My mom is the type of person who loves with her whole heart. She’s always been my biggest supporter, always telling me I can do whatever I set my heart on, and her faith in me is both a blessing and a curse right now. I cling to it, needing her belief that I can do this, but if I can’t, it’ll be one more person that I’ve failed.
I try my best to not look like I’m losing it and say, “Thanks, Mom. I love you too.”
She rests her hand on my cheek for just a second before turning to give my dad a hug. I hear her whisper, “Make sure he takes care of himself, and you better call me if you need me.”
“I will,sladkaya, don’t worry,” he tells her, and then kisses her before she leaves.
Soon we’re standing with the island between us, both of us furiously typing and getting to work while the others give us the space we need. This is not going to be a quick process, and everyone knows it. The first thing I do is disable one layer of security and leave a narrow line open into my system. If Cupid wants to reach me, I’ll let him. The next thing I do is search for Andrew Ellison on the list of Alphas I have. I’ve already checked him. I know he’s not on it, but I check again just to be sure.
“He’s not on the Alpha list,” I tell my dad, not even bothering to raise my eyes from the screen.
“Name change?” my dad asks.
“Has to be,” I say, already pulling up his birth certificate. I air drop it to my dad. “You take his mom. I’ll take his dad.”
“On it,” he says, both of us digging in at the same time.
It doesn’t take long for me to spot the error. Not only is there no birth record of an Andrew Ellison, but his dad doesn’t exist beyond this certificate.
“Definitely a fake,” I say. “His dad doesn’t exist and there’s no record of his birth at the hospital.”
“Mom doesn’t exist either,” my dad says. “Okay, we do this the hard way. Ellison is what, late forties? Early fifties? He probably graduated in his mid-to-early twenties, so let’s say between twenty and twenty-five years ago. The university has to keep records of this shit, right? It’s the most prestigious fraternity on campus. We run his face and see what comes up.”
“Already on it,” I say, using his photo from the latest university yearbook and running it through a facial recognition software. Immediately things start popping up, but it’s all worthless shit, hits from recent university news, papers he’s written, lectures he’s taught, anything that got his smug-ass picture taken is now popping up so I’m forced to look at photo after photo of the man I can’t wait to kill. I’d told Savanna the truth. I don’t enjoy killing, but I’m going to enjoy it this time.
While that keeps running, I use another program to start reconstructing what he may have looked like at twenty. Thanks to all the images popping up, I have a mix of photos that show his face from various angles. His hair is short enough to show his ears, which will be a key piece when the identification starts.
“I’m not finding any holes in his Ellison identity. His wife’s social media is filled with happy family photos. She doesn’t seem scared and neither do his sons. They could be faking it, but my gut says they’re not. She’s in a bikini in a lot of these photos, no bruises, no fear in her eyes. He’s been living quite the lie.” My dad clicks a few more buttons and then waits while he readswhatever is on his screen. “His finances look good too. Nothing unusual, no red flags, and it’s in line with his salary. He’s hiding his money somewhere else. He’s been very careful to keep his two lives separate. He’s smart and methodical, but that’s a good thing.”
“Is it?” I ask. “Because from where I’m sitting it just makes him really hard to find.”
I briefly look up and meet my dad’s eyes.
“I know, but it also means he’s not going to lose control. That’s a good thing, Niki. It also means he’s going to enjoy fucking with you. You need to prepare yourself for that.”
“I know,” I say, having already thought of it. “He must be laughing his ass off right now, and he’s going to want to rub it in. I fucked up, Dad. I fucked up to an unforgivable degree and Van’s paying the price for it.”
“You didn’t fuck up. You did everything you could. You checked her professor out. I know you did. There was no reason to question what you’d found,” he tries to tell me, but I shake my head, refusing to let him make me feel better.
“I should have, though. I should’ve questioned everything,” I say.
My dad shakes his head, refusing to back down and let me carry this. “You’ve been looking at thousands of files. This one went back twenty years and had a fake name. You can’t check every fucking detail on every certificate, Niki. It’s impossible. You know as well as I do that you follow the leads, the clues, the things that don’t add up. There were no red flags with Ellison. This is not your fault, but I know I’ll never be able to convince you of that. I’d feel the same way you do if I were in your shoes. I’d be wrong, but I’d still feel the same damn way.”
I’m grateful when he drops it. I know he means well, but I’m not looking to get rid of this guilt. I let it wash over me, mixing with the rage. I deserve it. No one will convince me otherwise.
The reconstructed image will take a while. It’s not as simple as matching hair and eyes and basic facial structure. It’s a precise measuring of his face. It extracts eye distance, nose bridge and width, ear shape, jaw angle, every small, unique piece of a person’s face is gathered and used. It’s precise, but, unfortunately, it’s not fast. While it continues to work, I hack into the university and start gathering all the digitized yearbook photos, compiling a folder of everything that involves the Alpha Psi Rho fraternity.
At some point during all this, my Uncle Vitaly must order food because soon there are boxes of pizza lined up on my kitchen table. Evgeny hands me a plate, and seeing his face is enough to jar me from my thoughts.
“What are you doing here, Ev?” I ask him, worried he’s going to put himself at risk.
“There’s no way I’m sitting this out,” he tells me, shoving the plate back in my face when I try to push it away. “No one knows I’m here, so relax. How are you holding up?”
“Not so great,” I admit. “Do you know Ellison?”
“No, I never had him for anything, and the education department is on the opposite side of campus from all the classes I take.”
“Yeah, I figured,” I say. “Not that it would do much good if you had. He kept who he is so well hidden, I doubt you would’ve noticed anything suspicious.”
