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I click an app on my phone, one designed by a friend of mine I met in the military, who went on to study at MIT. He provided me with the VPN app I use to conceal my IP address, but it also contains a GPS spoofer.

The first step is to jam his tracker, which will merely look like a delay in movement.

With the phone set out on the seat beside me, I leave the parking lot and head toward the nearest mall, keeping an eye on the traffic in my rearview, in case anyone is following behind.

Choosing a crowded part of the mall’s lot, I steal the last spot between two large SUV’s, then make my way into the mall. Once inside, I pop in to the nearest rest room and set the spoofer’s location to the Jansen estate, my old house, about ten miles north—only address I can think of off the top of my head. After a good five minutes, I execute it, before taking my time walking back to my car.

The dot on his tracker should’ve set back into motion and will appear like I’m on my way toward the old house. I am, but not before he gets there first.

A block up the street from the Jansen estate, I wait inside my idling car for a vehicle to arrive. Two minutes later, a white panel van pulls up in front of the house and sits in the driveway.

I snap a quick pic of the license plate.

Instead of climbing out of the vehicle, though, the driver backs out of the drive, and I miss the opportunity to plant the tracker back on him.

Fuck.

He takes off the way he arrived, and as I pass the house, following after him, I toss the tracker out the window.

Keeping about five car lengths behind, I follow him through the streets, until we reach a place called Duli’s Diner—the same diner noted in Nola’s progress notes by her psychiatrist.

Parked across the street, I watch him clamber out of the van, his face concealed by a black hoodie. Minutes later, a couple exits the diner. They don’t even register on my radar at first, since the guy is taller and isn’t wearing a hoodie, until the two of them jump into the same damn panel van. Suddenly, my what the fuck sensors go off.

Where the hell did hoodie go? And who the hell is this couple now?

The two drive out of the diner parking lot, leaving me to decide which one to go after. Dude in the hoodie is still in there, and he’s the one I’ve been chasing this whole time.

Instead of following after the couple, I make my way across the street and enter the diner, scanning over the handful of people inside. Not a single one wearing a hoodie.

The guy in the booth across from me gives me a once-over, his burger halfway to his mouth.

“You seen a guy come through here wearing a hoodie?” I ask him.

He hikes a thumb over his shoulder and gives a nod. “Think he went out the back door.”

With quick strides, I make my way down the adjacent hall, where the bathroom and kitchen doors line the corridor. At the end of the hall stands an exit, but the squeal of tires from behind has me spinning around, and I race back to the front of the diner.

Before I get a chance to see the vehicle, it disappears out of the lot.

“Fuck!”

The older couple sitting in the booth nearest to me look up with a shocked expression, but instead of offering an apology, I slam through the door.

Lost again.

11

Nola

I stare down at the cash that fills my purse. One thousand dollars. Another two thousand sits in a wallet on my phone. In seconds, Voss turned my world from impossible, to what every white collar in the world must feel like. How liberating it must be to deal with issues so quickly and efficiently that they hardly make so much as a hiccup in the day. That’s what I imagine Voss’s life must be like. If something is broken, he has the means to fix it. When he wants something, he has the means to get it.

I sign the paperwork for the tow and hand over a hundred-dollar bill, waiting on the change. Hell, when was the last time I waited on change, instead of counting out pennies to meet the required charge?

The garage is going to keep the car and have offered me a rental in exchange, and a shiny red Explorer pulls up to the front of the building. The driver from the rental place conveniently located next door tosses me the key. “All set.”

All set.

The only reason any of this is all set is because of Voss. Had he not given me the cash, I’d probably be scrambling to figure out how the hell to pay for everything, because apparently my insurance doesn’t cover rental.