The Second Son

by Martin Jay Weiss

  “Barry was my friend, too,” Ethan said.

  “I had a different relationship with him.”

  “It’s not a competition.”

  “I didn’t know you owned the rights to that loss,” Jack sighed. “Am I supposed to filter what I discuss with her, or do I need your permission—?”

  “Just stop telling her all this personal shit. She’s my girlfriend.”

  “You sound jealous.”

  “I’m not…You’re inappropriate.”

  Their insults overlapped from there, a cacophony of built-up rage.

  Jack: “You’re judgmental. Egocentric. Entitled.”

  Ethan: “Sneaky. Secretive. Ungrateful…”

  “Ungrateful” was his code word for “you would be nothing without me” in Jack’s mind, and it made him furious.

  But Ethan was first to get physical. He shoved Jack. Jack shoved back. It escalated into a flurry of jabs, and ended in a pointless wrestling bout on the grass-patch, until Brooke opened the kitchen window and shouted at them to stop their nonsense.

  They helped each other up, both laughing like twelve-year-olds. But they both knew on some level that they were growing apart, or at the very least, ready to enter a new phase of their twin-hood.

  —

  The thought of that fight weighed heavily on Jack now. He still had a deep secret that he wasn’t prepared to tell his brother. He was painfully aware that he couldn’t have an honest relationship with that burden. It was the primary reason he had to leave Santa Monica. Now his brother was coming to him, desperate, in the dark, and in need of his help. Jack decided that he would just focus on that.

  For now.

  He checked the Stalker app. It told him that Ethan was very close. He felt a rush of anxiety, the pit-in-the-stomach kind. He wondered how much longer he could keep the truth from his brother.

  And then his doorbell rang.

  CHAPTER 17

  Ethan walked from room to room truly impressed. “Looks like you’ve been living here for years.”

  “I know, right?” Jack agreed, following behind. “They really know how to take care of their people.”

  “It helps if you’re financed by tech-genius billionaire Sean McQueen,” Ethan said.

  Jack grinned. “Now, now.”

  It was immediately obvious to Ethan that Jack was proud of his new life and wanted his approval. He also knew there was no point in making Jack feel bad about his decision to leave Stalker. Ethan remembered feeling relieved when Jack told him he was moving out because he and Brooke could start their lives, alone. Now that Brooke was gone, the tides had shifted for Ethan, but it didn’t change the fact that his brother was ready to venture out on his own, and it was for the best. It was time.

  After they looped back to the kitchen, Jack made two perfect cappuccinos with his shiny new Keurig coffee machine and they sat down to discuss Brooke. Ethan filled Jack in on the sequence of events since she left: details about the note and paintings she left behind, what the Stalker app had shown so far—the false profiles of Brooke and her new husband, Benjamin Carver—and all his concerns.

  Jack got up and paced, the way he did whenever he was revving up to problem solve, stopping only for sips of coffee, and then he began: “The love of your life just left—without any explanation—and married some random guy, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Both of them are using false identities. She told you not to search for her but you think she did that because she’s in danger and didn’t want to drag you into the fray.”

  “That about sums it up,” Ethan said. “Your assessment, my dear Watson?”

  Jack turned to his brother and looked bewildered. “It takes time to really know someone.”

  “I know,” Ethan admitted. “Bailey read me the same riot act, that I didn’t know anything about her. And you guys are right. I don’t know why she left. I don’t know whom she married. I’m completely in the dark. But I don’t think I was blind. I know what we had was real—”

  “You don’t have to convince me,” Jack said. “I know how you felt about each other. If you think she’s in trouble, then she probably is. What can I do to help?”

  Ethan searched his iPhone photo library. “You said that Hounddog’s face recognition software works really well, that it’s further along than ours.”

  “They call it their PI function. It’s still in beta but it has more range, more databases—”

  “Well, I have this picture.” Ethan showed Jack the photo of Brooke and the man using Benjamin Carver’s alias getting married.

