Prologue

“Come on you guys get a room.” A voice yelled over a roaring crowd.

Isabel stopped kissing her boyfriend as they stood at the end of the Santa Monica boardwalk, and looked over at their friend. Well, seeing as she just accepted his marriage proposal, she supposed that he wasn't really her boyfriend anymore. He was her fiancée now, and she couldn't be any happier. She also couldn't care less about their mutual friend's comfort level and began to kiss her boyf-- fiancée-- all the more passionately.

Isabel heard the squeal of a car speeding off into the night, bringing her back into consciousness as the fog in her brain slowly cleared. She held her head as the pain all throughout her body began to make its presence known. She sat up as glass shards fell off her and joined the rest of what used to be the coffee table all over the living room floor. Blankets, pillows and toys, were strewn all around the living room, mirroring how she felt inside.

Suddenly, Isabel sat up and frantically searched for her phone, which had become lost in the struggle which left her house, her home, in shambles. After a few minutes of failing to find it, she stopped and took a breath.

Isabel began to calmly pick things up, and placed each thing back to where it belonged, as if she was merely cleaning up at the end of an ordinary day. She finally came across her phone and immediately broke away from the ritual. She picked it up, and began to dial 9-1-1, but stopped right before she pressed call. He had told her what would happen if she called the cops, and she knew he was crazy enough to do it. It didn't matter that it was his daughter too. He would still kill her out of principle.

Then suddenly the random dream she had earlier seemed less random, as if her subconscious already knew what she needed to do. The weight of facing the nightmare alone was too great, and she needed someone she could trust. Someone with connections. She returned to her phone, scrolling quickly through her contacts looking for the name she had been too ashamed to call in years. Having found it, she dialed the number.

“Hello?” barked a man's voice in a mixture of surprise and irritability.

“I need your help with something, something huge,” Isabel pleaded.

“What do you want?” the man demanded.

“I don't have time to explain. Right now, I just need someone I can trust.”