Vandermein

XXIV

"He had been investigating a string of robberies. Someone...I...had been breaking into research and development centers across the county. But I had the uncanny ability to leave no trace; the companies had to do a thorough internal review of their staff before even considering an outside party. 

"You've seen my suit work. The panels on it can bend light around me, making me invisible, or look different entirely. I can be taller, thinner, a man, a woman. It's powered by own body, so projecting images can be exhausting, but I've gotten quite good at it. 

"Anyway, in the same places where I would lift R&D, I would also hunt down criminals who've managed to skirt the law--people who intimidated juries, who made deals to avoid punishment, those types. I would find them, and I would kill them. 

"There's a company in this town called Stargazer laboratories. They made a prototype device that allows solid objects to pass through other solid objects. Essentially, it rearranges particles in a tethered object to avoid collision with adjacent objects. It's quite complex, I'll spare you the details. 

"I spent time here in town perfecting the technology, and on a trial run, I decided to hunt down Edwardo Miller, the apprentice serial killer to Don Sachs. Eventually, I found him with a van full of young women tied and gagged. Following from a distance was this detective right here, working on a hunch. He was being held back by a lack of probably cause--Miller and Sachs were as good at dodging prosecution as they were at dodging my tails. Boone was following at a distance, but he didn't see me, cloaked in my panels, already on top of the van.

"To make a long story short, I threw open the back doors, giving the detective the probably cause he needed. I put a bullet between Miller's eyes as he was driving and pulled the truck to the road safely. But I was sloppy. Boone tracked me down through witness interviews, DNA samples, and the expended round left at the scene. 

It was...a strange romance: him chasing me, me letting him. I admired his dedication to justice, or what he imagined it to be. When he finally had me cornered, dead to rights, he asked me out for a drink instead.  One thing led to another, and the rest is history. 

"Of course, it didn't stay history, did it, Boone? Things went sour eventually, they were always destined to fall apart. He wanted me to retire the cloak, live a simple, law-abiding life. He rebuffed my offers to help with his investigations, to track down the criminals and murderers off the record. His trust in the system ultimately trumped his trust in me. So, I had to make a choice: be true to myself or be true to him. 

"I chose me." 

Marie shifted in her seat, the story becoming ever so slightly emotional.

"I started tracking missing children about a year ago. There was a pattern to the abductions: an age range, a pathway across the continental United States, a type of child they were taking. Many of the children were never even reported missing, so I hacked into school attendance records, Child Protective Services reports. There were marginalized children, less likely to be missed, or for the parents to afford private investigators. They were kids whose disappearances the media would not bat an eyelash at. No one was looking for them but me. 

"Boone's name kept coming up. He was tracking the same kids as me. Over and over again, I would find his digital footprint on their records, his voice on tapped phone lines, photos of his vehicle visiting homes and schools hundreds of miles from his jurisdiction. I thought at first that he was investigating this too. I thought that maybe this could be a bridge to repairing things between us. 

"But I realized that Boone never breaks the rules, so who was he protecting? That's when your name started popping up, Vandermein. Without exception, when I ran down the rabbit hole, every missing child led to you and your clandestine shipping enterprise. Everything clicked. You two aren't nemeses. You're partners. The facade guarantees a closer look at links between you never occur; the records muddy up any investigation. 

"Those were the presumptions I was working on. When I found your cameras on the ship, it confirmed the theory. When the ship exploded, I knew that there was never really anything between us. I knew that I had to kill you--I had to kill you both--before you had the chance to hurt another child again."