  Jack grabbed the phone, pinched the picture to blow it up, and his eyebrows raised. “Wow.”

  “What?”

  “He’s a lot better-looking than we are.”

  Ethan laughed. “You’re a dick.”

  Jack texted the photo to his own phone. “I’ll run the picture at Hounddog.”

  Ethan jumped up. “Awesome, I’ll get ready—”

  “You can’t come with me, though. Authorized personnel only.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  “You want me to just wait here?”

  Jack tossed him a dishrag and said, “No. I want you to clean up the kitchen. And yourself.”

  Ethan’s car needed to recharge, and so did he.

  “Make yourself at home,” Jack said as he walked out. “I’ll call if I get a match.”

  —

  The dark Grand Caravan was parked on the corner of Market Street. The three men inside all had shaved heads and bulky prison weight-lifting bodies. Ace, the driver, was a relentless bounty hunter who rarely needed any help. He brought the other two along because his employer wanted every guarantee that the target, a thirty-year-old English woman using the name Brooke Shaw, was found. Ace didn’t know how much ground they would have to cover or how much muscle they’d need to use, so he took the extra precaution. Wade Franks and Dale Norton were cramped in the back where the seats had been removed. They knew each other from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men and were used to sharing small spaces.

  Ace had wanted to nab the target at the church in Napa and get the job over with, but Brooke was already gone when they arrived earlier that morning. Ace had to find another lead. When Ethan showed up at the church looking for Brooke, he became that lead. Ace called in Ethan’s license plate and learned Ethan’s home address and place of business in Santa Monica. A few phone inquiries proved that Ethan had been involved with Brooke. And just by observing the way Ethan had rushed in and out of the church, Ace knew that Ethan was desperate to find her. What Ace didn’t know was that Ethan had an identical twin. So when Jack—the clean-shaven brother—walked out of the house and headed for a Prius parked on the street, Ace assumed that Ethan had used this place as a second hideaway, shaved, cut his hair, changed into different clothes, and switched cars, all so he wouldn’t be identified.

  Now Jack was their lead.

  “Should we take him now?” Wade asked, gripping the Glock 19 tucked into his pants.

  “Not yet,” Ace said. “Let’s see where he’s going. Hopefully, he’ll take us right to her.”

  “What if he doesn’t?” Dale asked.

  “Then we make him talk.”

  “What if he doesn’t talk?” Wade asked.

  “Then we turn to Plan B, which is never easy, always violent, and sometimes deadly.”

  Wade and Dale smiled at each other.

  Ace watched Jack start the Prius and inch out of his parking spot.

  “Let the fun begin,” Ace said as he pulled out and followed after him.

  —

  Hounddog was based in a nondescript office complex. The parking lot was always busy, even on Sunday, but Jack found a place to park close to the lobby and ventured
inside. Even after a week of navigating Hounddog’s security protocol, entering the office was nerve-racking, especially knowing that he wasn’t there to conduct official Hounddog business. They took their security even more seriously than Stalker, which was probably overkill—biometrics designed by biometric developers. Jack was well aware of the reasons: state-of-the-art surveillance, employee vetting, and extreme caution were a necessity to prevent leaks, fraud, theft, and deception. When he was at Stalker he had to keep his eyes on everyone; now he was being watched.

  Jack fumbled for his access code and then put his eye up to the retina display for a scan. If that weren’t enough, a robotic voice asked him to place his thumb on the print detector plate that shot out of the wall, inviting Jack to sacrifice his thumb.

  Jack put his thumb inside, turned to the guard standing by, and joked, “If I choose to take this mission—”

  The guard laughed heartily. The door released, and Jack went inside.

