Page 1 of Fractured Destiny

Prologue - Present Day

My knee won’t quit bouncing.

Sixteen minutes isn’t a long time unless you’re sitting alone in a conference room with nothing to do except watch ferries cross Elliott Bay and wonder why your manager hauled you into the office the morning after you got home from tour.

The windows stretch from floor to ceiling, giving me an expansive view of downtown Seattle pretending to have its life together while a glass of ice water slowly sweats onto the conference table in front of me.

Linus texted me last night at midnight.

Linus: Urgent. Come to my office at 11. Alone.

I confirmed but he sent the exact same message again this morning.

WTF?

The alone part shouldn’t bother me. Who else would I bring to a meeting with my manager?

Still… It’s unusual.

Linus doesn’t waste words. If he tells me to come in, there’s a reason. The problem is he neglected to include what the hell it is, leaving me to invent my own using my wild imagination.

Who knows, maybe the Grammy shortlist leaked. Or, perhaps I was finally offered a stadium tour. There could be a film soundtrack sitting on his desk with my name on it.

Hell, maybe somebody wants to throw an obscene amount of money at me or some other reason I’ll happily pretend to understand.

Things have been moving pretty fast lately. Yesterday I woke up in Europe. Today I’m back in Seattle, running on jet lag and airport coffee, trying to figure out where I’m gonna live. I gave up my apartment over a year ago and need to find a place to call home.

My thumb finds the folded wad of paper in my pocket without me thinking about it. Old habit.

Whenever I’m wound this tight, I end up rubbing the edges smooth.

The outside layer is a Greyhound ticket from Tacoma to Seattle, folded into a square no bigger than a guitar pick. I left at seventeen with forty-two dollars to my name with the clothes on my back and a guitar glued together after my foster father snapped it in half.

Taped beneath the ticket is another scrap of paper. Smaller. Somehow, more valuable.

One word in handwriting I’ve memorized.

Neeley.

Three years ago she turned my world upside down and snuck out of my apartment before sunrise, leaving mascara on my pillow and her name scribbled across a torn piece of my lyric notebook. No phone number. No explanation.

Strangely, enough to make sure I never forgot her.

Or, it could have been the sex.

Either way, she’s lived rent-free in my mind ever since. Turns out unanswered questions make pretty decent songs, so there’s a plus.

It’s funny how one moment can alter the direction of your life.

The office door opens. Linus walks in carrying a mug of coffee and none of the relaxed confidence I’d been hoping to see. Instead of disappearing behind his desk, he crosses the room and drops into the chair across from me.

The one he refers to as the “bad-news” chair.

Fuck.

He’s never sat in it before, at least with me.

My knee stops bouncing. Something cold settles in my stomach.