Date: 2019-09-14 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Thriller; Mystery; Suspense; Science Fiction
Description: A new psychological thriller from Mark Lukens. What is the truth? What is reality? Twenty-six-year-old Zach Hughes and his wife Michelle were just hoping to have a nice dinner at a restaurant on a Friday evening. As Zach is seated at the table, Michelle goes to the restroom . . . she never comes back. After a frantic search, the only thing Zach finds is his wife's purse in the bathroom with her keys, money, and cell phone inside. The only witness is an elderly woman who saw Michelle leave with a man. Zach believes his wife was taken. The police are called, but they get nowhere, believing Miche

SLEEP DISORDERS

A PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER
by

MARK LUKENS

Sleep Disorders—Copyright © 2017 by Mark Lukens

All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be reprinted without written permission from the author.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (or in any other form), business establishments, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by: Tim Skipper’s Vision Studio

Special thanks to: Jet, Ann, Joe, Kelli, and Mary Ann—your help is immensely valuable to me, and I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate it.

Contents

SLEEP DISORDERS

OTHER BOOKS BY MARK LUKENS:

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

CHAPTER FIFTY

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

OTHER BOOKS BY MARK LUKENS:

ANCIENT ENEMY – www.amazon.com/dp/B00FD4SP8M

DARKWIND: ANCIENT ENEMY 2 – www.amazon.com/dp/B01K42JBGW

HOPE’S END: ANCIENT ENEMY 3 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07G1MS6RK

EVIL SPIRITS: ANCIENT ENEMY 4 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07L8KLXVB

DESCENDANTS OF MAGIC – www.amazon.com/dp/B00FWYYYYC

SIGHTINGS – www.amazon.com/dp/B00VAI31KW

DEVIL’S ISLAND – www.amazon.com/dp/B06WWJC6VD

WHAT LIES BELOW – www.amazon.com/dp/B0143LADEY

NIGHT TERRORS – www.amazon.com/dp/B00M66IU3U

THE SUMMONING – www.amazon.com/dp/B00HNEOHKU

THE DARWIN EFFECT – www.amazon.com/dp/B01G4A8ZYC

GHOST TOWN – www.amazon.com/dp/B00LEZRF7G

THE VAMPIRE GAME – www.amazon.com/dp/B07C2M72X9

FOLLOWED – www.amazon.com/dp/B078WYGMJN

THE EXORCIST’S APPRENTICE – www.amazon.com/dp/B00YYF1E5C

POSSESSION: THE EXORCIST’S APPRENTICE 2 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07NCZQTNR

A DARK COLLECTION: 12 SCARY STORIES – www.amazon.com/dp/B00JENAGLC

RAZORBLADE DREAMS: HORROR STORIES – www.amazon.com/dp/B076B7W252

COLLAPSE: DARK DAYS BOOK 1 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07SCPL6QB

CHAOS: DARK DAYS BOOK 2 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07TVYNW19

EXPOSURE: DARK DAYS BOOK 3 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07TY5S1S8

REFUGE: DARK DAYS BOOK 4 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07VR8KNJ6

CHAPTER ONE

My sleep disorders began when my wife disappeared. Strange things happened while I slept, so I started filming myself while I was asleep, and then I learned the truth. I learned that things weren’t what they seemed to be. You think you know how everything works in the world. You think you understand truths and realities, but then you see that it’s all been a façade when it’s ripped away, revealing what’s underneath.

Let me back up to the day my wife disappeared.

No, I mean the day she was taken.

It was a Friday night in early April, almost six o’clock, but still hot and humid, the air sticky with heat. We lived a little south of Daytona Beach, but we were far enough inland that the ocean breeze didn’t reach us. Michelle wanted to go out to a new steak and seafood restaurant she’d heard about. I was tired from working all day, but for once I had a Saturday off so I could stay out a little later that night.

I bitched about my job all the way to the restaurant—that’s how I spent the last few moments with my wife. I worked at a lawn and pest control company. I was the manager of the lawn division. I had been working there for six years, starting out as a lawn technician for three years, and then one year in sales, and the last two as a manager. I had five lawn trucks under my command, trucks loaded with water, fertilizer, and chemicals. Spring and summer were always busy with complaints of chinch bugs and weeds, and I had spent much of my day trying to appease upset customers.

“Steve’s having a shit fit about the missing bags of fertilizer and the spreader,” I told Michelle as I drove.

She had been looking out the window, her eyes probably glazed over with boredom as I droned on, but then she looked at me. “You’ll find out who took them,” she said.

Steve was my boss, and the fertilizer and spreader had been stolen from us two weeks earlier. There were no security cameras in the back where the trucks were loaded. Steve had his suspects narrowed down to one of the five lawn techs under me, and he was on my ass to find out which one of them was the thief. I suspected Ron, thinking he was itching to start his own lawn business and was building up his inventory little by little, but I had no way to prove it.

We pulled into the restaurant and parked. The place looked pretty busy, but we didn’t have to wait. A hostess was ready to seat us as soon as we entered the lobby.

Michelle needed to use the restroom. “Go ahead and get a table,” she said with her purse looped over one shoulder. “I’ll find you in a minute.”

I followed our hostess to our table tucked away in the far corner of the dining area. At least we weren’t out in the middle.

“Cindy will be right with you,” the hostess said with a big, fake smile.

I could spot fake smiles a mile away—I wore one every day when I talked to customers who were going nuclear because they had a dry spot in their lawn.

As promised, Cindy was at our table a few minutes later with menus. “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked.

“Just water for now,” I told her. “Some lemon for my wife’s water.”

Cindy nodded and bobbed away.

I checked out the menu, my stomach already grumbling.

A few minutes later Cindy was back with the iced waters, lemon wedges floating in both of the glasses. It was okay, I would just give my lemon wedges to Michelle.

“Are you ready to order?” she asked.

“Not yet,” I told her. “Still waiting for my wife.”

Another beaming, fake smile and Cindy was off again.

A few more minutes passed and Michelle still wasn’t back from the restroom. I kept glancing across the dining area, waiting to see her walking my way.

Ten minutes turned into fifteen minutes. I was starting to get concerned. Maybe she couldn’t find our table. I instinctively touched my phone, thinking she might call. Had she left her phone in my company pickup truck that I’d driven here? The truck was white with bright green grass painted along the bottom and the company name in yellow letters, outlined in red: Carlton’s Lawn and Pest Services. Yeah, Michelle loved riding around in that truck. I wasn’t really supposed to be driving it for private use, but I didn’t really care. Besides the decent health care and a matching 401K program, the company truck was one of the few perks of my job.

Maybe Michelle was sick. Maybe she’d gone back to the truck. But the doors were locked. Maybe she’d left her phone in the truck. Maybe she was waiting for me to read her mind and check on her out in the parking lot.

I glanced around at the other people in the restaurant. There were couples, families, and a large party of what looked like office workers sucking down beers and overpriced mixed drinks. Brays of forced laughter came from their table.

Cindy was back. “Are you ready to order?” she asked with a big smile.

Do you see my wife here yet? I wanted to snap, but didn’t. Instead, I said: “I’m still waiting for my wife to come back from the bathroom.”

“Oh,” the waitress said, glancing at the empty seat across from me. “I’ll come back.”

“Cindy,” I said.

She stopped on a dime, staring at me, waiting for my request.

I was suddenly at a loss for words. I knew what I wanted to say, but not exactly how to say it. I couldn’t help feeling that Michelle might be sick or something. “Uh . . . my wife has been in the restroom for like almost twenty minutes. Is there any way you could check on her for me?”

Cindy looked puzzled. It seemed I had stumped her with my request.

