But he had to find them first. Which is why he was combing through the research, pairing Lyne’s methods with the case studies, hoping one of them would give him a place to start.
Victor had always been better at these kinds of puzzles. He could take one look and see the connective threads, no matter how thin. But Eli persisted, scouring his files as the news in the background came and went and came again, and finally he found it. A lead. From a newspaper article Eli had saved on a whim. A man’s family had been killed in a freak accident, crushed to death. It had happened only a few months after he himself had nearly died in a building collapse. Only his first name—Wallace—was given, and the paper, which came from a city about an hour away, called him a local. Eli stared at the name for several minutes before digging up a screenshot of an online forum, one of those sites where 99.5 percent of the people are hacks looking for a little attention. But Eli had been thorough, and printed it off anyway. He’d even found a list of members who belonged to the site. One of them, a Wallace47, had only posted once on a buried thread. It was dated last year, between his own accident and that of his family’s. All it said was No one is safe near me.
It wasn’t much, but it was a start. And as he tossed his takeout container in the trash and snapped the television off, Eli wanted to go, to run, not away, but toward something. He had a goal. A mission.
But he knew he had to wait. He counted down the days until graduation, all the while feeling the attention of the professors, the counselors, and the cops on him like the sun in summer. At first it was glaring, but eventually, as the months wore on, it lessened until, by the time he took his exams, most even forgot to look concerned when he entered the room. When the year finally ended, he packed casually, did a last, lazy pass through his place, and locked the door. He slid the key into a school-sanctioned white envelope and dropped it off in the mailbox outside residential services.
And then, and only then, when the campus of Lockland had vanished in the distance, Eli shrugged off the name Cardale in favor of Ever, and went out to seek his purpose.
*
ELI didn’t enjoy killing.
He did quite like the moment after. The glorious quiet that filled the air as his broken bones healed and his torn skin closed, and he knew that God approved.
But the killing itself was messier than he anticipated.
And he didn’t like the term. Killing. What about removal? Removal was a better word. It made the targets sound less like humans, which they weren’t really … semantics. Regardless, it was messy. The profusion of violence on television had led Eli to believe that killing was clean. The small cough of a gun. The quick jab of a knife. A moment of shock.
The camera cuts away and life goes on.
Easy.
And to be fair, Lyne’s death had been easy. So had Sykes’s, really, since the car had done the work. But as Eli peeled a blood-soaked pair of latex gloves from his hands, he found himself wishing the camera would cut to a more pleasant moment.
Wallace had put up a fight. Late fifties, but ox-strong. He’d even bent one of Eli’s favorite knives before snapping it right in two.
Eli leaned against the brick wall and waited for his ribs to notch back into place before hauling the body toward the nearest pile of trash. The night was warm and he checked himself for blood before leaving the alley, the quiet already fading, leaving a strange sadness in its wake.
He felt lost again. Purposeless. Even with his lead, it had taken him three weeks to find the EO. It was a slow, clumsy pursuit. He’d wanted to be sure. He’d needed proof. After all, what if he guessed wrong? Eli had no desire to rack up a body count of humans. Lyne and Sykes had been exceptions, victims of circumstance, their deaths unfortunate, but necessary. And, if Eli was being honest with himself, sloppy. He knew he could do better. Wallace had been an improvement. As with any pursuit, there was a learning curve, but he firmly believed in the old saying.
Practice makes perfect.
VII
AROUND NOON
THE ESQUIRE HOTEL
VICTOR and Sydney sat in the hotel room, eating cold pizza and looking over the profiles Mitch had set out for them. Mitch himself had gone to run an errand, and even though Victor’s eyes tracked over the profile of a middle-aged man named Zachary Flinch, his mind was far more on the cell phone—ready and within reach on the counter beside him—and on the name Stell, than his papers. His fingers tapped out a quiet beat on his leg. On the opposite side of his phone sat the profile of a younger man named Dominic Rusher.
Sydney sat perched on a nearby stool, finishing her second slice of pizza. Victor saw her steal a glance at Eli’s newspaper photo, tucked beneath the corner of the third profile, which belonged to the blue-haired Beth Kirk. He watched as she reached out and drew the article free, staring down at it with her wide, blue eyes.