Other people read so slowly. Even smart people like Lin and my siblings. I’m going through the latest batch of CTTF reports while everyone else is still crawling through the now fully decoded doctors’ notes. I’ve got my own conclusions, but I want everyone else’s independent opinions so I feel like I can’t even talk about what Jeff is going to do next until they’re through reading.
There were missing persons increases in New Orleans, Tallahassee, Albuquerque, and Des Moines this morning. I feed the new data into one of Lin’s algorithms and see each of the cities rise in probability as the most likely location for Jeff by a few percentage points. Still much too far from certain to do anything about, but if we keep gathering data we might one day have a good idea for a place to start looking for him.
“Is it lunchtime yet?” Marc asks.
“Another hour,” Louise answers, flicking her tablet to the next page.
Marc sighs and goes back to reading. I glance over his shoulder with my bot eyes and see that he’s further along than any of the others, almost halfway through the full body of notes. He really is a wizard with the spoken and written word. Like an anti-Andrea. Andrea is still on the fourth page of notes and seems to be mostly lost in thought rather than paying attention to the text in front of her. I consider nudging her, but I’m just glad she’s willing to help at all.
“At least it’s not a barbecue day,” Lin says from her standing desk. “I always get hungry early when I smell the pit fired up.”
“That’s true,” Evan agrees.
“Yeah, this whole place stepped up their food service since Gramps got here,” Louise says, looking up from her reading. “I bet his restaurant was great.”
“Best barbecue in Colorado,” I reply, absently pulling the information from my index. “Or at least that’s what he always told me.”
“You never ate there?”
“Don’t know. Not that I remember. I probably did. He was still running it up through most of my early teens.”
“You’ve got the worst memory, Noah,” Marc chimes in.
“Yeah. I do.” I flip to the next report. I know he doesn’t mean any harm, but it stings all the same. Maybe I’m extra sensitive because of this morning. I don’t want to be mad at Lin for playing with my mind and body like she did, but I think maybe I am. I know she didn’t mean any harm, and it was fun in a disturbing way. And I did basically tell her to do it. It’s probably my fault anyway.
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The room goes quiet for a while. I finish with all the current CTTF reports and start in on investigating potential places Jeff might be using in all the top cities that Lin’s algorithm identified. I don’t think he’ll do storage units again, Jeff knows we’ll be looking for those. Warehouses, maybe? Unused industrial spaces, maybe? Empty homes or office space? No, probably not those. Too much risk of a realtor or owner or curious onlooker coming by. Jeff could probably make short work of anyone who came, but that would cause a trail potentially leading to the location and I don’t think he wants to attract attention yet. The complexity of most of the things he might be trying to do are a couple of orders of magnitude harder than the work he did on the self-installer, so I suspect that he’s going to want a place he can work out of for a while and run longer term tests.
A message pops on my computer’s screen. It’s from one of General Whitman’s guys with the response to the update I gave them with Jeff’s phone number. A mobile with that number has been popping up once a day almost since the time Jeff robbed our lab. It connects to various cell towers around the country, but only stays active for less than a minute then disconnects. Long enough to check for messages, I’m betting.
There’s also a strongly worded reminder in the message that we are not to interfere with CTTF operations. Still grounded, then, even with what looks like a good lead.
“Come on man. Let’s go.”
I look up and see Evan standing by my desk. It takes me a moment to realize the room has emptied except for him and Lin.
“Oh, Lunch. Right. Let me just finish this one thing. Go ahead without me, I’ll catch up.”
Evan looks like he wants to say something, but then he glances at Lin and just shakes his head. “Sure, brother. Take your time.”
Lin comes over as Evan walks out. She runs her fingers along my arm and up to my shoulder, where she lets it rest as her other hand plays with my hair. “I really love you, do you know that?” she asks.
“I do. And I love you too.”
“That thing this morning. Maybe it would be better if you just forgot about it. I thought it would be fun for both of us, but I’m worried you don’t feel the same way.”
“No, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
“But I do.” She plants herself onto my lap. “Our relationship is everything to me. I want it to be perfect.”
She’s so cute like this, her body warm against mine. I should probably say no, but what harm could it do to make one little change and forget something I’d really rather not remember anyway?
“If it means that much to you, then fine. But just this once. Remember, we decided no more messing with my memories.”
“Of course. Just let me plug in and I’ll take care of it. Then we’ll go get lunch.”