As I drove away, I could hear sirens in the distance. The last thing I needed was to get pulled over. Any police officer coming to a shooting scene would find me suspicious. My shirt was torn and stained with blood; my face was scraped from when I fell trying to grab Dave; I had bloody gauze stuffed into one of my nostrils, and my hair was a wet, tangled mess. I turned down the first side street and began to navigate away from the business areas, taking the less-traveled back roads.

  I might be away from where it all started at Stillpoint, but I was far from safe. Almost all of these rental cars had GPS. If whoever was after me had seen my license plate and had access to the rental car's systems, they could track me in near real-time. It wasn’t like I could swap it out, though; shoeless, bloodied, and beat up is pretty eye-catching.

  Heading straight home was also a risk. I still didn’t know how they had tracked me down or what they knew about me. For all I knew, a more dangerous version of Nick was waiting for me there. I needed a moment to think, and I needed more information.

  I drove to Porchlight Coffee, avoiding main roads. In the rear was a small employee parking lot, tucked away from view. There were no open spots, but that didn’t matter. I pulled in and left the engine running while I grabbed my laptop. My nose had finally stopped bleeding, so I took a moment to clean the blood off my face as best as I could without water. The rich smell of coffee beans made me wish I could go in and buy some. A corner of my brain wondered if I could. This was Seattle, after all. How bad did I really look?

  The first thing I did was scan for any news items about the shooting. Not surprisingly, I didn't find any, but it was likely too soon for updates. The Seattle Police Department releases information on its police blotter a few hours after an incident, and the mainstream news might not cover the shooting at all. I didn’t have time to track down a ton of info, but I had a hacker acquaintance who went by the handle BlueWhisper. He was a police information systems specialist, and I had used him before when I needed someone to track the police. I pinged him on Session and got a response in less than 2 minutes.

  Me: Hey, I need you to see if there is any information about a shooting over at Stillpoint on Union. Especially anything about a girl named Luanda who works there. Any Info at all. I can’t stay connected, but I will hit you up in an hour or 2. Any mention of Trey, Dave, or Nick as well.

  BlueWhisper: That’ll take some gas. 2ETH for sure for a deep dive into SPD, but I have the time and inclination.

  Me: Awesome. Tell me where to send it, and it’ll be in your wallet in 2 minutes. gtg

  It was a lot. Two Etherium were worth over five thousand dollars, but getting into police systems was super valuable, and selling services on the internet always came with risks. Each person who knew you could do something was a potential law enforcement or concerned citizen who may try to track you down or, at the very least, lock you out of the system you rely on. After he sent me info on where to put the money, I transferred the ETH to his wallet. Letting go of money was nearly as painful as my slowly fading headache, but I needed the information and didn’t have time to negotiate.

  I connected to my home rig next. I reviewed the footage from the cameras inside my apartment to check if anyone had been there while I was away. It was clear that no one had entered. I had no way to check if someone was watching it from outside, so I tried to figure out how likely that was.

  I knew Dave showed Luanda a picture of my driver's license. I could only think of a few ways they could have that. The most likely was that they had traced back IP addresses from my first hack to the library I had used for free Wi-Fi. I had never gone in, but there were cameras all around it.

  If someone examined all the camera footage, what could they discover? Security cameras generally have wide-angle lenses, which makes spotting faces hard, but they wouldn’t need to. Just seeing someone hanging out for a long time in the parking lot during the hack would be enough. They could find out who rented it with just a few letters from the license plate, along with the make and model. Rental companies always keep a copy of your driver's license. Fortunately, that ID was fake and would lead nowhere. However, it potentially explained what they showed to Luanda.

  If I was extra paranoid, which I was quickly becoming, it was vaguely possible they could have run facial recognition with the Seattle driver's license records and get my actual license from that. Even then, that didn’t tie to my apartment in any way since I rented it under a completely different alias. I never used my real identity for anything.

  None of my reasoning was perfect, and I still didn’t understand how they had found me at Starbucks so quickly, but it was the best explanation I could come up with. My apartment was probably safe, at least for a little while. Whoever these people were, they had enormous resources, and I couldn’t rely on my apartment staying secure for long, but for now, it seemed okay to make a quick run.

  I drove to my apartment, parked the rental car half a block away, and headed inside. I didn’t want to stay any longer than required, but I needed a few critical things. After taking a quick shower and getting dressed in fresh clothes, I was relieved that my nose had stopped bleeding and my head had cleared. I grabbed a carry-on-sized rolling suitcase and packed all my cash—almost twenty thousand dollars. I also included all my driver's licenses, social security cards, credit cards, security fobs, the four SSD cards from my computer, and the two unused burner phones I had on hand.

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  I would miss my rig, but without the drives, it was just a useless brick, too large to carry. I didn't linger. I packed my laptop into a shoulder bag, grabbed my roller case, and headed out. After setting the car keys on top of the rental, I walked about a mile to the Metro station.

