“Are you busy?”
“For now. What’s up?” I walked into the garage, heading for my car.
“I spotted Andrew Snow. Remember him from Hawthorne’s security?”
How could I forget? Andrew and Ben had kidnapped me.
“Where did you see him?”
“My team used facial recognition software and aged him. It picked up on a guy walking around the financial district on Congress Street a few days ago. A woman and a girl about ten years old were with him. He looks different with darker hair and dark bushy eyebrows, but I’m eighty percent certain it’s him. Wanna go see?”
Hope sparked. “Where?”
“There’s a STEM event for kids at the Museum of Science. There’s a room block for the event at the Royal Sonesta Boston. A man with the name Andy Fleming booked a room with two king-sized beds there. We can check out the event now.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
Fifteen minutes later, I met up with Godfrey, purchased our tickets, and entered the lobby.
I glanced at my phone, reviewing the current images Godfrey had sent to me.
“That’s definitely him, even with the new hair color,” I said, staring at the image of the brown-haired man who used to be blond. He had darkened even his thick eyebrows.
We made our way down to the robotics and engineering displays. A group of kids with tablets controlled their robots in a race to the finish line. While we walked, I kept my eyes open for a man resembling Andrew Snow. Was his partner, Ben Tilling, with him? Was one of them the Bleeding Hearts Killer?
We passed booths from MIT and MathWorks and entered aisles with coding stations, tables where kids made slime, wind tunnels for testing paper airplanes, digital microscopes showing cells and insects, and tables with kids wiring LED lights.
“Imagine where we’d be if we had gone this route,” Godfrey said.
“You’d be inventing a droid to do your laundry.”
“I still want that.” He laughed.
“But you have a cleaning service and an assistant who takes your clothes to the dry cleaners.”
“So? I can still have a droid.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. To spar?”
I shook my head and glanced around. Then my eyes landed on a man sitting at a table with his wife and daughter. “Look.”
We each grabbed a plate of fish and chips and walked over to a table close to Andrew’s. He noticed me, and the color drained from his face. As though he understood our presence, he said something to his wife, who was swiping something on her tablet. His daughter was playing with a purple robot when two kids came to her table with their science kits.
Chatter and electronic noises filled the air.
Andrew approached our table, and I gestured for him to sit across from us. “Long time no see.”
Godfrey wiped his mouth and hands with a napkin, tossing it on the table. “I like your new disguise.”
Andrew’s nostrils flared. “What do you want?”
“Not liking your rude attitude, Andrew,” Godfrey said.
“What do you think we want?” I asked, staring at the dark and thick eyebrows that changed his appearance.
Andrew was about ten years older than me, but right now he looked much older. A life of crime didn’t bode well for him. I should be furious with him, but I’d wasted so much energy over the years being angry. All it did was drain me. Andrew was merely a small fish in a deep pond. I’d rather channel my energy toward catching the shark.
