THE SECOND TIME a black bag was pulled over my head, I knew they were going to kill me. However, the first time it happened, six months earlier, the abduction held the uncertain charm of a new experience.

This all began shortly after the release of my third novel, which my publisher told me would be the last book they picked up unless sales began to improve. The first two had received tepid applause from critics, so I dove into a new genre for the third, hoping to spark something more than mediocre reviews.

Actually, if I’m being honest, this all began two years before that, when I stumbled through something that I never should have seen. The assignment was innocuous enough; edit an annual business report from a large _________ conglomerate. I had completed dozens of similar projects over the years; some middle manager had likely been tasked with translating the report into _________ for _________ stakeholders, and wanted it polished by a professional. Business as usual.

Generally, those assignments are mindless, requiring little more than a handful of commas and some restructured syntax; the content typically slips out of mind the moment I finish reading it, page by page disappearing like a ticking clock. The document in question was much the same, beginning with an address from the CEO, praising the hard work of everyone in the company, followed by budget reports, projections for the coming years, new initiatives, and data on the conglomerate’s growth. Boilerplate bullshit.

Buried within the budget was a small section on the new contractors hired and trained by the company, and what initially drew my attention were the names. They were the first non-___________ names I’d seen in the first 80 pages of the report. In a sea of Dmitris and Ivans, names like ______________ and _______________ were hard to miss. In total, there were about fifteen names on the list of hundreds that sounded decidedly ____________.

My curiosity was stirred, but not piqued, so I finished the project and sent the edited file back to my client, putting it temporarily out of my mind. Unfortunately, I’ve never met a scab I didn’t want to pick, and there was something niggling in my mind. I pulled the report up and began searching online for the _________ contractors who were apparently hired and trained by this ________ company.

They weren’t hard to find, having approached the peak of their professions, and thus top billing on search engines. One was a civil engineer who had led major expansion projects for half a dozen cities in ________ and _____. Another had designed sewage systems for major urban infrastructure advancements across the world. A third was the _________ president of a sprawling infrastructure and capital investment firm based in _____________ with satellite headquarters on four continents.

After five manic hours of scratching conspiratorial webs into legal pads, I had proven nothing about the vaguely related __________ experts except my penchant for obsession and sharply honed skills in procrastination. That being said, the list was still a curious collection of talents and expertise, all loaned out to a single conglomerate for consultancy rates that climbed into the millions of ________. It was intriguing, but far from damning, and for the moment, the itch had been scratched. I left it alone and allowed the scab to heal.

Yet, in the weeks that followed, as I poured sweat and nicotine into the work, attempting to snap my cold streak at the keys and start my third novel, my mind insistently drifted back across the __________ _____.

Even in those first few days, I was only flirting with the idea beginning to form on gleeful pages, and I never considered the dangers of drawing too deeply from a seemingly disparate scrap of my life. The concept for the book flowed rapidly, a natural expulsion from that feverish evening of conspiracy theory treasure hunting. As the story took form, I felt the old juices slide into place, the knuckle-joint oil of inspiration pounding out thousands of words a day, the novel spilling from a wound.

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Unravel the rest of this conspiracy in SN13 | The Ides of March.

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