Chapter Seven

Sara had been nursing her latte for twenty minutes when a woman in her forties slid into the chair across from her. Short auburn hair, designer glasses, the kind of professional attire that suggested government or corporate work. She didn’t look like someone who trafficked in conspiracy theories.

“Ms. Chen.” Not a question.

“You have me at a disadvantage.”

The woman glanced toward the window, then back. “Call me Alex. I’ve been following your work on online radicalization.”

Sara kept her hands steady around her coffee cup. “My work hasn’t been published yet.”

“No. But it’s been circulated. Your editor sent advance copies for fact-checking.” Alex paused. “The networks you mapped—they’re more sophisticated than you realize.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning the Riley conspiracy theories weren’t organic. Someone built the infrastructure first.”

Sara leaned forward. “Infrastructure for what?”

Alex’s phone buzzed. She glanced at it and her face changed completely.

“Shit. We have to go.”

“Wait, what’s—”

“They just arrested someone for the Riley shooting.”

Alex was already standing, moving toward the door. Outside, the Phoenix heat hit like a furnace.

“Tyler Robinson. Twenty-two, from Michigan,” Alex called over her shoulder, walking quickly toward the street. “This is going to make everything worse.”

“Why worse?”

Alex stopped at a gray sedan, keys already in hand. “Because whoever built this system knew exactly what Robinson’s arrest would do to the information ecosystem.”

“What do you mean, knew?”

Alex opened her car door. “Be careful, Ms. Chen. The people behind this are very good at making problems disappear.”

The sedan pulled away, leaving Sara standing on the sidewalk as Phoenix traffic flowed around her. Her phone buzzed with news alerts about Robinson’s arrest.

She walked back to her car with more questions than answers, and the unsettling feeling that Alex had told her both everything and nothing at all.