Page 130 of What We Burn

I flick through the texts again. The worst ones land just before her shift—the rope, her throat, next time. He doesn’t fire those off in the dark anymore. He sits with them. Picks the words. Times them to hit her right as she’s tying on her apron, so she carries them through every table she waits.

What a fucking creep.

Me:

Can you cross-reference the send-time with anything that might match a physical location or a time zone? Give us an idea if this guy is physically keeping track of her movements or doing it digitally somehow.

FENRIR:

Already running it. But the spoofing platform strips geolocation metadata before routing. I’m trying to reconstruct it from the VPN exit nodes, but the chain was built to prevent exactly this.

Me:

So we’ve got her schedule reflected back at us but no idea what he’s reading it off. We know exactly when he’s watching and nothing about how. Super helpful. Truly. The data gods are generous today.

FENRIR:

Patience. We’ll figure it out.

Me:

Patience is for people who don’t have a woman getting death threats every other day.

Long pause. Two words.

FENRIR:

I know.

That’s the thing about Fenrir. He’s a ghost. No face, no name, no voice that isn’t run through a processor that turns him into a genderless digital hum. I’ve worked with him for two years and I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup of one. I don’t know where he lives, what he looks like, how old he is, or what name his mother gave him.

It could be Pat, for all I know. And I’ve never met a Pat I could trust.

But I know he cares. Not about me, specifically. About the work. About the people on the other end of the data who are being hurt by the people he’s tracking. I’ve seen it in the way he stays online for eighteen-hour stretches when we’re close to a breakthrough. In the messages he sends when the stakes go up.

I know.

The door opens again. Gene. This time he knocks once he’s already got the door open.

Uncool, Dad. This is my private space.

But at least he’s carrying a plate with three slices of banana bread, a pat of butter, and a knife. He sets it on the tea tray.

“Working brains need carbohydrates to think clearly,” he whispers.

“Thanks, Dad.”

He hovers.

“It’s midnight, Dad. Go to bed.”

“Your mother would like to know if you’re staying the night.”

“I’m not staying. I’ll be another hour, tops.”

“I’ll let her know.” He clasps his hands, still hovering. “She says eat something or she’ll come down here herself.”

“Tell her she’s not allowed in here. We have an agreement.”