Fon knocked on his door at eight the next morning.
Same jacket. Same jeans. Either he traveled very light, or he hadn't slept. The quality of the stillness behind his eyes suggested the second option.
Adam opened the door. They looked at each other across the threshold. Mutual assessment.
"I want to know how you knew that about the woman. And why you chose to help."
Adam thought. "I read a lot. I pay attention. That's how I knew. And why I helped? You were new data. I had to have a closer look."
"Do you know you are in terrible danger?"
"Yes. I also know you're probably a cop. Everything about you gives it off."
Fon didn't react. "You and any other tourist here should leave immediately."
"You and I are technically the only outsiders in town." Fon's eyes widened with shock. Adam noticed and ignored the reaction. "But I can't leave until I find them —"
"— may I come in?" Fon cut in.
Adam stepped back.
Fon came in quickly and professionally. Nothing missed. The window was open a crack. The river sound came through — a low, constant presence. Fon's eyes flicked toward it, then back.
"Find who? Are there more tourists in this town?"
"There were. They're missing."
"Damn. This has escalated past what I imagined."
He looked at the desk covered in printouts. The laptop open. The spreadsheet on the screen. "What is that?"
"Missing persons data. Four counties. Twenty years. Public records portal."
Fon looked at the screen for a long moment without commenting. Then he sat in the desk chair.
"My name is Idris Fon. Detective Sergeant, Metropolitan Police. I'm currently on secondment to a federal task force tracking a transnational criminal network. I'm in the United States legally and with limited federal cooperation." He pause.
"The woman in my car was Elena Marchetti. French journalist. Thirty-four years old. She'd been investigating the same network independently. I gave her Blord as a lead six
months ago based on a financial thread my task force had identified. She went in as a tourist. I hadn't heard from her in four days. When I did hear, it was two words: come now."
"What did she say before she died?"
"Basement. Children. Frank keeps a list. Burn it." A pause. "And: the bodies are in the river."
Adam sat on the edge of the bed. Said nothing for a moment.
"The family that was here. Elliot and Wendy Marsh. Three children. Their van is in a locked barn at the end of Millhouse Lane. The town says they left in the night. Packed up in a
rush."
He paused. "The timeline doesn't work. I saw the husband across the street in the evening. He invited me over for breakfast. People don't invite others over and leave in panic less than eight hours later unless something happens in between. Nobody here is naming what the heck happened."
Fon looked at the spreadsheet again. "You built that in one night?"
"Yesterday afternoon and most of last night. It's not finished. I need access to NCIC to fill the federal gaps. The public portal has holes."
Fon considered this for a moment. "Adam Voss. I did a background check on you. Smart guy, straight grades, clean record. Most importantly, you're not from around here."
"OK?"
"It means I can trust you."
"You could have just researched the people of this town instead of wasting your time with me."
"That's the thing. Technically no one in this town exists. I can't find information about anyone from here on any database. Government or otherwise. Technically this town doesn't digitally exist either. I ran everyone through the ringer and only you
and a Mathew came up."
"Marty?"
"You know him?"
"Yes. What about him?"
"The boy schools at a boarding school outside Blord. That was the only info I could get on him." Fon picked up a page of paper and examined its content. He dropped it back down. "I have task force credentials with limited NCIC access. I shouldn't use them
outside sanctioned investigation."
He looked at Adam. "But if I did —"
"The pattern would be clearer. Faster. I can give you structured query parameters so you're not just searching blind."
Fon was quiet for a moment. Then he said: "What's the program?" Nodding at the screen.
"LAU. Emotional support AI. It does pattern recognition on structured data sets. I feed it the spreadsheet. It finds what the numbers are saying."
"You named an investigative intelligence tool LAU."
"I named it after my mother. It wasn't originally an investigative intelligence tool."
"How old did you say you were?"
"Nineteen."
"Right. I will help you find the family. But —" He looked at the screen again. Adam noticed that somewhere in the last five minutes, the man had stopped assessing whether to
trust him and had started treating him as a colleague.
"I need to know one thing. What do you want from the end of this? Not what you want to find. What do you want to happen after?"
Adam thought about the barn with the fresh padlock. Sam pointing from his father's shoulders. Saying his name.
"I want to rescue them. Wherever they are."
Fon nodded slowly. "I'll give you the NCIC access tonight. I'm also going to contact two people I trust on the task force. Not through official channels. Directly. On phones the
official channel doesn't know I have."
"Off-channel?"
"Because the case has been sitting at task force level for eight months and hasn't moved. Which means someone is sitting on it."
He buttoned his jacket. "Don't go out tonight."
"Marty told me the same thing."