  The Hounddog office had an open floor plan just like the Stalker space that Ethan had designed, but twice the size. Many of the employees were there, working away as if they didn’t know it was the weekend, or that a world existed outside of their computers. The tech culture seemed to be the same here as in Santa Monica, mostly hardworking grown adults dressed like sixteen-year-olds crunched over their computer keyboards. And if any of these Hounddogs were aware of Jack as he made his way across the room, none bothered to say hello—which was also typical of programmers. Jack wasn’t offended. He took this job to get away from managing socially and emotionally challenged techies (like himself), and for love. And he didn’t want to draw any unnecessary attention just yet. He was there to help his brother search for a missing person with software that was not yet approved for their site, something Hounddog employees were sworn not to do. Like Ethan, Jack justified the discretion in the name of Brooke’s safety.

  Jack found an empty terminal toward the back of the room. He fired up the computer and prepared to use the PI Mode, Hounddog’s face recognition feature. Sean McQueen had told Jack about it when he was interviewing, but he hadn’t yet had the chance to see how it worked for himself. So he input the wedding photo of Brooke and Benjamin and gave it a whirl.

  An animated hound dog came on screen and started sniffing around. Right from the start, Jack loved the Hounddog platform. It had basically the same foundation as Stalker’s, but it was more user-friendly and fun. It fascinated Jack how people working on the same idea at the same time with the same resources could come up with completely different results.

  Just like twins.

  Jack watched the numbers and colors blink on the computer screen as it searched hundreds of random data banks throughout the country, even internationally. He figured it could take an hour or so to process, but just when he got up to grab a cup of coffee, the animated hound dog barked at him, and the screen blinked a match.

  It took less than a minute.

  The first match paired the wedding photo to the pictures they took when they each applied for driver’s licenses and then their marriage license. The county databases listed vital statistics of Brooke Shaw and Benjamin Carver.

  Jack was impressed.

  The hound dog barked again. There was another match. It came in a folder with a Hounddog logo. Jack opened it up and gasped, “Holy shit.”

  Other programmers looked over, as if Jack were a freak playing a Vegas slot machine spewing coins. It certainly didn’t justify any of them to pull away from whatever they were working on and introduce themselves to the new guy.

  That was just fine with Jack since he didn’t want any of them to see that he just figured out who was using Benjamin Carver’s identity, especially since all of them would all know who that man was.

  CHAPTER 18

  Jack called his brother. Ethan didn’t pick up until four or five rings, and when he did, he was laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” Jack asked.

  “I was just taking a shower. I had soap in my eyes. When I reached for my phone, I grabbed a pair of racy red underwear with an embroidered S&M logo. Is that the official brand of San Francisco now? Did S&M replace Fruit of the Loom? When did you get so kinky?”

  “That might be funny if we were eight,” Jack said, annoyed. “Do you want to hear what I found or not?”

  “You got a match? Already?” Ethan wrapped a towel around his waist, stepped out of the bathroom, and dropped his voice an octave, “I’m sorry. Go ahead. Tell me.”

  “Benjamin Carver was an employee here.”

  “What?!”

  “He worked at Hounddog. Until recently. He put in his resignation almost two months ago. His last day was a week ago.”

  Ethan took a moment to let it sink in. “Brooke married a guy from Hounddog? How is that possible?”

  “I don’t know. But he was a lead programmer and had been with the company since they opened their doors. There’s a good chance they hired me to replace him.”

  “He was a lead programmer?”

  “And a polygamist,” Jack said. “He was already married.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I’m reading from his file. His wife’s name is Sarah. They live in Palo Alto. No kids.”

  “He was already married,” Ethan repeated. “Do you think he’s living a double life?”

  “Could be.”

  “What’s his real name?”

  “Rufus Wall.”

  It took Ethan a bit to realize why the name was familiar, and then he blurted, “Rufus Wall is dead.”

  Jack scrolled down Rufus Wall’s file. There was nothing about the former Hounddog employee dying. “Not according to this—”

  Ethan cut him off, “Remember when I told you that I stopped at Dancing Rabbit?”

  “Yeah. The old hippie zapped you.”

