Page 17 of Her Last Vow

"You were both a good deal more patient a few hours ago," Oakley said.

"A few hours ago we didn't know there could very well be a source inside this building feeding individual peak date predictions to someone outside of your company," Rachel said. "So yes, our patience has changed." She was speaking, of course, of Bryce; but she didn’t see the point in putting him in more danger. It would have been reckless to name him.

Oakley's mouth opened slightly and then closed again. For a second, it looked like she might be sick. "I…I wasn't aware of that."

"Then you're not aware of a lot," Novak said. "We'd like to speak with Dr. Sloan. Now."

"Let me see what I can do." Oakley's voice had gone thinner, less rehearsed. She turned and walked toward the elevator bank rather than picking up a phone at the desk, and Rachel took that as a small victory; it was evidence that whatever performance Oakley usually put on for visitors had been knocked slightly off its axis.

She was gone for nearly ten minutes. When the elevator doors opened again, it wasn't Oakley who stepped out first. Instead, it was a man of about fifty, moving with an ease that suggested he was used to walking into rooms and having the temperature of them shift around him. He wore a gray sweater instead of a suit, and he looked somehow very friendly but also inherently professional.

"Agents," he said. "Pleased to meet you. I’m Dr. Elliot Sloan. I understand there's been some frustration. I’m happy to speak with you, but let's not do this in the lobby."

"We appreciate you coming down yourself," Rachel said, trying to rein in the frustration she’d been feeling over the past fifteen minutes or so.

"I'd rather come down than have my front desk turn into a standoff." He said it warmly, almost like a joke meant to include all of them. Rachel couldn’t get a read on how he was really feeling, though, and that made her a bit uneasy. "Come on up. Let’s have a chat.”

Oakley trailed a step behind him, and Sloan glanced back at her without breaking stride. "I've got this, Nina. Go ahead and get back to what you were doing."

Oakley hesitated only a second before nodding and peeling off toward the lobby's far side. Rachel filed the exchange away without comment.

Sloan led them to the elevator himself, pressing the button for the fifth floor before either of them could ask. The car was quiet on the way up, and he spent most of the ride looking at the numbers overhead rather than at either of them.

The doors opened onto a quiet hallway. Something about the place had the calm and reverence of a museum. Sloan walked ahead of them at an unhurried pace, nodding once to a woman coming the other way with a laptop tucked under her arm. She nodded back without breaking stride.

"Most of my day is spent up here now," Sloan said, mostly to fill the space as they walked. "It seems the company keeps growing and I keep getting further from the actual work. Funny how that happens."

Neither Rachel nor Novak answered, and Sloan didn't seem to expect them to. He stopped at a door near the end of the hall and pushed it open, standing back to let them in ahead of him.

Sloan's office was larger than Oakley's and considerably less staged. Books were stacked on every surface, some of them medical texts with cracked spines, others clearly self-published research reports with plain covers. A whiteboard along one wall carried a mess of equations Rachel didn't try to make sense of. He gestured them toward two chairs across from his desk and sat down heavily in his own, as though the trip down and back up had cost him something.

"I assume this is about Renata Pike," Sloan said. "And Gerald Mott."

"Both of them," Rachel said. "Both died the same day their Apogee app told them they'd reached their optimal health peak."

Sloan nodded slowly, folding his hands on the desk. "Yes, Nina informed me. It's a tragedy. Genuinely. I built this technology to help people live longer, healthier lives, and instead I've got two people dead and a news cycle deciding my company killed them."

Or, Rachel thought, if Tanner’s information is correct, many more than just two…

"Do you think your technology killed them?" Rachel asked.

"I think two people died," Sloan said. "I don't know what killed them yet, and I don't think you do either, or you wouldn't be here asking me questions instead of arresting someone."

It was a very pointed and aggressive comment but he did not raise his tone at all. He still sounded conversational and unbothered.

"Do you think it's a coincidence?" Novak asked.

Sloan considered that, tilting his head slightly. "I think grief and fear make people see patterns that may or may not be there. I also think it's possible some of what's circulating online, this idea that our app is a death clock, could be creating its own effect.” He grinned at them and nodded his head. “Yes, I am very much aware of what Bryce Tanner has been saying about us. Anyway…if enough people believe reaching a health peak is somehow dangerous, you might see anxiety-driven events. Panic mistaken for something worse. Copycat behavior, even, in the worst cases."

"You're saying these could be suicides," Rachel said.

"I'm not saying that specifically." Sloan's tone stayed even, almost gentle. "I'm saying I don't know, and I'd be careful assigning a cause before the science tells us one. I've spent my career being careful about that."

"The medical examiner found a puncture wound on Renata Pike's neck," Rachel said. There was a moment when she regretted giving up this bit of information, but she felt the need to see this man falter a bit; she needed him to understand the wider scope of what they were looking at. "That's not anxiety. That's not a copycat panic attack."

Something flickered across Sloan's face, there and gone fast enough that Rachel couldn't fully name it. "If that's confirmed, then obviously we're talking about something else entirely. I'm not in a position to evaluate a forensic finding I haven't seen."

"We'd like to understand who has access to individual peak date predictions before they happen," Rachel said. "Not aggregate data. Specific names, specific dates."