A Dag Hamar Mystery

Your Several Loves

We shall not spend a large expense of time
Before we reckon with your several loves,
And make us even with you.
—Macbeth V. vii

“What’s your superpower?”

“I can tie a knot in a cherry stem with my tongue.” A fat lot of good that power was going to do me. I needed to be superman.

“What’s your superpower?”

“I can hold my breath for two minutes.” Hold on, Andi. Hold on.

It couldn’t have taken me more than 30 seconds to dump Cali outside the building and run back in. I grabbed the railing as I rounded the last landing, burning my hand on the hot metal. I would hold out the axe to her and pull her out.

But neither Andi nor the landing she clung to was there.

***

I was still in the hospital when I saw the news about CCS. The picture showed Darlene Alexander being led from the building by FBI agents. The sound was off, but the tickertape running across the bottom of the screen said “Embezzler takes credit company for millions. Arrested on inside tip.” Unlike the usual executive being cuffed, Darlene didn’t try to hide her face from the cameras. In fact, at one point she raised her head and looked straight into the lens and smiled sadly. Without the sound, I had the feeling she was communicating with me.

I had mixed emotions. She had saved my ass on two occasions and even provided the information that let me reach Cali in time. But Darlene had been the coordinator of every huge technical and security project the company had done since it was founded. A simple administrative position. She’d stepped aside to let Arnie take the credit for his “team.” She’d hitched her wagon to his star, as she put it to me. It kept her in a suspicion-free position where she had access to everything in the company. It turned out that she’d been the technical brains behind most of Arnie’s accomplishments. Even the reports she was supposedly receiving from Arnie to feed to me for my fake meetings were her own work and not his. And I’d only discovered the tip of the iceberg when I found the activation fee scam. The virus I’d let loose in the company network packaged up every file she’d ever touched. She’d routinely pulled single cards from batches in the manufacturing facility for years, selling them on the black market. She’d pulled account and personal information from the records at random to sell to thieves. Since the information had no set pattern, no one had ever managed to find the source of the leaked information. But compromising credit information is a Federal offense.

I’d set the trap that fateful afternoon, planting a virus in place that would collect information about the user when one of several key words or phrases was used. “IGotUrBak” was one of them.  As soon as she joined the game, the program started collecting and packaging her information, then delivered it to the desks of Arnie and Jen. I knew from Jen it would go straight to the CEO and Arnie would have to act immediately. He called the Feds and turned over the information, citing an internal investigation. He wasn’t happy about losing such a valuable aide. The thing is, if she hadn’t been so focused on helping me find Cali, she could have easily spiked my virus and stayed free.

Somehow, the whole team blamed me for Darlene’s disgrace. Typical.

All except Jen.

She visited me in the hospital during my short stay. I wasn’t much company. She genuinely sympathized and asked me to let her know if there was anything she could do to help me. Although I could still see a wistful desire in her eyes, it wasn’t an inappropriate offer and there was no suggestion in it. She knew there was no way I’d be fit for a relationship in the foreseeable future and she’s not the type to try to put a broken man back together. Not like Andi had. 

I went home when I was released and turned out the lights in my black room. I huddled in my bed with my bandaged hands held to my chest. I could still smell Andi’s and my love-making in the sheets. I wept.

***

There was a memorial service at the college the next week. I went in my gray suit, white shirt, and the tie she’d picked out for me. I saw Cali across the room. She was surrounded by friends from school and the theater. I wanted to rush up to her and hold her, but the one time our eyes met, she dropped her head and turned away from me. Child Protective Services had arranged temporary housing and care for her. When she was 18, she would be allowed to return home alone, but until that time—still a few months away—she was a ward of the State. There was no question that she was sole heir to her mother’s estate, but I didn’t know how they took care of property and mortgages and such in the interim. I was worried about her.

I didn’t go to Melissa’s memorial. I saw Olivia and James at Andi’s service. I’m sure they were in shock over their daughter’s murder. James came up to me and started to speak, but couldn’t. As he started back to his wife he turned back to me and croaked out, “They told us she’d run away. We’d never have…” He left the rest unsaid and escorted his wife out of the auditorium. They’d always assumed the worst about their daughter. I wasn’t about to confirm any of it. Pain was all any of us knew anymore.

I went home.

The doctor had given me some pretty kickass drugs to combat the pain of my burned hands and various other injuries  I didn’t know I’d received. A hospital counselor added a brochure on the seven stages of grief. Shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, acceptance. I couldn’t find anything in the damn brochure about bitterness and regret. If I had known it would all end so soon… I wouldn’t have changed falling in love. Oh but I’d have started so much earlier.

I didn’t remember anything about getting out of the burning warehouse. I was carried out, I discovered. I woke up in a hospital the next day and begged to go back to sleep. Jordan came by. He told me that when the firemen got to me I was smashing my tablet with the axe and screaming “Escape! Escape! Escape!” Maybe the screams had saved my life. I was choking on the smoke and keeling over when they dragged my sorry ass out of there.

My throat was sore. The doctor said it was an effect of the smoke inhalation and the screaming I’d done.

I knew it was from the constant weeping.

***

I sat in my office Monday morning, the day after Mother’s Day. I’d been lousy company for my mother when I took her to brunch. I hadn’t had much appetite and she never ate that much. We both sat next to the window looking out at the fishing boats. She dreamed, I suppose, of my father getting off one of them and coming to meet her. I dreamed of getting on one and sailing away into oblivion. We held each other’s hands as we looked out onto the blue sky and tears fell from our eyes. Oh God! How long does this go on?

I had to start pulling myself together, even though I knew I had nothing to do in the office. I showered, shaved, and dressed in my suit and tie. Somehow, the suit made me feel close to Andi. She and Cali had done my makeover. I wanted them to be proud. I stopped at the Analog for a coffee to go and then walked over to Olive before I headed uphill so I wouldn’t have to pass Andi’s empty house. It was bad enough that Lonnie’s mournful look and silence had nearly crippled me. The sun was shining and I broke a bit of a sweat by the time I got up to 15th. The folks in the other offices must have heard me come in as Janna soon poked her head around my doorframe.

“Just wanted to make sure it was you,” she said when I nodded at her. “How are you doing?” I started to say something, but I knew she wouldn’t accept “fine” as an answer. I just shook my head. She didn’t know the entire story, but she was aware that the guy they arrested was the same one who was stalking her client David. “Look, if you need to talk, I’ve got a pretty open calendar today. Just stop upstairs.”

“Thank you, Janna. I don’t know what to say yet. I can’t say it.” I’d wept, I’d shouted, I’d even gone to a bar, but the first swallow of the straight vodka I ordered came spewing out my nose as I choked on it. I hadn’t been able to simply say “She’s dead.”

“Well, I’m putting a fresh pot of coffee on. Help yourself.” She turned toward the kitchen but turned back before she’d taken a step away. “And Dag. Don’t blame yourself. God only knows how many children you saved.”

I wanted to scream at her. I couldn’t save the most important person!

But maybe I had. I’d saved Cali. That was Andi’s last desperate plea to me.

***

I can’t say I’d accomplished anything. I’d been in the office for several hours, but couldn’t name one productive thing I’d done. Stupid computer maintenance—defragging the drive. Throwing out most of the mail that had piled up in the past two weeks. Officially resigning my job at CCS. They were paying me two weeks sick leave and company insurance was covering all my hospital bills. I didn’t know how that worked. I only vaguely remembered signing the necessary forms, but apparently the coverage was effective on the first of the month. Just in time. I knew that whatever they sent me as salary and severance would pale next to what Lars would bill for my services.

That left just one thing. The brown envelope on my desk. I was still contemplating what I would do with it when I heard the outer door open and steps approach my office. I looked up in time to see Cali round the corner and step through my door.

I don’t think she expected to see me there. She caught her breath and stood staring at me.

“Cali?” The sound of my voice seemed to startle her even more and I was afraid she was simply going to bolt from the room. She wore blue jeans and a sleeveless shirt and carried her school bag and jacket. She exhaled slowly, trying to calm herself, but each time she inhaled it was like a gasp for air. She cautiously moved around my desk to take the seat facing me. She had an envelope in her hand but she made no move to give it to me. I was afraid that if I said anything she would fly away like the frightened bird she appeared to be. So we sat in silence, staring at each other.

“You’re fired!” she suddenly blurted out. “I want my money back.” She threw the envelope across the desk. “I wrote cancelled on the contract.” I reached for the envelope with my bandaged hand and heard a mewling sound as she curled herself up in the chair. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Cali. Your mom did all the work. It’s here.”

“I don’t want to know! I want to remember her like she always was. I don’t want to know what she did or who she was. Take it away!” I pulled both envelopes back and slipped them into my desk drawer.

“Cali,” I said softly.

“I hate you!” There was a fierce storm building in her eyes and her ragged breathing now was coming in deep sobs. “I thought you were a superhero. I thought you’d make everything better. But you couldn’t save Mel. You couldn’t even save Mommy and you loved her. I know you did! You loved her and I thought someday you’d be my daddy. And now I hate you and I hate myself.”

Oh God! Please don’t do this Cali! I hated myself. And for just an instant I regretted not leaving her to the flames and saving her mother. I’m not a superhero. I’m not even a good person!

I had only a moment for the tears to flood my eyes when Cali moved and launched herself at me. She was hanging from my neck with her face buried in my chest wailing and all I could do was hold her and cry out all the pain and horror that we both experienced.

She kept sobbing, intermittently gasping, “My Mommy. My Daddy.” I knew in that instant that she was my baby girl as much as if Andi and I had married. I could never have left her in that building, even if it had been my life that was forfeited. I wondered if there was a way I could adopt her.

I saw a movement a caught a glimpse of Janna at the door to see if everything was okay. She disappeared and I heard the sound of cups rattling in the kitchen. Gradually, Cali’s sobs let up and for a few minutes I thought she was asleep while I petted her silky hair. During that time, I saw Janna again. This time she slid a tray with two cups of tea onto my desk quietly, nodded reassuringly to me and left. Cali stirred and pushed away from me. She looked at the cups of tea suspiciously, but took one as she sat back in the chair on the other side of the desk.

