Page 130 of Hard Heart

I thought about Ari’s words as she ordered her espresso. There would always be injustices, and if I opted out of the system, that was one less obstacle in the way of those who caused them. Without checks and balances from organisations like the Justice Project, laziness and corruption would thrive. Could I sleep at night if I walked away?

“Flora has a theory that thirty percent of people are jerks,” I said to Ari when she sat back down. She’d bought me a cookie too. “She says it makes understanding the world easier. If someone’s rude or mean, there’s no point in trying to change them because it’s just who they are. Better to ignore them and seek out the remaining seventy percent as friends.”

“But there’s a problem with that theory. It’s the thirty percent who end up in positions of power. They’re the people willing to step on others on their way up the ladder, so we can’t simply ignore them because they have too much control over our lives.”

“You’re right, and I hate that.”

“Me too. This is all getting very philosophical for airport arrivals. Does your sister have her suitcase yet?”

“I’ll check.”

I messaged Flora and unwrapped my cookie. Ari checked her phone too and said, “Huh.”

“What?”

“Alexa says a woman named Harriet Tamblay was denied tenure at Georgetown two months before the fire at August Groveland’s home. She was briefly married to a man named Alton Stark, and they had a son named Christopher.”

“And you think…?”

“I think it’s a lead we need to follow up on. And a simple revenge motive makes sense. I mean, if Big Oil wanted to send a message to Groveland and Levi, then leaving them in the dark as to why they’d been targeted wouldn’t achieve the goal. But an asshole who just wanted payback? I can see that.”

I googled “Harriet Tamblay Georgetown,” and my heart skipped. “She was an associate professor in the physics department. Levi did science stuff. Uh… Water electrolysis?”

“Next time you speak with him, ask if he remembers her. Does it say what she’s doing now?”

“Hold on…”

I searched again, and so did Ari, and…yikes.

“So I think she might be hosting a podcast. Do you think this is the same Harriet Tamblay?”

“The ‘scientists have the key to unlimited free energy but they won’t let us have it’ lady?”

“That’s the one. She also wrote a paper suggesting reality is governed by undiscovered electromagnetic frequencies that influence human behaviour, and that only ‘the elites’ have the technology to tune those frequencies.”

Which didn’t even make sense. How could they be undiscovered if some people knew about them?

“I guess we know why she was denied tenure. The big question is whether her son is as wackadoodle as she is.”

I tried looking up his name, but there was nothing, and I couldn’t recall seeing a Christopher or Chris in any of my red-Audi searches. My coffee got cold. I forgot to eat my cookie. Then I realised thirty minutes had passed, and where the heck was Flora?

She hadn’t replied to my message.

She hadn’t called.

And when I tried calling her, she didn’t pick up.

Excitement over the new lead turned to cold dread in a heartbeat. “Why isn’t Flora answering? How long does it normally take to get through customs?”

“Not this long. Unless they took her aside for additional checks, but she wouldn’t have been carrying anything dubious, would she?”

“Only her medication, but she has a prescription for that.”

“She doesn’t fit the profile for a search anyway. Try calling her again?”

I did, with the same result. Stay calm, Sera. She was in an airport. Flora was safe in an airport, right?

“Her luggage probably just got delayed. Maybe her phone battery died?”