When I was little, Mom, Dad, my sister, brother, and I piled into the car for family outings that now seem routine—not mundane, but not special either. It was a beast of a thing, this car: a canary yellow Cadillac with brown leather interior. In those days, in our small town, the filling station would accept a personal check for a tank of gas. Even then, the car’s fuel economy was only nine miles per gallon.

We went to the movies—a proper outing for a family of five. Our small town didn’t have a movie theater, but it did seem to be teeming with pizza places. We saw 'The Muppet Movie.' I think for a while, I may have had a crush on Kermit the Frog. He seemed to have a good head on his shoulders, was well-liked, and talented—I mean, he played the banjo, which, in my opinion, is a dying art form. And puppets with legs—completely blew my mind. At the time, puppets were nothing more than socks with someone’s hand stuffed in the opening. If you saw legs, they were lying inert on a platform in front of said sock. This frog could ride a bike. Again, mind-blowing.

Two things about the movie, though: The end of the show featured 'The Magic Store' and an aptly named song. Somehow, everything was brighter, sparkled, and gleamed bigger and brighter than before. That’s exactly how I pictured adulthood. Someday, I would grow up, and when I got there, a door—maybe like a door to a soundstage—would open, and in I would walk, and it would be The Magic Store, or something like it, but maybe, well, probably without the Muppets. But there would be pomp and great fanfare.

As an adult, though, I can tell you there is no soundstage, there is no door, there is no great entrée to life thrusting a golden halo around itself, bathing you in warmth. This is your life. You have finally arrived. Find the fainting couch with your name on it, and all good things will come to you just by the wave of your hand. If this is supposed to be what happens, it hasn’t yet.

What was the second thing about the movie? Ah. Well. When my own children were small, I picked up the DVD at Target and was incredibly enthused to share this childhood memory. Kermit and the Muppets were all the same as I remembered, but the cameos—almost every person was dead. The grim realization wasn’t offset by the brilliance of The Magic Store at the end, though. It was more a reminder that I, too, am temporary. What movie would my son and daughters show their own children and be reminded of their own mortality?

Chapter 1

Kate – mid -1990s

“I have an idea,” I said. “I think it’s a great idea.”

“Oh, yeah?” said my roommate.

“I think so,” I replied. “I mean, I think it’s better than most of my other alternatives. Which, let’s face it, no one is banging down the door to offer me a job.”

We were lying on top of a blanket on the roof of her car, Sarah and I, sunning ourselves about a month shy of college graduation. Her plan was to get married. My plan was unformed. I would love to say my plan was incubating, but then there would have to be some sort of seed to sprout, or a cell line to propagate, a spore, something.

“I was thinking about becoming a salad maker.”

Sarah turned her head. “You do make a good salad, and you do love to feed people, but is ‘salad maker’ even a thing?”

“Someone told me if you can conceive it, it must exist. If I follow the logic, then there is somewhere, someone in need of a salad maker. We just haven’t found each other yet.”

“Hmm,” she said. “What else are you thinking about?”

“I could temp, work retail, wait tables. Something along those lines. The job market isn’t great. Grad school isn’t off the table,” I paused. “I also like the idea of murder adventures.”

She sat up abruptly, dislodging pots and potions of tan accelerator and sunscreen—getting the ratio perfect was key to getting a good glow without a burn.

“Sorry. What?” Collecting herself, she scrutinized me. “I don’t understand those words you strung together.”

Every time anyone asked me about my future plans, suddenly, salad maker seemed much more plausible and palatable, no pun intended. But why not make murder adventures? Not actual blood sport, though, at least not initially. But planning a murder could be a work of art. It could be an adventure on its own. Carrying out everything but the act itself. Debriefing, just like the Blue Angels after a mission—what worked, what didn’t, what could be done differently. Could there be a market for it? Could this be some kind of corporate team-building business? Would I do this by myself? How would I find clients? How would I find a business partner or investors? What kind of person would want to put his or her name behind a business like this? What would I call it? Did anything like murder adventures already exist?

