Page 15 of Rio (Redcars #3)
ELEVEN
Lyric
Levi—tall, blond, dark eyes, scowl carved into his face, unshaven and exhausted, but still a cop.
I hadn’t had the best experiences with cops; more often than not, I’d been the one slipping past them, running, evading.
And yet, this man looked more homeless than boy in blue, shirt frayed, jeans worn.
I couldn’t run this time, so I had to trust—hope—that maybe he was one of the good ones.
And since when had I started categorizing everyone in broad strokes of good and bad?
Rio was a bad guy by definition, all muscle and threat, yet under all that was a heart that beat with compassion.
I thought. Not the kind worn openly like Robbie, but still there, buried deep, waiting to be seen .
“Someone tried to kill Marcus Kessler last week,” Levi said. “He’s gone public with it.”
He dropped a stack of papers onto the bed in front of me. Photos, sketches, grainy surveillance clips—my face, frozen mid-stride, caught on half a dozen cameras.
“Sent out nationwide, circulated to every precinct, every cop, every patrol car. It’s big news,” he added.
I went cold. This was a new step—Kessler wanted me, or his system did, but he’d never blatantly involved the media or law enforcement before.
Wanted posters, digital bulletins, my features broadcast across the country as if I were a monster crawling out of the shadows.
I stared at the images, bile rising in my throat, and for a second, I couldn’t breathe.
I shoved the photos aside and scanned the document—and right there in capitals, an AI-generated photo but no name.
“And this,” Jamie said, placing a laptop on my knees and pressing play.
It was a breaking news bulletin – grainy CCTV stills of my face during an “attempt on billionaire philanthropist Marcus Kessler’s life” and rolling across under it a red brEAKING NEWS banner.
“We interrupt this program with developing news out of California. Police have released surveillance images connected to an attempted murder on noted philanthropist and technology entrepreneur Marcus Kessler. ”
A still frame appeared—grainy, taken from a street camera. It was me. My hair pulled back, my expression caught mid-turn. Clear enough to recognize, and my gut twisted.
“Fuck,” Rio murmured next to me.
The anchor’s voice sharpened:
“The suspect’s name is unknown at this time, and authorities are warning that he should be considered armed and dangerous.
If you encounter this individual, please do not approach them.
Call 911 immediately.” The anchor’s tone shifted, brighter, more urgent.
“And now, we cross to our correspondent live at the KessTech Tower, where reclusive billionaire Marcus Kessler has released this statement.”
I felt sick. This wasn’t like the contracts the AI had put on me before—this was mobilizing a fucking country to find me.
My face on screens, my name in bold letters, every precinct, every cop primed to hunt me down.
And none of them knew what Kessler was really like, what a monster he truly was behind the cameras and the polished words.
It twisted my gut to know he’d turned the whole world into his weapon, and I was the target.
Then, there was Kessler. Sitting behind a desk, collar open, bandage visible at his temple. He leaned toward the camera with the practiced ease of a man who knew exactly how much fear to sell.
“I won’t be intimidated. Yes, there was an attempt on my life. Yes, this man, whoever he is, wants me silenced. But I will not stop my work with law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and legal authorities. I will not stop protecting America from the shadows that seek to undermine it.”
The screen split—my image blurred on one side, Kessler’s solemn face on the other. The message was clear: predator and prey.
The feed flicked back to the newsroom, the anchor reeling off supposed sightings in LA and announcing a reward of five hundred thousand dollars for anyone with information.
My stomach dropped. I glanced up at the others—what would that kind of money mean to them?
For a flicker of a second, the thought chilled me, but then, I remembered the bounty sitting on my head on the dark web, way higher than this, and they still hadn’t turned me over.
That didn’t erase the fear twisting in my chest, though—the world was being mobilized to hunt me, and the price tag on my head only made it worse.
I flinched. “Fuck,” I whispered. “I need to leave.”
“And go where?” Jamie asked.
I stared at Jamie. “Anywhere that means I get to finish what I started, stop what Kessler is doing with LyricNight, and doesn’t put other people in harm’s way.”
“I’ll take him,” Rio said, his words slicing through the room like a blade.
Conversation died instantly, the air going still as if the sound itself had stolen the oxygen.
Every head turned his way, eyes narrowing, widening, searching.
His jaw was set, his gaze unflinching, hard enough to challenge anyone who dared to argue.
“Somewhere else. Away from all of you.”
The words hung there, heavy and final. No one rushed to answer.
“No,” Jamie snapped after a pause. “Lyric stays here. Not a single one of us will turn him in—unless we need to.” He added that last part with a hint of menace that made my stomach knot.
“What about you?” I asked Levi, my voice sharp.
The cop shook his head, weary. “I’m with Killian and the Cave,” he said. “But I have to go. I’m compromising things just by being here.” He left then, the door closing behind him.
A cop on my side? The thought twisted through me, uncertain and fragile.
I pulled the footage back up and ran the press conference again, this time at a slower speed, scanning every corner of the frame.
The desk, the flags, the background—it all looked too clean, too crisp.
I zoomed in on the wall behind him, the edges of the seal blurring, the lighting inconsistent.
Crowd shots repeated the same faces at different angles, like a shuffled deck of cards that appears random.
It screamed manipulation—AI-enhanced, maybe even fully AI-created.
None of it felt real, as if Kessler had conjured a press room out of code and smoke.
If he could manufacture the truth this easily, then the lies he fed the world were limitless.
“This isn’t real,” I said, exhausted, and turned the laptop to face Jamie. “I’m not convinced that’s Kessler at all.”
Jamie frowned. “You’re sure?”
“It’s AI; I’d bet my life on it. LyricNight is using any tool it has to find me. It’ll accelerate. Every contract it pushes from now on will be about silencing me before anyone looks too close.”
“Is Kessler doing this?” Jamie asked .
“He could be. But why?” Lyric frowned. “He’s a salesman, good at playing the part of genius billionaire in front of the camera. No, that’s not him; I’d bet my life on it.
“If that’s not him giving that speech, then where is he?” Jamie flicked screens. “Three more contracts in the last two days on you, dead or alive. And there are media reports saying you’re involved with domestic terrorism or cyberterrorism, plus recent digital breaches within banks.”
“Anything to have me gone.”
“Which makes it volatile and more dangerous.”
“All I can hope is that it’s creating its own fear,” I began, and Rio frowned at me.
“It’s paranoid,” I began in an easy way to explain what no one could truly understand—that AI could learn and rewrite itself and potentially break free of the constraints of human control.
“LyricNight has accelerated its self-defense mode, pushing out more lethal contracts and harsher countermeasures to find me and kill me, and it risks exposing itself.”
“How can we fight something we can’t see?” Rio asked.
Fuck, I wish I had an answer.
Jamie closed the laptop. “More importantly, Lyric, why the fuck does this AI want you dead?”