“It’s like that all the time,” she said, finally. “One minute I’m fine and the next I’m a wreck. I hope I didn’t ruin your suit.” I looked at the tear stained front of my jacket and just shrugged.

“It wouldn’t make a difference if you did, Cali. I would hold you forever.”

“I know you did your best, Dag. I know you tried to save her, both of them. I don’t blame you. But I get so angry. And they aren’t even putting the bastard in jail!”

That wasn’t quite true. He’d been jailed without bail, but then moved to a secure hospital. Jordan told me it looked like he wasn’t mentally competent to stand trial. He still kept muttering over and over, “It’s just a game.” John Patterson had tipped over the edge of not being able to tell the difference between cyberspace and reality. It was a condition I was dangerously close to myself, I realized.

“There is so much evidence against him that he will never be free again. He’ll either be in a hospital for the rest of his life or in prison for the rest of his life.”

“But he won’t hang!” The venom in Cali’s voice was frightening, even if understood. I’ve always been opposed to capital punishment, but I confess that if I could get my hands on him I’d kill him myself.

“Where are you living?” I asked, trying to shift the conversation away from our anger.

“Can you believe they put me clear out in Bellevue! Thank God there are only a few more weeks of school left. The bus ride is like an hour long. And so much for theater. This is going to kill my career. They say I can transfer my Running Start to Bellevue College, but it’s like being sentenced to Siberia.”

“Cali, do you want me to…” I wasn’t sure how to broach the subject of adoption with her. It probably was too soon, but if she wanted me to advocate for her I’d step in.

“I already asked them. CPS said there is no way they’d allow me to live with a middle-aged man, no matter what your relationship to my mother was.”

“Middle-aged?” She looked at me and finally we both laughed. It wasn’t much, but it was the first time either of us had laughed since that night.

“You need a new dye-job. Your roots are showing.” Well, it had been two weeks since Andi and Cali touched them up in their kitchen. There was a halo of blond surrounding my head and mustache.

“I’m going to let it grow out,” I said. “I can’t maintain coloring them. I’m going to keep it all trimmed and short, though.”

“I see you dressed in a suit to come to the office, too.”

“I’ll need to buy a couple more or this one will be worn out.” We were chit-chatting about nothing, trying desperately to live in a moment when everything was normal. We both knew it wouldn’t last.

“Dag, what did Mom say?” I reached back into my drawer for the brown envelope. “No! I don’t want to know. I just want to know… It wasn’t something terrible that she did, was it?”

“Oh Cali. Andi wasn’t capable of doing something terrible. She loved you. She loved you so much she gave her life for you. Twice.” Her lip quivered and for a moment I thought we would both return to tears.

“Can I ask you to keep that for me? Someday, I’ll come back and get it. When I’m ready. Right now, I just want to remember Mom the way I always knew her. I just want to love her like she loved me.”

“It will be here.” Cali rose from her chair and put the tea mug on the tray. This time I stood and walked with her to the door. She stopped and looked up at me before she left.

“We’ll be okay, won’t we? Someday?” she asked.

“We’ll be okay. I know I have a business to run and a client I made a promise to. I have to be okay. And you have school to finish and a big career on stage and screen waiting for you. You can’t disappoint your public.”

“I’ll invite you to all my openings,” she said. She hugged me again and I kissed the top of her head. She smiled up at me and then headed off to catch her bus back to Bellevue.

Somehow, we would survive.

Hold Enough—Part 2

Jan and Donna Garrick rolled up beside us and asked where we wanted them to check. We sent them to cruise up and down the waterfront. That was where Seattle was most vulnerable and was the furthest out that I could imagine they could have gone by now. Jordan has said Patterson’s yacht was anchored out in the Sound, so the Marina was a logical place for him to head. Sara Gates and Sandy Halstead were then sent south. Of all our friends, the two musicians would be most familiar and comfortable with Pioneer Square. Andi took over deploying our friends as I started reviewing images flashing on my screen from various cameras.

He’d done it again. He disappeared into the tunnel entrance, but never showed up on the security cameras once inside. Andi turned up University and I jumped out of the car and headed for the tunnel entrance. Watching a live feed of the University Street tunnel and the CCS security camera, I entered and headed to the escalator. I saw myself disappear from the CCS feed just after I left the street. I watched the tunnel cameras as I emerged into the tunnel at the bottom of the escalator. I didn’t come on camera until I was ten feet into the tunnel. In that ten feet, there was an access door to the maintenance shafts. I felt my stomach tie in knots as I tested the locked door. I sent a message to the police ground team and was joined in the tunnel five minutes later by two uniformed officers and a Metro maintenance worker. I was ordered to stay out of the tunnel as they unlocked the door and went in. I ran back up the escalator. All busses and trains were being stopped at the tunnel stations and searched.

Andi brought the van around on Third to the entrance and was anxiously awaiting me when I came out. I slid into the seat next to her and gave her a hug. “We’ll find her,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “I swear we’ll find her.” She nodded. I could see her jaw clenching. Her hands both gripped the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles were blue.

I looked at the game status. Eighty more players had joined in the past ten minutes. Word had gone out that we were chasing down John Patterson. The gaming community was out for blood. When one of their own became a pariah, there was no tolerance. I scanned the video feeds that were continuing to come in from around the city. It was just too much data for my tiny screen. I reached for my cell phone and dialed Jen.

“This isn’t what I intended to spring on you tonight.”

“I didn’t think so, but you never know.”

“Look, I’ve got too much information flowing in to handle it all. I need a filter.”

“You want us to watch first and feed you what we think is pertinent.”

“Is the whole team there?”

“Yes. Even Arnie and Darlene are set up.”

“I’ll transfer all the video feeds into the company and you can sort them out. I’m betting he headed north, but it wasn’t on a bus. There could be an access to his fricking office down there or a garage or a tunnel all the way to the Marina. But his yacht is anchored off Shilshole Bay. I’m betting he’s headed that way.”

“Route the feed to Supurnurd,” she said. “That’s Ford. He’ll distribute to the rest of the team.” I thanked her and hit the switch to distribute my info feed to Ford. I recognized the name. He was one of my six pursuers in the game a few nights ago. Well, if they were that good, then I definitely wanted them on my team. I could imagine the feed suddenly lighting up the eight foot wide screens in the various conference rooms around our office where a dozen windows could be opened on-screen and observed at the same time. I contemplated the maps of Seattle that now took over my screen.

Paula and Dick Wagner pulled up beside the van and handed coffee through the window to us. They had loaded their vehicle with urns of coffee and were handing out cups to everyone engaged in the search. Their coffee shop was in Pioneer Square and the name played off the most popular tourist attraction in the area: wUnder Grounds. I stared at the cup, thinking.

After the Great Seattle Fire of 1897 when more than 30 blocks of wooden buildings in downtown Seattle were destroyed, the city started rebuilding according to a new code—all buildings had to be made of stone, steel, and masonry. The new buildings went up almost as fast as they’d burned down. But in order to stabilize the constantly sinking and flooded streets, the city built retaining walls on either side of First Avenue that were ten to thirty feet high. They filled the street with sand and gravel and then repaved it. The new shops and buildings found they needed entrances on the second and third floors in order to let people in from the street and new sidewalks bridged the gap above the underground city.

A civic activist in the middle of the 20th century known for his wit and for founding the popular tourist attraction once quipped that he could walk from King Street Station to Pike Place Market and never see the light of day. People joked that he would make the trip at night. But gazing into the pit that begins any reconstruction project in Seattle will quickly show that as much of a building on the western slope of the city will be underground as above ground. I was wondering if Patterson would ever emerge from beneath the city of Seattle.

My computer flashed with new video feeds and a message on the game boards. There was video of a couple emerging from the east side of First Avenue and crossing to enter an abandoned building on the west side near the Art Museum. Just 15 minutes ago. I motioned Andi into action as she drove down the hill to First and began to circle the block. That’s an impossible thing to do. First rises away from the water as it approaches the market and for eight blocks there are no streets that connect to Western and the Waterfront.

“Where are eyes on that area?” I demanded, even as I was routing the new images to the police. From the Harbor Steps to the Market, no one had brought a camera online on the West side of First Avenue.

“Everything in that quadrant has just gone dark,” Ford responded. “We’re working on a solution.”

The gameboard chimed and I dove into the alternate reality that my players were experiencing.

“We’re under attack! Every time a player moves, he’s knocked off the board. He’s pulling the plug on every camera in the area as fast as we can bring them online.”

“Philanthropia is chaos. Automated defense systems are activating across every street. We’re digging tunnels to get from one area to another.”

“Wherever he is, he’s got more computer power in his hands than we have combined.”

The reports from the game board showed people pulling out, reporting viral attacks, and crashes. Patterson knew we were searching in both physical space and cyberspace and he was hiding in both. But if he was launching attacks in cyberspace, I had to believe he was capable of launching them in the real world as well.

“We need to cordon off the waterfront so he can’t move west of Alaskan Way. If he gets out into the Sound, we won’t have a chance of finding him,” I told Andi. She pulled off of Spring onto Western and stopped to send text messages to the Faculty. They had called in friends as well and by now there were at least thirty cars prowling the area. Police were at the doors of the building on First and were going in.

My cell phone rang and Jen barked at me.

“We’re going mobile,” she said. “You’ll get the first live video feeds within two minutes. I’m already positioned at the south end of the Market looking over the back toward the Waterfront. Ford is managing the feeds from the office.” By the time she finished speaking, my computer was lighting up with feeds as my team lined up on foot down the Harbor Steps and along Western. Andi and I continued to move north on Western as I scanned the screen and she scanned the street.

My tablet and my phone alerted me at the same time. I flipped open the phone as I scanned the new images I was receiving from the video feed.

“Hamar.”

“Dag, it’s not good. Coast Guard has just taken charge of the yacht and our police boat is headed in. The guy’s a maniac. The girl is dead. So is all his crew. He’s way off the deep end.”

“We’ve got a reading of body signatures going into a warehouse between Western and Alaskan Way. I’m following. We’ve got to stop him before he hurts Cali.”

“What do you mean, body signatures?”

“Part of my team is filling holes in the video with infrared lenses.”

