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He makes a derisive sound. “Because this is a fool’s mission.”
“Then quit.”
“I don’t want to quit. I’ve got mouths to feed.”
She frowns at him. “You never mentioned you had kids.”
He chomps away. “I don’t. But I’m also not going to keep my mouth shut when I think something’s not—”
She cuts him off with a palm literally to the face. Not a slap. She presses her fingertips into his forehead and cheekbones. “The tech is there,” she tells him, her eyes cutting to me. “If the algo works in the test account, it goes live.”
“What do you do if you find a hit? A match?” Newman asks me.
I stay quiet. It’s my coding, so if this doesn’t work it’s all on me.
“I don’t know,” Debbie says honestly. “We’ve never found the others before they were dead. And we only found three so far.”
Newman and I go quiet, both of us wincing. The pictures we saw of what the billionaires who set this all up did to those women is seared in our memories. Harvesting organs is nasty business. Eyes. Kidneys. Hearts. Livers. Lungs.
Skin.
So much skin.
Debbie sighs. “There is no protocol. We need to find these women now.”
“You’d better get one in place,” Newman grouses.
I finally speak up. “This is going to work. We will find them. And when we do, what are you going to say to a bunch of women in their twenties who’ve been raised in a cult that elevates them to goddess status? A cult their parents joined? And the parents handed their young daughters off to be raised thinking they're so special they're the embodiment of a prophecy? A prophecy three of them have been told, and each is ‘the one’?”
The words sound so stupid out of my mouth.
Newman’s right. This entire job feels like we’re being punked. But when I took it months ago, it was the only lifeline anybody offered me.
And when you’re drowning, you take it and ask questions later.
“It’s not your job to worry about that,” Debbie says. “We’ve got people way above your pay grade handling those details.” She taps my desk twice and looks me in the eye. “Good work.”
“Thanks.”
“Now do more good work.”
“I will.”
And with that, she walks right back out of the area, leaving me alone with a blustery Newman, elegant lines of code, and a lead ball in my stomach, turning hotter by the second.
Paigelynn, from the dog class, slams into my memory banks, my body going hot with the thought. Her long, silky hair. Those big doe eyes. Curves begging for my fingers. How sweet she was to her little dog, Winnie.
And how threatening her asshole husband was.
Is.
I pull out my phone and find the picture of their license plate. With more than a few keystrokes and a surprisingly easy time, I do a search.
It’s registered to an LLC. Of course it is. The name?
Synergy900 Holdings, Incorporated.
One thing you learn in any security field is this: the more boring the name, the more they’re covering up for something.