I knew no matter how I said it, that it was going to come out weird. “I mean, I would check on her, but I . . .” I let my words die off, hoping she’d understand.

“Oh, of course,” she said. “No problem. I’ll go check for you.”

“Thank you, Cindy. Her name’s Michelle. She’s got long brown hair.”

Cindy was off.

I sat there for a few more minutes, sipping my iced water, glancing at my cell phone for something to do, just checking to make sure I didn’t have any nasty emails from Steve.

“Sir.”

I looked up at Cindy.

She was frowning like she was confused, possibly the butt of some kind of joke. “I checked the bathroom. There’s no one in there. Nobody named Michelle.”

I was frozen for a moment, trying to figure out where Michelle could be, thinking again that maybe she’d gotten sick and went out to the truck.

Cindy had more to say: “And someone turned a purse in to our manager. She said she found it in the restroom.”

“A purse,” I asked, my voice suddenly losing strength.

“Yeah. You want to take a look at it?”

I was standing before I even realized what I was doing, my head suddenly a little light. I told myself that it was just the heat from my long day at work and lack of food. Maybe I was dehydrated. But I was suddenly frightened. I felt like I was walking through the thick air of a dream as I followed Cindy through the crowded dining hall, passing the group of office workers, an overweight man telling a joke, the others erupting in laughter.

I was at the hostess’s stand and our hostess was already holding a black purse out to me like it was a dead animal she wanted to be rid of.

My heart felt like it had stopped in my chest. The room seemed to be spinning around me. I had that slight sense of floating an inch or two above the floor. I stared at the purse: fake black leather, some kind of assortment of silver rings and buckles on it that seemed more decorative than functional. Was this my wife’s purse? It certainly looked like it, but I was no handbag expert. Could I pick my wife’s purse out of a lineup? I wasn’t sure. But I heard my voice coming from far away, telling the woman that yes, this was indeed my wife’s purse. Because instinctively I already knew.

I took the purse and opened it, praying to be wrong, praying to be embarrassed when I realized that I was rummaging through a stranger’s possessions. I pulled out Michelle’s wallet, opening it. Her driver’s license was tucked away behind the plastic protector, her credit cards in their slots.

“You’re sure she’s not in the bathroom?” I asked Cindy. “Could you check again please?”

Cindy nodded quickly, her movements like a frantic bird now. She hurried back down the short hall to the women’s room. Time seemed to stretch, but it also seemed like Cindy was back in an instant, shaking her head like a doctor about to call the time of death.

“She’s not in there?” I asked, my voice rising.

Cindy shook her head no again, eyes wide.

“You’re sure?”

“No one’s in there. I checked every stall.” She glanced at the hostess like she was looking for help; she seemed to be afraid that I was going to bolt past her and check the women’s room myself.

“I don’t understand why my wife would leave her purse in the bathroom,” I said. I looked at the tables closest to the lobby. I saw an elderly couple sitting at the nearest table, their attention on me. The woman was staring at me unabashedly, her husband glancing back and forth between her and me, and then he looked at her again, touching her hand, whispering to her, perhaps telling her to stop gawking.

But the old woman kept looking at me. She’d seen something, I was sure of it.

“Maybe she went back to the table,” the hostess suggested.

“I would have seen her,” I said, still looking at the elderly woman. “How could she have gotten back to the table without walking past me?” But the hostess was right, it wouldn’t hurt to check.

It took me less than a minute to walk to our table and then back to the lobby. I went out the glass doors, exiting the lobby, sensing the relief from the waitress and hostess, both of them hoping I might be leaving.

I looked around at the parking lot and then ran, actually ran, to my company pickup truck. I peeked inside the truck, making sure it was still locked. Michelle wasn’t inside. I looked all around the truck, even underneath it. I don’t know what I had been expecting, that she might be crumpled down beside the truck, a hand to her stomach, groaning, suddenly sick—too sick to come to the table and tell me she’d gone back to the truck.

But she wasn’t there.

A moment later I was back in the lobby. “She’s not out there,” I told the hostess.

Cindy was gone.

The hostess stared at me, unsure of what to do.

“I need to find my wife,” I snapped. “She went to the bathroom, and now she’s not here.”

The hostess had nothing for me but a fake smile and big, watery eyes.

I rushed down the short hall to the women’s room.

“Sir!” the hostess screeched.

I didn’t answer her. I didn’t stop. I didn’t care. I slammed my way into the women’s room. A woman stood at the long row of sinks, messing with her makeup, staring at me through the mirror without turning around, apparently not as shocked at my entrance as I thought she would be.

I banged on the doors of each of the stalls. “Michelle! You in here? You okay?”

“Sir, she’s not in here.” The hostess was in the bathroom now, following me from stall to stall.

I brushed past her and went to the men’s room. Maybe Michelle had gone into the men’s room. But even as I grasped at that straw, I knew rationally that it wasn’t true because her purse had been found in the women’s room, not the men’s.

She left her purse behind. It still boggled my mind.

When I was back in the hallway, I heard a man’s voice right behind me. “Sir?”

I turned around and saw a tall man in his late thirties with thinning hair and a large, protruding belly. He looked like someone who might have had a decent run at football in high school but lacked the talent to go any further in athletics. He still looked sturdy and strong, though. Cindy, our waitress, was standing beside the manager, a little more comfortable with the bulk beside her.

“Sir, can I help you with something?”

“My wife is missing,” I told him.

“Sir, if we could discuss this somewhere else,” he said, gesturing at the glass doors that led outside.

“I already looked out there,” I said. “She’s not out there. I can’t find her.” I could feel my breaths growing quick, my lungs and throat wanting to close up, the beginnings of a panic attack. I’d had my share of them throughout my life so I knew the signs.

I still had Michelle’s purse in my hand. I’d been carrying it the whole time without even realizing it.

“Have you asked around in here?” I asked the manager. “Has anyone seen my wife?”

“Sir, please calm down.”

I knew my voice was rising. The people at the tables closest to the lobby were looking at us now, including the old couple who had been staring at me before.

“Sir,” the manager warned, glaring at me.

“She’s twenty-seven years old,” I said, looking at the older couple now. “She has long dark hair. Five foot five. Slim. Pretty.” I could feel tears threatening. “Beautiful,” I corrected myself. “She’s beautiful.”

“Sir,” the manager warned again.

“Please,” I said, rushing over to the old couple. The old man reminded me of Burgess Meredith from the Rocky movies. But I concentrated on his wife. “If you saw anything . . .”

“Sir,” the manager snapped right behind me. He grabbed my arm a little too hard. “You can’t bother the customers.”

“Bother the customers?” I shouted, ripping my arm out of his grasp. “My wife is missing!”

“I’m going to call the police,” the manager warned.

“Good! Call them!”

The manager nodded at the hostess, a silent command to her. She was off and running.

“I saw the woman,” the old woman said from right behind me.

I turned around and locked eyes with her.

She was smiling now, her eyes twinkling and kind, but there was something vacant about her stare. “I saw the woman you’re talking about. I saw her leave with a man a little while ago.”

CHAPTER TWO

My heart skipped a beat. I stared at the old woman who was nodding and still smiling.

“You saw her leave with a man?” I asked.

The woman’s husband grabbed her hand, shushing her. He looked at me with apologetic eyes. “Sometimes she rambles,” he told me.

“When?” I asked the old woman, keeping my eyes right on her. “When did you see her leave?”

She shrugged. “Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes ago.”

“Where did she go? Who was this man she was with?”

The woman nodded at the glass doors beyond the lobby. “She left out those doors. She was walking with the man and they left.”

“Was she being forced to leave?” I asked. My breaths were shorter than ever now, coming quickly.

The woman shook her head no, her eyes telling me that I had it all wrong. “It didn’t look like he was forcing her to do anything. They both seemed happy to me. They were smiling. I didn’t really think anything about it until now.”