“Someday you’ll have to tell me how you get access to so many toys. I’m on my way.”

I looked at the message at the bottom of the video feed coming in to me with the infrared images. “IGotUrBak.”

“And I’ve got your ass,” I whispered. “But that’s for tomorrow.”

***

I tried to get Andi to wait with the car, but there was grim determination in her face as we moved toward the warehouse. Her only words were a whispered, “She’s my baby.” She clutched my hand as we found the entrance and went in. I could hear sirens wailing in from the south, but they’d been going on and off all night. The security chain on the door had been broken and we pushed the door open. There was no light, but I used an LED on my keychain to cast a ghostly blue light out ahead of us—just enough not to stumble and fall over anything in our path.

At this part of Western, the street was higher than Alaskan Way, so we were two stories above the back of the building with another two above us. I bet on his moving down toward the back with a planned escape out toward the Marina. We signaled everyone to close in on the west side of the building. He was being surrounded. I got a triumphant cheer from the gamers as the entire area lit up with video feeds again. They’d neutralized him in cyberspace. In my mind, that doubled the danger in real life.

The building codes might have required masonry and steel construction, but once inside the warehouse, huge wooden pillars supported wooden floors on which were stacked crates and crates of unknown merchandise for an import/export company. We made our way down a stairway flashing the weak beam left and right and listening intently. I was surprised to find that once we’d reached the ground floor on the west side of the building, the stairs continued downward. This building was built below sea level. We’d seen and heard nothing since entering the building and both of us were sweating, our palms slippery where we held each other.

The scream from below us almost knocked us off our feet. We hit the last flight of stairs running and slid to a halt, faced with a sudden wall of fire. Across the warehouse floor, Cali was tied to one of the massive wooden pillars. I automatically hit 911 on my cell as we skirted the flames and ran to her.

Her face was bruised and her hands and ankles were duct taped to the pillar. I pulled out my pen knife and began sawing through the sticky mess while Andi comforted her daughter and checked for other injuries. Cali was in shock, staring fixedly at the fire as it progressed toward us while I stripped tape off her arms leaving huge red welts where it had stuck to her. The smoke was getting dense and I could barely see the stairs across the warehouse. When she was finally free of the pillar, she slumped to the floor.

The fire was spreading fast through the dry wooden crates and packing material that acted like kindling. Boxes were exploding from the inside as the heat outside increased. There was no time to waste. I scooped the girl up in my arms and we ran for the stairs. We were only two flights up to the lower ground level and we rushed across the floor, already feeling the wood heating up beneath our feet. We were running through a tinderbox. But the doors on this side of the building were all chained shut.

Damn! This had to be illegal. There has to be an emergency exit. But every access we found was padlocked and chained. We had no tools to break them. We sprinted to the stairs again, seeing flames shooting up the freight elevator next to them. Something exploded to our right and suddenly this floor was engulfed in flame. Andi pushed me from behind as I carried Cali up the stairs. We’d made the first landing and I turned to launch myself up the next flight when another explosion ripped the stairs from beneath my feet. As I fell forward, I pushed—no… threw—Cali to the landing in front of me as the stairs gave way. I heard a scream behind me and dragged my body up to the landing with my hands. I turned to see Andi, still on the landing—trapped against the wall, the steps between us collapsed.

We locked eyes for a terrified moment. I reached out to her, but the gap was just too wide to touch. I had only the wagging stair railing to hang on to as I leaned over the inferno. Then she screamed at me.

“Save my baby! Please Dag. Save Cali!”

I was choking on the smoke and my own tears as I mouthed to her “I love you.” I saw her return the motion as I threw Cali over my shoulder and charged up the remaining two flights to the Western Avenue floor and crashed through the doors.

A fire truck had just pulled up and I rushed a firefighter in full gear and dropped Cali into his arms. Before he could react, I picked up his axe, turned, and dove back into the burning building.

Hold Enough—Part 1

Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'
—Macbeth V. vii

As soon as I could confirm that Andi was okay with Cali, I headed to my apartment. I was on a mission. I knew now that Mel had been snatched from the street by someone who knew where she would be and when. I knew that there was more than one person involved. And I knew that Mel’s time could be up already.

I launched all computers and dove directly into my previous searches. One of these bastards had to be Patterson or involved with him. Whom had Mel told she would be downtown on Thursday morning. Who was waiting for her? And where had she been taken? I received an amber alert notice on my cell phone as I was just diving in. Jordan’s timing was perfect.

I started scanning the neighborhoods where I’d posted notices and the email that had come in as a result. Each notice I’d posted had been vandalized. A big stamp reading “Cancelled” defaced each bulletin. I ran through the 250-some email responses I’d received since posting the notices and finally came to the one I feared.

“Too bad. She was such a filthy slut. Maybe you’d work harder if it was a nice girl who was closer to you.”

I called Andi but got no response. I’d been digging for over two hours since I left her and Cali. She must have turned the phones off so they could have peace while they slept and recovered. I left a message and went back to work. I didn’t want Cali out of sight.

With the number of cameras in downtown Seattle, the obvious next step was to try to track where they had gone after the bus tunnel; and bus tunnels had 24-hour camera surveillance. I tapped into the Metro site and started worming my way inside. I’m pretty cautious about breaking and entering when it’s a site owned by the government or a government agency. Metro was a county agency and as a result I had to fight my way through a whole different set of protocols than those for the city government. I ended up using a crude hack to get to the video feed from KC Metro. From there, I had to search back through archives to find the date and time of the kidnapping. It was tedious work and I was already wishing I had more coffee. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept, but my eyes kept closing on me.

When I finally found recordings of the right tunnel and the right time, I kept replaying them and rechecking the time.

There was nothing on the tape that showed Mel entering the bus tunnel.

***

My options were running low. I opened my curtains and saw that it was dark outside. How long had I been at this, vacillating between intense concentration and sleep? I needed more coffee, and I needed more information. Why was Cali downtown with Mel when both girls should have been in school? Why hadn’t Cali been missed?

I grabbed my tablet and crossed the alley to see Andi and Cali. I knocked lightly on the door, realizing it was already past ten o’clock and they could be sound asleep. A few seconds later, the porch light came on and Andi opened the door. She looked drowsy and fell into my arms as she pulled me through the open door.

“What a day,” she sighed. “I fell asleep in front of the TV.”

“How’s Cali?”

“She slept most of the day. I haven’t heard her stirring yet. I should get her some food.”

“The poor kid.”

“She thinks it’s her fault because she was with Mel. She didn’t want to tell anyone because she was supposed to be in class. Then with Olivia blaming her for Mel running away, she’s just been a wreck.”

“Why wasn’t her school absence reported?”

“She leaves high school after second period and goes over to the college for the Running Start program. College professors don’t report attendance.”

“What were they doing downtown?”

“Something about the prom. Mel kept telling Cali she had a surprise for her. Cali ended up believing the surprise was that Mel was running away. Everyone was so dead sure she was a runaway that Cali believed it, too. What a mess.”

“Did anyone contact Olivia and James?”

“I called them right away, but while I was on the phone, the police arrived and they kind of freaked out and hung up.”

“I’d like to ask Cali some questions if you think she can handle it. The police are moving, but they don’t have all they need yet.”

“I’ll go see if she can wake up enough to talk and eat something. She didn’t even finish lunch.” Andi went upstairs and I stepped into the kitchen. It wasn’t like Andi to have left the food and dishes from the meal on the table, but there they were. I started cleaning up the mess we’d left and wrapped the remaining bread—already turning crusty—in a plastic bag. I heard Andi moving from place to place down the hall and then she burst back into the kitchen looking panicked. “She’s gone!”

***

“Jordan, we need help. It looks like Cali has gone to try to find Mel. Andi had her cell phone off so they could sleep this afternoon, but when she turned it back on there was a text from Cali that said, ‘Got a text. Going to help Mel.’ I don’t think Mel sent any text messages. Her parents cancelled her cell phone the day she went missing.”

“I’ll subpoena the phone records,” Jordan said, “but I can’t get into town to help you. I’ll put out an APB and an amber alert. As soon as I’ve got a search coordinator, I’ll forward the name and number to you. We’re getting ready to board Patterson’s yacht out in the Sound. I’m half a mile off-shore.”

“I’m going after her. I think I know where to start, at least. The correlation of the other missing kids over the past five years have all been going downtown sometime close to the last time they were seen. We’re starting at University Street Station.”

“There will be uniforms in the area. I’ll let them know to watch for you. Keep your phone live so we can reach you and let me know what you see. Don’t try to make a capture. Let the police do their job.”

“It’s not a job to me, Jordan. It’s Cali.”

I disconnected and grabbed Andi by the hand. She already had her jacket on and we went to her car to go downtown. While Andi drove, I tapped into the gaming community. This wasn’t the game I intended to play tonight, but it was much more important than tracking down a credit card thief. Still, the CCS team could be useful. I sent the message via my office email. Even though I wasn’t using a tapped keyboard, I was sure my email would be monitored. Just to make doubly sure, I cc’d everyone on my team.

“Eyes on Seattle. Find the Kidnapper. Starting Now! It’s not a game. Big reward!” I attached the video of the original kidnapping, a photo of Cali, and estimated time she went missing. She had an hour’s head start.

I desperately hoped we weren’t too late already.

***

Andi drove down Third as we scanned the area hoping we’d see Cali on a street corner. You can’t get in or out of some of the garages down here after 11:00, so we didn’t try to park. By the time we stopped at Madison, 40 players had registered and were receiving data files from me for tapping into the city’s many cameras. I just didn’t have time to waste on bastards who weren’t playing my game, so I heightened my online defenses. I was here to find Cali and I needed every single one of these dweebs to help me do it. I started keying instructions into the tablet calling for maps of the city and camera angles on the bus tunnel entrance.

My cell phone chimed a text message and I read “Amber Alert: Cali is missing. We need help searching downtown.”

“Did you just text me?” I asked.

“I sent a message to the Faculty Lounge list.”

“Good thinking. I’ve got online help, but we need feet on the street. We can use all the help we can get.” I heard her phone start buzzing with incoming messages as one by one our friends told her they were on the way. “No word from Cali yet?”

