Holden woke to the smell of chlorine and something else something animal and wrong.
The headache arrived a half-second later, a vise tightening at the base of his skull, the cost of a night the Anchor had kept him half-tethered to.
He opened his eyes.
White ceiling.
Sunlight slanting hard through curtains no one had closed.
The villa.
He sat up.
The room swam, settled.
The Anchor had done its work he’d stayed conscious longer than the others, long enough to get them here, long enough to distribute bodies like cargo.
The rest was gone.
Not erased, exactly.
More like a film with half the frames missing, the narrative coherent only if you didn’t look too close.
Stu was on the bed to his left, face-down, one arm hanging off the mattress.
Alan sprawled on the couch, his satchel clutched to his chest like a stuffed animal.
Phil Phil was in the other room, Holden thought, or hoped, because the alternative was that Phil had wandered off into Vegas with a gut full of roofies and no working memory.
Doug was gone.
Holden knew that without checking.
Doug had been on the couch in the main room, propped against the cushions, breathing slow and even.
Now the couch was empty.
The tiger growled.
Holden stood.
Crossed to the bathroom.
Opened the door.
The tiger blinked at him from the tub, golden eyes lazy, a kind of annoyed boredom in the way it yawned.
Big.
Easily four hundred pounds.
A Bengal, he thought, though he wasn’t sure how he knew that or why it mattered.
It had a collar.
Someone’s pet, then, or someone’s terrible idea of one.
He closed the door.
Walked back into the main room.
Noticed the baby.
The baby was in the closet, swaddled in a hotel bathrobe, sleeping in a nest of someone’s jacket.
It he?
she?
looked maybe six months old, breathing soft and steady, one tiny fist curled against its cheek.
There was a bottle on the floor beside it.
Someone had fed it.
Holden had a flash of Alan, giggling, holding the bottle while the baby latched on, saying something about teamwork.
He rubbed his eyes.
The headache was getting worse.
Stu groaned.
Holden turned.
Stu was sitting up now, both hands pressed to his face, a noise coming out of him that wasn’t quite a word.
He pulled his hands away.
His mouth was a ruin blood crusted on his lips, one tooth conspicuously, grotesquely absent.
“What,” Stu said.
His voice was thick.
“What did I”
“Don’t know yet,” Holden said.
Stu looked at his hands.
At the blood.
His eyes went wide and then wider, and Holden watched him do the math the missing tooth, the taste, the wrongness.
Stu inhaled to scream.
“Bathroom,” Holden said, flat and fast.
Stu froze.
“What?”
“There’s a tiger in the bathroom.”
Stu blinked.
Turned his head toward the closed door.
Turned back to Holden.
His mouth opened.
Closed.
Opened again.
No sound came out. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
“Okay,” Stu said finally, very quietly.
“Okay. Why is there a tiger in the bathroom.”
“Working on that.”
Alan stirred.
Sat up.
The satchel slid off his chest and he caught it by reflex, blinking at the room like he’d woken in a place he’d never seen before.
He smiled.
“Good morning.”
“Alan,” Holden said.
“Where’s Doug.”
Alan looked around.
Frowned.
“Doug was here. I remember Doug. He was on the couch. He said he was tired and I said we should let him rest because resting is important.” He paused.
“I think I said that. Did I say that?”
“Where is he now.”
“I don’t know.”
Phil appeared in the doorway to the bedroom, shirtless, squinting, one hand braced on the frame like the floor might move without warning.
“What the hell happened,” he said.
His voice was gravel.
“Trying to establish that,” Holden said.
Phil stepped into the room.
Noticed Stu.
Noticed the blood.
“Jesus. Stu, what did you”
“I don’t KNOW,” Stu said, and the panic was climbing now, the spiral starting.
“I don’t know, I don’t remember, there’s a TOOTH missing and Holden says there’s a TIGER”
“There’s a what.”
“Tiger,” Holden said.
“Bathroom. Don’t open the door.”
Phil stared at him.
Crossed to the bathroom.
Opened the door.
The tiger growled, louder this time, a sound that vibrated in the chest.
Phil closed the door.
Turned back to the room.
His face had gone blank, the look of a man whose brain had simply stopped offering explanations.
“Okay,” Phil said.
“There’s also a baby,” Alan offered, pointing at the closet.
Phil looked.
Saw the baby.
Nodded once, slowly, like this was fine, like this was a thing that happened and he was prepared to accept it.
“Okay,” he said again.
Holden let them process.
