The Unseen by Jake Lingwall Page B

States?”
    “Exactly. But if they could stop the assassinations outright, they would have. So either they can’t, or it’s too expensive or difficult to protect everyone. But if they could stop the assassinations at all, both sides would have protected their executives.”
    “Hmmm . . .” It gave David pause, which was good, because it had bothered Kari as well. “So what are you saying?” David asked.
    “I don’t know what I’m saying.” Kari laughed at that sentence. That’s true more often than it should be. “But all the crime shows and movies I’ve ever watched make it clear that you need to have a body, a weapon, a motive, and a killer to solve the case. And all we have are bodies and two killers.”
    “The motive is to win the war right? Or to get revenge?”
    “That’s what everyone believes. But think about it—how did killing the president of the United States help the Middle States’ cause? How does killing a defense secretary in West Virginia help their cause?”
    “Easy—destabilizes their military leadership.”
    “Then why would they also assassinate a senator from Connecticut? Why would the Coastal States assassinate a prominent grassroots leader?”
    “Better questions.” David said. He considered it for a minute and then smiled.
    “What?” Kari said.
    “You’re going to figure this out.”
    “Are you serious? I just finished telling you why it didn’t make sense to me.”
    “I know,” David said with one of those knowing smiles that infuriated her. “I just have a feeling.” Kari wanted to fight with him about that, but held it in. He loved when she did that, and she didn’t want him to have the satisfaction.
    “So we don’t have a motive,” Kari said. “At least, we don’t have the entire motive. There’s more going on here. But even more perplexing is that we don’t know how these things keep happening. There’s never any information released, no public witnesses, and the investigations are all silent.”
    “I guess we can’t stop them from happening if we don’t know how they are happening,” David said.
    “Exactly!” Kari said, hoping the agreement would lead her to a brilliant point, but she stopped blank. She didn’t know where to go with things from here, like the trail had gone suddenly cold.
    “If only we knew someone who could hack into the databases to find that information out . . .”
    “Easier said than done. Besides, there is always the chance that they could track me down.”
    “You’re trying to tell me that you don’t know how to properly cover your trail?”
    “Well . . . I’d like to avoid it if I could. Besides, there’s no guarantee that I would find anything useful. Maybe they don’t release any details about how the victims are murdered because they don’t know how it’s happening!”
    “They’d have to know how some of them are happening. I mean, there are only so many ways to get the job done.”
    “Do you think they are all unique, or are they all carried out the same way?” It was a question that Kari had passed over in her mind before, but she hadn’t dwelled on it. Now that she asked it, though, it connected everything. Kari gasped.
    “What is it?” David said, but Kari couldn’t respond. “Kari? Kari?”
    “Oh, sorry,” Kari said. “But I think I just figured something important out.”
    “No way—just now?”
    “Yes. What you said led me to it. Thank you, David! You’re brilliant.”
    “I mean, that’s what I’ve always been trying to tell you. I thought you would have believed me after that drone smack-down I gave you back in high school, but at least we’re both on the same—”
    “There is a third party.” Kari cut his gloating off, which didn’t seem to bother him at all.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Someone is doing the assassinations, and it’s not either of the governments.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes, really! That’s the only way it makes sense. Someone is picking off specific