“No answer on her phone and to response to the text messages,” Andi said. Tears were running down her cheeks. She shook her head and turned the car onto Columbia and then raced up First to Pike and looped around on Second. My gamers started reporting in with images from cameras located in every conceivable place—garage entrances, bus stops, traffic cameras, banks. The number of feeds was overwhelming, and the fact that I was controlling four on-line computers in my home and office remotely didn’t help. The first images, of course, came from the CCS external camera recording from the past hour. It began running at 4X speed, streaming images of a mostly empty street. I had a thought and contacted a gamer I knew from past experience to be a good strategic thinker.

“I don’t know how, but I think the kidnapper operates from these coordinates,” I said in my message. I fed him a package of data that included the IP address of Philanthropia and the path I’d used to track him down. “He’s egotistical enough to think he could be online while we do an IRL search. Here are some known aliases. See if you can track him.” I got a grin in response and saw a team of players peel off into Philanthropia.

Then I got an alert that chilled me. In the images playing on my screen I could clearly see Cali standing outside the bus tunnel entrance. The timestamp showed 9:50 p.m. Three minutes later, a man emerged directly behind her and dragged her back toward the tunnel with his hand over her mouth. This time the image was clear.

I immediately forwarded the clip to Jordan and got confirmation a minute later that an update to the amber alert had been issued sealing off ferry and train traffic. The image had been forwarded to bus drivers, taxi drivers, and local media. “I need eyes in the tunnel at all stops starting at 9:50. Move outward from the tunnel in one block increments. I want every live camera in Seattle raided.”

A gamer message flashed on my screen. “Is that John Patterson?” I replied in the affirmative and received a skull and crossbones emoticon. The gamers were going to be pissed.

***

Hired

I cannot strike at wretched kerns, whose arms
Are hired to bear their staves:
—Macbeth V. vii

I sat in a food court a block away from the office drinking black coffee and setting up my plan of attack. Someone with access to the company security cameras had set me up by editing footage from security cameras to show me making a midnight raid on the manufacturing facility. That someone had made the mistake of capturing footage from my incident in front of the building and posting it on a video sharing site. It was as if I was being taunted. If I could triangulate on the two events and the missing ten seconds of network logs, I was pretty sure I would find my antagonist inside CCS. I set up my laptop with a 4G connection and logged onto the company network.

***

The path led me through a dusty attic in the CCS archives. The camera system was an early model that came out nearly 20 years ago. The company had made minor additions and modifications to the system over the years, improving their archiving system and transferring data to the cloud. Occasionally they replaced or added cameras but it was essentially the same system they started with. In fact, I discovered many of the company’s systems were dated. The network technology, managed by Don Abrams and Allen Yarborough, was state of the art. On the other hand, accounting systems that were set up when the company was founded were essentially unchanged, the biggest advances being updates to current software versions.

My usual method is to scan through huge amounts of data very quickly, looking for anomalies and inconsistencies as much in the form of the data as in the actual numbers and names. But as I strolled through this dusty archive with neatly labeled boxes stacked in rows that no one would ever touch, I was struck by a uniform feature rather than an anomaly. One name kept appearing on the records of every significant development and installation in the company for decades. An employee number that was mostly zeroes.

In a row of file boxes that had not been touched in years, I saw one box that had no dust on it. It slid smoothly out of the storage cabinet as though it had been used every day. Inside were automated transactions that hadn’t changed since the company was founded. But the account numbers changed on a regular basis.

Whenever a person gets a new credit card, the first thing they need to do is to activate it. The process works differently for nearly every company issuing a card. It can be as simple as flipping a switch that makes the account active and able to accept transactions. CCS was using an antiquated system of processing a micro transaction on the account. When the customer called the activation line, a randomly generated transaction of between ten and twenty cents was charged to the account, verified, and then reversed. The charge never appeared on a statement to the customer, so it was invisible to questioning eyes.

I verified that the accounts were being charged and saw a string of merchant accounts that accepted the transactions, immediately depositing the money at one of a dozen different banks. Over the years, the depositories had changed, many due to banks that merged or that went under during the economic collapse. But the company kept depositing funds to the merchant accounts.

The reversals, however, did not charge those merchant accounts. The funds were deducted from an expense line under the activation system that was so small it would never undergo scrutiny. That meant someone was collecting the money from the micro transactions—a few cents at a time.

After I placed a tracer on the files so I would be informed whenever someone touched them, I did some quick calculations. The company activated over 100,000 cards a month. At a fifteen cents per transaction, that came out to $15,000. Over 20 years, the yield would be nearly four million dollars. Someone with great patience had put together a nice little retirement fund. I had to admire the long-term planning involved. It wasn’t overly greedy. In fact, I was pretty sure the executives of the company took more in bonuses and stock than this each year.

Bonuses and stock that a lower level employee would never see.

***

“Jen, this is Dag.”

“Good morning. How are you feeling?”

“My head hurts, but it doesn’t look like there’ll be any long-term damage.”

“That’s good to hear. When can we expect to see you in the office.”

“Jen, how long have you been with the company?” As far as I was concerned I wasn’t planning to come into the office again, but she didn’t need to know that yet.

“Eighteen months. Why?”

“When did you put together the team?”

“That was my assignment when I was hired.”

“Always the same team members?”

“We’ve had a little change in the past year, but pretty stable—only the best and brightest.”

“What is the most significant project the team had executed before I came on board?” There was silence at the other end. For a minute, I thought Jen had just disconnected instead of answering me, but I waited.

“You know, don’t you, Dag?” There was another pause as she tried to outwait me. I’d figured it out, but I needed to hear it. So far I was just making assumptions. I heard a door close and then Jen spoke lowly and rapidly. “The team was put together to assess and expand the company’s ability to respond to a cyber attack. It was to focus on rapidly identifying and neutralizing a new threat. You were invited onto the team to provide a target. You’d be let loose inside the firewall and the team would track and neutralize any attempt you made to access data. Whatever Arnie hired you to do undercover was just a ploy to get you to search through every possible sensitive point in the system. You were to be the threat and we were to stop your investigation. It turned out you were slipperier than we anticipated and the teams efficiency has risen 30% since you arrived. I’m sorry, Dag. It wasn’t personal. No one knew who you were. It was just a lucky draw that Arnie hired you instead of some other hacker.”

That hurt. He hadn’t even chosen me because I was the best hacker to test his team. It had been random. Just someone he hired and gave the keys to the kingdom to in order to test his response team’s power and flexibility. Only it had backfired. Someone on the inside really was robbing the company.

“You’ve been had, Jen,” I said. “Tell the team you don’t think I’m out of the game yet. In fact, I’m sending you a file that suggests that I’m still in the system even though I’m not in the office. They should stay alert for what I do next.” I sent her the login information for six smartcards that I’d received from my bug on the manufacturing facility. That would expand their target awareness and give them more to look out for, even though I had no intention of using any of them again.

There is a longstanding principle regarding the control of mass behavior, explored in social studies, politics, and philosophy. The best way to hide a real internal threat is to focus on or create an imaginary external threat. Hitler managed it brilliantly. Bush managed it somewhat less successfully, but well enough to send the country to war for more than a decade. Countless other politicians and business leaders had managed it. Launch the rumor of a takeover bid from a rival company and watch the deflated stock value rise long enough to cover a cash shortfall that can’t be explained. Fabricate an external threat to rally the troupes around and you will get them to ignore a very real internal danger. It’s what Lars was teaching us in our Navy intelligence drill. You could even avoid—or start—a revolution. CCS was focusing its top talent in the company on stopping an imaginary external threat as a ruse to keep them from discovering a very real problem inside. I needed just a few more bits of data to tie it all together, and I began writing a routine that would help me tag and identify the controller. I would need to lure the team back into an engagement, but I already knew who the target was.

***

I packed up my computer and headed back to Capitol Hill just before noon. I’d transferred my virus into the system where it would lie dormant until one of several key phrases was appeared in the network. I’d do it tonight and tomorrow this little game would be over.

I arrived at Andi’s house right at noon and was greeted like the long-lost. I could smell a delicious aroma as I went into the house.

“What is that wonderful smell?” I said.

“Homemade bread,” Andi responded. She placed a long sensuous kiss on my lips, then whispered in my ear. “Before we go in, please take this.” She handed me a thick brown envelope. “It’s all the material I’m going to give to Cali. I’d like you to look it over and help me make sure it… Well, that it won’t hurt her. Now that I’ve decided to tell her, I’m nervous. I don’t want her to think any of this was her fault.” I took the envelope and slid it into my backpack. I kissed her again.

“I’m so in love with you, Andi. I’ll look at the stuff, but when it comes down to it, it’s because Cali loves you and you love her that it will all work out. Don’t worry darling.”

We walked into the kitchen in time to see Cali stuff a piece of bread that was mostly butter into her mouth.

“Mmmgh!” she choked out as she drank a huge glass of milk. “It’s so good!”

“Don’t eat it all before the soup is on the table,” Andi laughed.

“You guys were out there snogging so long that I couldn’t help myself,” Cali teased, licking her fingers.

Andi handed me a slice of the still-warm bread and I smeared it with butter. I took a big bite.

“Oh, this is good! Why do we need soup?”

“You’ll like this, I promise.” We sat at the kitchen table and Andi put a big bowl of incredible chicken soup on the table in front of each of us. I took a taste of the soup and realized this was not the kind of soup that comes from a can. I also realized how long it had been since I last ate. “Wow! The soup is great. I haven’t had homemade food this good in as long as I can remember.”

“Oh, it’s just leftovers.”

“Leftovers? You eat like this all the time?”

“No. I cooked a big batch of soup and fresh bread a few nights ago when I thought I was going to have company. When he didn’t show, I just put the soup in the refrigerator.” She looked at me and smiled sweetly. It dawned on me what she was saying. This was the meal I missed while I was locked in the manufacturing room. I hung my head sheepishly.

“Mea culpa,” I moaned.

“Going out for a week and he stands her up the first opportunity he has,” Cali smirked.

“It was unavoidable,” I tried to explain.

“Yeah, you were all tied up. How are you going to make it up?” I thought for a minute then came up with an idea.