“What did this man look like?” I asked. I could hear my heartbeat rushing in my ears. Even my eyeballs felt like they were pulsating. I felt shaky and a little nauseous.

“He was about your height,” the woman said. “Your build. Brown hair like you. He looked a little bit like you. He wore dark pants and a button-down shirt. White shirt, I think, but I can’t be sure.”

“And she wasn’t . . . she wasn’t distressed at all?” I asked.

“No,” the woman said. “Not that I could see.”

I looked at the woman’s husband. “I didn’t see anything,” he said before I could bombard him with questions.

“You sure?” I asked, moving closer to him.

The old man shrunk back like I was going to hit him.

“Sir, that’s enough,” the manager said from behind me, butting in between me and the table, pushing me back.

I backed up and stared at the manager. Everything in my peripheral vision seemed to blur into a white haze, everything else fading away. I felt numb and dizzy. “I’m trying to find my wife.”

“I understand that, sir.”

I wished like hell he would quit calling me sir.

“The police are on their way here,” the manager informed me. “I can’t have you harassing our customers.”

“The lady saw my wife leave with some . . . some guy.” I looked around for security cameras. “You have cameras here?”

“Sir . . .”

“I need to see the film on those cameras.”

“Sir . . .”

God, if he said sir one more time . . .

*

The police got to the restaurant five minutes later. The manager had refused to show me the footage on the security cameras, but I was sure the cops would make him do it; I even told him that the cops were going to make him play the footage back, like they did on the TV cop shows.

The police officer who showed up was in his late thirties, wearing a vague expression of disappointment, like he had hoped for something a little more exciting than this, or maybe something that demanded a little less work. His name was Officer Crowell. He asked me questions, jotting notes down on a little notepad he had flipped open.

A few moments later, Officer Crowell interviewed the older couple; the elderly woman was the only customer who had seen my wife leave the restaurant.

Then the cop was back to me, and a moment later we were outside on the little walkway under the entryway roof. The elderly couple walked out a few minutes later, the husband trying to hurry his wife to their car and away from me.

“You got her statement?” I asked Officer Crowell, gesturing at the couple.

“Yeah,” he said as he watched them walk away, waiting until they were well out of earshot. “He told me she’s a little senile,” he whispered to me.

“She saw my wife leave with a man.”

The cop grew serious. “Mr. Hughes, were you and your wife arguing tonight?”

“No.”

“Arguing in the last few weeks?”

“No. She didn’t leave me. Someone took her.”

The cop just nodded. “The witness,” he jerked his thumb back to a silver Cadillac leaving the parking lot, “she didn’t seem to think your wife was being forced to leave.”

“He could’ve had a gun on her. Maybe it was in his pocket. He could have threatened her, told her to act naturally.”

The cop shrugged like it could be a possibility—but hell, his expression said, anything could be a possibility.

“She left her purse behind,” I said, looking down at the purse still gripped in my hand. “Why would she leave her purse behind? It’s got her wallet in here. Her money. Her keys to the house. Her driver’s license.”

He sighed heavily.

“Can you get the manager to check the security footage?” I asked. “I want to see the man she was leaving with. I want to see how she was acting.”

“We don’t know she left with a man,” Officer Crowell said. “I just told you that our witness may be a little unreliable.”

“I want to see the security footage.”

“I need authorization to do that.”

“Well, get some.”

The cop bristled like I’d just slapped him. Any trace of patience was gone now. “Look, Mr. Hughes, sometimes wives leave.”

It was my turn to feel like I’d just been slapped. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“Happens all the time,” he said. “Most guys never see it coming.”

“She didn’t leave me. She was taken by a man.”

“The best thing you can do is go home and wait for her. She might come back. She might call.”

“She can’t call me because her phone’s in her purse,” I said through gritted teeth, lifting up the purse and shaking it. “She wouldn’t have gone anywhere without her phone. Her credit cards. Her bank card. Her keys to her car and the house.”

He sighed heavily again, like a parent forced to tell a child that the Easter Bunny wasn’t real. “Sometimes they run off to start a whole new life and leave everything else behind.”

“So you’re not going to do anything?”

“Of course. But we can’t declare an adult missing until they’ve been gone for more than forty-eight hours. Just go home. Call her friends and family. See if you can find out why she left.”

I wasn’t moving.

“Sir, I’m going to need you to go home now.” There was no mistaking the warning in the officer’s tone now; he was tired of playing around with this. “You can’t stay here. You need to be home when she calls or comes back.”

“Comes back? Someone took her.”

The cop exhaled a long breath of irritation. “If she hasn’t come back in forty-eight hours, then come down to the station and we’ll fill out a report.”

That was it. That was all the help I was going to get.

I walked away from the cop, walking on numb legs to my company pickup truck with the bright green grass painted along the bottom. I was holding Michelle’s purse straps so hard my fingernails were digging into my palms. I felt like I was in some kind of nightmare; nothing seemed real anymore, and everything seemed possible.

CHAPTER THREE

I was in a fog as I drove home, driving on autopilot as my mind wandered.

Officer Crowell seemed to believe that Michelle had left me.

Had she?

But why would she choose to do it now, at a busy restaurant on a Friday night? I worked eleven to twelve hours a day five days a week. If she wanted to leave me, she could have done it during one of those days. She could have come home from her job at the nursing home and packed up her stuff and left—she would have had all day to do it. She could have left a note. And she certainly would have taken her purse and her cell phone.

To start a whole new life, the officer had said. Leaving everything else behind. Maybe the person she had left with had asked her to leave all remnants of her old life behind. I could imagine some wealthy man entering Michelle’s life, promising to sweep her away from the doldrums of her life and her marriage to a pest control manager, promising to take her to his yacht or private jet so they could travel to exotic islands, lie on the beach, drinking and making love all day.

It was possible that someone had swept her away, but it still didn’t make a lot of sense. Michelle was a beautiful woman, that was for sure. But I wasn’t exactly ugly. And even though I wasn’t wealthy, we weren’t struggling for money.

Another picture entered my mind: Michelle tied up in the back of a van, strips of duct tape pasted over her mouth and eyes. She would be shaking with terror, not knowing where her abductor was taking her, what he was going to do with her, how long she had to live.

Stop it!

I almost had to pull the truck over to the side of the road and throw up. But I held it down and got home. I didn’t really remember the drive much, and then it seemed like a moment later I was pulling into the driveway in front of our home, parking behind my 2008 F-150 and right beside Michelle’s car, a Kia Optima. I had almost expected to see her car gone, thinking she had hurried home, packed a bag and took her car.

But her car was here, and she was still gone.

I sat there for a moment with the headlights shining on the tailgate of my truck in the twilight; I was still numb, still struggling to believe what had just happened. I shut off my headlights, then the engine, then I got out.

The street was quiet. We were tucked away at the far end of our rural neighborhood that backed up to a few square miles of woods. There were a few houses down the street, a large stand of trees blocking my property from theirs, and a house farther down the street in the other direction around a sharp bend in the road, but none of them could be seen from my driveway. If it wasn’t for the empty house almost directly across the street, it would feel like we were the only ones on this road.

The house across the street had been vacant for the four years Michelle and I had lived in this house. There were empty lots of wild grasses and weeds on either side of the house, and the beginning of the woods beyond the fenced-in back yard of the home.

I walked from my truck to the front porch, the shadows already growing long at this late hour and shrouding the front porch in darkness. I wondered what to expect. Did I think I was going to come home and find Michelle waiting inside for me, apologizing for some big misunderstanding? Did I think I was going to come home and catch her in the middle of packing her bags?

