Chapter 3 - The Ghost of '96
Arthur Vance walked out of the precinct with a smug, untouchable smirk, straightening his expensive tie. Jenkins watched him go, her blood boiling.
“They’re going to destroy the drives,” Cho said quietly, watching the evidence tech reluctantly hand over the sealed bags to Sterling’s team.
“Not all of them,” Jenkins whispered. She opened her jacket slightly. Tucked securely in her inner pocket was one of the three hard drives. “I slipped it out before logging it into the master system. If they want to play dirty, so can we.”
But they needed help. They couldn't trust the department, and they couldn't trust the local tech division. Cho knew a guy—a paranoid, off-the-grid hacker named Aris who lived in a retrofitted Airstream trailer out in the county woods.
As they drove out to Aris’s trailer, Jenkins read through the 1996 CPS file again. She held it up to the dashboard light. The name was heavily redacted with thick black marker, but time and cheap ink had made the letters faintly visible beneath the redaction block.
E-L-I-A-S T-H-O-R-N-E.
“Elias Thorne,” Jenkins read aloud. “That was the boy from thirty years ago. He vanished from the foster system a week after this report was filed. Never seen again.”
They pulled into the muddy clearing where Aris’s trailer sat. But the trailer’s door was wide open, swinging in the wind.
Cho drew his weapon, motioning for Jenkins to do the same. They approached silently. Inside, the trailer was a wreck of shattered monitors and torn wires. Aris was gone. But sitting in the single un-smashed chair in the center of the room was a man.
He was broad-shouldered, wearing a dark trench coat, with a jagged scar running along his jawline. He was holding a heavily modified suppressed pistol.
“You’re late, Deputies,” the man said, his voice rough.
“Hands where I can see them!” Cho shouted, aiming his Glock at the man’s chest.
The man didn't move. “You have one of the drives. I know you do, because Arthur’s men just tore this place apart looking for it. They thought Aris had it. I barely managed to get him out alive.”
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“Who are you?” Jenkins demanded.
The man stood up slowly, stepping into the dim light. “My name is Elias Thorne. Thirty years ago, Arthur’s father introduced me to the monster. Tonight, I’m going to kill it. But first, we need to save the boy.”