“How about some entertainment?” I asked, grabbing my backpack.

“You sing, dance, or act?” Cali asked.

“No. You’re the triple threat. I’m just superman,” I laughed. “This is all over the Internet. You’ve got to see it, but don’t tell anyone you know who it is. Secret identity and all that.” I opened my laptop and loaded the video clip I’d saved. Then I turned it toward Andi and Cali. “Just watch this.” The video played.

“That’s unbelievable,” Andi said. “Play it again. It goes so fast!” I ran the clip again. “Again,” Andi said. I glanced up as the video played my 30 seconds of glory for a third time. Cali was staring, open-mouthed at the screen and was scooting her chair back away from the table. Tears were springing to her eyes. She started gasping and I thought at first she was choking on something. I backed my chair away from the table.

“Cali!” Her chair toppled back behind her as her hands came to her face and a long mournful wail escaped from her lips. Andi turned to her daughter and reached for her but I caught her as she fainted away at the table. Andi grabbed a glass of water as I carried the child to Andi’s bedroom and laid her on the bed. In a moment, Cali had her eyes open and was spluttering on the water. Her eyes were still filled with tears and she was hyperventilating.

“I’m sorry, Mommy! I’m so sorry! Oh my God! I’m so sorry. What have I done? I didn’t mean to.” Andi wrapped her arms around her daughter and rocked her back and forth as she sobbed and repeated over and over again how sorry she was. This couldn’t have been about knocking the chair over. Cali was sweating and her hair was hanging in clumps, stuck to her face by the sweat and tears. Heart-rending sobs broke from her lungs.

“It’s okay, Cali,” Andi soothed. “It’s okay Sweety. Tell Mommy what it’s all about.” I stood next to the bed with my hand resting lightly on Andi’s shoulder, unable to understand anything that was going on. Was life with a teenaged daughter always like this?

“Mel! I’m sorry! Mel! Mel!” Cali wailed.

“What is it, Cali?” Andi asked in exasperation.

Cali started to thrash around on the bed and we soon realized she was trying to get up. She couldn’t express herself verbally through the continuing sobs. In seconds she had led us back to the kitchen table and started the video playing again. She pointed at the video but instead of the action that had captivated me when I’d first seen the movie and that Andi had asked to have replayed repeatedly, Cali was pointing to action happening in the background, nearly half a block away from the accident. It went by too quickly for me to see the first time and I replayed it at a slower speed while Cali continued to point and moaned “Mel!”

Andi and I saw what she was pointing at simultaneously and both of us gasped. There, half a block from where I was being a superhero, Cali and Mel were walking up the street. Like everyone else, when the action happened in the foreground, Cali and Mel started to run forward, but just before the clip ended, we could see Mel peel off away into the entrance to the bus tunnel. She was not alone.

A man had wrapped an arm around Mel’s shoulders and was guiding her away.

“He took her!” Cali screamed.

***

While Andi calmed and comforted Cali, I went back to the computer. I’d already forwarded the link to the police as part of the bus accident investigation, but then I’d broken into security at CCS and downloaded the full length of the video including several minutes before and after the thirty seconds that were posted. I opened the file and began examining it frame-by-frame. When I looked at the full video earlier, I was focused entirely on the foreground, following my own progress up the street. I’d seen the man step out from behind a pillar directly behind his victim and just when the couple turned their heads away from each other, push the young woman into the street. I was sure the police would be able to subpoena the full clip and have legal evidence to find and convict the man. But I hadn’t paid attention to what was happening in the background.

I saw Cali and Mel emerge from a shop up the street. The camera’s focal length is not the greatest for items in the distance, but after Cali had identified herself and Mel, I could pick them out on the grainy film. The timing was incredible. Just as the man in the foreground stepped out from behind a pillar, a man also stepped out of a doorway behind Cali and Mel. While the video was silent, I could tell exactly when the bus breaks squealed. The attention of everyone on the street shifted to the accident. People started to run toward the bus, including Cali and Mel. But Mel only moved one step when the man behind her swung his hand across her mouth, moved her into the bus tunnel entrance and disappeared.

Before the scene had played out, I was on the phone to Jordan.

“You’re keeping me busy, Dag. What is it?” he answered the phone.

“We’ve got a kidnapping that was reported as a runaway and I have strong evidence that it involves Patterson.” I sent the full video to Jordan as we talked. He had another phone at his ear calling in the Seattle kidnapping task force. They would have video experts on it in no time to enhance the images. There was no question in my mind. The man behind Mel had clapped his hand over her mouth and maneuvered her out of the street while the accident was being staged. It was a coordinated effort. But what caught my attention, now as I was focused on the background, was where Mel’s kidnapper had emerged.

All along Third there are a mix of old and new structures. Many of the old ones have businesses at street level—a deli, a brokerage, a travel agent—and offices above. The door from which the kidnapper emerged was the building that housed Patterson Foundation.

Clamorous Harbingers

Make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath,
Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.
—Macbeth V.vi

About 11:30, Andi slipped out of bed and started feeling around for her clothes. I turned on a bedside light and just watched her beautiful body as she gathered her things together.

“Do you have to leave?”

“Curfew,” she said. “What’s fair for the daughter is fair for the…”

“The mom,” I finished. “In every sense of the word except biological you are her mother and will always be.”

“Yes. But I’ll have to tell her now. Soon.” I slid out of bed and stood with her in the tiny pool of light. I helped her on with her clothes. It was a lot more difficult than helping her off with them. I finally gave up as we laughed over tangled underwear and then began pulling my own clothes on. “You don’t need to get up.”

“What would your daughter think if your boyfriend didn’t even walk you home after a hot date? Besides, that gives me five more minutes with you.” We left my apartment and went down the back stairs across the alley from her front door. She unlocked her door and turned to kiss me goodnight when the hall lights came on.

“Well, you’re finally home,” Cali said from inside. She came down the hall wearing Andi’s plush robe and fuzzy slippers with her hair in curlers. “I guess I can go to bed now that I know you’re safe.” It took us a moment and then all three of us broke up.

“You don’t really wait up for her like that, do you?” I asked Andi.

“Not like that! What would her date think if he saw her mother looking like that?”

“Well, maybe I overdid it with the curlers,” Cali laughed. “Anyway, I’m going to bed now so you two can kiss goodnight. Just don’t stand out there on the porch where all the neighbors can see you.”

“’Night Cali.”

“’Night. Love you Mom. Love you Dag.” She kissed each of us on the cheek and went back down the hall. I stepped in far enough that I wasn’t on the porch, but we kept the door open.

“See? That was much more effective than if you had come home alone. She’d have been so disappointed.”

“I think she likes you.”

“I’m glad. I intend to be around for a long time.”

“I love you, Dag.” We kissed.

“You are my heart’s desire, Andi.” I looked at her for a long moment and then retraced my steps back to my apartment.

***

Five hours before I was so exhausted I couldn’t keep my eyes open. After an evening spent in the arms of my lover, I was so energized I could scarcely sit. I had work to do. My little girl’s friend was missing. My girlfriend’s little girl. I corrected myself, then proceeded to ignore my internal correction. I needed to find Mel.

There were 4,173 correlations that my search and compare algorithms had revealed. That sounded like a lot, but when compared to the 15 million results a standard Google search yields, it seemed manageable. I plunged into the life of a rebellious teen and was sucked into the slimy dregs of America.

It was a neighborhood—if you could call it that—in which bright neon lit up a thousand doorways with promises that paled against the reality inside. Crossing any threshold could result in loss of money, reputation, or civil liberty. I could defend myself against the threats of these commercial venues. It wasn’t that I could walk with impunity anywhere I chose, but I was well-protected. It took more than a casual touch cripple me.

More dangerous were the darkened alleys between various strip shows and sex shops. Drugs, guns, sex in every variety were offered by people with no front-door presence. Unwilling organ donors wailed in the distance as their bloody body parts were offered to the highest bidder. And as ineffectual as policing the district was, any alley could hide a cop where drunk patrons were arrested for the very suggestion of a solicitation for in illegal act.

I had new leads to follow up and now that I was in Neverland, I track them down. I started by entering a reverse phone booth and feeding the list of numbers into the device. In minutes it started feeding back a list of names, addresses, marital status, spouses, children, and even a history of where each man had lived for the past thirty years. There were a few people smart enough to use an Internet phone service that yielded less ready information, but the vast majority had solicited favors from a fifteen-to-seventeen year old girl using their personal cell phones. The world was filled with the illusion of privacy.

I focused on the numbers in the same area code and when I had addresses, I narrowed my search to those who were within the residential and business community of downtown Seattle. I walked through their neighborhoods tacking up posters where their friends and neighbors could see them with a picture of Mel and the message “This 17-year-old girl is missing. Reward for information.” I used my own Internet phone number, a message collection service that I book for a month at a time. I included an email address routed through one of the adult services websites. I didn’t expect any of the men on my list to respond. As soon as they realized the woman they’d solicited was a minor, they’d flee the sites where they met her. But it was always possible that someone else in their more respectable neighborhood might have spotted her, especially if she’d been seen with one of their neighbors.

I put up posters around her school community and the various sports groups she participated with. It was always possible that her disappearance had nothing to do with her activities on the adult forums and I didn’t want to leave anything to chance. I even posted at her church. Somehow, I didn’t think her parents were the type who would alert their critical-thinking religious community about their wayward daughter. They’d be surprised, but there really wasn’t anything they could do about it.

And finally, I contacted her cellular system. Her parents had disconnected her cell phone. I wanted to know the instant it was reconnected or reassigned. That took some tricky hacking as the big cell systems don’t freely give out that information. I had to settle for attaching a flag to her phone number so that it would notify me if a call was made in or out.

In the old days, detectives did this footwork literally on foot. By sunrise, I’d covered more virtual territory than Sam Spade could have imagined existed. I’d posted notices on the message boards of every “friend” Mel had on the Internet as far as I could tell. There was no question in my mind that she could run away and hide if she truly wanted to, but if she had been taken, she would become a hot property pretty quickly.

