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Chapter 3 – "The Names in the Notebook"
Part 2: The Stranger and the Smoke
The email reply came faster than Ethan Cole expected.
Ten minutes after he hit "send," the burner account lit up with a new message.
> From: [email protected]
Subject: [RE] Halrick
Where did you get that name?
If this is a setup, you're wasting time you don't have.
If it's not—meet me. Today. 11 a.m. Bryant Park. Behind the carousel. Bring nothing. No phones. No bags. Just yourself.
Ethan stared at the screen, heart ticking like a time bomb. Bryant Park wasn't far—20 blocks south. Close enough to walk. But the message felt sharp-edged. Like someone was fishing with a hook made of bait and razor wire.
Still, he had no choice.
He logged out, wiped the computer's browser history, and left the library before any employees could ask questions. The phone he'd stolen from the diner cook—Jayden's—he tossed it into a mailbox on 5th and 44th.
From this point forward, he was flying dark.
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The city woke around him.
Cabs honked. Buses sighed. Coffee shops pumped caffeine into half-conscious office workers and freelancers pretending to write screenplays. And Ethan walked through it all with eyes scanning every window, every reflection in glass, every man who looked at him too long.
The carousel in Bryant Park spun slowly to a tinny music box tune, empty except for a maintenance worker checking bulbs. Behind it was a strip of benches, mostly empty, save for a few morning joggers and a man in a long charcoal coat with a book in his lap.
Ethan paused, scanned again, then walked toward the man.
The coat was nondescript. No logos, no insignia. His face was older than Ethan expected—maybe mid-50s—but sharp. Narrow. Hair slicked back, clean shave, black gloves. The book was a copy of Catch-22, held but unread.
Ethan sat down three feet away.
"You Cipher?"
The man didn't look up.
"Say anything that sounds like a code phrase and I leave."
Ethan nodded once. "No codes."
They sat in silence a beat.
Then the man closed the book slowly.
"You're Cole."
"Yeah."
"You're also stupid."
Ethan tensed. "Excuse me?"
"Coming here. Contacting me. If you really have what you claim, you just made yourself the most visible mark in Manhattan. There are people already tracing that email."
"It was a burner—"
"Doesn't matter. You're in the game now, and they have longer legs than you do."
Ethan swallowed.
"I didn't have a choice."
"None of us did."
That silenced Ethan. The man stood, motioned with his head.
"Walk."
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They moved through the park at a steady pace, neither fast nor slow. The man never introduced himself, but Ethan didn't need a name. Not yet. What mattered was knowledge. The man finally spoke again after a block.
"Your father's name was Miles Cole. Chemical specialist. Background in bio-organics, right?"
"Right."
"Worked under DARPA in the 80s. Recruited for a 'civilian-disaster deterrent program.' The public-facing name was Environmental Virology Initiative."
Ethan stopped walking.
The man turned, annoyed.
"EVI?"
"Cute, isn't it?"
"That wasn't what he told us. He said he worked for—"
"A food safety board. I know. They always say something that sounds boring."
Ethan's voice sharpened. "What was EVI really doing?"
The man paused.
"Making ghosts."
He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his coat and offered one. Ethan declined.
"They took disease vectors, manipulated them into artificial templates. Viral blueprints designed to exist only once. Burn through a target and vanish. No trace. No carrier. No pattern."
Ethan felt sick. "Weapons?"
"Not just weapons. Surgical weapons. You want to take out a political leader, a rogue agent, a journalist sniffing too deep—EVI made sure they dropped dead without suspicion. Heart attack, aneurysm, autoimmune collapse. No residue. No red flags."
He lit the cigarette.
"But PURITY was the apex. The one formula no one could trace."
"And Halrick?" Ethan asked.
The man exhaled smoke like a man trying to buy time.
"Halrick didn't invent it. He stole it. From your father. Then refined it. He didn't want to sell it to the government. He wanted to sell it to anyone. Highest bidder."
"But he died. In 2003."
"Sure. Or maybe he didn't."
Ethan blinked.
"You're telling me—?"
"I'm telling you that nobody saw a body. Just a closed casket, a recycled death certificate, and a ten-million-dollar offshore transfer to a Cayman shell company."
The man flicked ash to the wind.
"If Halrick's alive, he's the key to ending this."
Ethan narrowed his eyes.
"Then why not find him?"
The man stopped walking. Looked at Ethan square.
"Because everyone who's tried is dead."
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To be continued in Part 3, where Ethan uncovers the first name in his father's notebook—and realizes someone is tracking every move he's made since the funeral.