The thief stood up. He walked to the door and locked it. You were Arthur Vance, he said quietly. A drifter. A man with a record for petty theft and a history of disappearing. You stole the identity of a quiet archivist named Elias Thorne five years ago. Did you really think you were the first person to have this idea?
Desperation drove him back to the library the next morning. He didn't go through the front. He used the delivery bay, slipping in behind a crate of periodicals. He knew the blind spots of the security cameras; he had mapped them out himself during a boring summer shift. Identity Thief
He spent the night in a 24-hour diner, nursing a single cup of black coffee paid for with the crumpled twenty-dollar bill he kept in his shoe for emergencies. He watched the news on the mounted TV, half-expecting to see his own face labeled as a fugitive. Instead, he saw something worse. The thief stood up
The thief sat back down and resumed typing. You should run, Arthur. It’s what you’re best at. A drifter
When he tried to swipe his keycard at the lobby elevator that Tuesday evening, the reader blinked a spiteful, jagged red. He tried again. Red. He walked to the concierge desk, where a young man he didn’t recognize was monitoring the screens.