PROLOGUE

Holsworthy Army Base, Sydney, NSW, Australia

RILEY Jax woke up with a gun in his hand and a body on his floor.

Bee-beep. Bee-beep. Bee-beep.

He turned off the alarm on his wristwatch.

6 am. A Monday.

There was a sharp, unfamiliar metallic taste in his mouth, his head was fuzzy and he was coated in a fine sheen of cold sweat. He eased himself up out of his military cot bed and forced himself to study the body on the floor.

It was a clean kill: the dead man had taken one bullet to the brain and another to the heart, at close range. He was dressed like a civilian, but could have been ex-military from his build, his buzzcut, his neatly pressed clothing and his shiny boots. Jax had never laid eyes on him before – he knew that for sure because he never forgot a face. Never.

Jax tried to recall the events of the previous night, but the thread was broken – he had lost almost ten hours. He couldn’t remember anything after 8.14 pm.

Nothing. Not a thing. Everything black.

He remembered leaving the mess hall after dinner at 7.04 pm. It had been a balmy evening, the temperature still high after the heat of the day. A couple of the guys had been sitting around outside. He’d stopped and chatted with them for a few minutes, not because he wanted to but because it was expected.

After that he’d walked into his army-issue apartment – little more than an oversized bedroom with a small adjoining bathroom containing just a toilet and basin – grabbed a towel, his toiletry bag and his thongs before walking back out. The floodlights had been on but not yet needed.

The base, a haphazard assortment of buildings bedded on concrete and bordered by barbed wire and bush, had been quiet. It always was on a Sunday night, the last night of freedom before the week’s first crack-of-dawn roll call; most of the soldiers would have been at the pub. They wouldn’t start stumbling in until 10 pm. Some wouldn’t be back then. They would have just enough time to change out of their perfume-soaked civvies and make muster.

Jax had only walked past two men on his way to the shower block. He’d nodded at them before entering and showering on his own. Towel tied around his waist, thongs squeaking as they were worked by wet feet, he saw nobody after his shit, shower and shave.

His memory became clouded after that, though he did remember returning to his room. He recalled pulling on boxer shorts and a singlet, checking his phone to find out if Nikki had called and, seeing she hadn’t, grabbing a book – A Theory of Human Motivation by Abraham Maslow – and collapsing into his cot for an early night. And that’s where his memory stopped, at 8.14 pm.

Since then: nothing. Not a thing. Everything black.