Page 30 of Her Last Escape

"Loss of a spouse, anti-death technology," Novak mused, pulling out his phone. "Could be our motive."

They pushed through the doors and walked back out into the brisk January morning. "Someone who couldn't save his wife, angry at those trying to cheat death,” Rachel said. “Plus, Thorne just admitted the guy had tried following New Horizons employees. It fits."

Novak was once again calling the field office with an information request, this time for Jason Dewalt.

As they got back into the car, Rachel couldn't dislodge her final image of Thorne's nervous expression as they'd left – like a man who'd just released something dangerous into the world. The pastor's zealotry had been concerning enough, but if someone from his church and his protests were indeed capable of murder, Rachel wondered what that might do to a church leader.

Rachel felt that they might be on the right track, but she also felt a creeping darkness working its way into her thoughts. If Jason Dewalt was indeed their killer, it was hard not to feel somewhat sorry for his situation—having lost a wife while others in his city could afford to freeze themselves in the hope of avoiding death.

But whatever his story, it gave him no right to brutally kill others. And if she and Novak could act quickly, they’d make sure he never did it again.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

The dashboard clock read 12:15 when a fresh wave of rage coursed through him. He watched another Tesla pull into Whitehall's valet line, its driver barely waiting for the car to stop before thrusting his keys at the attendant. Third one in twenty minutes. The young valet – probably a UVA student working part-time – smiled and nodded as if the Tesla driver had done him a favor by showing up.

From his position in the strip mall lot across the street, he had a perfect view of the restaurant's façade – all gleaming steel and angular glass, bathed in purple accent lighting even in broad daylight. The entrance was flanked by towering metal sculptures that looked like twisted DNA helices reaching toward the sky. Modern art for people who thought themselves too sophisticated for tradition. The whole building screamed new money, with its forty-foot ceilings visible through floor-to-ceiling windows and a rooftop bar that would be packed with the young tech crowd come spring.

The restaurant had opened just six months ago, replacing an old family-owned Italian place that had served the community for three decades. Now, instead of checkered tablecloths and candles stuck in Chianti bottles, Whitehall's offered minimalist décor and plates so large and empty they looked like modern art installations themselves. The transformation was a perfect metaphor for everything wrong with this city – with this whole society. Old values discarded for whatever was trendy and expensive.

Lunchtime traffic crawled past on Preston Avenue, an endless stream of luxury vehicles and delivery trucks jockeying for position. The constant motion provided perfect cover. He was just another face in a parked car, maybe waiting for his turn at the dental office or the cell phone repair shop behind him. Nobody spared him a second glance. The strip mall lot was half-full – busy enough to blend in, not so crowded that anyone would notice how long he'd been there.

A sleek black Porsche pulled up to Whitehall's, and for a moment his pulse quickened, but it wasn't Maxwell's car. Just another member of the privileged class coming to pay too much money for too little food. He checked his watch again. 12:20. Maxwell would arrive soon – the man's schedule was as predictable as an atomic clock.

His fingers drummed against the steering wheel as he remembered the hours spent learning everything there was to know about Jonathan Maxwell. He had a job that sounded painfully boring: venture capitalist. And his life was an open book to anyone willing to dig deep enough. Princeton undergrad, where he'd been president of the Ivy Club – the most exclusive of Princeton's eating clubs. Harvard MBA, graduating with distinction. Five years at Goldman Sachs before striking out on his own, where he'd quickly developed a reputation for identifying promising biotech startups before anyone else saw their potential.

Maxwell had built his first tech investment fund from nothing to $500 million in assets under management within three years. Now, he ran three different funds, sat on six corporate boards—including the New Horizons board—and had an estimated net worth of fifty million dollars. All by age fifty-two. His Manhattan office occupied the entire forty-seventh floor of a Madison Avenue tower. His Hampton summer home had been featured in Architectural Digest and had been used as an example of one of those “best homes” television shows a few years back. Last year alone, he'd earned eight million dollars in carried interest from his funds.

The numbers made his jaw clench. Fifty million dollars. What Maxwell spent on his watch collection could fund a dozen cryonic preservations. Instead, the man had already reserved his own space at New Horizons despite being in perfect health – just another backup plan for a man who'd never faced real consequences in his life.