Fon paused. "The boy. How much does he know?"
"More than he's told me. Less than he knows himself, I think."
Fon buttoned his jacket. "Be careful with him. If he's from here and he's been talking to you, he's already in more danger than either of you realize."
He left.
Adam turned back to the screen. Typed to LAU: New variable. Police officer. British. On FBI secondment.His name is Fon.
That's an unusual name.
He's an unusual man. He takes it very seriously. Which given the name requires a certain commitment.
He went back to work.
**********
Marty stopped coming to the river.
Three days passed with no sign of him. No appearance at the bank. No stone against the window. Nothing through LAU.
Adam noticed but didn't push.
On the fourth day, he caught a glimpse of Marty at the far end of the high street. The boy saw him and made a route adjustment. His eyes met Adam's for a second and then found somewhere else to be. He looked thinner than three days ago.
That evening, Adam left the window on the latch.
At twenty to nine, a small stone hit the glass.
He went down the back stairs and out through the garden door. Marty stood near the fence at the back. In the dark. Very still.
They moved to the shadow of the large trimmed shrub in the corner. Mrs. Harrow's pride and ongoing project, shaped into a sphere. The shrub smelled of earth and something sharper — manure, or blood meal. Something Mrs. Harrow fed it that made it grow unnaturally green. The leaves were so dark they were almost black in the moonlight. They brushed Adam's arm. Felt waxy. Overfed.
Marty spoke without looking at Adam directly. Quiet and rapid.
"Don't go out after nine. Alone. Don't."
Okay.
"If Mrs. Harrow brings food to your door that you didn't order, don't eat it."
Right.
"Pete notes where people go. He has a pattern for everyone. Don't use the same route twice in a row."
"I'd already noticed Pete."
Marty looked at him for the first time. Something shifted in his expression. Surprise. Quickly managed.
"You noticed him."
"Standing outside my gate at seven in the morning before his shop opened. Yes."
Marty was quiet for a moment. Then he said, in a slightly different register. Lower. More careful.
"Can I tell you something? And you won't —" He stopped. "You won't jump to conclusions."
"Yes."
"I followed my dad onenight. Two years ago. I was seven." He was looking at his own hands, spread on his knees. "He goes out sometimes late. Him and some of the others. I wanted to know where they went. So I followed him. Once."
He stopped. Adam waited.
"The old mill. The one at the river bend with the padlock. There was a man. A visitor. I was friends with his daughter, Sally. I'd seen him around town for five days. They all went in."
His hands closed slowly. "He didn't come out."
"How long did you wait?"
"Two hours. Under the footbridge. Dad came out and the others came out and they were —" He paused.
Choosing. "Different. Like after church. Like something had been done that was
supposed to be done."
He swallowed. "I went home and I didn't say anything. I never said anything. To anyone. I never saw Sally again." A pause. "Until you."
"Why me?"
Marty looked at him again.
"Because you look at things like they're real. Everyone here looks at things like they're supposed to look at them. You don't do that."
Adam sat with this. There was a lot in it.
"I've been keeping notes. In a notebook. Behind a loose brick in the wall at the back of the school. Names. Dates. Visitors I saw and then didn't see anymore."
"Don't bring it to me. Don't carry it around. Leave it exactly where it is."
Marty nodded. He had expected this.
"My mum cleans the rooms in the basement under the mill. She comes home smelling different and washes her clothes separately from ours. I don't know all of it. I know some of it. I know enough to know it's bad."
"It is bad."
"You're working on it." Not quite a question.
"Yes."
"With the other man. The one who came with the woman."
"Yes."
Marty exhaled. A small, quiet release. "Be careful. They know everything about everyone who comes here. That's —" He stopped. "That's part of it."
"I know."
"But be careful anyway."
"I will."
Marty went back over the fence, quietly and efficiently.
Adam stood in the dark garden for a while after he had gone. Listening to the river. Thinking about a seven-year-old boy standing under a footbridge at night, waiting to see if anyone came out.
Nobody told Marty to watch. Nobody taught him to write things down. He did it because he needed to understand what was happening around him. Because understanding things — even terrible things — was better than ignorance.
He went back upstairs. Did not eat the baking that appeared outside his door the next morning. Still warm. Smelling of cinnamon and something else beneath it. He smelled it, clocked it, and chose not to investigate further.
He opened LAU. Typed: The boy told me things tonight. He's been watching this town for two years. Alone. Because there was no one else to tell and he needed someone to know.
That's a heavy thing to carry. Something about the way you describe him reminds me of you.
It does. I see it too.
He looked at the screen.
I feel responsible. I didn't expect to feel responsible for someone.
That's not a deficiency. That's exactly right.