It felt, weirdly, like one of his lessons with Tean, trying to memorize all the rules for what got uppercase letters and what didn’t.
Daniel0510, for Daniel’s name and birthday.Maybe.
The sign-in boxes turned red, and a little yellow flag popped up, telling him the account information was wrong and suggesting he try again.
What about a special character?Passwords needed special characters sometimes.Daniel0510!, maybe.
Red boxes.That aggressively polite little flag.
So, what could it be?Jem’s gut told him he was on the right track—if Kazen had been telling the truth, anyway, with that story about Brennon’s password.Jem stared at the password in front of him.His own password for most things was Sc!pio19 because his birthday was May 19th.So, he tried Dan!el10.
Wrong again.
He wasn’t sure how many chances he’d have before the system locked him out.How many had he tried so far?Three?And he’d get—what?Maybe five?
Dan!el0510
Shit.Fuck.Damn.
Before he could overthink it, he typed in Daniel05!0
And the screen changed.
It showed a rough map—blue-green, with gray lines for roads and blocky shapes that must have been houses.On the left was a list of devices: Brennon’s Apple watch, Brennon’s AirPods, Brennon’s iPhone.Brennon’s Apple Watch and Brennon’s AirPods both saidNo location found.Not connected.
But Brennon’s iPhone said2 min ago.
Holy shit.
Holy fucking shit.
That didn’t make any sense.That cop had told Tean that the last place they’d seen Brennon’s phone before the GPS stopped transmitting had been at Ammon’s house.But here it was, broadcasting its location right now.
The urge to laugh rose up in Jem.Dumbass cops.They’d tried once, and when they’d seen that the phone wasn’t transmitting, they hadn’t tried again.
But here it was.Live.
Jem clicked on the phone, and the map zoomed.A circle formed over a green wedge that had a blue squiggle running through it—a park.
“Fuck me,” Jem said aloud.
He stared at the circle for a minute.And then another.
It didn’t move.
Jem cast a glance at the hallway.Beyond it, the bedroom.
And then he grabbed his jacket and his keys and let himself out of the house.
13
The Jordan River Trail wasn’t actuallyinSouth Jordan.But it was close.
Jem’s old Kawasaki rumbled as he rolled into the parking lot.Tired security lights painted everything a vibrating gray-orange.The pavement was faded and worn—not broken, not weedy, but the paint mostly gone, and the edges chipped into gravel.A handful of cars were parked here in defiance of the sign posted at the entrance: PARK HOURS SUNRISE – SUNDOWN.A Beamer.A beat-up Corolla.A Ram with mud dried on the wheel wells and a bumper sticker Jem couldn’t read.A minivan with five little stick figures on the rear window.
Jem parked, but he stayed on the bike, sitting there, watching.Tonight, the air was cool verging on cold, and Jem was half-frozen from the drive on the highway.It was also why the windows on the parked cars were all up.The security lights hummed and threw orangish glares onto the glass, but Jem waited and watched.Nothing from the Beamer.Nothing from the Corolla.Nothing from the Ram.But someone moved inside the minivan, watching Jem back.Waiting for Jem to make the first move, maybe.Or trying to decide if he wanted what he saw.Cruising had never been Jem’s thing—not that he hadn’t done it a few times when he’d been younger, but it had always felt too much like a game, and when he played a game, he liked to play by his rules.
Instead of waiting for the minivan dad to make up his mind, Jem checked his phone again.There were websites for this kind of thing now.Ways to make it easier.Instead, he logged into Brennon Lee’s iCloud account again.