Prologue

                Moriah Bentley frowned as she studied some pictures on her laptop. Her right index finger hovered over the trackpad while the remaining fingers clutched a pen that paired with a notepad to the right of the computer. Her eyes narrowed in concentration, studying the image she’d been looking at for the past few minutes. The photo was notable, as it was the only photo posted within the last two weeks that showed her target. Posted to Instagram, notably not to the account of the target himself, but rather of his girlfriend. The man in question had short jet-black hair, was wearing a simple t-shirt with the Northwestern logo on it, and a smile just slight enough to notice he was smiling. Next to him was a girl of Hispanic origin with wavy brown hair that went down to her shoulders. She wore glasses and a simple pink shirt, and she had a far broader smile than her boyfriend.

                Moriah clicked a button to switch to the next most recent photo. Another selfie, this time with the two on a plane, side-by-side. The two had bright and excited expressions, and the capture read “Boston bound! So excited!”

                The girlfriend was a regular on Instagram, posting things at a weekly, sometimes daily, rate. That was, until two weeks ago. The last post showed an apparent trip to Boston, and since then, absolutely nothing.

                An outsider may have found this suspicious and concerning, but a bit of research explained exactly why nothing was posted. It was the only reason Moriah had even discovered the couple in the first place. Two weeks ago, an incident at the Science Museum of Boston Massachusetts became national news for a few days. A volunteer had been struck by the Van de Graaff generator amid an electricity show. Despite the cage being supposedly foolproof against lightning strikes—the entire point of the cage in the show—somehow ten bolts of electricity managed to bypass the cage entirely, impossibly striking the victim. On top of that the victim had been struck specifically in the heart each of those ten times. Crazier still, the victim somehow escaped the incident alive and with no external or internal injuries. According to scientists, neither should have been physically possible.

                One event alone wouldn’t rouse suspicion. But combine the strike with the victim’s survival and lack of injuries, and calling it a coincidence seemed impossible. There had to be some reason for what had occurred. And Moriah may be one of the few people in the world who might know the truth.

                Her son is living proof of that.

                Moriah clicked back and forth between the two photos, trying to find something, anything that would give any hint as to whether her suspicions were right. The dates could be brushed aside; It was perfectly natural that the victim and his girlfriend could have gone silent on social media after a traumatizing event. Instead, Moriah searched for something she could physically see in their photos. As far as indicators, nothing immediately stood out. The two still wore similar haircuts, clothes, and were posing like any average couple would. Moriah scanned the recent photo, searching for garments, jewelry, and especially peered at their skin for signs of bruising or disturbances. It was here where Moriah had hit her first noteworthy piece of evidence. The victim had red markings and bruising on his neck. Faded, but still noticeable if one were looking incredibly closely. This was certainly disturbing on a number of levels. The marks didn’t match that of burns, but rather of a grip. The victim had been choked. That didn’t combine well with the other thing that Moriah had noticed: The victim appeared very tired. His eyes were narrower and had more red veins within. There were very noticeable bags under his eyes, as though he hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep, perhaps in days.

                Moriah frowned. She didn’t want to assume anything, but clearly some kind of physical trauma had struck the victim following the accident in Boston. It wasn’t uncommon for couples to have physical altercations nowadays, and some could even downplay the severity of such a relationship. She desperately hoped that this wasn’t the case here. She opened up a tab and started to look around for information on the victim’s parents. It took a few minutes of rigorous searching, but she finally found names. Unfortunately, nothing about them seemed noteworthy. His mother was an active participant in town rallies, but beyond that, the family was relatively quiet. She then repeated the process for the girlfriend, and quickly struck gold. According to a Noblesville police report, the father of the victim’s girlfriend had been arrested for attempted homicide through suffocation. The date of arrest? Six days following the incident in Boston.

                A sigh of relief escaped Moriah. While not definitive proof, the evidence seemed to provide another likely story. The victim had been strangled by the girlfriend’s father, who was promptly arrested on the spot. While certainly not good news, it was relieving to know that the girlfriend herself was not the perpetrator. Still, the implications of this incident left a bad taste in Moriah’s mouth. What could’ve caused the father to want to choke his daughter’s boyfriend, so soon after he had escaped death in Boston?

                As much as Moriah wanted to consider any of this evidence toward her theory, there wasn’t anything concrete enough. If anything, this only increased the pressure on getting to the victim faster than usual, as if Moriah was right, the victim could be in further danger down the line.

                “Anything?” a voice behind her spoke. Moriah rotated in her chair to face a girl in her late-teenage years, lying down on a hotel bed on her phone. This young woman was Hazel, Moriah’s adopted daughter.

                Moriah shook her head side to side. “Something, but it’s no indication of whether we’re right about him or not.”

                “What’d you find?” Hazel asked, getting off her belly and sitting up straight, swinging her legs to the front of the bed.

                Moriah explained her findings of the victim and his girlfriend’s father’s arrest, catching her up on her reasoning.

                “That’s awful!” Hazel repeated. “I can’t believe he got strangled!”

                Moriah nodded. “My hope is that the incident is unrelated to Boston, though I’m not sure how it could be. At worst, the girlfriend’s father knows the truth and is spreading it to as many people as he can.

                Hazel snorted. “No one would believe him though, right?”

                Moriah shrugged. “Regardless, it could very well mean that the secret has been exposed. If we’re right about him, then this is something we need to make sure we get to sooner rather than later. We’ll have to come up with all kinds of alibis and damage control.”

                “No pressure, huh?” Hazel said with a frown. “Anything else?”

