Page 32 of Her Last Vow

"I don't think they had to," Rachel said. She walked back into the converted studio, looking at the tripod, the ring light, the mat worn thin in the center from repeated use. "They just needed enough fear and enough noise, and people would start doing the rest of the work themselves."

“Well,” Novak said, “this studio makes some sense. Looks like she was on TikTok as well. Not nearly the following Pike had, though. Looks like she was just getting started. A little less than eight thousand followers.”

“Maybe that was enough to catch the attention of the wrong people, though?” Corbin suggested.

“Maybe,” Rachel said.

She thought of Tanner's video from the night before, the shadowy figure climbing out of a phone screen, the meme with sixty thousand shares. If this newly developing theory was right, maybe somewhere in that noise, a woman had decided the only way to prove she wasn't afraid was to push her body past what it could survive. And maybe she had died two days early doing it, in a public park, in front of a growing crowd already reaching for their phones.

"So…are we agreed?” Novak said. “That this was probably not the work of our killer?”

“I think so,” Corbin said.

“Same here,” Rachel agreed. “But I don’t think the media is going to give a damn. I think we’ve got maybe another few hours before this entire thing blows up beyond our control.” She then looked to Novak and said, “And I think the only person who can help us control it is Dr. Sloan.”

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

When they arrived back at the Apogee building, it was 7:12 in the morning. The building looked solemn and peaceful in the early morning light, before the parking lot was filled with the cars of workers and consultants—though there were a few that had come in to get an early start to the day. Because of the lack of cars in the lot, Rachel spotted a sleek, new Tesla pulling in almost as soon as Novak filled a parking space. The Tesla slipped into a reserved spot near the front entrance, and Sloan himself stepped out. He moved across the lot toward the glass doors with his bag slung over one shoulder and his head down against the morning glare.

"Talk about good timing," Novak said, already opening his door and stepping out.

They caught up to him halfway across the lot, their footsteps loud against the quiet of the near-empty lot at this hour. He didn’t realize someone was rushing up to him until they were about ten feet away. And when he did turn to face them, Sloan didn’t look surprised to see them. He also didn't look much like the man Rachel had spoken to the day before, or on the phone earlier in the morning. His voice on that call had climbed and cracked with anger, sharp enough that she'd half expected to find him rigid with it now, still furious about surveillance vans and business consequences and everything else he'd accused her of not understanding.

But now, he looked like someone who'd aged five years since sunrise. His shoulders had a slight stoop to them that hadn't been there in his office two days earlier, and the skin beneath his eyes had gone the color of a slight bruise. Even his walk seemed careful, like a man who was sure there might be a land mine around him somewhere.

"Dr. Sloan," Rachel said.

For a moment he just looked at them, his bag still hanging from his shoulder. "Agent Gift. You’re here early.”

“We needed to speak with you.”

“Why not just call?” he said. “You proved very early this morning that you don’t mind calling at all hours.”

“This is more of a face-to-face thing,” Novak said.

"We had a fourth death this morning," Rachel added. "A jogger named Holly Greer, found in a park in the middle of her morning run."

Something moved behind his eyes, quick and involuntary. "Same as the others?"

"Not the same technique, no. We believe her death was a total accident. Nothing is confirmed yet, but she was on steroids and only two days away from reaching her peak. We’ll need verification from the ME but for right now, there seems to be a decent chance she wasn’t murdered. However…we have no idea how the killer will react to this. Or the media, for that matter.”

“This is…God, this is getting out of hand,” he said. His voice was thin, little more than a whisper.

Rachel kept her voice even, watching him carefully for whatever came next. "We need you to shut the app down today, before anyone else dies."

She expected the same voice from the phone call, the same climbing outrage about surveillance and business and everything she didn't understand about the damage she was doing to his company. Instead, Sloan exhaled slowly, and something in his posture seemed to give way.

"Maybe you're right," he said.

Novak's eyebrows lifted slightly. "That's not what you said a few hours ago."

"A few hours ago I was angry, and I hadn't had time to think past the anger yet." Sloan shifted his bag to his other shoulder, looking past them toward the building rather than at either of them directly. "I've had time now, and you're not wrong. Pulling the app, at least until this is sorted out, might be the only responsible thing left to do at this point. It would certainly do less damage to us than another body turning up with our logo strapped to their wrist." He frowned and said, “I know it must seem monstrous to people who are paid to save lives, but…we do have a multi-million dollar company here, a company that employs nine hundred people across the globe. It’s why these decisions can’t be made lightly.”

“Well, if you agree…then do it,” Rachel said.

"It's not that simple." He said it quietly, without the defensiveness she'd expected from him. "Nine hundred employees, Agent Gift. And their families. I have investors who'll pull funding the second I admit publicly that the product might be dangerous, whether or not it actually is. I have a legacy I've spent twenty years building, and pulling the app doesn't just pause it. It ends it. Even if we get it back up and running in a day or so, that sort of thing sticks. Nobody trusts a resurrection in this industry. You kill the app, you've killed the company, and every person who works for me is out of a job because I decided it was the responsible thing to do." He sharpened his focus and then said, “All because you are unable to find a killer.”

"People are dying, Dr. Sloan." She decided not to take the bait of him trying to shift the blame.