The Match

Chapter Sixteen

Chris Taylor was scrolling through Twitter when he stumbled across the headline:

The story didn’t really pique his interest. It was just a murder in another state, nothing to do with him, but Chris idly wondered why it was getting such significant social media play. He clicked the link and felt his blood go cold:

Okay, he was a retired police chief. That explained why the story was making the rounds more than a normal slaying.

Henry McAndrews.

That name rang a bell. And not a good one.

Chris took off his hipster beanie. He’d also grown a hipster beard. He wore hipster slim jeans and ironic sneakers and basic T-shirts, all in a fairly successful attempt to change his look from that of the more nerdy Stranger. It worked well enough, especially when you rarely left your loft. In his previous incarnation, Chris had revealed secrets that he believed were detrimental to humanity. His own life had been blown apart by secrets. His philosophy had thus been a simple one: Drag those secrets into the light of day. Once exposed to sunlight, the secrets would wither and die.

But he had been wrong.

Sometimes, the secrets did indeed wither and die — but other times, they grew stronger, too strong, taking nourishment from the sunlight and wreaking destruction. The repercussions had caught Chris by surprise. He believed that you right wrongs with the truth, but in the end that often backfired. He’d learned that the hard way — in blood and violence. Innocent people had been hurt and even killed. And yet, when you have a setback doing good, do you just give up and say nothing can be done? Do you throw your hands up and surrender to malignant evils that infect us all? That would have been the easy route. Chris had gotten away safely from the mess he helped create. He had money from his exploits. He lived comfortably and could continue to do so without worrying about righting wrongs. But he wasn’t built that way. He’d tried to let it all go, but that didn’t hold.

So now Chris helps people in a different way.

He’d formed Boomerang in order to help those who were being attacked and couldn’t fight back. He punished not only those who created secrets but those who lied, abused, bullied — and did so anonymously. He went after those who served no positive purpose whatsoever in society and only eroded and destroyed the good. He worked hard now to make sure that the mistakes he made as The Stranger were minimized. His old work had been a volatile compound. He couldn’t control it.

With this — with Boomerang — he could ensure safety.

Not always. Not a hundred percent of the time. There was always the chance, despite his absolute best efforts, that an innocent person would be punished. He got that. He wasn’t blind or dumb. It was why he double-checked and triple-checked. If Boomerang was going to go after you, Chris wanted to make sure you deserved what was coming. Sure, he could stop altogether, leave it to the authorities who were still lagging way behind in defending those being attacked in the new online world, but do we stop doing the right thing just because we fear mistakes? Our justice system is imperfect, yet no one suggests that we get rid of it because of the occasional error, do they? We don’t just give up. We try to improve and make it better. We do our best and hope the balance sheet at the end of the day shows we did more good than bad.

Boomerang helps people. It protects the innocent and punishes the guilty.

But now he read the name again.

Henry McAndrews.

Chris looked up the name and found the file.

This was bad news. Very bad.

Chris — the Lion — grabbed hold of his burner phone. On it was a dark web communication device that was as untraceable as possible. He composed a message that no one other than Alpaca, Giraffe, Kitten, Panther, and Polar Bear would understand.

The urgent signal. Then he added, just to be sure: