Page 30 of Victorious

XIINOW. THEN.

2.75 YEARS AGO

SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE COUNTRY

MITCH hunched over the computer in the hotel suite.

They were staying at a place on the edge of a city whose name he’d already forgotten.

It had been nearly three months since they left Merit behind, in the aftermath of Marcella Riggins’s gala, Eli’s death, Victor’s desertion, and in that time, Mitch had lost track of the miles they’d put on the car. Lost track of the names of the towns they’d stopped in, pausing only long enough to refuel, to rest. Bouncing from place to place like a signal trying to avoid detection.

It was a catch-22.

The more they moved around, the more chance they’d be spotted.

The longer they stayed put, the more chance they’d be found.

Mitch didn’t know the right answer.

If Victor was here, he’d have a strategy, a series of strategies, moves and countermoves for each eventuality.

If Victor was here—but he wasn’t.

It was just Mitch, and the dog, and the kid.

“When’s the last time you slept?” asked Sydney, sitting cross-legged on a hotel bed with a box of Chinese takeout and Dol’s head in her lap.

Mitch didn’t stop typing, but he forced his gaze up, and saw her studying him, blue eyes raking over his stubble, the hollows in his cheeks. He knew what she saw, because he saw it, too, whenever he opened a new coding window, his face reflected in the black on the screen.

“I’m okay, kid,” he said with a tired smile.

Syd gave him the kind of look that reminded him of her real age. “You’re a great guy,” she said, rising from the bed. “But just so you know,” she added, setting the takeout at his elbow, “you’re a really shitty liar.”

With that, she disappeared into the bathroom. As the door clicked shut, Mitch sagged.

She was right. He had barely slept these past weeks.

He spent his days on the road with Syd, and his nights writing programs that trawled the internet for arrest warrants, police reports, mention of EOs or EON, or any sign that they were onto them. The only thing he had caught word of was Stell’s death. A single gunshot wound to the head. A suicide—or so it seemed, but Mitch had no doubt it was Victor’s handiwork. A parting shot. Literally.

The fact his programmed searches returned no results should have put his mind at ease, but it didn’t. EON’s databases didn’t list Sydney, but there was no way of telling what Stell himself had known. If he’d kept private—paper—files.

The thought ushered in a fresh wave of panic. He knew it was only a matter of time. The bad luck that had followed Mitchell Turner all his life would find them.

One tired night, turning over stones, he’d even ended up on a corner of the dark web where people were discussing how to become an EO. Not that they used the word itself—they seemed to sense the danger of the term, the letters like a beacon cast onto the darkened sky—but their desire was clear. Mitch read, half in wonder, half in horror, as strangers theorized, the way Victor and Eli must have once, what it would take to increase their chances of a positive outcome in the event of death, be it accidental, or intentional.

One user claimed they had designed a drug that could elevate a person’s baseline adreno-cortisol levels. Theoretically, the pill would lay dormant like a steroid bomb inside their body until activated by a state of heightened stress, or sudden trauma. Of course, due to the short half-life, it had to be constantly re-upped, and the user was demanding an exorbitant sum.

The other posters had called bullshit.

So had Mitch. But he’d screenshotted it. Which was how he’d known it was time to log off for the night.

His stomach grumbled, and he stabbed the chopsticks into the box, the noodles halfway to his mouth, when his laptop pinged.

His pulse lurched, convinced for a moment that it was one of his programs returning a hit. But clicking through the windows, he found the source of the alert.

An email.

At first glance, it looked like spam. He almost deleted it.