  “Right. After I left, I headed up north,” Ethan explained, “and I saw that a car had gone off the side of Highway 1, where the road winds like a snake and there’s a hundred-foot drop down to the ocean below. I had a really bad feeling, so I pulled over. I thought the worst, that it was you or Brooke, or you and Brooke—”

  “I get it, your imagination went wild.”

  “They were bringing up a car,” Ethan continued. “I told the police that I was concerned. They showed me two suitcases they had already found. One of the cases had a name tag.”

  “Rufus Wall?”

  “Yep. With a Palo Alta address.”

  “The second suitcase didn’t have a tag but I know whose it was. Remember Brooke’s roommate, Anna?”

  “Her roommate?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hang on, I’ll check the local news sources….” Jack ran a quick search and found a press release from the Big Sur News. “The car they brought up was a red Mini Cooper, belonged to Anna Delaney Gopnik.”

  “Bingo.”

  “Says they are still searching for bodies.”

  “The cops said something really odd,” Ethan remembered. “When I told them that I knew Anna from Dancing Rabbit, they seemed rattled, and said there had been a lot of missing people that have some connection to the resort. One of the detectives called it ‘the rabbit hole’ and asked me if I’d noticed anything strange when I was there.”

  “‘The rabbit hole’?”

  “What if the Dancing Rabbit people are all using false identities like Brooke? What if Rufus Wall left Hounddog, faked his death, used Benjamin Carver’s name, and then married Brooke—?”

  Jack cut his brother off, “Why would they be going to all that trouble?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think your imagination is going wild again. Sounds like a stretch.”

  One of the Hounddog programmers came from behind and asked Jack, “Going to be long? I need to print.”

  Jack quit out of the program using a short ke
ystroke before he spun around. “All yours. I’m through, actually.”

  Jack walked away and crossed the room. “I shouldn’t have this discussion here,” he told Ethan. “Call you back when I get outside.”

  —

  Ethan finished drying off, got dressed, and ran down to the kitchen to run a search of Rufus Wall on Jack’s laptop. He found a short Wikipedia page listing an impressive programmer résumé: educated at MIT, started at Intel, a long stint at Microsoft, helped Amazon develop their analytics, headed up Tinder, and then moved on to Hounddog.

  Ethan’s phone rang and he picked up quickly. “How would Brooke know a guy from Hounddog?” he asked Jack again. “Don’t you think that’s really weird?”

  Jack waited for his eyes to adjust from the fluorescents to the bright sunlight in the parking lot. “She had a life before you,” Jack reminded him.

  “I’m not buying that. Too random that she would marry a guy from our competition. And besides, her life before me was in London.”

  “Wasn’t she in Big Sur for about a year before you met her? And didn’t she run the retreats for tech companies? Maybe it’s not that random.”

  “She hated the tech business. She was trying to get tech people back down to earth, away from their devices. She once told me that one in ten American adults confess that they check their emails when they’re having sex, to make the point. She wanted to simplify our lives. Unplug. She hated what we do—”

  “Not true,” Jack told him as he moved past the guard in the lobby, “she didn’t hate the tech biz at all. She’s the reason I moved up here.”

  “Brooke was the reason you what—?”

  “She introduced me to the guy who hired me,” Jack confessed.

  “Why would she do that?”

  “She knew I wasn’t happy,” Jack explained. “She was trying to help me.”

  “She was trying to help you?” Ethan repeated.

  Jack sensed Ethan’s anger growing and added, “But her leaving you had nothing to do with that.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “I promise you,” Jack told him. “Look, I like Brooke. A lot. I know that she loved you. God knows why.” Jack laughed, without his brother joining in, and then he turned serious again. “She’s not the type to run off with an old boyfriend on a whim. I agree with you that she must be in some kind of trouble. I had no idea she was using someone else’s name and I can’t imagine why she married a guy from Hounddog. None of this behavior is like her. But if she’s going through all this trouble to disappear, I just don’t know what else we can do—”