My email started lighting up at about seven o’clock with messages. Most were innocuous ping-backs, testing my spam filters. Nothing related directly to Mel’s disappearance. I started seeing one message appear from several directions at once. At first I thought it was one of those phishing schemes that start off “I couldn’t believe it was you in this video. ROFLMAO.” Usually those were followed by a link to a porn video that demanded an account password in order to view the footage. But this link kept appearing with a caption that began trending on some of the popular sites. “Unsung superhero rescues woman. You won’t believe this guy!” The link led to a legitimate video sharing site and when I finally decided to follow it, I was stunned.

The video clip of less than 30 seconds, showed an oncoming bus, a woman being pushed into the street, and a guy jumping out to catch her and swing her to safety before the bus mirror hit him in the head. It showed me on Thursday morning.

***

I was still in my jeans and sweater with a Gore-Tex jacket and a baseball cap protecting my eyes from the morning rain as I swung off the bus at Third and Union. I’d watched the video a dozen times—maybe twenty. I still couldn’t figure out how I’d moved the way I did or what had alerted me to the fact that there was a danger just behind me. Granted the video compression had certainly dropped some frames from real time, but even slowing it down, most of the action was blurred.

But one thing was clear: There was a fourth person involved in the incident.

I hadn’t been following the case closely. I knew that if it came to trial, I’d be called as a witness. I would be unable to provide any details because the action of pushing her off the sidewalk occurred behind me. She had accused her boyfriend and he had been arrested and was out on bail with a restraining order against being within fifty feet of her. The video showed that it clearly wasn’t the boyfriend who pushed her, but it didn’t show a clear image of the person who had.

I forwarded the link to the police detective in charge of the case, pointing out that the video cleared both the boyfriend and me. It was clear that the squabbling couple had turned their heads away from each other—her toward the street and he toward the sidewalk—when a person directly behind the couple pushed her. The boyfriend was too far away and facing away from his girlfriend to have been the one doing the pushing. He turned as I moved and the culprit had slid past on the right. The video ended before the perp had come fully into view, though. I needed to find the rest of that footage and in order to do that, I needed to know where the camera was that took it so I could request the rest of the sequence.

I was only half a block from the CCS office when I stopped to measure out where the accident had happened. As best I could tell, I was in the right place. I waited there, just listening and trying to put myself back in that space. I turned to see an approaching bus.

Damn! They move like hell down that street until they screech to a stop at the shelter in front of the office. It’s a wonder I wasn’t killed! I looked at the tail of the bus stopped to pick up passengers. That gave me a reference point. I pulled out my tablet and replayed the video, trying to reverse the perspective and look up at where the camera was. Yes. The perspective was from several feet above the sidewalk which confirmed my suspicion that it was not caught on a cell phone by someone at street level.

A few years ago when I was complaining to my cell phone carrier that I kept losing calls, I started observing where I had good service and where I didn’t. A little research showed me what a cellular tower looked like. I started looking around me when I had good service and gradually became aware of cell towers within my line of sight. They weren’t always towers. They were stuck to the sides of buildings downtown, on rooftops in the suburbs. Huge towers were located every few miles along the freeway. I suddenly started seeing cell towers everywhere. And when my service started to improve, I could almost always identify a new tower within sight.

The same was true now. As I looked up I spotted a black glass globe hanging from what would otherwise look like a street light. I recognized it for no other reason than the ceiling of a casino is peppered with the things. Each one contains a camera—some static and focused on a single table or game, some panning from side to side like the cameras inside CCS. This black globe hung off the wall of the CCS office building. As I looked down the block, I saw four more exterior cameras. I turned around in place. Jutting up off the nearest traffic signal was a white bar with a camera on top. In front of the bank, there was another series of cameras. At the entrance to a parking garage across the street, a camera was pointed at incoming autos. Even under the awnings of Benaroya Hall, there were security cameras. A camera across the street and fairly high on the building looked like it was pointed at the bus stop. A matching camera was positioned opposite.

I wasn’t sure there was anyplace I could walk downtown and not be caught on a security camera.

The one I wanted access to, though, was one I could actually get to. It was part of the CCS security system.

***

My phone buzzed as I was walking up the street holding my tablet in front of me recording the locations of the various cameras I saw on the built-in video recorder. The unique chime I set up told me it was Andi.

“Hello darling.”

“Ooo. I like hearing that.”

“I like saying it. Did you sleep well?”

“I’ve slept alone all my life. Why does it suddenly seem so lonely in my bed?”

“Mmmm. I’d love to take up residence in part of it.”

“You’d want to be in the same part as me, though.”

“That’s true enough.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m downtown at the office. I’ve got something really remarkable to show you.”

“Really? Sounds like a big break-through. Why don’t you come for lunch?”

“Lunch? Aren’t you teaching?”

“I completely forgot that today the college is closed for a symposium that’s occupying every corner of the campus. I have the day off, and Cali will be off after 10 since she only goes to high school for the first two periods and then goes to college on the Running Start program. Come on. How does lunch with your two favorite girls sound?”

“Absolutely wonderful! I can be there by 11:30. Is that okay?”

“Make it noon. Cali needs some supplies for a project she’s working on. We’re going out as soon as she gets home.”

“Great. I’ll see you at noon.”

“Oh Dag…”

“What is it Andi?”

“I love you.”

“You’ve suddenly become the light of my life.”

The Queen

The Queen.
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
—Macbeth V.v

By a quarter till five I was wrung out. My software chimed and I looked to see that it had over 4,000 correlations. I groaned. I couldn’t face it now. I saved the results, shut down the computer, and lay down in my bed. I was asleep instantly.

And just as quickly awakened.

I glanced at my phone and saw that it was seven. It hadn’t felt like I’d been asleep for a minute. Then I realized there was a light knocking on my door. I groaned, but got up and went to answer it.

“I uh… well… um… I missed you,” Andi said as soon as I opened the door. Oh yes! I wrapped her in my arms and planted a kiss on her that told her how much I’d missed her as well. Noting that we were still in the doorway, I pulled her into the apartment with my lips still locked to hers. When the door shut behind us and she heard it click she pulled away from me and looked into my eyes, then, as if just becoming aware of her surroundings, she stared around her. “It’s black!”

Andi had never seen the inside of my apartment. Well, very few people had. Even when I had girlfriends, I never brought them here. I didn’t mind sharing it with Andi, though. My apartment is always clean. That’s not a problem. I only have 350 square feet and if I didn’t keep up with cleaning, before long I wouldn’t be able to move. It’s not like I have a lot of stuff to clutter the place up. I just never started buying stuff after I moved in here. I tried to imagine what it looked like through Andi’s eyes.

“They let you do this? The apartment management, I mean?”

“I had to pay an extra month’s damage deposit and promise to restore it to pristine white before I leave,” I said. “Eric helped me choose the materials.”

She moved around the little room, touching my desk, my bed, my chair. Each time she reached out her hand, I felt like she was exploring another part of my body. It wasn’t like everything was black. The kitchen, closet, and bathroom were still white. But I had four sets of heavy black drapes hung over the closet door, the kitchen archway, and both windows. With the bathroom door closed, you couldn’t see the white room. A shower curtain that Eric picked out for me had demure nudes in black against the white curtain. The drapes across the kitchen and closet doorways kept any light leaks from those rooms and the drapes over the two windows were floor to ceiling, so no ambient light leaked in from the street lights below.

“Do you mind that I came over?”

“Not at all. I was napping, but I’m suddenly wide awake. I kind of like showing you my room.”

“Would you like to see me naked in it?” she asked. I almost swallowed my tongue, but it was hers that was suddenly in my mouth. Our love-making was more relaxed than it had been the night before. We laughed more as we explored each other’s bodies. She traced a scar on my back I got when I’d fallen into a dumpster as a kid. I simply marveled at her pristine, beautiful body as I took each piece of clothing off of it. We were joyful and playful in our love-making and I wanted to please her in every way possible.

Nearly two hours later, we hugged each other in my bed, our sweaty bodies practically glued to each other. I was spooned behind her, still teasingly nibbling on her ear and whispering to her about how happy I was.

“Is it completely dark when you turn out the lights?” she asked. I’d left two lamps on low while we made love—each of us wanting to see the other.

“It can be.”

“Show me.” I flicked off the power strip under my desk and my computer equipment, stereo, and desk lamp all went out. I made sure the bathroom door was closed and all the drapes were sealed and then flicked out the lamp over the painting on my wall. I slipped back into the bed from the end and crawled up her body until we were spooned together once again. Then I pulled a black sheet up over us. Not only did the room get dark, but with all my electronics turned off, it was silent as well.

Even after our eyes had time to adjust to the darkness, we really couldn’t see anything. I could hear our breathing, synchronizing together so that we inhaled and exhaled at the same time.

“I can hear your heart,” she said softly. “It’s like being in a womb.”

“I was in a womb not long ago,” I laughed softly.

“Mmmm. Now we’re both tucked inside and we can’t see a thing. We can only feel each other’s presence and hear each other’s heartbeat for company.”

“Yes, but I smell the fresh citrus scent of your hair,” I whispered. “I feel your soft silky skin beneath my fingers.”

“I feel you poking me in the butt,” she giggled. She rolled in my embrace and after bumping foreheads and smashing our noses together, we managed to find each other’s mouth. I would never tire of kissing her. It erased everything else from my mind. She snuggled close to my chest and spoke so softly that even in the darkened room I almost missed what she said.

“Do you have any secrets, Dag?”

“I have things I don’t talk about. I deal with confidential information that I don’t share with anyone.”

“No. I mean things about you that you can’t tell anyone. Not someone else’s secret you won’t divulge.”

“Maybe. I haven’t always been as upstanding as I like to believe I should be. Sometimes, I do things that I think better of after the fact, but have no way to correct. I sometimes tell clients what I think they should hear rather than what they ask. I struggle with the ethics of confidential information, especially since I have an almost insatiable desire to find out everything about everything. I stick my nose into other people’s business and then regret knowing what I do. Sometimes maybe I stretch the boundaries of what is legal in finding out information.” We were quiet for a few minutes, almost dozing as we listened to the silence around us—relishing in the fact that our only sensory input was from one another. “Andi,” I whispered, “I will never keep a secret from you.”

Her face was buried against my chest and I could feel the area heating up. I was aware of the moisture between us and I wiped her tears away in the darkness.