No, she wasn’t going to be inside the house; deep down inside I already knew that. She hadn’t left me. She had been taken. Michelle and I were happy. We hadn’t had an argument in months. She was my dream woman, even if I might not be her dream man. But I knew she loved me; I could tell. I could feel it.

She had been taken. Maybe it hadn’t looked like she’d been forced to leave the restaurant, but her abductor had gotten her to leave somehow. Maybe the person who took her was someone Michelle knew, maybe someone from work, a friend of a friend, some psychopath who’d had his eye on her for a while now, watching her, waiting for the right time to take her. Maybe he’d told her that her friend was in the parking lot. Maybe he’d told her that a friend of hers was in distress, crying or hurt.

But she would have come and gotten me, wouldn’t she have? She would have told me that she needed to go outside, or maybe even asked me to go with her.

Maybe the man who had taken her had jabbed the point of a knife or the barrel of a gun against her side and whispered at her to be cool or her life would end in an instant.

My stomach felt sick again, and maybe if I had eaten something the food would have come up by now. I was driving myself crazy trying to think of what had happened to her. I unlocked the front door and stepped inside. I closed the door and locked it. I set the keys in the little dish at the end of the counter. I set Michelle’s purse down right next to the dish. And then I searched through the house.

Michelle wasn’t there. Her closet hadn’t been ransacked like she’d come back and packed a bag. Everything was just how we’d left it before driving to the restaurant.

Officer Crowell had told me to reach out to Michelle’s family and friends. Michelle didn’t have much family. Her parents were dead, just like mine were. My parents had died when I was twenty-one years old, killed in a car crash, both of their lives snuffed out in an instant. Michelle’s father had died when she was a child and her mother had died when Michelle had turned eighteen years old. The loss we both shared was one of the things that had brought us together when we met in college. I had no siblings and Michelle had an older sister, Brenda, who she barely ever spoke to. She lived in Ohio, where Michelle was from. Or maybe Brenda lived in another state up north; I wasn’t exactly sure.

Friends. I couldn’t think of any of Michelle’s friends right off the top of my head. It wasn’t like she invited any of them home to hang out with her. I’d had Stan over a lot when we were both lawn techs to play video games, but not so much since I’d become a manager and his boss. I couldn’t really remember Michelle ever going out with her friends. She’d always been kind of a homebody; she’d rather curl up with a good book or watch a movie with me.

I collapsed down into a chair at the small table in the kitchen. I had taken Michelle’s cell phone out of her purse without really remembering it. I scrolled through her contacts and was surprised to find so few of them. I found Kendra’s name, and I remembered Michelle talking about her from the nursing home, a nurse she worked with. And there was another nurse or CNA named Denise that I remembered Michelle mentioning a few times. I think Susan was Michelle’s supervisor at the nursing home. And then I saw her sister’s name—Brenda. There were a few other names on the contact list, including my name and cell number, my work number, our house number.

Before calling, I scrolled through her recent calls. Mostly from me or to me. I scrolled through her text messages. Mostly the same thing, but only from a few weeks back. She must have deleted anything older than that.

I dialed the first number on the contact list and cleared my throat. I wished I had grabbed a bottle of water out of the refrigerator. This person was Denise. After four rings, Denise’s recorded voice asked me to leave a message.

I did.

“Hey, Denise. This is Zach, Michelle’s husband. I was just wondering if Michelle had contacted you tonight. She took off and hasn’t come back yet. Just a little worried. Please call me back at this number if you hear from her. Thanks.”

I hung up.

I dialed Michelle’s sister next. The number was disconnected.

Great.

I left a message with Kendra and Susan.

Two of the other phone numbers just rang and rang, and one was answered by a woman who was sure I had dialed the wrong number.

And that was it; that was the extent of my search by phone.

I just sat there in the kitchen as the room darkened little by little. Eventually I got up and turned on the light over the stove. I finally heated up a frozen dinner in the microwave and wolfed the food down, barely tasting it, chasing it with a can of soda. I turned on the TV in the living room and the TV in the bedroom just to have some noise in the background, anything to block out the voices in my mind for a little while.

Wandering through the house like a zombie, I finally sat down in front of my computer in the spare bedroom just down from our bedroom. We had turned this room into an office, and the other smaller bedroom had a treadmill and a rack of dumbbells against a wall. Our plan was to turn one of these two rooms into a nursery eventually. We’d been trying for the last three years to have a child, but we hadn’t been lucky. I wanted to go see a doctor about it, maybe have my sperm count checked, but Michelle wasn’t ready for that; she was content to keep trying.

I checked my emails on the computer, praying that Michelle had sent a message to me. I had my cell phone with me, constantly checking it for text messages.

There were no messages from her.

Hours later I took my anxiety pills (which I really needed at that moment) and the sleep-aid Dr. Valentine had prescribed for me two years ago when I’d started seeing her regularly at Michelle’s request. I’d suffered through severe panic attacks and depression after my parents were killed in the car crash, and those demons came back in full force a few years ago. One of Michelle’s friends had recommended a great therapist, and I started seeing Dr. Valentine. There wasn’t a lot of therapy from the doctor, more of just handing out pills. But at least the pills worked somewhat.

I left the light on in the hallway and in our master bathroom. I lay down on the bed, kicking my sneakers off and letting them thump down onto the tiled floor. Our bed was in the middle of the room with an antique dresser and mirror directly across from the foot of the bed. There were two narrow windows on either side of the bed. The two closets and our bathroom were just off of the bedroom. It was murky in the room, but the bathroom light provided enough light for me to see well enough. I didn’t feel like I was going to be able to sleep, maybe never sleep again. I would just lay there all night staring up at the lazily turning ceiling fan, worrying about Michelle, but I drifted off to sleep without remembering it.

CHAPTER FOUR

I woke up to the sound of someone pounding on my front door. I jumped up, swung my feet over, the bottom of my sneakers hitting the floor. I sat bolt-upright on the edge of the bed.

For just a second I didn’t know where I was. Everything seemed strange, and it almost felt like I was still dreaming. I knew I had been having a strange dream, and this felt like the tail end of that dream before I came fully awake. I stared down at the sneakers on my feet, wondering when I had put my shoes on. I listened to the pounding at the door, wondering if it was Michelle. Had she been locked out?

Then it all came back to me in a rush. Michelle wasn’t home. She’d left the restaurant last night with some man.

I was up and walking before I knew it, stumbling down the hall toward the living room and the front door. Fragments of the dream flashed through my mind: I’d seen Michelle in the dream, I was sure of that. But I don’t think it was a nightmare. All I could see was her walking ahead of me in the darkness, turning around with that sexy smile on her face, her eyes reflecting a soft light from somewhere behind us. She was beckoning me to follow her.

Follow her where?

I didn’t even look out through the peephole before opening the door. On my front porch were two large men in suits and ties. Both flashed their badges at me.

“Zachery Hughes?” one of the men asked. His face was pale with bright red splotches on his cheeks. Hair buzzed short. Dark sunglasses.

“Zach,” I corrected.

“I’m Detective Hartwell and this is Detective Williams.” Both men tucked the wallets with their badges back into their suit coats at exactly the same time, moving like they were synchronized swimmers.

“Did you find Michelle?” I asked, hope erupting inside of me so hard it hurt.

“Can we come inside?”

I stepped back and opened the door wider. “Sure. Come on in. Did you find my wife?” As soon as I asked again, I was afraid of the answer. Why would two detectives be here? Had they found my wife’s body?

For a second I couldn’t seem to catch my breath.

The detectives entered my house, both of them taking their sunglasses off and slipping them into their suit coat pockets. I picked up the scent of cologne and mint chewing gum. I closed the door and gestured at the living room. “Please, take a seat if you want to.”

