CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
"You're going to burn a hole through that thing," he said, nodding at her laptop.
"I'm trying to finish this affidavit before Anderson calls asking where it is. If he’s making big moves for this, I need to make sure I get this part done on my end.
" She scrolled back up to the top of the document, rereading a paragraph she'd already rewritten twice.
"Dates, deaths, the connection to the predictions.
Keep it factual, keep opinion out of it.
That's easy to say. Harder to actually do when four people are dead and I've got fresh, still-evolving opinions about all of it. "
"Do you think we even still need the order? After Sloan's little performance and confession this morning?"
Rachel sat back, rubbing at her eyes. "Legally, it's murkier than it sounds.
Sloan suspended the feature, not the app.
The predictive model's still sitting on Apogee's servers, still holding every peak date it's ever calculated.
He can flip that switch back on the second the news cycle moves past him, and there's nothing stopping him from doing exactly that.
A court order would take the decision out of his hands entirely.
It shuts the door and locks it instead of just closing it for however long he feels like keeping it closed. "
"So it's not really about today."
"It's about next week, when everybody's forgotten this happened and Apogee's board starts asking why the flagship feature's been sitting dark for ten days.
" She took a sip of coffee, grimacing slightly at how cold it had gotten.
"And there's also the fact that we've still got a killer we haven't caught.
Whether the app's live or not doesn't change what somebody's already capable of doing with the data that's already out there. "
Novak forked up another bite of eggs. "Fair. Still feels like we're chasing something that already stopped moving, though."
"That's what's bothering me." Rachel closed the laptop halfway, enough to give herself a break from the screen without losing her place.
"I keep going back and forth on Sloan. If he's not our guy, then what he did this morning was the right call.
It was probably the only decent thing anybody at that company's done since this started.
He took it publicly instead of hiding behind lawyers, and he did it before we forced his hand. "
"But if he is our guy…" Novak started.
"If he is, he just handed himself the best alibi money can't buy.
A wounded, grieving founder. A secretly dying man who does the noble thing and shuts down his own creation rather than let it hurt anyone else.
A jury would want to acquit him out of sheer sentiment before the prosecution even finished its opening statement.
" She shook her head, more at herself than at Novak.
"Either he's the hero of this story or he's about to get away with murder because he understands exactly how to make himself look like the hero.
I can't get comfortable on either side of that. "
The waitress came by to top off both their mugs without being asked. Rachel murmured a thank-you before Novak had even looked up. He waited until she'd walked off before speaking again.
"So walk me through it," he said. "Not the legal stuff. The other thing you've been chewing on since the parking lot."
“It’s that obvious, huh?”
“Yeah. When you get tired and stressed you’re pretty easy to read. No offense.”
“None taken…I guess.” Rachel turned her mug slowly on the tabletop, watching the coffee shift inside it.
"I keep picturing the victims the same way we've been picturing them since Pike.
Marked for death, targeted, killed on a schedule because somebody with access wanted them dead on a specific date.
But…what if that's backwards. What if the peak date wasn't when they were supposed to die.
What if it was the last day they were supposed to be… right?"
"Right, how?"
"Right, as in correct. Accurate. What if the killer isn't picking people to kill, but picking people whose survival past that date proves…I don’t know.
Proves something wrong? Mott hits his peak and keeps living, keeps proving the model isn't the finish line it's supposed to be.
" She leaned forward, elbows on the table now.
"What if every one of these deaths isn't a murder built around a deadline, but a correction.
Somebody stepping in before a person can live long enough to become evidence that the algorithm failed. "
Novak set his fork down slowly. She could tell he didn’t look entirely convinced, but she didn’t blame him. Even to her, as she’d spoken it word by word, it sounded flimsy. "That's a hell of a reframe."
"It changes who we're looking for completely,” she admitted.
“If the killer wants people dead just to punish Apogee, or to prove the app's dangerous, that points in one direction.
It points toward somebody like Tanner, somebody who hates the company and wants it burned down.
But if the killer's trying to keep the model perfect, trying to stop people from living past their peak and disproving it, that's not somebody attacking Apogee.
" She held his gaze. "That's somebody protecting it.
Or, at least, trying to. Somebody who built it, or helped build it, and believes in it so completely that watching it be wrong feels unbearable.
