms it: Elizabeth was two months pregnant when she died.

With a sympathetic grimace, I drop my phone to the bed and walk into the bathroom to shower. As I wash my hair, I think about what else Gail told me. What’s not in his Wikipedia. That after his wife’s death and a brief period of intense grieving, Kieran threw himself back into work and dating with shocking zeal. In the years since, he’s maintained seventy-hour work weeks and an average of two to three “dates” a week. His productivity has been great for Lumitech’s net worth, but his dating habits have given their PR team ulcers and generated enough NDAs to wallpaper a building.

Then, five weeks ago, he stopped… everything.

Stopped going to work. Stopped answering calls and emails. Leaving his house. Shaving and showering. And from Gail and Alistair’s routine visits to his home, they suspect most of his meals are of the liquid variety.

The head of a massive, publicly traded tech company abruptly disappearing is not good for business. That the cause is a possible mental breakdown is immeasurably worse. So far, the company has managed to keep Kieran’s absence on the down-low, but it’s only a matter of time before the media catches wind. Alistair is desperate to help his brother and on the verge of a breakdown himself as he tries to fill Kieran’s distinctive shoes at the helm of their company.

It’s a rumbling mountaintop with the potential for an avalanche of multibillion-dollar proportions. And Gail believes I’m uniquely suited to stop it.

“I know you can get through to him, Talia. He’s an out-of-the-box thinker, and there’s no one more out-of-the-box than you.”

Backhanded compliment or not, she’s right. I’m firmly out-of-the-box. Sure, on paper I’m qualified to be his therapist. I have a PhD in Clinical Psychology from UCLA and have been a practicing psychologist for seven years. But to say I use my degree creatively is an understatement.

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