Page 22 of I Will Find You

Insane.

“I don’t get it, man,” Newman says, reaching for his fifth Mountain Dew of the day.

I look at the clock. It’s only 12:34 p.m.

“How do you grow up in a cult and not know it?” he says for the seventeenth time today alone.

“That’s kind of the point, Newman.” I roll my eyes. “If you’re raised that way from birth, how are you going to know any different?”

“Come on. We have reasoning abilities. Free will. You know, the things that make us human. How do you not realize the truth at some point?”

His argument is well-worn. We’ve gone around and around on this topic ever since we started working together three months ago. There are some people in life who like to think that they can never be duped. That they’re too smart to fall for a con or too clever never to get screwed.

Newman is one of those.

Which makes Newman an enormous target because the best way to con someone is to convince them that you’re not conning them.

That they're too smart to be fooled.

Those are the easiest marks.

Butter wanders over to me, wanting head scratches, which I give liberally. At least I’m allowed to bring him to work with me. Newman’s not a huge dog fan, but Butter has charmed even him. Now everyone at work fights over who gets to take him for walks.

And I don’t have to worry about him peeing on table legs when I leave him alone in my apartment.

Butter, that is. Not Newman.

I look at the guy, exasperated. "I don't know. How do you not realize the truth at some point? Because they've been brainwashed."

"Right. Weak minds."

“No. Not weak. Just raised under different circumstances. I feel bad for them,” I say, the words evoking a growling sound from the guy.

“You say that all the time. How can you have so much sympathy for a bunch of chicks you’ve never met?”

“They’re not just 'chicks.' They’re women who are being raised to think that they are the embodiment of a nine-hundred-year-old prophecy, Newman. And that they have some sort of genetic makeup that’s taken over a century to build up and be refined. That they are The One.”

“Yeah,” Newman cracks. “But everybody wants to be The One. Isn’t that the whole point of the Hunger Games? We all want to think we have a secret destiny that gives our lives purpose.” He paws through his desk drawer. “I swear I have a bag of jerky in here somewhere.”

Newman’s destiny is to die by the age of fifty from a heart attack with arteries so clogged even Drano can’t clear them.

Bzzz.

Both our phones go off at the same time. We look at our screens and groan in unison. It feels good to agree on something with this guy.

“Debbie,” Newman says. Debbie's our boss. “It’s like she knows.”

“Of course she knows. I told her we were close to cracking it.”

“Seriously, Cam? You had to go and tell the boss?”

“She signs our paychecks, Newman. Of course I had to tell her. Plus, one of the women is about to turn twenty-five.”

“Yeah, I know we’re on a deadline. Again. Just like last time.”

I cut him off. “Not just a deadline. You realize what’s going to happen to this woman if we can’t find her in three weeks?”

“Sure. Same thing that happened to all the women before her that we couldn’t find. They’ll harvest her organs or something.”

---