“We’d rather stand,” Detective Hartwell said.

Detective Williams nodded in agreement. Both men were staring me down.

“My wife,” I said, waiting for an explanation.

“That’s why we’re here, Mr. Hughes,” Detective Hartwell said. “You want to tell us what happened?”

I was sure they’d gotten the report from Officer Crowell, but I told them anyway. I told them how we’d driven to the restaurant. I told them how Michelle had gone to use the restroom while a hostess showed me to our table. I told them I had waited fifteen, or maybe twenty minutes before asking our waitress, Cindy, to check the women’s room for my wife. She’d come back to tell me that my wife wasn’t in there, but that someone had found a purse in the restroom.

“And that was your wife’s purse?” Detective Williams asked.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s over there in the kitchen.” I hitched a thumb at the archway that led into the kitchen just beyond the dining room.

“Was anything taken from the purse?” Detective Hartwell asked.

“No. Her wallet was still there. Her driver’s license. Her cell phone. Her car keys.”

“Money was all there? Credit cards?”

“Yes. I mean, I don’t know exactly how much money she had in there, but there was still money in the wallet. I haven’t counted it.”

Both men nodded slightly, both almost mirroring each other. I had the feeling that these two had worked together so long that they could practically communicate telepathically.

“Were you and your wife arguing last night?” Detective Williams asked.

I noticed that they seemed to take turns asking me questions. And again, I was sure they’d already gone over the answers I had given to Officer Crowell. But I played their game. “No. We never argued. Everything was fine.”

“So, you identify your wife’s purse,” Detective Hartwell said, gesturing at me impatiently to continue with my story.

“And I keep looking for her. A manager came. I think he wanted me to go outside, like I was bothering the other customers, but I didn’t. There was this old couple. Maybe in their seventies. The wife told me she saw my wife leave.”

Neither detective looked surprised at this.

“She said she saw my wife leave with a man. She said he was about my height. Brown hair. I think she said he was wearing dark pants and a white shirt. You could check with Officer Crowell. He took the woman’s statement.”

Detective Hartwell sighed. “Yes, that woman has been diagnosed with dementia.” He pulled out a small notebook from his suit coat pocket, flipping it open and reading for just a moment. “She claimed that the man walked out with your wife and that your wife didn’t look distressed.”

I nodded. Maybe we were starting to get somewhere. Maybe they were finally going to start looking for this man. I felt the weight of impatience pushing on me, but I resisted.

“She also claimed the man looked a lot like you,” Detective Hartwell added.

“Yeah,” I said, remembering now that she had said that, but not sure what it had to do with anything.

Perhaps Detective Hartwell sensed my confusion. “You think she might have seen you walk in with your wife and perhaps got the two memories mixed up?”

I just stood there, silent.

“You know,” Detective Williams said. “Because she has dementia.”

I hadn’t considered it. I could feel our train getting way off track suddenly. I wanted to steer us back to what was important. “I asked the manager about security cameras. He said they have them at the restaurant. Did you guys check them?”

Detective Hartwell nodded. “Yeah. We did. But they weren’t working last night. Some kind of glitch, I guess.”

I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. “Weren’t working?” The idea seemed impossible to me, the coincidence too great. My one piece of evidence had evaporated like a smoke ring.

“Mr. Hughes,” Detective Williams said, “do you think your wife might have been having an affair?”

“An affair?” I breathed out, startled by the sudden shift in our conversation. “No. Not at all. Why would you ask that?”

Detective Williams shrugged. “Would it make you angry if you thought your wife was cheating on you? Sleeping with some other guy?”

I didn’t answer. I could already see where this was going.

Detective Hartwell looked around at the living room as if noticing it for the first time. “Nice place you’ve got here.”

I didn’t bother saying thank you; I knew it wasn’t a compliment.

“Pretty remote here,” Detective Hartwell continued. “No other houses around, except for the empty one across the street.” He shrugged. “I mean, things could happen here and nobody would see anything.”

I kept my mouth shut, my balls crawling, my stomach sour, my mouth suddenly dry.

“You mind if we have a look around?” Detective Williams asked.

I could see that these two weren’t playing good cop, bad cop—they were playing bad cop, bad cop. They weren’t even trying to hide their suspicion. I wanted to try to appease them. I wanted to let them know that I understood the husband was always the first suspect in a disappearance. But I didn’t want to seem suspicious.

“We could come back with a search warrant,” Detective Williams said. “Wouldn’t take too long.”

“No,” I said and then cleared my throat a little. “No. Look around.”

Detective Williams started walking around, knocking lightly on the walls like he was listening for the hollow sound behind them.

“I didn’t do anything to my wife,” I said in the calmest tone of voice I could muster. “We went to a restaurant together.”

Detective Hartwell stood right in front of me. “See, that’s kind of the problem. Nobody saw you enter the restaurant with your wife.”

Again, I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. “That’s . . . that’s impossible. The hostess . . .”

“She remembers seating you. She remembers you telling her that your wife was with you. But she doesn’t remember seeing her.”

Detective Williams had disappeared down the hall, walking toward our bedroom.

“The old lady, she saw my wife leave,” I said.

“And I already told you that she’s not the most reliable of witnesses. And her husband hadn’t seen anything. Nobody else near the lobby saw anything.”

I felt panicky, like I was suddenly drowning. I needed something to hold on to. Then I found my life raft. “My wife’s purse. It was in the bathroom. A woman found it and turned it in.”

“Yeah,” Detective Hartwell said. “That’s true. But what if you came in and slipped it into the bathroom and then walked out to the hostess’s stand? From the hostess’s viewpoint, and if she was pretty busy, you could have slipped in and slipped back out without anyone noticing.”

“Why would I do that?” I asked. I wanted to ask why I would go to all of that trouble to get rid of my wife when I could do it right here in our rural neighborhood. But then I realized that I would need an airtight alibi. And if the cops were busy searching for a missing woman, then they wouldn’t bother searching my home.

But I was innocent. My wife was missing. She’d been abducted. And every second we spent suspecting me, trying to catch me in a slipup, the longer the delay was in looking for my wife. Again, I felt that boulder of impatience weighing down on me, and I was doing my best not to erupt in anger.

Detective Williams was back. “Doesn’t look like your wife packed anything.”

“Because she didn’t leave me. She was taken by someone.” I thought about the security cameras malfunctioning at the restaurant, and how strange that was—the one piece of evidence I needed wasn’t there.

“You mind if we look in your vehicles?” Detective Williams asked. “Your wife’s car?”

I shook my head no. I grabbed the keys for the vehicles in the kitchen and then I went outside, the detectives following me. The sun was blindingly bright, the day already hot and humid, insects buzzing in the trees and brush. I opened the doors to my truck, my company truck, and my wife’s car. I was glad there weren’t any neighbors within view to watch the police search my vehicles.

It took Detective Williams ten minutes to comb over everything in the three vehicles, but he spent the most time in my wife’s car, especially the trunk. He’d slipped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves and he took a few photos with his cell phone.

“We could get forensics here,” Detective Hartwell threatened. He looked away, surveying the surrounding area, staring for a moment at the house across the street, the house standing alone among the empty fields, the line of dark woods beyond it, the rotting wooden fence surrounding the back yard. “Probably will at some point.”

I knew I was close to being arrested, but I also knew they didn’t have enough yet or I would have already been in handcuffs and stuffed into the back of their black sedan.

Did I need a lawyer?

I couldn’t believe this. I knew I might be a suspect, but too much time was going to be wasted.

Finally, they were done. Detective Williams left all the car doors open as he walked back to me, pulling off his gloves and stuffing them down into his pants pockets.

“We’re done here for now,” Detective Hartwell said.

I waited for the warning about not leaving town.

