Here's thebooks.

Growing up Catholic in America is a quick path to becoming an atheist. They tell you to believe in God, in right and wrong, but they don't always tell you what "right" or "wrong" actually means. You just know that if you make the wrong choice, you're facing hell—or jail. As a kid, I learned quickly that the only way forward was to follow the rules, even if no one could tell me why. It was always about keeping some authority happy, some voice that loomed over me, promising consequences if I stepped out of line. They wanted obedience, but no one could really say what that looked like.

The ping came in at 2:41 on a Monday afternoon, which meant Marsh was already in the parking lot when the target arrived. That was how GroundTruth worked. The app never told you it knew where you'd be. It just posted gigs you were always, somehow, seven minutes from.

VERIFICATION REQUEST #88-4407 / Location: Westfield Mall, East Wing / Duration: est. 90 min / Rate: $14/hr + anomaly bonuses / Accept? Y/N

Marsh accepted. He'd stopped reading past the rate line months ago.

He was fifty-one years old and he had spent twenty-two of those years as a loss-prevention officer… Then the cameras got good enough to do it themselves, and loss prevention became a dashboard in a regional office in Ohio, and Marsh became a verification specialist, which was not a job. It was a series of pings.