CHAPTER EIGHT
They parked and walked to a smaller door beside the roll-up.
Novak knocked twice, and the door was opened almost immediately.
Bryce Tanner looked smaller in person than he had on screen, though no less intense, with the same shaved head and the same tightly muscled build visible under a fitted black t-shirt.
"Can I help you?"
"Bryce Tanner?" Rachel asked, showing her credentials. "I’m Agent Gift, with the FBI. This is Agent Novak. We'd like to ask you a few questions, if you have a minute."
Something flickered across his face, gone almost as fast as it appeared.
Then he smiled, wide and easy, and stepped back from the door.
Rachel could basically see him going from fear to something like excitement.
He was likely already trying to figure out how he could make a visit from the FBI work for his brand.
"FBI. Wow. Yeah, come in, come in."
The inside of the unit had been built out with more care than the exterior suggested.
A backdrop of exposed brick hung against one wall, flanked by a ring light on a stand and a camera mounted on a tripod facing a single stool.
As they got closer, Rachel saw that the brick was clearly fake.
Foam soundproofing panels covered another wall in a checkerboard pattern, and a folding table near the back held a laptop, several external hard drives, and a tangle of cables.
The rest of the space was mostly bare concrete; all of the rebuilding efforts had gone into the small filming corner.
"Sorry about the mess," Tanner said, gesturing toward two folding chairs near the table. "This is just the studio. I've got an office space I use for the business side, but everything gets filmed here."
"It's a good setup," Novak said, glancing around.
"Thanks. It took me a while to get the acoustics right." Tanner sat down across from them, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, still smiling. "So what's this about? Let me guess. Apogee. Right?"
"What makes you say that?" Rachel asked.
"Because I've been talking about that company for over a year, and suddenly two people are dead on the exact days that app told them they'd peak." Tanner spread his hands. "I figured somebody official would show up eventually. Honestly, I'm glad it's you and not some PR firm trying to shut me up."
“How did you know about the deaths?” Rachel asked.
He gave a guilty shrug and said, “Whether you see it as pathetic or not—and I know some do—obsessing over that company has fueled my content for the past year or so. If someone sneezes hard in that building in Reston, I know about it.”
“But the most recent death—”
“Renata Pike,” he said. “Yeah. I got wind of that about an hour ago.”
Rachel nearly asked how, but she sensed that would sideline the more important meat of the conversation. Someone like Tanner would have ears and sources everywhere. Maybe someone on the police or at the hospital.
"You've been vocal about the company," Rachel said. "Calling it a death clock. Why is that?”
"Because that's what it is." Tanner's voice picked up energy, the same cadence Rachel recognized from the video.
"I've had thousands of people reach out to me since I started covering this.
Former employees, people whose family members died right around their peak day.
Nobody wants to connect the dots because Apogee's got money and lawyers and a very good PR team. Like, scary good.”
"How long have you been covering the company?" Novak asked.
"A little over a year. I started because a viewer sent me her mother's peak date prediction, and her mother died four days later.
That's when I started digging into the pattern.
" Tanner shrugged. "I'm not a scientist. I'm not saying I've proven anything.
And I make sure to point those things out whenever I talk about Apogee.
I'm just asking questions nobody else wants to ask. "
"We were actually just at their offices in Reston," Rachel said, watching him carefully as she said it. "We talked with their VP of communications. She walked us through how the predictions work, how private the individual data is supposed to be."
Tanner's smile stayed in place for a half second too long before it faded. "You went to Reston."
"Yes, this morning," Rachel said. "We're trying to understand who might have access to a user's peak date before it becomes public. Whether it's someone inside the company, or someone who's found a way around their privacy controls."
"Someone like who?" Tanner's leg had started bouncing, his knee moving in a quick, tight rhythm.
"That's what we're trying to figure out," Novak said. "You've spent a year building a following around this idea. Some of your viewers seem to think you've got a source inside the company. Do you?"
Tanner stood up fast enough that his chair scraped hard against the concrete.
The shift in his mood was like night and day—as if someone had flipped a switch.
He went from being conversational and mostly polite to paranoid and defensive in less than three seconds. "I don't like where this is going."
"We're just asking questions," Rachel said, keeping her tone even. "The same way you ask questions in your videos."
"No, this feels different." Tanner's eyes moved between them, and his hands had curled into loose fists at his sides. "You're not here about Apogee. You're here about me."