                Moriah shook her head. “Nothing concrete. He doesn’t have nearly the same kind of social media presence that his girlfriend does, so him not having any posts after the accident isn’t anything suspicious on its own. Frankly, I’m a bit surprised his girlfriend even posted anything, especially when his neck hasn’t fully healed yet.”

                They spent a few minutes going over a couple of other things they could check when the hotel door opened up and in popped Moriah’s twenty-four-year-old son, strutting in like he owned the place. Quickly Moriah and Hazel dropped what they were doing and got to their feet. “Cole!” Moriah greeted, with rapt attention. “How did it go? Did you find anything?”

                Cole smirked flauntingly. “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

                Moriah held in her sigh. Cole loved being the center of attention whenever he could. He loved playing the “Good news or bad news” game whenever he held information. “Whatever works,” she said, grabbing her notepad and pen.

                Cole didn’t let up. He crossed his arms. “C’mon, gimmie something to work with here!”

                She sighed. “Good news, then.”

                His smirk faded. “Oh, actually… it works better bad news first…”

                Then why give us the option!? Moriah thought to herself, withholding an eyeroll. “Then the bad news?”

                He cleared his throat. “So basically, Target E’s not in Boston anymore, he bailed like a week and a half ago.”

                “Target E?” Hazel said, crossing her arms. “He has a name you know.”

                Cole flashed a toothy grin. “I thought Target E sounded cooler. Makes this feel like a real-life operation, you know?”

                “Please take this seriously,” Cole’s mother sighed. “What’s the good news?”

                “Fine,” he dropped the smile with an eyeroll. “The good news is that I know where he is now. Turns out, dude’s a college kid still, attending Northwestern University.”

                He paused for dramatic effect, and Moriah and Hazel exchanged an awkward glance. “We uh… figured that part out already,” Hazel explained.

                Cole’s eyes widened. “Seriously!? The fuck was I doing over there then!?”

                “Language, honey,” Moriah scolded. “And we’ve known he’s attended this university for a while, it came up on the first few searches across their socials. In fairness, we only recently discovered that he’s back there now, so you couldn’t have known that.”

                Cole threw his arms out. “And no one bothered to tell me about his college!?”

                Moriah winced, worried about something spewing out of his hands. “You have been told, multiple times,” she disappointedly said. “You just haven’t been paying attention.”

                He rolled his eyes. “Geez, sorry I haven’t been paying attention to his fucking college.”

                “So that’s it then?” Hazel interrupted, looking between us. “We found nothing? We came here to Boston for nothing then?”

                Moriah returned back to her desk to pull up the photo on Instagram again. “Not exactly. While Boston may not have gleamed any information specifically, we do know where he is now, and that’ll be our next destination.” Typing in a prompt, she started browsing the web for plane tickets. “We’ll leave for Chicago tomorrow and see if we can track him down at his university.”

                A cleared throat broke the conversation, and everyone looked back at Cole, who had yet another grin on his face. “I wouldn’t say Boston has been a waste. After all, you haven’t heard the even better news yet.”

                Moriah’s patience with Cole withholding information for dramatic effect was thinning, but she held on and nodded. “Then, you found something?”

                He nodded. “The really good news is that I’m like, ninety-five percent sure we’re right about him.”

                Hazel’s eyes bugged. “No kidding!? How!?” Moriah too, leaned in, now completely focused.

                Cole smirked, obviously enjoying the attention. “It took some finagling, but I eventually got the doctor to slip. I asked them if they noticed anything weird about him while they treated him, and they kept being all ‘no, that’s confidential’ and ‘I can’t tell you’, blah, blah, blah. But eventually one of them admitted something about him ‘emitting a static field around himself somehow,’ and that ‘he’d never seen anything like it before.’”

                “Emitting a static field?” Moriah repeated, quickly rushing to grab her notepad and pen and writing it down. “You’re sure that’s what they said?”

                He nodded. “They seemed to realize that they slipped up, tried to tell me to forget what I heard, and I just said that I didn’t even hear what they said. It’s clearly supposed to be a secret. So how about that? Pretty damn useful, huh?”

                Moriah flew lightning quick back to her laptop and immediately began researching static fields, trying to find evidence that a human could produce one themselves. “You’re positive they said he ‘emitted’ the field?”

                “Something like that,” Cole nodded.

                “Something like that?” Moriah frantically clarified. “As in, not exactly?”

                Cole groaned. “Yes, he specifically said emit. I remember that much.”

                “Is that good?” Hazel asked, trying to keep up.

                Moriah’s fingers were flying across the keyboard. “As far as I’m aware, that’s good information. That might just be the evidence we need to go forth!”

                “A-HAH!” Cole shouted with a fist bump toward the air. “So, I did it? I did good?”

                Moriah turned to her son with a smile. “Yeah, that was really useful, thanks.” Cole returned the smile gratefully. She returned to the computer. “I need to do some more research, but if this holds true…” her heartbeat was accelerated. They might just be right after all!

                “Well, I’m gonna take a shower,” Hazel declared, making her way past Cole.

                “Don’t have too much fun in there,” he teased.

                “No promises,” Hazel joked back.

                Moriah hardly listened. She gave one last look at the victim in the photo and imagined him in a new perspective. His tired, sad eyes could just be telling the story of someone who had just gone through something life-changing, and was feeling lost and alone in a world he had no idea how to navigate in. He had a girlfriend, who may or may not know his secret, and he had an adult on his girlfriend’s side that wanted to hurt him. Moriah squinted, refilled with determination.

                We’ll find you, Beck Roland.