Let them spiral and stare and start asking questions they couldn’t answer.
He walked to the window.
Pulled the curtain back.
Sunlight hit him like a slap and he squinted, taking in the view the Strip below, the chapel two blocks south with its marquee already lit, the digital clock on the Caesars tower reading 9:47 AM.
Saturday.
June.
The wedding was tomorrow.
Thirty hours, give or take.
The Deadline Clock didn’t announce itself.
It was passive, background, a hum at the edge of his awareness.
The window was there.
He could feel it tightening.
Behind him, Stu was spiraling.
“We have to go to a hospital. I need a dentist. I AM a dentist, I can’t how did I did I pull my own tooth? Why would I pull my own tooth”
“You didn’t pull it,” Holden said, still looking at the Strip.
“You don’t have the angle. Someone else did. Or you hit something.”
Stu made a noise like he’d been struck.
Holden turned.
Walked to the center of the room.
The others were looking at him now Phil wary, Stu desperate, Alan confused and waiting.
The morning-after tableau, canonical and complete.
He’d watched this scene in a theater in 2026, laughing at the chaos, never imagining he’d be standing in it, pricing it, trying to keep it from eating them all.
“Tiger,” he said.
“Bathroom. Bengal, I think. Has a collar. Someone’s expecting it back.”
“Whose?” Phil said.
“Working on that.”
“Baby. Closet. Fed, breathing, approximately six months old. No ID visible.”
“Oh my God,” Stu said.
“Stu’s tooth. Missing. Likely extracted or knocked out. Blood pattern suggests it happened hours ago.”
Stu made the noise again.
“Doug,” Holden said, and the room went quiet.
“Gone. Last seen on the couch. No note. No sign of where he went.”
Phil straightened.
The leader’s reflex, even hungover, even lost.
“Okay. Okay, we find Doug. That’s the priority. The wedding’s tomorrow, we find Doug, we”
“We do them in order,” Holden said.
Phil stopped.
“What?”
“Tiger’s a forty-minute problem if we’re smart. The baby’s an afternoon. Stu’s tooth is a dentist and some paperwork. Doug’s the only thing on a clock.”
“Doug IS the clock,” Phil said.
“Which is why we do the rest first.” Holden met his eyes.
“We can’t look for Doug with a tiger in the bathroom and a baby no one’s watching. We handle the chaos, then we find him. In that order.”
Phil stared at him.
Holden watched him decide saw the moment Phil’s brain, still sluggish from the dose, accepted that someone else had a plan and he didn’t.
“Okay,” Phil said quietly.
“Okay. What do we do first.”
Holden pulled out his phone.
Flipped it open.
Scrolled to the card he’d saved yesterday Stella’s number, the one she’d written on the back of her business card in the villa lobby when she’d looked at him like he was the first client who’d ever tried to make her job easier.
He dialed.
She picked up on the second ring.
“Stella.”
“It’s Holden. From yesterday.”
A pause.
He heard her sit up, wherever she was.
Heard the shift from off-duty to operational in the way she breathed.
“What happened.”
“Tiger,” Holden said.
“Baby. Missing groom. Stu’s down a tooth. I need help and I need it quiet.”
Another pause.
Longer.
He could almost hear her pricing it, running the math on what this would cost and whether he was worth the trouble.
“Where are you,” she said.
He told her.
“Don’t touch anything. Don’t let anyone leave. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
The line went dead.
Holden pocketed the phone.
Looked at the others.
“Help’s coming.”
“What kind of help,” Phil said.
“The kind that keeps us out of jail and gets Doug to his wedding.”
Stu was still staring at his hands.
Alan was staring at the closet, a look on his face like he was contemplating adopting the baby.
Phil was staring at Holden, and the look on his face was the one Holden had been dreading the one that said how do you always have an answer.
Holden ignored it.
Walked to the minibar.
Found a bottle of water.
Drank half of it in one pull, the headache receding a fraction, the Anchor’s cost settling into the background where he could function around it.
The tiger growled again.
The baby sighed in its sleep.
The wedding was in thirty hours and Doug was gone and the night Holden had tried to steer had happened anyway, exactly the way the film had promised, and all he had to show for it was a headache, a triage list, and the growing, unshakable suspicion that he’d underestimated what it would cost to keep a promise.
He sat on the edge of the couch.
Closed his eyes.
Started walking backward through the missing night, pulling threads from the evidence, braiding the erasure into sequence.
It was going to be a long day.