My Fake Husband's AI Predicted My Murder

A Job for Tomorrow

Grant Lyle wanted somebody to tell him he could keep the money.

It was the first thing he asked when June brought him into the room. He was thirty, with bitten nails and a jacket too thin for the weather. He had come voluntarily after seeing Aria's face on the news. Now he seemed to regret every step that had led him here.

"How much?" June asked.

"Five hundred. Cash. There's more after the job."

"You may need to give it back. We'll deal with that. Tell me about the job first."

Aria sat against the far wall. She was not questioning a witness on June's behalf; she was there because Grant said he needed to look at her before deciding what to say. Theo waited outside, where Grant could not change his description to fit the man in front of him.

The job was scheduled for eleven forty-seven on October twelfth, the night after this one. Grant had received the instructions the previous afternoon. He had never mistaken them for a message sent from the future. The future date had simply made the delivery sound planned and therefore respectable.

"Who paid you?" June asked.

"A woman. White coat. She came to the lockers where I pick things up."

"Did you know her?"

"No. She knew my name. Knew I was behind on a loan."

He looked toward Aria.

"You look different with your hair down."

Aria felt her stomach contract.

"You think it was me?"

Grant took a photograph from his phone. It showed Aria in a white coat beside a locker bank, one hand extended with an envelope. The angle hid half her face. It did not need to be perfect. It only needed to agree with the idea the person looking at it had already been given.

"They sent this so I wouldn't forget who to report to."

"Did you see my face when you met her?"

"She had a mask. It was raining."

"Then what made you think I looked different?"

He stared at the picture. His cheeks reddened.

"I thought I remembered."

Aria wanted to take his phone and show him every reason the woman could not be her. June touched the table once, a small reminder to wait. Aria folded her hands beneath her knees.

Grant played the message he had received. Theo's voice told him to take a sealed package to the east service corridor of Aria's office and leave it inside. The voice was close enough to make her skin tighten. It lacked the faint roughness she had heard that morning, but that proved little. Recordings could be old.

"He said the door would be open," Grant said. "The key was for the cabinet."

He placed a small brass key on the table. Aria did not recognize it.

"What was in the package?"

"I don't know. I collect it tomorrow."

"Why couldn't she sign?"

Grant looked at Aria again. "The message said she'd be sedated. For her safety."

June stopped the recording and asked him to wait while an officer brought him water. Aria went into the corridor because the room had become too warm.

Theo stood by a vending machine with two untouched paper cups. He offered her one, then lowered it when she shook her head.

"He thinks I recruited him," she said.

"Did you?"

She looked at him sharply.

He had not meant it as a joke. Nor as an accusation. He was asking the question she would have asked him, and she hated the second it took to understand that.

"No."

"All right."

"Just like that?"

"No. It took some work."

She leaned against the wall. He stood beside her, leaving the usual space, and for once the space did not feel like a performance. They listened to the vending machine hum.

"I thought his fear made him convincing," Aria said. "Then he got my face wrong."

"He's frightened of something real. He just may not know what it is."

Neither did she. The threat could be fabricated and dangerous at the same time. A false forecast did not prevent someone from carrying a real package through a real door.

June came out and told them the office building had agreed to close the corridor and post a guard. Grant would not make the delivery. The key would be examined. She did not promise this removed the threat to October seventeenth.

"Someone is arranging things in advance," she said. "The software is useful cover. That's as far as I can go today."

Theo asked whether she could trace the cash. June gave him a look suggesting she had thought of that before he spoke. Aria almost smiled.

On the way out, Grant asked to speak to her again. He stood beside the desk, turning his empty wallet over in his hands.

"I'm sorry about the picture."

"Keep telling them what you actually saw."

"I need the money," he said.

She knew he was asking her for it. She also knew paying him now could turn a frightened witness into another ugly story about her case. For a moment she considered doing it anyway. She had five hundred in savings and no patience left for the way good reasons kept arriving too late to help anyone.

June saved her from the decision by giving him the number of a support worker and arranging a ride home. Grant looked disappointed. Aria left with that look following her.

Outside, Theo held the car door. She waited until he moved his hand before getting in. He noticed and looked away. She wanted to tell him that the door in the simulation was different, that she did not truly believe every ordinary movement was the beginning of it.

She could not say it honestly yet.

Mara called while they were stopped at a light. She had reached Alton, the lawyer who stored the executed marriage agreement. He had released a copy to Voss's office shortly after the wedding.

"The privacy appendix wasn't attached," she said. "He says Theo authorized the request."

Theo stared through the windshield.

"I authorized a trust review."

"Did you read what you sent?" Aria asked.

The light turned green. A car behind them sounded its horn. Theo moved forward, slowly, and Aria watched his hands on the wheel.

"Pull over," she said.

He did. They sat beside a bus stop while people looked through the windows and failed to recognize them.

"Before you answer," she told him, "remember that I will hear a smaller lie more clearly now."