The next day bled into Megan's room through the blinds, a flat, indifferent light. She was sprawled on her bed, phone in hand, mindlessly scrolling through Bleeter. The feed was a numbing stream of inanity: what people ate, vapid political hot-takes, and a swirling, chaotic chorus about Jay Norris. Conspiracy theories, tributes, memes of the "Signal Lost" screen. It was all noise. She knew the truth, and the truth was a cold, hard stone in her stomach, making the online frenzy seem pathetic and small.
The creak of her bedroom door swinging wider made her glance up. Her father passed by the open doorway, a figure moving with a grim, purposeful stride that was utterly alien in their languid home. He was wearing a suit. Not his usual expensive-but-casual blazer, but a proper, dark, slightly-too-tight suit. He looked like a man going to a funeral, or to a bank he was about to rob.
She felt a dry click in her throat and swallowed hard. The stone in her stomach turned to ice.
This was it. The 'other thing'. The score.
She waited, counting the soft thuds of his footsteps descending the stairs. The distant clink of keys. The low hum of the garage door opening. The growl of an engine—the black Obey Tailgater, the most boringly sinister car he could own.
Her body moved before her mind fully processed the plan. She was on her feet, pulling on the sneakers she'd kicked off by the bed. She grabbed her keys from the dresser, the yellow fob for her Elegy cool in her palm. She waited at the top of the stairs, listening as the Tailgater's engine idled, then faded as he pulled slowly down the driveway.
Now.
She took the stairs two at a time, a quiet flash in her baggy t-shirt and shorts. The garage felt cavernous, her canary-yellow Elegy RH8 a splash of vibrant alarm in the gloom. She slid into the driver's seat, the familiar cockpit a welcome embrace. The engine woke with a tuned, eager purr. She eased out of the driveway, hanging back, letting the black sedan become a distant speck before she gave gentle pressure to the accelerator.
Tailing him wasn't difficult; it was a race where only she knew the track. Her father drove like a man preoccupied, obeying traffic laws with an almost robotic precision that was itself a tell. She hung back, using traffic as a screen, her focus absolute. The urban sprawl of Los Santos streamed past—Vinewood's mansions giving way to the more utilitarian grid of La Mesa.
Her brow furrowed when he signaled and turned into the lot of a drab, boxy building: Darnell Bros. Garment Factory. A flicker of doubt. A garment factory? Was this some bizarre, legitimate business? Had she gotten it all wrong?
She parked a block down, behind a rusting delivery van, and killed the engine. Through her windshield, she watched him enter the unassuming door. The wait was agonizing, every second stretching out. She chewed her thumbnail, her eyes never leaving the factory entrance.
Then, he emerged. And he wasn't alone.
A man shuffled out beside him, stout, leaning heavily on a cane. Megan's breath hitched. She fumbled for her phone, swiping to the camera and pinching the screen to zoom. The digital image wobbled, then clarified.
The face was older, heavier, etched with lines of chronic anxiety. The posture was perpetually hunched. But the eyes, even from this distance, had a familiar, calculating glint behind thick glasses.
Uncle Lester?
The name surfaced from a deep, dusty place. 2004. The smell of diesel and cheap laundry soap. A trailer park, the sky a vast, terrifying openness after North Yankton. A nervous, sweaty man who came by sometimes, talking to her dad in low, urgent tones, his fingers always twitching. She'd been eleven. He'd brought her a packet of colored pencils once. She'd called him Uncle Lester because her parents did.
It couldn't be. Not that Lester. Not the weird guy from the internet, the one her dad had muttered about. Not the voice on the phone after the explosion. It was impossible, and yet, it was undeniably him. The past, a past she thought was buried, was here, leaning on a cane in a garment factory parking lot.
They got into the Tailgater. Megan's heart was a drum against her ribs. She started her car as they pulled out, falling in behind them with a fresh, electric terror. This was no longer just about her father's new hobby. This was a reunion.
The drive to Little Portola was tense. She hung back further, letting other cars slip between them. They parked near a row of shuttered shops. She pulled over half a block away, watching in her rearview as her father got out, alone this time, and walked with that same purposeful stride toward the storefronts. He was scanning, assessing. Not shopping. Casing.
He returned to the car empty-handed, drove slowly around the corner, and parked again. Megan parallel parked smoothly, her racing instincts keeping her movements fluid and calm despite the panic singing in her veins. She watched as he got out again, looked around with a furtive glance she'd never seen on him before, and then slipped inside a doorway next to a boarded-up shop. A faded sign above the adjacent entrance read something about textiles, but the door he used led into a space that was clearly an active, internal construction site. She could see piles of drywall and the glow of temporary work lights from within.
He disappeared into the gloom.
Megan sat perfectly still in the driver's seat of her bright yellow car, feeling horribly exposed. The pieces weren't just snapping together anymore; they were assembling into a terrifying machine. The garment factory wasn't a business. It was a front. Lester was the planner. Her father was the operator. And this construction site in a dead part of town? This was the target. The 'score'.
She wasn't watching a midlife crisis anymore. She was watching a heist in its planning stages. And the planner was a ghost from the worst time of their lives. A cold certainty washed over her: she couldn't just watch from the shadows anymore. The next move had to be hers.