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the cops had a file on Pierce that was a mile thick. That file would be an awesome place to start, except they wouldn’t let me look at it. First, I was a civilian, and second, I was in competition with the cops. In the crime novels, a PI is either an ex-cop or has some cop buddies who owed him a favor and who happily provided him with the department’s files, while carrying on about how it could cost them their job. I had no cop buddies. I tried to avoid them as much as possible. My dad had been friendly with a couple of people, but both of them worked in the Financial Crime Unit, not in Homicide. Besides, right now nobody except Montgomery, me, and Bern knew that I was looking for Pierce. If I put myself on the cop radar, they would start paying attention to what I was doing, which would make finding Pierce harder.
    Around me downtown Houston hummed with life. The skyscrapers, some glass and steel, some towering monoliths of stone, rose around me. The cobalt building of MII loomed to the left, looking even more like a shark fin. I could almost imagine the pavement cracking, breaking open in huge slabs, and a colossal shark head bristling with razor-sharp glass teeth emerging to swallow me whole. In front of me, traffic inched up the busy street. A red Maserati convertible pulled out of traffic and drove down the Metrorail tracks toward the hospital. The driver, a young guy in a black T-shirt, was putting on cologne. Dumbass.
    Above him a large flat-screen billboard mounted on the wall of a stone tower flashed with advertisements. A news segment came on, and an image of a woman in a business suit filled the screen. She was in her late thirties, athletic, attractive, with medium brown skin and a dark wealth of curly hair, currently pulled back from her face into a knot. Everyone in Houston knew her name. Lenora Jordan, Harris County District Attorney. When I was fourteen years old, she walked into the street to face George Kolter. She was fresh out of law school and he was a seasoned fulgurkinetic Prime. He could shoot lightning from fifty feet away, he stood accused of child molestation, and he had decided at the last moment that he wasn’t going to trial. Lenora Jordan walked down the courthouse steps, like a gunfighter from the Old West, summoned chains from thin air, and bound George Kolter to the pavement. The whole thing had been recorded and played by every news outlet. It was epic. Every girl in my grade wanted to be Lenora when she grew up. She was incorruptible, powerful, and smart, she had no fear, and she didn’t take shit from anyone. I had no doubt that if Pierce was apprehended and received his day in court, she would destroy him while making sure that his constitutional rights were perfectly preserved.
    I wasn’t Lenora Jordan, no matter how much I wanted to be. If I did run into Pierce by some chance, I couldn’t dramatically bind him. I couldn’t make him do anything against his will either. I would have to somehow convince him that it was in his best interests to come with me.
    I pulled my phone out, downloaded the background file on Pierce, and opened it. Most people accumulated identifiers: DOB, SSN, last known address, driver’s license number, place of employment, all the things that tied them down and made them relatively easy to track. About 75 percent of the time, their idea of being off the grid meant hiding out at their cousin’s house. And 90 percent of the time, their mother, no matter what she claimed, could get hold of them within minutes.
    Pierce’s file provided me with a date of birth, place of birth, Social Security number, parents’ names and address, and his education. Elementary school, middle school, high school, Stanford University, bachelor of arcane science in materials science and engineering, minor in philosophy, 3.9 GPA. Applied and was accepted into a graduate program for a master’s of materials science and engineering, dropped out two months into it. Current