“I have a secret,” she said. “A secret I’ve never told anyone.” I kept very still. This was not the time to ask questions. It was only a time to love unconditionally. “You know, don’t you? I knew that you would know one day. When I decided to let myself fall in love with you, I decided I would tell you, and I can’t go any longer without.” She was whispering to me as I stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head. I had figured out she wasn’t Andi Marx, but I didn’t care.

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“Yes, I do. I planned to tell Cali when she turns 18, but I know she suspects something and I can’t keep it from her.” I wasn’t prepared for what came next. Nothing could possibly have prepared me.

“Cali isn’t my daughter. She’s my sister.”

***

Once Andi started telling the story, a floodgate opened and more than seventeen years of living a secret life spilled forth.

“Our mother was only stupid in her choice of men. My father was a mean man who only showed up once every few months and for never more than a week or two at a time. From the time I can clearly remember, Mom would keep me hidden when he was there. I had a special room I went to with lots of books. She home schooled me, not because of any religious ideas, but because she didn’t trust anyone. I think she felt the authorities would try to take me away from her if they knew what a violent person my father was.

“When I was fifteen, nearly sixteen, Mom got pregnant again. Only it wasn’t my father’s child. He threw a fit the next time he came home, beat her up, and then swore he’d kill us all the next time he came home.

“I’ll never understand why she didn’t just take us and leave. She certainly knew how to do it. She knew where the shelters were and even how to change her identity. But instead, she took me away and we hid until the baby was born. She filled my head with how I knew more than any other girl my age, so I could be six years older and have my college diploma right now. She said I’d have to change my name, but one day she would come for Cali and me and we’d be safe again. She took Cali and me to a shelter for abused women and told them that my husband was dead, I’d just given birth, and I wasn’t safe from my father. She gave me a packet of documents that included birth certificates for Anne Doreen Marx and California Celeste Marx, a marriage certificate to Charles Marx, his death certificate, and an insurance policy. It also included my college diploma. I made up the whole story about Charles Marx and how he died after my college graduation. I read a story about it somewhere and just adopted it as my own. I don’t know where Mom got the name California, but Celeste was her name. I stayed in the shelter until I could find a job and then they helped me get day care for Cali while I worked and picked up more education credits to fill in the blanks of a college education that I’d never had.

“It was only a couple of months after I went to the shelter that my father killed Mom and then shot himself. Since they’d moved again recently, no one knew about me or Cali. I stayed away. It was almost a year later that I remembered the insurance policy in my packet of papers and called the agency. They said the funds were payable to a trust and they would be happy to have it signed over to me. It was for half a million dollars.

“Once the paperwork was finished, Cali and I moved to Washington. You see, I never made it out of Michigan before. I’ve never even been to Florida where my diploma says I graduated. I did get my teaching certificate once I got here and I was surprised at how easy it was for me get a job teaching high school kids who were almost the same age I was. While my students started college, I got my Master’s in Literature and Education and then got a big break when I got a job at the Community College and could lighten my schedule. With careful investing I was able to buy the duplex and pay most of the mortgage out of the rent. Cali and I have had a comfortable life for a single parent except…”

It seemed like her story had run its course and I was so dumbfound that I couldn’t speak. I just held my precious girl in my arms and smothered her with kisses and love. Eventually she rubbed her cheek against mine.

“Except I’d never let myself get close to a man because I was so afraid he’d find out and they would take Cali away from me. Until you.”

“I love you, Andi. I will never betray your secret. It’s really nobody’s business. You are the only mother Cali has ever known and she loves you.”

“I knew you would find out. It’s who you are. But I know I can trust you. I’ve been alone so long.” She was sobbing against my chest. Tears were flowing freely from my own eyes. My poor, precious girl. We rocked each other in our arms and maybe we even fell asleep for a bit when the weeping subsided. I would never let her go.

“What’s your real name, Andi?” I asked softly, not really sure if she was awake.

“Rachel Evans. And don’t worry. I did the math. I pass the half plus seven test.”

We laughed. Our laughter turned to more kissing and the kissing to more loving. There in the dark womb of my room we couldn’t tell where one left off and the other began. We shared one body and we came as one person.

The Time Approaches

The time approaches
That will with due decision make us know
What we shall say we have and what we owe.
—Macbeth V.iv

Two mountain ranges, back to back across the continent with a vast high desert between—a desolate wasteland or a fertile playground? When I awoke on Sunday morning facing a wall, I glanced over my shoulder and on the other side of the bed saw Andi, still asleep with her back toward me. I felt a pang of… regret? No. Guilt. I’d betrayed our friendship. I’d turned my best friend into my lover. My love. And now we each hugged opposite edges of the same bed with a cold chasm between. I could feel a sob welling up in my throat.

Then she turned toward me, her eyes opening a slit and then her smile causing them to crinkle up as she looked fully at me and I rolled toward the center of her bed. We met in the middle with arms wrapping around each other and a kiss that welcomed more than bodies together.

“Hello lover,” she whispered.

“Good morning, my love,” I answered softly.

“I’m not used to sleeping with someone else in my bed. Cali and I haven’t done it for so long, I’d forgotten how.”

“Shhh,” I said. “I think it’s something we’ll learn. I felt so alone when I woke up and wasn’t touching you.”

“Oh, Darling. Please let us never be alone like that again.”

Romance stories would have us immediately falling together in passionate sex—again—but they never seem to take into account basic needs of the body when it wakes up in the morning. I waited my turn and then used the bathroom after her, seeing the various cleansing products, hair products, and feminine products for the first time with my eyes fully open. I hadn’t seen a sight like that in a long time. When I returned, I was relieved to see that Andi hadn’t dressed and left the room. She sat in bed with a sheet pulled up to her chin, but when she saw me, she let it fall away from her. She took my breath away and the blood drained from the upper half of my body. Half faint, I stumbled back to the bed where she welcomed me into her arms and her body.

***

As we lay together in the afterglow we whispered softly.

“I could get used to this, you know?”

“To sex in the morning?”

“That. And to seeing your face when I wake up. To smelling your scent on my pillow. To seeing you come out of the bathroom. To you.”

“I’d like to get used to that. Andi, you know I’ve been married. You know I’ve had a live-in girlfriend. You know I’ve had little trysts. So tell me—why have I never felt this way before? Why have I never woken up in the morning thinking this is where I belong for the rest of my life? Darling, why has it taken me so long to find you?”

“I love you.”

“Oh and I do love you.”

There was a crash in the kitchen and a cupboard door slammed closed. Andi sat straight up in bed and my heart skipped several beats.

“Oh shit! Cali’s home,” Andi whispered. Before I could respond she pushed a finger against my lips and whispered “Stay!” She jumped out of bed, grabbed the plush robe and fuzzy slippers I saw her in only a few nights ago, and left the room. I didn’t try to listen in, but it was a small house and I couldn’t help but hear the conversation as I got up and quietly pulled on my clothes.

“Honey! I didn’t expect you home so early. Did you have a nice sleep-over?” Andi asked. I could imagine her going over to hug her daughter.

“Where did you stash our computer geek? Or did you push him out a window when you heard me?”

“Cali! What do you mean?”

“Mom, it’s okay. I know Dag was here all night.”

“And how would you know that, miss know-it-all?”

“All my life there’s never been a time when you didn’t hear me come in at night and say hi,” she answered. “Not in all my life have you not been up waiting when I came home.”

“Cali, I thought you spent the night at Alex’s house.”

“I couldn’t, Mom. It was really super-nice of Alex. I mean, they really wanted me to come, but I just couldn’t do it. I mean… I’m just not ready. After the strike party we all went to Denny’s and I asked her to drop me off before they went home.”

“But that would have been at…”

“About 1:00.”

“Oh dear.”

“Don’t worry, Mom. You were quiet. I went right to sleep.” I’d finished dressing and was debating whether to try to sneak past or just boldly go out and face the music with Andi. I could tell that I needed a shave.

“Honey… Please, Cali. Understand this. No matter what my relationship is with Dag, you are my daughter and I love you. First. Foremost. And Forever.”

“I know, Mom. I was going to make coffee for you, but I dropped the can.”

“We could all go to the Analog if it isn’t too early.” I decided that I could safely walk in now, but I stopped in the doorway as I saw them both on the floor sweeping up spilled coffee grounds.

“Mom, this is real isn’t it? I mean you aren’t just trying to prove something, are you?”

“Prove something? Like what?”

“Like, oh, that you aren’t gay.” I almost choked on my own tongue. I remembered my conversation in the car with Cali a week ago.

“What??!!”

“Um, never mind.” Cali saw me in the doorway with a smirk on my face shaking my head. I didn’t expect her to rush on with the next thing she said. “It’s just that you’ve never had a boyfriend before, Mom.”

“Well, it’s a little early to call him a boyfriend.” Cali looked straight at me.

“It’s a little late to deny it.” Andi followed her gaze and jumped half out of her robe when she saw me.

“Agh! Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

“I didn’t sneak,” I laughed.

“I turned around and you were just there.”

“I walked in from the next room.” I avoided saying the word bedroom.

“You didn’t make any noise,” Andi said, now giggling as she came to me and gave me a morning hug in front of her daughter.

“You want me to wear a bell?” I asked. All three of us started laughing. I don’t understand how a hundred and ten pound girl or her almost-as-petite mother can make so much noise just walking on carpet. I’m sure there were times I could feel the floor shake in my apartment on the third floor next door.

I caught Cali up in our hug as well and suggested we go have coffee at The Analog since there didn’t seem to be any to brew here. Andi went to change and Cali reached up to kiss my cheek.

“Don’t you ever, ever hurt her,” Cali whispered in my ear fiercely. I kissed the top of her head and she slipped out of my arms and followed her mother to the bedroom. She didn’t really whisper when she joined her mother, so I couldn’t help but overhear. In fact, I think Cali was speaking loudly enough for me to hear on purpose.”

“Mom. I think I owe you this.”

“What is that for?”

“Well, he paid me back for the tickets.”

“I guess you made a little spending money in the deal then, didn’t you.” They giggled.

Two devious women! I didn’t stand a chance!