He'd spent weeks piecing together Maxwell's daily routines. He divided his time between New York and Boston, with frequent trips to Silicon Valley. He stayed at the same hotels, ate at the same restaurants, followed the same workout routine every morning. Maxwell's Instagram-famous wife documented their lives exhaustively online – their travels, their charity galas, their perfectly curated existence. It had made tracking the man's movements almost too easy. Currently, though, he was in Charlottesville for a conference.

Right on schedule, Maxwell's midnight blue BMW M760i pulled into the valet line. He watched the man emerge, straightening his bespoke suit jacket – Tom Ford, if he had to guess, based on the cut. The recent interview Maxwell had given to TechCrunch played through his mind: "Within five years, we'll make cryonic preservation accessible to the upper middle class. Within a decade, anyone with a decent 401(k) should be able to afford it."

The arrogance of it all made his blood boil. Maxwell and his fellow board members treated life extension like a luxury good to be marketed to the masses, not the precious resource it truly was. They were building a future where the wealthy could hoard immortality itself, doling it out to the "worthy" while people who actually needed it died waiting…or unable to afford it.

Inside Whitehall's, Maxwell would be ordering eighteen-dollar cocktails and thirty-dollar pasta dishes, discussing how to commodify the very boundary between life and death with others just like him. The restaurant's pretension matched its clientele – menus without prices, waiters who spoke in hushed tones about "house-made" everything, sommeliers hovering nearby to suggest hundred-dollar bottles of wine. All so the masters of the universe could feel special during their power lunches.

His research had revealed every detail of Maxwell's visit to Charlottesville. The man was only in town for the Biotechnology Innovation Summit at UVA, where he'd be speaking tomorrow about "Democratizing Longevity Technology." The irony was almost too much to bear. Maxwell's idea of democratization meant making it slightly easier for the merely wealthy to access what should be a fundamental human right.

Maxwell’s New Horizons connection went deeper than just his board seat, though. Maxwell had paid a solid 1.2 million dollars to reserve his preservation pod five years ago despite being decades away from needing it. That space could have gone to someone facing actual mortality – someone who'd earned the right to a second chance. Instead, it would sit empty, waiting for a man who treated death like an inconvenience to be solved with his checkbook.

He'd tracked down everything about Maxwell's involvement with New Horizons. He had first invested in the company three years ago, leading a thirty-million-dollar funding round. Since then, he'd become their most prominent advocate, speaking at conferences and writing opinion pieces about the "moral imperative" of life extension technology. But Maxwell's version of morality conveniently aligned with his financial interests. Every time he spoke about democratizing access to cryonics, New Horizons' waiting list grew longer.

Through the restaurant's windows, he could just barely see Maxwell moving deeper into the place, no doubt about to hold court at a prime table. He wished people like Maxwell and what they stood for didn’t anger him so badly. He hated to feel like those sorts of men were getting the best of him by simply getting under his skin.

He forced himself to take slow, steady breaths. Emotion was the enemy of execution. He couldn't afford to let his hatred of Maxwell and everything he represented cloud his judgment. Not when the window of opportunity was so narrow.

The past three victims had been easier. He'd had time to plan, to wait for the perfect moment. But Maxwell was different. He would be flying back to New York on Saturday morning, returning to his penthouse overlooking Central Park. That left less than forty-eight hours to finish this part of his mission.

At 1:22, Maxwell's group began filtering out of Whitehall's. He was easy to spot, holding court in the center of four others, standing briefly out in the cold. Maxwell's laugh carried across the street, loud and utterly unconcerned with who might be watching. A hundred-dollar lunch was just another tax-deductible business expense for him.

The valet brought his car around, and Maxwell exchanged elaborate goodbyes with his lunch companions. Everything about the man's movements suggested someone who had never questioned his place at the top of the world.

Two more days. That's all the time he had to take Maxwell out. After that, he'd head back to New York, and there was no telling when he'd be back in this part of the country again. He’d show up again sooner or later, he figured, just to make sure he was still prominent and visible on the New Horizons board. But he couldn’t wait that long.

He waited until Maxwell's BMW pulled into traffic before easing his own car out of the strip mall lot. The lunch rush provided plenty of vehicles to hide behind as he followed at a discreet distance. All he needed was one clean opportunity. One moment when Maxwell’s carefully ordered world would slip just enough to create an opening.

Maxwell might have fifty million dollars, but money couldn't buy immortality. Not yet. And he would make sure the man learned that lesson before his reservation at New Horizons came due.

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