Линвуд Баркли - Find You First

The outdoor buzzing persisted.

“Remind me when you fly out again?”

“Tomorrow night. Dubai.”

She sighed as she settled onto a stool at the island. “Maybe I’ll come with you. I could take up residence in the mall.”

He grinned. “You could use the break.”

“Let me think about it.”

“Don’t think long. We’ll need to get you a ticket.”

“I know, I know. There’s a few things I’d have to — oh shit.”

There was the ping of an incoming text. She reached into the pocket of her robe, pulled out her phone, thumbed the Home button. “Must be... what the...”

She suddenly looked up, then to the outside, and screamed: “Get Tina!”

Clifton said, “What?”

Cheryl pointed. “Get her! Get her inside!”

“What the hell—”

“Do it!”

Clifton ran from the house, scooped his arm around their daughter, lifting her into the air so quickly that her watering can went flying, landing in a grouping of flowers, snapping stems.

“Daddy! Stop—”

He practically threw her into the kitchen. As he let go of her she stumbled.

“The door!” Cheryl said.

Clifton slid the glass door into place and locked it without having to be told.

“You hurt my knee!” Tina said to her father.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m sorry. Your mom — your mom thought—” At which point he looked at his wife, hoping she would offer a reason for what had just happened.

“Go upstairs, Tina,” she said.

Tina was on her feet now. “I didn’t do anything wrong! Daddy made me spill—”

“Go to your room!” her mother screamed.

Tina looked ready to burst into tears as she ran from the kitchen and thumped her way up the stairs.

Clifton glared at his wife. “What the fuck is wrong with—”

She extended her arm, holding the phone so he could see. A few seconds of video was playing on the screen.

Of their house. Shot from above.

The focus was on Tina, playing in their backyard, moments earlier.

Clifton took the phone from his wife’s hand. “What the hell?”

He slid open the kitchen door again, took one step out, looked into the sky for the drone. But the buzzing had become distant. Whatever had been up there was gone.

When he stepped back inside, he looked at the phone.

“What’s this number? Who is this from?”

“I don’t know,” Cheryl whispered. “Read below the video.”

Clifton slid the picture up and saw a block of text, all caps. It read:

YOU WILL RECEIVE A LIST OF NAMES. YOU WILL SEARCH THE WHATSMYSTORY DATABASE FOR THEM. IF YOU FIND ANY OF THEM YOU WILL PERMANENTLY DELETE THEM AS WELL AS ANY DNA SAMPLES FROM THESE INDIVIDUALS. DO NOT TELL ANYONE. YOUR DAUGHTER IS VERY CUTE.

Clifton looked up.

“What the hell?” he asked.

Cheryl, her hands shaking, shook her head.

“We have to call the police,” he said, reaching for his own cell that was on the counter, next to the sink. “We’ve got to—”

Cheryl’s phone dinged again. Clifton’s eyes went down to it.

THAT WOULD BE A BAD IDEA.

His face paled. He handed the phone back to Cheryl. When she saw the words, a tiny squeak came from her throat. They scanned the kitchen, as if they might be able to spot whatever device was picking up their conversation.

“We can’t call the police,” she said, her voice down to a whisper. “They got my private number. They’re listening to us. They’re watching .”

For several seconds, neither of them spoke. Clifton broke the silence, leaning in close, his voice barely audible.

“What do you think it’s about? Who are these people they want deleted? Why would they want that? Who wants it?”

“How the fuck would I know?” she snapped.

“Hey, it’s not my company this is about. I didn’t get the text.”

She gave him a hateful stare. “You’re blaming me?”

“No, no, fuck.” He put his hands on her shoulders and brought her in close to him. He put his mouth to her ear and whispered, “What are we going to do?”

Cheryl broke free of him, picked up her phone, and hit the button to reply. She typed four words:

SEND ME THE NAMES

And hit Send.

Fort Wayne, IN

Travis Roben visited Super Duper Comics pretty much every week, usually on his day off from restocking shelves at Walmart, but he didn’t spend much time in the superhero section. He didn’t care about any of that Avengers Marvel shit or Spider-Man or any of the Justice League crowd. He had no time for Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman (okay, maybe Wonder Woman, who was pretty fucking hot), or Flash. That stuff bored him.

He preferred offbeat graphic novels, ones where the main characters hadn’t been bitten by radioactive spiders or blasted by gamma rays or were sent to Earth to escape a planet that was about to blow up.

Travis liked stories about real people dealing with real situations. Like that epic Clyde Fans , by that Canadian graphic novelist Seth. Good old-fashioned noir stories, like the Nick Travers books by writer Ace Atkins and artist Marco Finnegan, or Louise Brooks: Detective by Rick Geary. There was that really amazing memoir, from a decade ago — which he definitely had not read at the time, when he was ten years old — about using the services of prostitutes. Paying for It , it was called, by Chester Brown. Amazing. That one hit home for Travis. While he’d never been to a hooker, he had to admit the idea had crossed his mind. To be twenty and never have had sex, and to have no likelihood of having sex, well, you wanted to at least fantasize about your options, even if you knew you’d never go that route.

Sure, he’d kissed two girls over the years. One was his cousin, and that was at her mother’s funeral. You can’t expect a lot of tongue in a situation like that. The other was when he was nine, and some bullies had pushed him and Wendy Bettelheim together behind the school and threatened them with a beating if they didn’t pucker up and kiss each other on the lips. They had never spoken of it again.

Travis knew he was a bit different. It was more than just a nerdy interest in comic books. Lots of guys were interested in comic books and still got some action. But Travis was on the shy side, had few friends, and liked to spend most of his free time — at his parents’ home; he hadn’t quite made the leap yet — working on a graphic novel of his own.

The glasses didn’t help much, either. God, talk about going full nerd cliché. He’d asked his mom to at least get him some cooler glasses, ones that didn’t have big heavy frames that made him look like his name should be Poindexter or something. She’d said his glasses were just fine. He could see, couldn’t he? And if he wasn’t happy with his glasses, she’d told him, he could take some of his Walmart money and buy some on his own, if he had any left after his latest trip to Super Duper Comics.

Yeah, well, she had a point there, he supposed.

When he wasn’t reading his latest purchases, or working on his own graphic novel, which just happened to be about a lonely guy who still lived at home and felt belittled by his parents (“Write what you know!” all the books told him), or maybe jerking off to some online porn, he was finding out about this “incel” movement, which was pretty fucked up, but still, kind of interesting.

There were all these posts from guys who described themselves as being “involuntary celibates,” which meant that they wanted to get laid, but no women were willing to go to bed with them. Okay, so on first reading, it sounded like these guys were simply a bunch of losers, but the more Travis read about them, the better he could see their point. Suppose you did everything you could to be nice to some woman? Brought her flowers, complimented her on her appearance, asked her out for a drink. And no matter what you did, she kept saying no, she didn’t want to go out with you? Whose fault was it then? Certainly not yours. You were making the effort. If this was the kind of reaction you were getting from every woman, you had to ask yourself one question: What the hell was wrong with these women?