“What about my wife?” I asked, and I felt like I might be pushing it a little, but I couldn’t help it. I was mad that they had their minds made up about me; I was scared they weren’t going to even try to look for Michelle.

“We’re doing our best,” Detective Hartwell said as Detective Williams walked to their sedan and got in. Detective Hartwell handed me his business card.

I took it, holding it with numb fingers.

Detective Hartwell got real close to me. I could smell his mint gum and cologne even more now. He had slipped his sunglasses back on, and I was kind of glad I couldn’t see his cold blue eyes right then. “You think of anything . . . anything at all . . . you give me a call. Okay?”

I just nodded, not sure if I could trust my voice at that moment.

Detective Hartwell got into the passenger side and then they drove away.

I was left standing there, feeling violated but also lucky I wasn’t at the police station looking up attorney phone numbers in the Yellow Pages.

CHAPTER FIVE

Two hours later I had showered, gotten dressed, and then managed to eat a little something. I had tried all the phone numbers again, but all I got were voicemails and ringing. I had no messages from Michelle, no texts from anyone, no emails. Nothing.

It took me a few hours to calm down from the interrogation I’d just been through. Obviously Detectives Hartwell and Williams were trying to rattle me, intimidate me into some kind of confession, trying to trip me up somehow. They’d been looking for some kind of evidence, something they could use to gain a search warrant. Had they found something, the flimsiest of evidence? Were they petitioning a judge right now?

I felt an overwhelming urge to flee the house. I was afraid of going to jail—I’ll admit that. I’d never been in jail, but with my history of panic attacks I could feel the anxiety building just at the thought of being handcuffed, being stuffed into a cell, locked inside, unable to escape. But what I was even more afraid of was the time wasted while they concentrated on me. I’d heard somewhere that police had about forty-eight hours to find an abducted person if they had any hopes of finding that person alive. I knew others had been found alive well past forty-eight hours, but I didn’t think it was many.

Time seemed to be ticking by. I had to do something. I had made all the phone calls again, but I had to do more.

I would go to Michelle’s work. I didn’t expect to find her there, but maybe I could talk to Kendra or Denise, or even Susan. Maybe they would know something. It was a longshot, but it was something.

Grabbing the keys to my work truck and my pickup, I went outside and moved the vehicles around, parking my work truck behind my wife’s car. I went back inside and dropped the keys to my work truck in the little tray. I checked to make sure I had everything turned off, and then I left my house and got into my truck.

I got a phone call while I was driving to the nursing home where Michelle worked. It was Steve, my boss.

“Zach, what’s going on? The police were just here.”

“The police?”

“Yeah. Two detectives. White guy and a black guy. Not the friendliest guys in the world.”

“Michelle went missing.”

There was silence on the phone for at least ten seconds. And then: “God, Zach. How?”

I explained briefly about going to the restaurant—he knew which restaurant I was talking about—and how Michelle had gone to the women’s room and then I’d never seen her again.

“Zach, I’m so sorry. I . . . I don’t know what to say.”

It seemed sincere enough. Steve knew Michelle. He’d met her at our Christmas parties. Everyone remembered Michelle after meeting her. Everyone always loved Michelle.

“What did they say?” I asked, trying not to sound guilty at all.

“They were asking a lot of questions,” Steve said, the tone of his voice changing just a bit, all business, any compassion he’d had gone now.

I waited, hoping I didn’t have to ask him what kind of questions they had asked.

“They asked if you complained about Michelle,” Steve said. “You know how guys bitch about their wives. They asked if I thought you two were having problems, or if either of you were cheating on the other. They asked if I knew about any money problems you might have. Stuff like that.”

I held the cell phone up to my ear as I came to a stop light, waiting for it to turn green. “Look, Steve, I know how this might look. But I didn’t do anything to Michelle.”

“God, Zach. I know that.” But I swore I heard the slightest bit of doubt in his voice.

“Somebody took her. A woman at the restaurant, an older woman, she saw Michelle leave with a man.” I left out the part about the woman being senile. “The police need to get out there and look for her.”

“You think she was taken by someone?”

“I don’t know. I think so. If she was going to leave me, or leave with some guy, I don’t think a busy restaurant would be the best place to do it.”

Steve didn’t join in my defense.

“Look, I’m sorry the detectives went there. They came to see me this morning. Must have gone to see you right afterwards.”

“No. It’s okay. We all need to do everything we can to find Michelle.”

“Yeah, thanks, Steve.”

*

The nursing home where my wife worked wasn’t as large as some of the other nursing homes and assisted-living facilities in town, but it was a nice place. There were courtyards, and the rooms were pretty spacious. I’d only been there a few times in the last few years Michelle had worked there, and I felt a little ashamed about that, but she knew it could sometimes be a depressing place.

Michelle had a CNA certificate, but for the last two years she’d been in charge of activities for the residents there; she helped with the entertainment in the activities rooms. She helped bring in guests: singers, magicians, speakers, groups from local schools (she said the residents loved it when the kids came in to sing or put on a dance show). Sometimes Michelle even helped put on shows with some of the other CNAs and nurses. I remember one time they had put on some kind of Alice in Wonderland show and Michelle and Kendra had dressed up like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Just the memory of it nearly brought tears to my eyes.

As I parked, I saw a black sedan at the other end of the parking area. For just a moment I thought it might be the detectives’ car. But then I realized that it was a Lincoln.

But it got me thinking. If the detectives had already gone to my work and questioned my boss and coworkers, the next logical place to look might be here where Michelle worked. They might even be here right now. What if I ran into them?

So what? It wasn’t against the law for me to look for my wife, was it? And if the cops weren’t in any hurry to do it, then it might be up to me.

I got out and walked up to the entrance, a metal and glass door swishing open when I got within a few steps of it. The woman at the reception desk was friendly enough. I asked if Kendra was working today and reminded her that Kendra was my wife’s friend.

The woman frowned and seemed reluctant, but she let me sign in. I went down the hall, cutting to the right immediately before she changed her mind.

I found Kendra on the second floor after asking around. I had a sense that these nurses were going to get suspicious soon. I felt like I didn’t have a lot of time before I was asked to leave. My whole world felt like a ticking clock right now.

Kendra looked surprised to see me there.

“Hi, Kendra,” I said. “I’m Zach. Michelle’s husband.”

Kendra nodded. She knew who I was, recognizing me immediately even though I’d only met her a few times. She seemed nervous, maybe even frightened of me. I wondered if she already knew that Michelle had vanished, and that I might be a suspect.

“I’m looking for Michelle,” I said in the gentlest voice I could muster.

“I don’t know where she is,” Kendra said. “I haven’t talked to her in weeks.”

That seemed strange to me. I told Kendra about how Michelle disappeared last night, how she’d gone into the women’s room at the restaurant and then never came back out.

But Kendra didn’t look shocked about that, and that also seemed strange to me.

“A woman at the restaurant,” I continued, “she saw Michelle leaving with a man. About my height, brown hair. She said he even kind of looked like me. The woman said that it didn’t seem like Michelle was being forced to leave, but maybe she was.”

Kendra just shrugged and glanced down the hall like she was looking for someone to rescue her.

I looked down the hall in the same direction she was and saw a few of the residents in the hall. One lady was pushing herself away from us in a wheelchair, passing a man hobbling along with a walker.

“Kendra, I’m worried someone took my wife,” I said, looking at her again.

Kendra didn’t seem too alarmed. She seemed to dismiss the idea that my wife had been taken—I could see it in her eyes.

And for the first time, right there in that brightly lit hallway, I wondered if Michelle could have left willingly. Could she have planned this whole thing? She had been the one adamant about trying out the restaurant last night. I’d told her I was kind of tired, but she really wanted to go out. My stomach curdled with the thought, but one way or another I needed to know the truth.

