If one man—one demented, fucked-up TA—killed sixteen innocent people for it, what lengths would government agencies go to?
Ivy thought back to when she was a kid. Gene just a young man back then. Excited, full of life. Took her out to the Queen Anne’s lace field.
“Math is the key to everything, Ivy,” Gene had told her. “It rules everything, from the way this flower grows to the way our DNA replicates.”
“Is that what you’re doing, Daddy? At work? DNA?”
Gene laughed. Twirled a flower.
“No, sweetie. I’m working on the Riemann hypothesis.”
“What’s that?”
Gene passed her the flower. She tried to twirl it like her dad, but couldn’t.
“It’s the greatest math problem in history. A way to understand the distribution of prime numbers. The applications are endless.”
“I know prime numbers: two, three, five, seven...” Ivy got all the way to twenty-nine before stopping.
“You’re right. But things get more difficult the larger the numbers get. Prime numbers run everything. They’re critical in cryptography—in codes. Computer codes, cryptocurrency, the stock market. The larger the prime number, the harder the code is to crack. With huge prime numbers, even the best computers in the world can’t determine if they’re actually prime. But if I can solve the Riemann hypothesis, then the equation can be used to predictallprime numbers. Every single code can be broken in seconds.”
The car suddenly lurched to a stop and Ivy blinked tears from her eyes.
Prepared herself to fight.
Never got a chance.
The trunk opened and Ivy thrust her arms upward. Cool air struck her from behind—she was facing the wrong way and hadn’t even realized it.
An arm laced around her throat, and Tristan dragged her out of the trunk.
She fell on the ground.
Ivy tried to scramble to her feet, stopped when she felt something sharp poke into her back, right between her shoulder blades.
“Try anything and I’ll sever your spinal cord. Your brain will still work, but you’ll never be able to use your legs again.”
To prove that he was serious, as if killing sixteen people wasn’t evidence enough of his pathology, Tristan pushed the knife. It split the fabric of her shirt and pierced her skin just deep enough to draw blood.
“Get up. Slowly.”
Ivy made it to her knees, then stood. Tristan shoved her left shoulder and she turned.
“Walk.”
Ivy took a few tentative steps, half expecting to fall off a ledge.
“Keep going. There’s a step. Another. One more.”
Ivy mounted the stairs.
“Stop.”
Tristan moved from behind her to in front, and Ivy thought about making a run for it. But which way? How far?
She couldn’t see a damn thing. Would probably cripple herself on the steps, save Tristan from doing the act.
She heard a series of beeps, then what must have been a lock turning. A door opened and Tristan was behind her again.