Not an enemy of the company. A true believer. "
"Okay." Novak drummed his fingers once against the table, thinking it through out loud. "So if that's the read, and Sloan gets up this morning and tells the world the algorithm's a problem, tells everyone he's turning it off because it's hurting people..."
"Then Sloan just became the biggest threat to whatever this person believes in that's ever existed.
" Rachel felt the shape of it solidify as she said it and just like that, she became a bit more certain.
"He's not just some outsider criticizing the app from a distance, like Tanner.
He's the founder. If he stands up and calls it flawed or dangerous, or wrong, that carries the sort of weight that nobody else's criticism does.
To somebody who thinks of that model as gospel, Sloan denouncing it isn't just a business decision.”
“It's heresy, coming from the one person whose voice could actually kill it for good," Novak said, and she could see that he, too, was coming around to the idea.
Novak sat with that for a second, taking another mouthful of food as he did.
"So instead of Sloan being our guy, Sloan just made himself a target. "
"Maybe." Rachel pulled the legal pad toward her and flipped to a blank page, more out of habit than having any real plan to write something down yet.
"Which means I need to stop asking who wants Apogee to fail and start asking who can't survive watching it fail.
Who's deep enough inside that company to see every prediction, manipulate the data if they needed to, and cares enough about being right to kill over it. "
"That's a shorter list than the suspect list we started with."
"It's a shorter list than I want it to be, honestly.
" She started scratching out names as she spoke, more thinking aloud than actually taking notes.
"Oakley's client-facing, she doesn't touch the model itself.
Hartley's cleared, and even if he wasn't, he leaked data out of anger at the company, not devotion to it.
That's the opposite instinct." She underlined one name twice and looked at it for a moment. It fit…but it didn’t make much sense.
"Sloan built the framework originally, but if he's the one trying to kill it now, that doesn't fit either. "
"Which leaves…"
Rachel didn't answer right away. She looked at the name on the page for a long moment before she said it out loud, like saying it might make it more real than she wanted it to be.
"Kline."
Novak's fork stopped halfway to his mouth. "You're serious."
"I don't want to be." Rachel tapped the name with her pen.
"But think about it. She's the one person who's had total access to that model from day one.
She built the recalibration logic herself.
I mean, she told us that in her own lab.
She's the one who found Hartley's export pattern and handed it to us on a plate, which at the time felt like a win. "
"And now?"
"Now I keep asking myself how convenient that was.
We show up asking hard questions about her team, and less than twenty-four hours later she calls us with a clear, tidy explanation that happens to point everywhere except at her.
" Rachel felt something cold settle in her stomach as she said it out loud for the first time.
How the hell had she overlooked this until now?
"She built Hartley's access herself, if you think about it the wrong way," she continued.
"Not literally…but she's the only person at that company who could have engineered exactly the kind of trail she found, if she'd wanted to. "
"That's a hell of an accusation to build on hindsight."
"I know. It could just as easily mean she's exactly who she looks like, a brilliant engineer who happened to catch something the rest of us missed.
" Rachel pushed the legal pad away slightly, frustrated with herself.
"But brilliance, access, and enough physical strength to hold a needle steady against a moving target.
All of that describes her fine. So does the zeal.
She didn't just build that model. She talked about it like…
like scripture. Every conversation we've had with her, she's defended it like it was something sacred, not something she got paid to maintain. "
Novak was quiet for a moment, turning it over. "And if she's the one who's been steering us this whole time, feeding us just enough to look helpful while keeping us away from her."
"And from that point of view, Sloan going public this morning didn't just embarrass the company. It made him her enemy. Shit, it could have maybe even made him her next target, if we're right about any of this."
“If,” Novak said.
Rachel closed the legal pad, feeling the shape of the theory even as she doubted parts of it. "It's a stretch. I know it's a stretch. We don't have anything close to proof, just a pattern that fits a little too well once you squint at it the right way."
"Doesn't mean it's wrong."
Rachel drained the rest of her coffee, the third cup since they'd sat down, and set the mug back on the table with a soft clink. "But it's enough reason to go back out there and look her in the eye again. After Sloan’s announcement this morning, if she is what we’re thinking she is, I’d imagine her demeanor has changed quite a bit.
We can see if she still feels as helpful the second time around. "
Novak was already signaling the waitress with one hand raised, making the universal gesture for the check. "Then let's get moving right before I talk myself into a fourth plate of bacon."