Page 45 of Bleed the Shadows

“A nerd,” Remy said.

Aloha nodded. “Right. A nerd. He appears in yearbook photos taken of the groups he was part of but not in any of the candid photos from dances and pep rallies and shit. And you were right, he disappears after high school.”

“Damn,” Poe said.

I sensed there was more. A house call from Aloha was apparently not normal. He wouldn’t have made it unless he had something new.

“But it got me thinking,” Aloha continued. “About his face.”

Bram’s expression was stony. “His face.”

Aloha nodded. “I’ve got some new tech, a facial recognition spider.”

“What the fuck is a facial recognition spider?” Bram asked.

“It’s… well, think of it as a piece of software that crawls the internet looking for a match.”

“A match to someone’s face?” I was starting to see where he was going and I got the first lift of hope in my chest.

He nodded. “I haven’t had much cause to use it. Figured this might be the perfect time.”

“Did it work?” Remy asked.

“You’ll have to tell me.” Aloha turned his laptop around. A grainy image of a young clean-shaven guy had been expanded on the screen. “This look like your guy?”

I understood why the Butchers looked at me. I’d been studying Ethan Todd for almost two years. If any of us would know his face, it would be me.

The guy on the computer was young, with a smooth baby face and a kind of nerdy haircut that made him look even younger than he probably was.

I pulled out my phone and searched for a recent picture of Ethan Todd, then held it up to the picture on Aloha’s screen. I tried to focus on the details: the guy’s forehead, the slight downturn of his eyes, the line of his nose.

My heart beat faster. “I think… I think it’s him.”

“Can I see?” Remy asked.

I handed him my phone and he held it up to Aloha’s screen. “Close enough for me. Who is this fucker really?”

I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but it was the only lead I’d had on Ethan Todd’s background after he’d graduated from Blackwell High. I was willing to chase it.

“You’re not going to believe this.” Aloha turned his computer around, tapped at the keyboard, then turned it back to face us.

A newspaper article appeared on the screen, a group of young men and women in business-casual attire clustered around a guy in a suit holding a plaque.

“What the fuck am I looking at?” Bram asked.

“An oldBlackwell Tribunearticle about a bunch of rich college kids who raised money for charity,” Aloha said. “And you want to hear the real kicker?”

“We do,” Poe said.

“The college? It’s Aventine.”

The name landed like a lead weight in the middle of the room.

“Aventine?” My brain felt like it was moving through sludge, trying to figure out what he was saying. “But that… that doesn’t make sense.”

Aventine was a private college. Rumor was they made a show of recruiting random students, but the only kids who were actually accepted, the only kids who actually went there, were the rich kids whose parents were engaged in questionable business practices.

Primarily organized crime.