"Mr. Tanner, sit back down," Rachel said. "Nobody's accusing you of anything." She wondered what had sent him on this trajectory. Was it the mention of having been at the building in Reston? Was it asking if he knew anyone on the inside?
He didn't sit down. Instead, his eyes flicked toward the back of the unit, toward a metal door partially hidden behind the soundproofing panels. Rachel saw the decision form on his face a half second before he moved.
He shoved the folding table hard into Novak's legs, sending the laptop and hard drives scattering across the concrete, and bolted for the back door.
“Jesus…” Novak muttered as he stumbled to his feet. "Tanner!" he shouted, stumbling back to catch his balance.
Rachel was already moving. She cleared the table in two strides and hit the back door just as it slammed shut behind him.
She shoved it open into a narrow loading dock area lined with dumpsters and pallets.
Tanner had a head start of maybe fifteen feet, sprinting toward a chain-link barrier at the far end of the lot.
She didn’t even consider drawing her weapon because things could go badly once it was out.
He looked to be in good shape, so she knew she had a chase on her hands, but she welcomed the challenge.
If he did manage to get too far ahead, she may pull her gun and fire a warning shot.
"Stop before you make this worse!" she called out, knowing he wouldn't, and pushed harder anyway.
Her shoes hit the cracked asphalt of the loading area in a fast, even rhythm, and she felt the burn start low in her legs almost immediately.
Tanner glanced back once, his face pale with panic, and put on a burst of speed toward the barrier.
He got both hands on top of the chain-link and vaulted it in one motion.
He was more agile than Rachel had given him credit for, landing hard on the other side and stumbling before he caught himself.
Rachel didn't slow down. She hit the fence at a dead run, planted one hand on the top rail, and swung herself over in a single fluid motion.
She landed on the other side without breaking her stride, but she was old enough now to know that she'd be sore in her calves and lower back tomorrow.
She instantly closed the gap between them fast, focusing on nothing but the space between her and his back.
She was aware of the sounds of Novak somewhere behind her, also catching up.
Tanner cut hard to the left around a parked delivery van, and she cut with him.
She was now close enough to hear his ragged breathing.
He tried to angle toward a gap between two dumpsters near the edge of the lot, and Rachel put on one final burst of speed, closing the last few feet.
She timed it just right, executing a lunge that caught his shoulder and drove them both sideways into the metal side of a dumpster.
She’d known it was coming, though, and managed to skid to a stop before her entire left side slammed into the dumpster.
Tanner, on the other hand, was not as lucky.
He hit the ground hard, and Rachel came down on top of him within a few seconds.
Tanner was groaning and gasping for air as she pinned one arm behind his back before he could twist away.
He thrashed once, tried to buck her off, and she used her weight to press him flat against the pavement.
"Stop moving," she said, breathing hard. "Right now."
Behind her, she heard Novak's footsteps approaching fast across the loading dock, his own breathing labored.
"Jesus, you're fast," he said, kneeling to help pin Tanner's other arm while Rachel got the cuffs around his wrists.
Rachel smiled briefly at the compliment, but kept her attention on Tanner.
"Get off me," Tanner said, his voice thin and shaking. "I didn't do anything. I swear to God, I didn't do anything."
Rachel pulled him up by the arm and turned him around so his back was against the dumpster, his chest heaving. His face had gone gray, and his eyes darted between them, wide and unfocused in a way that looked less like guilt and more like raw fear.
"Then why'd you run?" Rachel asked.
"Because I knew you'd think it was me," Tanner said. "The second you said Reston, I knew. They’d twist the story, point fingers at me. I knew you'd think it was me."
"Think what was you?" Rachel asked.
Tanner's breathing hitched, and for a moment it looked like he might be sick. "I didn't kill anybody. I swear to you, I didn't kill anybody. But I know things I shouldn't know. And now two people are dead, and I've been telling everybody I know things, and I think..." He stopped, swallowing hard.
Rachel understood without having to dig deeper. He was worried that the inner circle at Apogee might be coming after him. Still, it was no reason to run from federal agents, and they already had him cuffed.
“Well, you can explain it a bit more back at your place,” Novak said.
"Fine. But can you take the cuffs off? I'm sorry, I mean…really."
“No. The cuffs come off when we’re done talking,” Rachel said.
Tanner said nothing else as she turned him around and pushed him gently back in the direction of his studio. With his shoulders hunched and his head lowered, he remained quiet as Rachel and Novak escorted him along.