Kendra still wasn’t volunteering any information. I knew she was on the verge of bolting, coming up with some kind of excuse to get away from me.

“Have you seen Michelle with a man like that?” I asked, my voice quivering. I was suddenly afraid of the answer. It was a strange feeling, a possible sense of relief that Michelle might be okay, but a crushing devastation if she had chosen to leave me for another man.

Finally, Kendra shook her head no.

“Did Michelle say anything to you?” I asked her. “About us?” I was almost afraid to hear her answer.

Kendra nodded. She seemed to be steeling herself, preparing to say something that might make me angry. “She was afraid of you.”

A sledgehammer had just smashed me in the chest. I even took a step back from Kendra as my mind tried to understand what she’d just said.

Kendra stood there, suddenly empowered and bold, a weight off of her chest. She glared at me like I was some bully she’d just stood up to. “She told me you were scaring her.”

“Scaring her?” I said, shaking my head. “How? I mean, why? I don’t understand.”

“I need to get back to work,” she said.

“Please,” I said. I was tempted to grab Kendra’s arm, stop her from turning away from me, but I could picture how that would look. “Please. I need to see Michelle. I need to talk to her. Has she been in to work today?”

“She quit,” Kendra said, practically spitting the words out at me.

“Quit?” A sense of disbelief was washing over me. I imagined that Michelle had come in last night, or even this morning to quit. Maybe I had just missed her.

“She quit three weeks ago,” Kendra said and walked away.

CHAPTER SIX

I was numb as I drove home.

Kendra said Michelle had quit working at the nursing home three weeks ago. No wonder the receptionist had looked at me so strangely when I said I was there to see Kendra and Michelle. I was surprised she’d let me pass, but maybe she was scared of me too. Maybe they all were.

Scared of me? Why? What had I done to make Michelle so frightened of me?

She certainly hadn’t acted scared of me during the last three weeks. And she had quit her job, so she’d been pretending to go to work for the last three weeks, playing some kind of charade, some kind of game, setting all of this up while acting normal around me.

Again, I felt a little relieved that Michelle might be okay. At least she wasn’t dead or being tortured or raped somewhere. At least there was that. But still, I was devastated that she’d been afraid of me, that she couldn’t even talk to me about leaving, that I’d never even gotten a chance to plead my case, to try to right any wrongs or make things better.

It wasn’t fair.

I knew I should go home. It was still pretty early, not even afternoon yet. I needed to calm down and think about things. Michelle had left all of her stuff at home. If she had left me, then she hadn’t taken a single thing of hers. I could understand her wanting to leave her entire life behind, starting over new, as Officer Crowell had said, but I couldn’t understand her taking nothing with her. She had photo albums with pictures of her parents, of her sister. She had other mementos from childhood. What could make her leave all of that behind?

And it just didn’t make any sense. I knew what I’d just heard from Kendra, but it didn’t seem like the truth. I couldn’t explain why I couldn’t accept it, I couldn’t explain why things just weren’t adding up, but it was something I felt in my bones.

Instead of going home, I went to the restaurant. I parked as far away in the parking lot as I could, watching the restaurant. They were open for lunch, somewhat busy even though it wasn’t even twelve o’clock yet. I saw a few customers going in, a few coming out. I even saw the manager walking out and checking on things.

I waited for an hour, watching a few employees park and walk to the restaurant, dressed for work in their uniforms.

And then I saw her—the one I’d been waiting for. Cindy.

I got out and hurried up to her as she walked toward the restaurant.

“Cindy,” I called out.

She stopped, turning around, staring at me. There was no fake smile on her face now. She was startled for just a second, but then I saw the fear in her eyes, the same fear I thought I’d seen in Kendra’s eyes only a few hours ago.

“Cindy. My name’s Zach. I was here last night. I came with my wife.”

She remembered me.

“I just need to ask you a few questions.”

“I . . . I need to get to work. I’m running late.”

I expected Cindy to take off running, but she started walking again, a brisk pace toward the restaurant.

I shadowed her, but not too close. I felt absurdly like a reporter harassing a celebrity; all I needed was a microphone and a cameraman following me. “Did you see my wife come into the restaurant with me?”

“No. I saw you at the table. I gave you menus and water.”

We were getting closer to the restaurant now. Cindy was walking a little faster.

“Did anyone else see my wife? Who turned my wife’s purse in?”

“I don’t know. The hostess said it was some lady.”

“Who was she? How did she find my wife’s purse? Where exactly did she find the purse in the bathroom?”

“I don’t know,” Cindy moaned, picking up the pace a little more.

I started to panic. We were close to the restaurant. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to follow her inside. “That elderly couple, the lady who saw my wife leave, do you know them? Do you know their names?”

She shook her head no, not looking at me, pressing on toward the glass and metal front doors of the restaurant.

“Are they regulars? Please, I need your help. That lady’s the only one who saw the man my wife left with.”

“Sorry,” Cindy muttered, still not looking at me. “I can’t help you.”

The front doors burst open and Richard the manager came out, his fleshy face red with anger. “You need to leave,” he told me.

I thought about arguing that I had every right to be there, and that this was public property, but I could tell he was one breath away from calling the police. “Please,” I told him. I stopped a few feet away. “I need to find my wife.”

Cindy kept walking, passing right by Richard and then entering the restaurant.

“I’m sorry,” Richard said, but he sure didn’t look like it. “I truly am. But I can’t help you.”

“Two detectives came to my home this morning. They said they checked out your security camera footage. They said the cameras weren’t working last night. Some kind of glitch.”

Richard shrugged; his gesture saying: Things like that happen.

“How could the cameras not have been working at that exact time? All of the cameras went out at the same time? Were the ones out here in the parking lot working?”

“I told the detectives everything I knew,” Richard said. “I answered their questions. That’s all I can do. Now, I’ve got a restaurant to run and I need you to leave.”

“You don’t think it’s strange that all of your cameras stopped working. Did you get them fixed?”

“We’re done here.”

“I need to know what happened to my wife.”

“She left, man,” Richard barked out, finally losing his temper completely. He calmed down almost immediately, seemingly a little embarrassed about losing his cool. “I’m sorry she left you. I am. It happens. Hell, my girlfriend left me four years ago. I came home and her stuff was packed. She left a note.”

But Michelle didn’t leave a note. She didn’t pack her things. I wanted to argue that point, but I didn’t.

“Please,” Richard said. “I’m asking you to leave. If you don’t, I’m going to have to call the cops.”

I nodded, my hands going up in surrender. I even backed up a few steps. I could feel tears of frustration burning in my eyes. I turned and walked away.

“Don’t come back,” he called after me. “Don’t harass Cindy or anyone else here.”

I got to my truck and got inside, started it up. I pulled out of the parking lot and saw Richard watching me leave, perhaps committing my truck and license plate to memory.

*

When I got home, I went through Michelle’s closet and dresser drawers again. I didn’t pull everything out, but I sifted through the clothes and her jewelry boxes on top of the dresser. I went through the boxes on the top shelves of her closet that contained photo albums and other things that were special to her. Everything seemed to be there, all of her photos and jewelry. I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure, but I was fairly sure.

I stood in the little hall between my closet and my wife’s larger closet, the hall between our bedroom and the master bathroom. I just stood there, staring in at her closet. I felt like I was missing something. I was sure there were clues among her stuff, but I was overlooking something. In my haste, in my panic, I wasn’t seeing something.

So I slowed down. I looked through her things again, taking my time. I stared at the clothes on the hangers: dresses, pants, shirts, coats, and of course nurse’s scrubs. I stared at the line of shoes on the metal and plastic racks along the closet floor: sneakers, sandals, clogs, high heels, flats, boots. I’d seen her wear some of these clothes and shoes, but others I’d never seen her wear before.

