Page 16 of Her Last Vow

"You're handing it over now," Rachel said. "That matters more than what you didn't do a year ago."

"Does it?"

"It will if it helps us," Rachel said. "But we need everything you have. Every email, every screenshot, every name, whether you used it in a video or not."

"Yeah. Okay." Tanner nodded fast, like agreeing was the only thing he could do right now that felt useful. "It's all still there. I never delete anything, not even the stuff I don't use. I've got folders going back to the first email."

"How does the source contact you?" Novak asked. "Same address every time?"

"Same address. It's some string of random letters and numbers, not a name. I looked into whether I could trace it once, early on, but I don't have that kind of skill and I didn't want to pay somebody who might turn around and sell me out to Apogee's lawyers. Plus, if this guy knows his stuff, I feel like he’d know if I was doing something…something untoward." He shrugged and added, “You know…like handing his material over to the feds.”

"We'll have people who can look at it and be discreet," Rachel said.

Novak was already moving toward the laptop. "We're going to need that computer."

"Take it. Take whatever you need." Tanner held up his cuffed hands slightly. "Can you take these off now? I told you everything. And I'm obviously not running again."

Rachel nodded at Novak, who came around and unlocked the cuffs. Tanner rubbed at his wrists and didn't say anything else for a moment, staring at the table.

"One more thing," Rachel said. "The names on those screenshots...do you recall if the name Gerald Mott was ever in one of them?"

Tanner shook his head slowly. "Not that I remember. But I can go back through everything."

Rachel stepped back and let Novak start on the logistics of the laptop and the email account. If Tanner was telling the truth, and his alibi held up the way it looked like it would, then whoever was doing this hadn't found their victims by scraping public posts or guessing at symptoms. They'd been handed the information directly, the same way Tanner had. The killer wasn't reading tea leaves in a public feed. They knew the exact date because someone with real access to Apogee's model had given it to them, or because they had that access themselves.

"If this checks out," she said quietly to Novak, "we're not looking at a stalker with a spreadsheet anymore."

"No," Novak said, working the laptop bag onto his shoulder. "We might be looking at somebody inside."

Rachel knew this was true, but didn’t like the idea. Once again, it made her think back to Diane Mott and the idea that there was some sort of conspiracy buried in all of this.

CHAPTER TEN

The Apogee lobby looked exactly as polished as it had an hour and a half before, but the young man behind the reception desk was not the same one who'd walked them up to Nina Oakley's office. This one had a shorter haircut and a stiffer posture, and he didn’t stand up when Rachel and Novak approached.

"We're here to see Dr. Sloan," Rachel said, setting her credentials on the counter. "Agents Gift and Novak."

"I don't have anything on the calendar for a meeting with Dr. Sloan," the young man said, glancing at his screen. "Let me see if Nina's available."

"We don't need Nina," Novak said. "We need Dr. Sloan. We were told earlier this morning by Nina Oakley that it shouldn’t be a problem to speak with him.

"I can call up and check," the young man said, already reaching for the phone. But already, his tone suggested he expected the answer to be no.

"Check fast," Rachel said. "We're investigating two deaths connected to your company's product. If Dr. Sloan would rather do this through a subpoena, we can arrange that instead, but it'll take a lot longer and it won't look good for him or for Apogee."

The young man's composure slipped slightly. He dialed, spoke in a low voice for a few seconds, and then set the phone down. "Somebody's coming down."

It was Oakley who appeared first, stepping off the elevator with a tighter expression than she'd worn earlier in the day. She seemed very surprised to see them again and she looked quite nervous as she looked back and forth between the agents and the young man.

"Agent Gift," she said. "I wish you'd called ahead. Dr. Sloan's schedule today is extremely full."

“You said this morning it wouldn’t be too difficult to speak with anyone we needed to. It's been two hours. We're not asking you to move his whole day around. We're asking for fifteen minutes."

"I understand that, but—"

"We have two people dead," Novak said. "Both of them died the exact day your app told them they'd hit their peak. We were told the man who built the algorithm travels a lot, which is fine, but if he's actually in the building right now, that's a different conversation."

Oakley blinked, and for a second the polish slipped enough that Rachel could see her actually taking in the shift in tone. This morning they'd been careful with her, deferential even. Now Rachel could see her recalibrating, trying to decide what had happened between their last conversation and this one to account for the difference.