One Click
Chapter 03 - One Click
The key fob was old compared with the car.
Its black casing carried a thin silver scratch across one corner. Eli remembered making that mark at age nine when he dropped it on the garage floor. His father picked it up, wiped away the dust, and told him machines did not care about scars if the signal remained true.
After the funeral, the key disappeared into his mother’s locked sewing box.
She returned it on Eli’s eighteenth birthday.
“Do not use this until Mara contacts you,” she said.
Mara Keene was a name Eli had heard only in whispers: attorney, trustee, keeper of whatever remained from his father’s company. Three nights earlier, she called and said the car would arrive at Hawthorne.
“It will recognize the key,” Mara told him. “What happens after that will be harder.”
Now Vanessa and Chase stood between him and the red car, waiting for embarrassment.
Eli pressed the button.
The supercar’s lights blinked.
A soft electronic chirp crossed the courtyard.
The driver’s door unlocked.
Nobody laughed.
Vanessa turned slowly toward the car. Chase looked from the key to Eli’s torn hoodie as if one of them had violated physics.
Eli walked past them, books still balanced in his left arm. The crowd opened without being asked. At the door, he paused, set the books carefully on the passenger seat, and looked back.
Vanessa found her voice.
“You found the key.”
“No.”
“Then you stole it.”
Eli opened the driver’s door.
The tan leather interior glowed beneath the gray sky. On the steering wheel sat a small silver emblem shaped like a compass—his father’s private mark, never used on production vehicles.
Eli touched it once.
“My name is on the trust that owns this car.”
Chase stepped forward. “Your name is Eli Carter.”
That was the name on Eli’s student records. His mother’s surname. The name chosen to keep reporters, creditors, and Grant Sterling’s investigators from finding him.
Eli met his eyes.
“My full name is Elijah Adrian Mercer.”
Professor Cole had reached the edge of the crowd. At the name, she stopped.
So did the university president walking down the founder’s steps.
Mercer.
The company whose founder died in a mysterious test crash eight years earlier.
The company now controlled by Grant Sterling.
Vanessa’s face went pale.
May you like
Eli slid behind the wheel but did not start the engine.
The car had already said enough.