***

I sat in my room with the drapes open—something I rarely did. Sunlight filtered through the needles of the giant sequoia outside my window. We’d had coffee as if we were one big happy family, but when we walked back it was obvious that Andi and I were not going to spend a lazy Sunday in bed reading the comics and making love. Cali was still hurting over the disappearance of Mel and that meant that I still had work to do.

I opened the log-on screen for Mel’s erotic forum account and entered CaliMel in the password box. A welcome screen flashed on the screen with the announcement that she had 273 email messages. I read two and decided I didn’t want to read any others. It still wasn’t obvious she was supplying any of these perverts with the things they were requesting, but what they were sending her was sickening.

I downloaded all her email and private messages to a database and then started sorting the results. Most frequent contacts. Most frequent phrase used. Most recent outgoing messages. Any clues that I could pull together. I needed to know first if Mel went willingly or if she was coerced, and then I could worry about where she was.

By two o’clock, I’d pulled the drapes closed. It was the first of May and while April had gone out like a lamb, May was proving to be a tiger already as the wind picked up and the morning sunshine turned to a threat of rain. But more than that, even living on the third floor I had a sense that I didn’t want anyone able to look over my shoulder through the window. The crap on my computer was leaving me sick to my stomach and my bruised and stitched-up head was throbbing.

I’d found nothing that overtly suggested a rendezvous or enticement away from home, but there were dozens that suggested where they would be if she happened to find herself in the vicinity. There were also her own updates that suggested her locations. They called them “check-ins.” “MayBeLegal just checked in at Jaqui’s Lingerie Boutique.” “MayBeLegal just checked in at The Rack.” I had news for these two or three thousand guys who followed her. MayBeLegal wasn’t.

I was dealing with a huge volume of information. The simple fact that every name on her site was an alias meant that identifying the voyeurs would be a project for more computing power than I could muster. But I wanted to find out who could possibly be an influence on her. It struck me that I was looking for Mel because she was missing. She wasn’t the only girl ever to go missing in Seattle. Unfortunately, less than half the missing persons in the country are actually reported because they are either not missed or family and friends assume they have left of their own accord. Of those who are reported, there is no coordinated effort to recover them unless foul play is suspected or the person is considered to be “vulnerable,” as in developmentally handicapped or a child. The assumption of vulnerability, however, is that the older the child is, the less vulnerable, so a 17-year-old runaway is not as high a priority as a 12-year-old missing person. Digging through the Internet for records of missing persons over the past five years was a painfully slow process and the results were limited.

It was part of a long-shot plan, though. I wanted to cross-check the names of all these girls against the list of Mel’s followers. I had no expectation of getting results, but I was running out of options.

Her last check-in had been at a Gelato shop on Third Avenue Thursday morning. As far as I could tell, that was the last record of her whereabouts. I could find no more recent posts, messages, or updates on any of her accounts.

While my search and compare software ran, I decided I’d have to try the inevitable. I called Mel’s parents. I’d met Olivia and James at a play a couple of years ago. It was one of Cali’s first leading lady roles and the entire Faculty Lounge had come to support her. We’d done the same kind of field trips to hear Sara and Sandy in concert, to watch Jan and Donna’s son in his college football debut, for an art showing, and other times. My meeting with Mel’s parents was brief and I felt they were a little stand-offish, but even that did not prepare me for my conversation with Olivia.

“I heard about Melissa’s disappearance,” I said, “and I’m calling to offer my assistance if you need anything. Have there been any developments?”

“What kind of developments would there be,” Olivia snapped. “She left. She walked right out on everything we’ve done for her. She’s done irreparable damage.”

“You don’t think there was anything suspicious about her disappearance? She wasn’t having any difficulties at school was she?”

“The school, where we all send our children thinking they will be watched over, told us that her attendance record showed she was there for her first two classes and didn’t show up for third period. They saw no reason to let us know about that until the police interviewed them. The police say she ran away. Well, if that’s all she cares about her family, then so be it.”

“Olivia, this must be very hard on you. Has she made any calls or sent any messages on her cell phone since she left?”

“We disconnected her phone. If she thinks she can just walk out and that we’ll continue to pay her expenses, she has another think coming. We cancelled her credit cards and put a stop on her bank account. She’s still a minor and without access to our money she can’t get far. She’ll come back when she finds out she can’t make it on her own, and when she comes home she’ll be grounded until she’s thirty. We never should have given her so much freedom.”

I couldn’t help but think that maybe if they had given her a little freedom, she wouldn’t have felt such a pressing need to rebel or to get free. It certainly sounded like Olivia and James believed she’d run away and they weren’t about to offer any other suggestions. I made one last attempt at expressing my sympathy and then disconnected. I thought about the difference between Olivia and Andi and the differences between their daughters who had become best friends. It just didn’t add up. I could see Mel running away from home, but I couldn’t see her running away from Cali. Runaways often seek shelter with trusted friends. Only in cases where there is no friend or there has been a big fight do they just disappear.

Or when someone makes them disappear.

Sweet Oblivious Antidote

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
—Macbeth V.iii

Andi drove from the theater to her house in silence. I was afraid to break it. My arm resting on the seatback let me softly touch her shoulder as she drove. Once at a stoplight, she pulled my fingers to her lips and kissed them, then put my hand securely back on her shoulder. Much though I wanted to, I didn’t dare put my hand on her leg beside the console. I didn’t want to seem pushy. I hadn’t felt this nervous since high school.

She pulled the van into the spot behind her duplex and as soon as we were both out of the car she grabbed my hand tightly as she went to the back door and unlocked it. She didn’t bother to ask whether I wanted to come in.

As soon as the door shut behind us, Andi’s lips were pressed against mine and we both moaned as we found each other’s warm, receptive mouth. I held her… no, I clutched her tightly against me, willing her to simply know how much I loved her.

When Eric’s three-legged cats finally decided they liked me a few years ago—or at least that I was a fact in the building and wouldn’t suddenly disappear—they attached themselves to me at every opportunity. If I sat on the back steps to drink wine with Eric, or if a group of us gathered around a hibachi to grill steaks on the landing, they would twist around my ankles, rubbing and purring. If I failed to pet them in the right spot, they rubbed against me until they had satisfied themselves. Once, when I was juggling two bags of groceries that I’d carried down the hill from QFC, they slipped past me into my apartment and when I sat in my recliner they were suddenly both in my lap kneading my leg with their one front paw each and pushing every part of their bodies against me with a purr that shook the picture on my wall.

I swear that Andi was purring against my chest as she molded her body into mine.

Nor was I idle in petting her.

Whenever I took a breath to say something, she captured my mouth in another kiss. We were lost in each other. When Andi pushed me away firmly, I thought we were ready to return to cautious reality.

“Dag, Cali is spending the night at Alex’s house. Will you stay with me tonight? Please.”

“Andi…” It was what I wanted more than anything, and still I was so afraid that our relationship wasn’t ready. “Andi, are you sure? Once we do this we can’t go back. I love you desperately, but I don’t want to lose what we have.”

“Dag, my darling. We don’t have to sacrifice what we have to have what we want. You are a good man. I know you might break my heart one day, but I also know you would never be cruel or hurt me if you could avoid it. Now come with me.” She turned and headed toward her bedroom. I started to follow, then stopped abruptly.

“Andi, wait.” She turned and I saw a moment of doubt and worry on her face. “I’m not prepared. I didn’t bring anything…” Damn the age of safe sex!

“Take one from the cookie jar,” she said, laughing at me. Then she stepped back into the kitchen and looked me straight in the eye. “Grab a handful.”

***

Once we were in Andi’s bedroom, everything slowed down. It wasn’t that we didn’t both desperately want to consummate our love, but neither of us wanted to miss anything about the experience. I looked around and realized that in seven years of friendship I’d never seen Andi’s bedroom. Her bed was actually bigger than mine, no matter that I was nine inches taller. There simply wasn’t room in my apartment for a big bed and so I slept diagonally on a standard double.

The décor in Andi’s room was feminine, but not girly. She had matching pastel sheets, duvet cover, dust ruffle, and pillows complemented by the simple dressing chair upholstery and the drapes. There was nothing ornate, but a simple throw-rug in a darker hue was in front of the bed, and a couple of very nice pieces of artwork that on closer examination proved to be quite erotic hung on the wall. The rest of the room was decorated in pictures of Cali at all stages of her life. There was Cali in school pictures and Cali in plays. I was a little nervous about undressing in front of so many pictures of the girl.

Andi took that decision away from me. We gently helped each other out of each item of clothing, showering kisses on each other as we removed each piece. We let our hands touch each other and our lips taste each other. Both of us wanted to remember this moment for the rest of our lives and neither of us wanted it to be a blur of frantic passion.

But the passion was there. As we settled our naked bodies between the sheets, we kissed and even laughed at each other’s reactions. She softly kissed my head near my wound and asked if it was okay. We surprised each other with impromptu discoveries of erogenous zones that neither of us knew we had. When I dragged a finger lightly from the hollow beneath her collar bone across her breast and down to the valley of her navel, Andi shuddered in my arms. Then she giggled like a teenager and quietly said, “Do you want to… now?” I smiled at her wickedly.

“No. I was thinking we’d just tease each other tonight.” Her eyes got big and then a fit of giggles took us both over. Her hand caressed my ribcage and I could feel an electric tingle all up and down my spine. I pulled her to me and kissed her eyelids. “Oh Andi, I love you so much.”

“Then make love to me, Dag.”

We slid together and with a minimal amount of fumbling I began to enter her as I looked into her eyes. Not for the first time, I felt I could just lose myself in her eyes. I pressed my cheek against hers and sank sank slowly into her. She suddenly caught her breath, her whole body shaking. I felt moisture against my cheek and looked again at her face. Tears streamed from her eyes, clenched shut. I panicked slightly. I don’t know what possessed me.

“Andi… Were you… Were you a…?” I couldn’t finish the sentence. She panted shallowly.

“I have… a… 17-year-old daughter. I don’t think it grows back.” There was something determined about the way she said it. She opened her eyes, filled with tears and a smile broke across her face that filled my heart.

“Andi…?”

“Just make love to me, Dag. I’ve waited so long for you.”