  As I rode the train, the image of Luanda standing there with her gun at her side kept coming back to me. She had literally saved my life. Despite the strange moments of precognition I experienced, there was no way I could have gotten past Dave. He was stronger than I was, faster, knew how to fight, and had a gun. My only chance was thanks to Luanda, and I had left her caught between Nick and the police.

  Life liked to put me in those kinds of positions: positions with no options. Like the first time I called the police on mom, I didn’t do it because it was the right thing to do. I did it because I was out of options. Now Luanda would be the one without options, and it sucked to have caused it.

  It haunted me as I traveled across town, taking multiple trains to SeaTac and finally grabbing a shuttle to an extended-stay hotel. The entire journey, from the moment I drove off to finally feeling the security bar shut behind me, had taken over three hours.

  The room was simple, furnished with only a bed, a mini-fridge, a microwave, and a single-burner stove, but it would do. It had a musty smell, and the bed had a noticeable dip in the middle. Good enough for now while I figured out my next steps. The first thing I did when I sat down was contact BlueWhisper on Session.

  Me: Sorry for the delay. How did the info gathering go?

  BlueWhisper: No worries mate. Heaps of data. Sending a full dump now. Looks like a bit of a shit show over there. Won't ask why u were interested. Cops picked up that Luanda girl, no charges yet tho. They've got her in for a chat. That's all I know on that bit. I can't get anything from station internals, sorry. They’ll enter it into the CMS at some point, but it might not be right away. I’ll for sure know if they file charges.

  BlueWhisper: They got a 911 from that girl and just the regular dispatch stuff on that. Also, BOLO's out for a blue sedan (late model), driver's a white bloke early 20s, maybe no shoes on. They're also looking for a tall, muscly white bloke, 20s or 30s, wearing a grey t-shirt & jeans - no car mentioned for him.

  BlueWhisper: Looks like the girl shot an unknown white bloke, maybe forties. Single shot to the head. Dead right there at the scene. No ID on him. He had a suppressed HK P30SK - don't see that too often in Seattle. The girl had a tiny Sig P365X.

  BlueWhisper: I’ll keep on it until I get the notes back from the interrogation.

  Me: Thanks, man. You rock.

  I looked through the data he sent me. There were transcripts of every dispatch call and information about the police units involved, including arrival times and vehicle locations. There was also a timeline of when the police took Luanda into custody, the station they took her to, and the assigned investigators' names. No charges were pressed yet, but they had her on potential gun charges as well as murder. BlueWhisper was worth every penny.

  As I was going through it, he sent me another message.

  BlueWhisper: It looks like they pulled another gun from a suspect vehicle close by. Suppressed Micro Tavor. Not bad. You've landed me in some interesting stuff today, cheers.

  The good news was that there were no license plate numbers in the BOLO and the descriptions of me were vague. On the bad news side, it seemed like Nick had escaped. The day had been hell and I felt it all over, so I closed my computer and lay down. As I fell asleep, my mind was on Luanda; whatever had happened with her was my fault, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.

  I woke up in another premonition, experiencing that same sense of subdued unreality as when I was in the tank, but this time it felt different. I wasn’t even in my body; I was inside a police station. I couldn’t control my movements, which was completely different, but I could see, hear, and feel. I felt a hand under each arm, guiding me but without much force. My hands were handcuffed behind me, and there were shackles on my feet.

  I could feel my mouth moving, and words came out, but I controlled none of it. I heard Luanda’s voice as I spoke, “Where are you taking me?”

  From behind me and to my left, I heard a deep male voice answer, “We’re taking you for transfer; you can get the details when you get there.”

  They guided me through an automatic thick barred door that opened with an audible clack. On the other side was a tall, lanky police officer in a tan sports coat with close-set blue eyes and greying hair. A scar across his left eyebrow made him look tough despite being in his fifties. The two guards who brought me in removed my shackles and handcuffs, and the older officer took out his own cuffs and cuffed my hands behind my back.

  As he guided me out of the building, I repeated the earlier question I had asked the guards, “Where are you taking me?” It was mind-bending to feel myself speaking but having no control and hearing Luanda's sharp alto voice come out.

  “We can talk on the way.” His answer was flat and professional.

  “Have you talked to my lawyer?”

  “He’ll be kept informed.”

  He pushed my head down, and I willingly got in the car. As he reached across me to buckle my seatbelt, his left hand went between my thighs, and I could feel my body stiffen. He lingered, leaning over me for a second, and I heard him say, just loudly enough for me to hear, “Enjoy the ride.” He closed the door and went around front. As he got in and we drove away, a man in the passenger seat turned to look back at me.

  It was Nick. Fucking Nick. He wore a cocky half-smile on his face. “Good to see you again, Luanda.” I could feel my heart racing. “You’re not the same queen bitch without the gun, are you? I guess you, me, and Jacob here will be getting to know each other a lot better.”

  I heard Luanda’s voice say, “You’re the asshole who broke in the back door at Stillpoint. Salty because you had to run away from a girl. Fuck you asshole.” I saw Nick's fist coming at my face, my left eye exploded in pain, and I woke up.