“Come on, brother,” a voice says. A strong hand shakes my shoulder.
“Where are we?” I ask, my eyes struggling to focus.
“Topeka, but you’ll get that when you read. Get dressed, we need to go.”
I glance around, my vision clear now. I have no idea why I’m in a gross rathole motel or who this big man waking me is. A message flashes across my console overlay that I should trust Evan, along with a picture of him. Recognition clicks and I know my brother again. I nod and get up, then read while I brush my teeth. By the time I’m done, I’m current enough to be functional. I read so fast these days.
“So what’s the news, Evan?” I ask as I slip some deodorant under my shirt.
“The jet’s on the way to the airport. We’re going to St. Louis. Lin found him there. He’s at another storage locker place, or at least the truck he drove is. And the missing persons reports came in. There weren’t three young men reported missing from here, there were four. Lin’s still getting details, but I bet we’ll see he’s another guy near our age.”
It’s not easy for me to assimilate the new information while I’m still reintegrating with my index and my log, but with some focus I think I understand what’s going on.
“So he’s got another victim from here? One that he’s still hauling around with him?” I ask, using my bots to get my hair in order and tie my shoes.
“That’s what it looks like, unless he dumped the other body somewhere else for some reason. But I can see him running tests on four variants of the installer at the same time, maybe one worked. Or didn’t fail immediately, anyway.”
I nod and shoulder my pack with yesterday’s clothes in it. We head out and Evan drives us through the dawning streets to the airport. It takes us a few minutes to find the entrance for private flyers, but we get there eventually. It would have been way faster for us to just suit up and fly right to the family jet, but coming in unannounced like that at an airport this size would cause all sorts of attention that we would rather avoid. If Jeff doesn’t know we’re close on his trail yet, the last thing we want is a news report giving us away.
Cindy is there, somehow cheerful even at this hour. We get in the air quickly, and Evan and I take turns hitting the tiny shower in the plane’s rear bathroom while we fly. I’ve never been back there before, we usually leave it for Cindy and the flight crew, but we both needed the showers. Once we touch down, I get Lin on the line and into my earpiece.
“Hey, Noah,” she says. Her voice is groggy. I must have woken her. “Did you sleep enough?”
“Yeah, I slept great. Sorry to wake you,” I tell her. “We just got to St. Louis.”
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“Good,” she says. “Give me five minutes to get to our office and I’ll tell you what we found last night. Start heading to the address Evan has in the meantime.”
“We will. Call me when you’re ready. You’re amazing, Lin,” I say, disconnecting.
My phone dings a minute later as we leave the small hanger for private jets. It’s a text from Alan with instructions for our ride. There’s a car waiting for us just around the corner. A bored looking twenty-something guy in a dark jacket hands us the keys to the silver midsize sedan. Evan hands him a tip and takes the wheel. I navigate for him while he drives. We’re just getting onto the freeway when Lin calls back. I put her on speaker so Evan can hear as well.
“All right,” she says, the sleep in her voice gone now. “Once I got those pictures and figured out the victims’ names, I was able to figure out how your brother found them so quickly. There’s a dating app for anonymous encounters that they were all on. Jeff too, with fake everything except his picture. The other missing person that came up last night was in the database for it too. Also, you are going to be an angel investor in the app. It was the only way Alan could get us access quickly. As far as they know, I’m in their live database now so I can evaluate their tech stack.”
“OK,” I respond. “Will that cost us a ton? Evan, take that next exit.”
Evan glances at his blind spot and shifts lanes. Interesting, he doesn’t use his bots for situational awareness when he drives like I do. Maybe that sort of thing is why my brain is broken and his still works.
“Just a couple million,” Lin says casually. “But we can back out if I can find any serious flaws in their back end. Alan says not to worry about it, he had one of your finance guys look at it and he thinks we can come out ahead on it. Their technical side is pretty well designed so far, so he might be right.”
“So who’s our survivor from the chainsaw massacre?” Evan asks as he takes the exit, his calm, sad voice steering the conversation back to what matters now.
“Theo Johannes,” Lin answers. “Age twenty-four, caucasian, self described twink. Likes tall men and rough-”
“I don’t think we need the whole dating profile,” Evan interrupts. “What does he look like?”
“Short blond hair,” Lin reports. “Blue eyes. Tattoos all along his right arm, mostly some kinds of white people quotes. ‘Never Be Daunted’ and stuff like that. He’s kind of good looking, in an overly groomed way.”
“OK, we’ll keep an eye out for him,” I say.
Evan slows and pulls up to the curb. I see a sign for Store’N’Go up ahead. I turn on the earpiece and pop it in. I pull my bots in tight and turn on all the detection options in the overlay. If Jeff has working bots, I want to see his before he sees mine.
“There’s the truck,” Evan points out, indicating a pickup parked in front of one of the storage units that we can see from here through the chain link fence. The bed of the truck looks empty from here. Hopefully, Jeff and the gear are inside.
I get out of the car and form a thousand extra eyes, spreading them out to form a telescope array that NASA would be proud of, straining my brain to get some insight on what’s inside before I put my cloud somewhere that he might be able to detect it. Nothing. If he’s in there, he doesn’t have any bots active. I’d pick them up with this array of sensors running. I relax a little and send in the eyes.
I don’t get three steps from the car before I see what I hoped not to see.
“We found him,” I tell Lin softly.
“Jeff?” she asks eagerly. “He’s there?”
“No, Theo. The fourth guy,” I answer. “We didn’t make it in time.”
I hear Evan retching again behind me.