Swipe

father’s closet, fielding Logan’s frantic questions.
    “He what ?”
    “Killed someone. Guy named Jon Pulman. Jon was fifteen at the time.”
    “Why?” Logan felt a shudder run down his back.
    “No one knows. Peck had a history with him; they’d been friends for years, apparently. Jon had the Mark; some speculate Peck couldn’t tolerate it any longer—”
    “Peck doesn’t have the Mark?”
    “That’s right.”
    “And he killed his own friend because his friend did? That doesn’t make any sense.”
    “No. But it’s consistent, if you keep digging.” Erin found the box labeled “DOME—CONFIDENTIAL,” which she’d hidden before she left, and exhumed it once more. “Something about the Mark seems to rub Peck the wrong way. Big-time. Turns out he attacked another one of his oldest friends, Trenton, just six months later. Trenton is seventeen. He’s been in a coma ever since.” Now Erin corroborated her story with pages that she took out from her father’s box one at a time.
    “How long’s that been now?”
    “’Bout four months. Hasn’t woken up.”
    Logan looked over the papers. “What’d Peck do to him?”
    “Same thing he did to Jon. Blunt object to the back of the head.”
    “Over the Mark?”
    Erin could tell Logan was skeptical. “You wouldn’t think so, necessarily. Not just from those two instances alone. But the story continues.”
    Logan had to concentrate hard on his breathing to keep from hyperventilating. He could already see his peripheral vision fading.
    Erin continued. “See, a DOME agent was at the scene the time Peck went after Trenton. Tried to stop Peck in the act. That’s why Peck couldn’t finish the job. But Peck didn’t run. Not right away. Went after the DOME agent first. Hit him with a chair.”
    “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
    “I’m not.”
    “No one attacks a DOME agent. You’d have to be . . .”
    “That’s right,” Erin said. “You’d have to be crazy.”
    Logan sank to his knees beside Erin, not quite able to stand as the gravity of all this crept up on him. “But why would a DOME agent have even been there? Police, I’d understand—someone calls a disturbance, an officer shows up . . . but a DOME agent? DOME doesn’t ever handle crimes not related to the Mark.”
    “ Exactly .” Erin paused so the conclusions could sink in.
    “But it still doesn’t make sense. Why go after his own friends?”
    “Who knows? The guy’s Markless. He’s a criminal.”
    Logan shook his head. “It isn’t a crime to be Markless, no matter what age you are.”
    “It’s not, no. Not in itself. But to survive like that . . . no way to eat . . . nowhere to stay . . . it’d make a criminal out of you pretty quick.”
    Logan thought of Slog Row. “I guess it would.”
    “But you’re right,” Erin admitted. “All this, by itself, is still weird. Why his own friends? Why a DOME agent?”
    “Right.”
    She handed him another page. “Well, turns out the DOME agent wasn’t killed. Just banged up a bit. Couple months ago, he was able to testify.”
    “Okay.”
    “Apparently he’d had his eye on Peck for some time. They still don’t know much about him, or his history, at least according to these papers. They don’t even know his full name. But they know what he’s been up to recently. And the incidents with Peck’s friends? Those are the exceptions. Mostly, Peck doesn’t kill, and mostly, Peck doesn’t target those with the Mark.”
    Logan had a feeling he didn’t want to hear the rest of this. But he couldn’t help himself from asking, “Then what does he do . . . mostly?”
    “Mostly, he targets kids.”
    Logan shuddered. “ Kids ? What for?”
    “All DOME knows is, in the past three or four years, Peck’s had a history of tracking kids while they prepped for their Pledge.
    Some of them, he tracks them—then he seems to let them go.
    Forgets about ’em. Lets them just get the Mark and live their lives. Many never even realize they’ve been watched.”
    “And the others?”
    Erin looked Logan in the eyes. She put a hand on his shoulder. “The others disappear.”
    Logan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “What do you mean, they disappear?”
    “’Bout two months ago Peck kidnapped a girl named Meg Steward. Meg was twelve at the time. Your age. Would have been thirteen by now, and Marked, of course, but . . . no sign of her.”
    “How do they know it was him?”
    “He left a note—on paper—asking Meg to meet