Page 12 of Her Last Vow

"Do you know where he's based?" Rachel asked.

"Somewhere near Arlington, I think. A few of the things I saw said that every now and then, he’ll promote small businesses catering to nutrition, wellness, things like that. And most of them are Arlington or DC based.”

"That's very helpful. Thank you." Rachel paused, wanting to make sure she asked all that was on her mind so she wouldn’t have to bother this poor woman again. "One more thing, and I want to be honest with you about why I'm asking. A lot of what's circulating online about this app is speculation, not fact. I don't want you to feel like we're dismissing what you've told us, but I also don't want you spending more nights going down these rabbit holes. It's not good for you, especially right now."

"I know how it sounds," Diane said quietly. "I'm not stupid. I just needed something to make sense of it. Something more than a doctor telling me his heart just stopped for no reason."

"I understand. We'll be in touch if we learn anything."

"Please do." Diane's voice had thinned out again, the exhaustion returning. "That's all I want."

Rachel ended the call and set her phone in her lap, looking out at the trees blurring past the window.

"Bryce Tanner," Novak said. "You know the name?"

"I don't, but I'm about to." Rachel pulled up a search on her phone, typing the name in along with Apogee. The first result loaded almost instantly.

It was a video that had been posted two days earlier with over four hundred thousand views. The thumbnail showed a man in his thirties with a shaved head and an intense expression, sitting in front of an exposed brick wall. The words DEATH CLOCK EXPOSED were written in bold red text across the image.

She tapped play and let it run for a few seconds, angling the phone so Novak could glance over as he drive.

"I've gotten three messages this week from people inside that company," Tanner said on the video, his voice pitched somewhere between outrage and satisfaction. "Apogee's COO has been quietly meeting with health insurance companies for months, trying to sell them access to user data they swore up and down was private. I've seen emails. I've talked to people who were in the room. This isn't about wellness. It's about who's willing to pay for a list of names and dates. Not any better than this scam health insurance plot that’s rotting this country."

Rachel scrolled through the comments briefly, then paused the video.

"He's not talking about the deaths at all," she said, skimming the description beneath it. "This one's about the COO selling data to insurers. Nothing here about Pike or Mott."

"Makes sense," Novak said. "Pike only died last night. This posted yesterday, before any of it happened. And Mott wasn’t exactly a social media darling."

"So whatever's got him worked up right now has nothing to do with our case." Rachel set the phone down again. "Or at least nothing he knows about yet."

"Doesn't mean he's clean. Just means he's angry about something else. If he’s building part of his brand around health-related conspiracies, that’s a deep, dark hole. Guys like this don't need real information to build a following. They just need an angle."

Rachel looked out at the road. "If he's already convinced himself the company's selling private data to insurers, it's not a big leap for him to decide somebody's using that same data to target people."

"We should talk to him."

"I'm not against it, exactly." Rachel looked out the window again, watching a gas station slide past. "I just don't love the idea of us showing up on his doorstep and giving him more material for his next video. Guys like this thrive on attention from law enforcement. If word gets out that the FBI questioned him, that becomes the story instead of anything he actually knows."

"Maybe. But if he really does have sources feeding him something real about that company, that's worth knowing." Novak checked his mirror and merged onto the exit ramp. "And if he doesn't, we've lost an afternoon talking to a guy with a following. Either way we walk away knowing more than we do right now."

Rachel didn't answer right away. She thought about Diane Mott—about how easy it was for a grieving person to tumble into rabbit holes, chasing patterns that felt like answers because the real ones hadn't come fast enough.

"I don't want to build this case around what a guy with four hundred thousand YouTube subscribers thinks is happening," she said finally. "I just want to make sure we’re being careful about that."

"Of course."

"I’ll call the bureau and get his address," she said, already tapping the number. "And when we talk to him, we don't tell him anything he doesn't already know."

Novak nodded, merging onto the main road that would take them back toward Arlington. "You sure you want to call ahead…or just show up?"

"Let's just show up," Rachel said as the line to the bureau started to ring. "I'd rather see his reaction in person than give him time to plan one."

CHAPTER EIGHT

Finding Tanner's address took less effort than Rachel expected. Once she'd called the field office, she was instantly put through to an analyst who pulled public business filings tied to Tanner's channel while Rachel was on the phone with her. Within just eight minutes, they had a lease registered to a production company under his name. And it turned out that Diane's information had been correct: Tanner rented a commercial unit in a strip of light industrial buildings off Route 50, not far from the address Diane Mott had guessed at.

"Unit 14," Rachel said, reading off her phone as they pulled into the lot. "Between a mattress outlet and a place that does custom vinyl wraps."