Business plan. I needed a business plan. I also needed to be able to do research without triggering any alarm bells and setting the National Security Council, Big Brother, or the Illuminati on my trail. And I definitely wanted to stay way the heck away from the Dark Web. In my early twenties, during a visit to the Grand Canyon, I realized how small I was in the grand scheme of things, and how little help there was depending on the circumstance. When night fell, we walked back to our hotel room, and there was enough light to illuminate our way, but beyond the rail separating civilization from what was out there, I could have been in my backyard, not standing along the rim of a pitch-black pit, and one unplanned step or clumsy move against the rail made grave difference, all under the same glittering stars and velvety night sky. That was my feeling about the Dark Web. Just leave it the fuck alone. And maybe, well, maybe it might leave me alone, too.

Chapter 2

The Pitch - excerpts

I’d like to preface this meeting by stating we are noting that we’re only holding five pitch meetings, and we are only inviting five people to our pitch meetings. You are one of the select few. Congratulations. Before we dive into the pitch, though, I want to acknowledge that what we do is highly unorthodox. If this doesn’t align with your interests... that’s fine. You’ve already signed the non-disclosure agreement. Now, let’s get to why we’re here.

We’ve seen the movies, read the books. We understand the basic anatomy of murder and death from the media we consume. You know there’s an event horizon defined by a murder. Death is imminent. In those moments of anticipation, you feel a subtle thrill, a frisson, about what’s going to unfold.

We watch the bad guys get caught. There’s always an Achilles’ heel, it seems, that Johnny Law manages to exploit. But why? What went wrong? Was some detail overlooked? Was there a failure to plan—or worse, a failure to plan for the unexpected? Perfection is unattainable. We must anticipate every tiny grain of sand potentially infecting or contaminating a microchip. The moment even one grain enters that closed system, what’s the countermeasure? If there isn’t one, the plan is sub-standard. The microchip, once infected, compromised, is headed straight for the scrap heap.

In business, when we fail to achieve a desired result, we look back to root cause. We go through the motions of PDCA – Plan, Do, Check, Act. And our improvements are iterative. However, when it comes to planning a murder, we don’t have the luxury of being able to workshop. Everything has to be perfect, and all contingencies have to be considered at every step in the completion of the exercise, and the ability to pivot with complete agility has to be automatic.

Who are we, and what are we proposing, and why do you want to invest? We are Diamond Teams. We are a boutique consulting firm with a solitary product on offer. We plan murders. We do not commit murders, and our clients do not commit murders. We guide our clients through every step leading to committing the murder, ending just shy of actually doing the deed. Our execution is in the detail, the planning, the procedure, the full-scale roll-out of murder without actually pulling the trigger, and finally the debrief sessions.

I have one client who, as a team-building exercise, involved his senior leadership team, and we planned the murder of the leadership team of a rival corporation. They then carried out all the steps necessary to take out their targets. Their success was measured not in lives lost but in the act of performing surveillance, social engineering, and capturing video or photographic records of the completion of the final steps in their project, and evading detection by their targets and/or the authorities.

Each member of the team knew exactly what their roles and actions were in the steps assigned to them. They also knew Plan B if anything went amiss. They rehearsed. They monitored their heart rates to minimize panic responses in risky situations, and they used this to keep cool heads during practice operations. They not only learned about their targets, but they learned about themselves. Imagine if you could recognize a panic response but then convert it into a moment of complete clarity, allowing you the chance to change gears without stopping to think through all the pros and cons of what this action or that action may be. You lose no time because ALL the thinking has been done long before this occurrence of stress.

Since the first client, all of my business has been via word of mouth. We do not advertise, but we need your investment to hire more staff and infrastructure to accommodate the demand for our services. Our profit margin to date is 80%. We have no debt at this time, but we are at a point where capital is needed in order to grow in a logical and meaningful way without sacrificing quality or any of our other Key Performance Indicators.