Chapter 1 #2
I know he is talking to me. By now, Luke has slumped to his knees by the grave.
His filthy blond hair is hanging in a soaked, shaggy mess around his head because he’s refusing an umbrella, and it has started to rain more heavily.
He wants to suffer, I think. Luke believes that if he suffers, things will improve.
My personal beliefs are different. I believe that making others suffer will improve things for me.
Luke takes after our mother, as did Teddy.
She was an artistic woman with a whimsical nature.
She loved her babies intensely, and I know that being taken from us so early must have destroyed her more than actually dying did.
I pray that she did not know it was happening.
I hope one moment she was alive and full of sweet joy, and the next she was at rest. I hope that for her, and for Teddy.
Me, on the other hand, I follow in my grandfather’s mold.
He was a stoic bastard whose name is still feared in certain Latvian villages.
He was the one who insisted on coming to America and making something of himself.
When it turned out that it was almost impossible to do that by strictly legal means, he turned to more creative modes.
The Levin family has run every kind of organized crime gambit there is. We are legit these days, of course, but our grandfather ran moonshine, guns, and anything else he could get his hands on. He was a one-of-a-kind man, and I like to think he lives on in me.
Aiden is more like our father was. Controlled.
Precise. Specific. Words that should really only be used to describe an accountant, but when paired with his native dangerous aura…
Aiden does not seem like he should be as frightening as he truly is.
Foolish people underestimate him all the time. But they only make that mistake once.
I will not see my brother’s coffin reach the end of its journey, and for that I am grateful. I have seen enough. Too much. I have carried enough impotent grief. Following this woman gives me something to do.
I am good at this sort of thing. I keep a good distance, and I do not walk right behind her.
If she happens to glance around, she will likely not notice me.
I stay at a right angle behind her, triangulating her movement.
It allows me to keep her in sight and over a little bit of distance, draw even with her and even get in front of her.
I am closer now than before, and can see her face from time to time. She is pretty. Very pretty. She has wide eyes that give her a perpetually innocent expression, and a full mouth that speaks to sin. She is young. Perhaps around Teddy’s age. I wonder if she was a friend. Or something more.
Levin men do not date much. Aiden does not have time, I am not often able to find a woman who can match my intellect, let alone my interests, and Luke, well, he is likely the exception, though he keeps quiet about it.
I am not so simple as to assume that any woman hanging around a grave is necessarily a girlfriend, however. Teddy was popular. He was liked by a lot of people at college. I suspect if this was one of his school connections, the cemetery would have been inundated with coeds.
It’s very possible that this cute little blonde with the short bob and the snub nose is something else altogether.
Something closer to a spy. Plenty of people use attractive young women as runners.
They are overlooked as potential threats usually.
Traditionally, nobody would dare touch a woman, let alone use her in this way, but it’s 2026, and a lot of the old rules are changing in response to a world that doesn’t play by many, if any, anymore.
She looks over her shoulder repeatedly, nervous. I can practically feel her anxiety as she hurries away, head down. I wonder if she can feel me close. Some people have good prey senses. She certainly looks like she wants to go to ground as soon as possible.
It’s too late for her, though. She is on my radar. I have her scent, and I will not leave her tail until I know everything there is to know about her.
If she is known to Teddy, then she knows she shouldn’t have been at the cemetery. We, the family requested privacy and showing up to stand ominously at a distance is not really the definition of privacy. At the very least, she has been a naughty girl.
She seems to have a pretty figure, though it is hard to tell under a coat. I like the way it seems to flare out around her bust and hips. There’s something a little old-fashioned and classic about it. The coat looks expensive, too.
Either this young lady has impeccable fashion sense and a very generous clothing budget, or someone has dressed her. Strange thought to have about an adult, but there is something about the level of polish I’m seeing in her attire that makes me think she either is a designer, or has one.
It’s the bob, I decide. It’s too classic to be contemporary.
Or maybe it’s the hat. A dark beret set at an angle far too jaunty for a funeral.
The shirt beneath the coat has broad lapels.
She could have stepped right out of a vintage era.
She is wearing brown leather boots, also well shined, also vintage.
Interesting.
She walks far longer than I expect her to, several blocks through the city. At one point, she pulls out her phone and loses herself in it for a moment, but the streets are too busy to do that for long before she almost walks into someone and is cursed at roundly.
“Sorry,” she says, her head low. She holds herself much like the incarnation of an apology for a few steps before straightening again. An actress of sorts, then.
I do not really think she had anything to do with Teddy’s death.
A girl like this is much more likely to have been a friend, perhaps a girlfriend, perhaps someone who wanted to be a girlfriend, but never caught his eye.
Women are capable of all kinds of quiet madness when it comes to adoration denied.
I am beginning to doubt that following a pretty young woman is going to get us any closer to Teddy’s killer.
To find him, we are going to have to look into any number of cartels, shadow governments, or general assholes.
The police investigation has gone nowhere.
Teddy was found dead in an alley, left like so much trash.
I don’t like to think about it. None of us do.
But the fact of the matter is our brother is dead and we do not know who did it.
This woman is the first lead we have had since the terrible event happened a week ago.
I continue to follow her as she weaves between people.
Sometimes I am ahead of her, other times I am inside a store, then behind, then across the street.
I flow with the city, and she appears entirely ignorant of my presence.
I have been trained by the best when it comes to surveillance.
Each of us brothers has a role in the family business.
Aiden is the brains, in the sense that he is a consummate negotiator and capable of synthesizing data from sources obvious and not so obvious.
That second part is where I come in. I am the one who is known, inside our family at least, for ferreting out secrets.
My methods are sometimes surreptitious, but often rough. I employ very little in the way of ethics when it comes to discovering what I need to know. Aiden pretends not to know, though I think deep down he is more dangerous than I am.
And then, of course, there is Luke. Poor Luke. The lost boy. The middle child in a family of four, somehow.
It is time to use a few of the tools I am fortunate enough to have access to.
The first of them looks like a phone, but is actually a different device.
When I activate it, it scans the phones around me, cataloging their numbers.
As I follow the girl, it continues to sort through the numbers around us, discarding the ones that drop out of range, and adding new ones.
Because I am following her, and only her, her number is sorted to the top of the most frequently pinged list. And just like that, I have not only her number, but in effect, her location.
The concepts of privacy and freedom were lost longer ago than most people realize, but most would still be shocked if they knew just how much each and every one of them had become part of a walking swarm of cloud data.
The Matrix had it right, a stream of code corresponding to redheads, brunettes, and this mysterious blonde who is now getting into a ride-share car.
If I wanted to flex my digital muscle, now would be the opportunity to do something very, very funny. We have access to all manner of databases. In fact, we own significant shares in the company that car is working for. We also own significant shares in the manufacturer of the car.
I smirk to myself darkly, a real sense of pleasure running through my veins. My brother is dead, and frankly I did not anticipate smiling again so soon, but this sort of thing is my lifeblood.
I pull out another device that has been syncing with the first. This one performs a different set of actions. This one allows me to tap into the back end of the car by entering the license plate.
I could drive that car, now pulling away, like a toy vehicle if I wanted to. I could amuse myself as much as a boy with an RC car on a dirt track. The city would be my playground, and the driver and my quarry would be my playthings.
But that would ruin the game. It would certainly tip our hand. If she is connected to a crime family, organization, or just a company out for blood, doing that would certainly ruin the element of surprise, which I still have.