Some of the clothes and jewelry triggered memories for me. I saw a flash of us going to the movies. Michelle loved the movies; it didn’t matter what kind of movie it was, she was all for going. In another memory I saw us cleaning out the garage. I saw us working in the yard. Having sex. Eating breakfast. Comforting her one time when she had the flu.

But I was no closer to an answer, to why she would have been taken, or why she would have left me.

Did she leave? I needed to think about things rationally. Was she frightened of me like Kendra had said? And why had she quit three weeks ago yet kept on acting like she was still going to work? And she had insisted that we go to the restaurant last night. I had been tired and didn’t want to go, but she had insisted. Had it all been planned out? Why plan it out like that?

The elderly woman in the restaurant had said that Michelle left with a man, but she also said that Michelle hadn’t looked distressed. But wouldn’t she have been nervous while leaving with another man? Wouldn’t she have been nervous that I would have seen her? What if the hostess hadn’t seated me right away? What if I would have decided to use the bathroom or waited for her to come out? What if I would have checked on her sooner? How could she have known exactly what I was going to do?

And why leave her purse behind? Even if a wealthy man had whisked her away, why not just take her purse with her and dump it somewhere else? Had she left the purse there to taunt me?

Or was the purse some kind of clue left behind?

If she had been abducted, why would the man make her leave her purse behind? Wouldn’t that have alerted people more quickly, giving them less time to get away? And then I wondered where the man would have been if he had abducted her. Had he been in the women’s room? Or just outside of it? I wondered again where the purse had been found. On the floor? By the door? Just outside of the door on the floor?

I wished I would have pressed Cindy or Richard more about it earlier.

Why would an abductor allow Michelle to drop her purse? Because her cell phone was in it and he was afraid of being tracked? But then again, why not take the purse and then dump it somewhere in the parking lot, or out on the street?

I was driving myself crazy. I could tell that I was leaning more toward the abduction theory—it just felt right to me. Or maybe I just didn’t want to believe that Michelle had left me, that she had planned this whole thing out so meticulously. It would mean that she not only feared me, but that she also hated me.

I was restless. I needed to do something. I couldn’t find any clues in her clothing or jewelry, so I went into the office. We had a desk in there with a computer and printer on top. There was a stereo and two bookcases that held mostly Michelle’s books that she’d read, a lot of well-worn paperbacks. Her taste in books was as eclectic as her taste in movies.

Maybe there was something in one of the books.

Two hours later the bookshelves were nearly bare and there were stacks of books all over the floor. I had looked through them all. There was no writing inside, no doodling, no drawings, no papers or notes tucked inside.

Next, I went through the desk drawers, pulling everything out of them and repacking them not so neatly. I checked through the boxes and envelopes of receipts, bills, and statements. I checked for anything unusual in our bank statements. I checked the computer, looking for any strange files. I checked both of our emails again. Michelle hadn’t used her email in years, and there was nothing there. No messages on the phone.

Nothing.

A sudden anger raged inside of me. I had an urge to clear everything off of the desk, but I resisted.

Instead, I went into the kitchen. I didn’t feel hungry, but I knew I needed to eat. I looked at some of the leftovers in the fridge, including some pasta and sauce Michelle had made a few nights ago, but I settled for another frozen dinner that I heated up in the microwave oven over the stove.

I thought about going to the store and buying some beer, but I knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to drink alcohol and take my anxiety meds and the sleep-aid. After my parents had died, I had self-medicated with alcohol. It seemed like the only thing that kept the panic attacks at bay, but it didn’t help at all with the depression. I was turning into a mess.

Michelle saved me. She’d gotten me to cut down on the alcohol, and then four years ago to completely quit, along with help from Dr. Valentine and the meds she prescribed.

I thought of Dr. Valentine. I wondered if I should schedule an appointment to see her. Maybe I would call her office on Monday. Maybe if I could talk some things out with her, maybe she could help me see things more clearly.

After I ate, I tried calling the phone numbers on Michelle’s contact list again. Except Kendra. I didn’t need to talk to her again. I left some messages, and the other phone numbers just rang and rang. Her sister’s phone was still disconnected.

I wrote an email to Michelle, begging her to come home, begging for forgiveness for whatever I’d done wrong. But she hadn’t looked at her email in years and I didn’t expect her to look at it now. But it was better than doing nothing.

I turned on the TV again, but wasn’t really watching it. Stan called around seven o’clock and told me he was sorry to hear about Michelle.

“If there’s anything I can do, man,” he said.

“Thank you,” I told him.

Stan said the guys at work were sorry about it, too. He said some of them were praying for me.

We talked a bit about work, and then I hung up.

The next few hours drifted by, and then I popped my pills and I was in bed, the TV in our room on, the ceiling fan on. I was dressed only in my underwear. I drifted off to sleep.

CHAPTER SEVEN

In my dream I saw Michelle again. The dream seemed so real. It felt more like a vivid memory, or like I’d been teleported to another place.

Except I knew it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.

Michelle was a few feet ahead of me in the darkness, walking toward something, maybe a building or a house. I could see the bulk of it in the distance, but I couldn’t make out details. There was a small sliver of light coming from the building, but it was all blurry in the background because my focus was on Michelle. I was following her, afraid to take my eyes off of her, drinking in every molecule of her while I had the chance. We were walking so slow, like everything had slowed down like it does in dreams sometimes.

She didn’t look scared of me. She was smiling. It wasn’t like she was running away from me in fright, but more like she was hurrying toward something. Like she wanted me to follow her.

To where?

And then I saw where she was going—the house across the street. I could see it materializing out of the darkness, the little splash of light in the window. Was someone in there? Was she going to see someone inside?

I wanted her to wait for me. I wanted to call out to her, but it was like I couldn’t get my voice to work. I wanted her to stop, to talk about this. I felt there might be something bad in that back yard, something bad inside that house. I just wanted her to wait a minute.

And then I was awake.

I sat up in bed and looked down at my legs. I had a pair of jogging pants on and my sneakers were on my feet, the laces tied. I had a shirt on. The TV was off, but the ceiling fan was still on. The bathroom light was off, but from the open door of my bedroom I could tell other lights in the house were on.

Something had woken me up.

A noise?

And then I heard it, the sound of someone moving something around in another room, that person trying to be quiet.

My heart thundered in my chest as I slid out of bed. For just a second I thought it might be Michelle. Maybe she had come back home. Maybe she’d changed her mind about leaving me.

Maybe I thought that because I’d just been dreaming about her.

I didn’t have a gun. I’ve never had a gun. Michelle had never liked guns, and I’d never grown up around them. I’d never even shot a gun. But right at that moment I wished I had one. All I had was an aluminum baseball bat in my closet—the extent of my home defense.

A moment later I crept out into the hallway with the bat gripped in my hands. I felt inadequate with the bat, the person who’d brought the proverbial wrong weapon to the fight. I paused just outside my bedroom door for a moment, listening.

I didn’t hear any other noises in the house.

The next room down the hall was the office. The light above the desk was on. My computer was on. I glanced inside, but didn’t go in. I kept going down the hallway. I peeked into the “gym.” The light was off and I turned it on. The closet door was partially open, but I didn’t want to check it just yet. I wanted to check the rest of the house and then I would circle back and check all the closets.

The light was on in the kitchen. I walked through the living room and then the dining room, looking around. Our house isn’t huge, and it only took a few moments to be reasonably sure no one else was in the house with me. I went into the kitchen and glanced down at the sets of keys in the little dish next to Michelle’s purse. My dirty dishes were still on the counter, the wastebasket nearly overflowing. Everything still looked the same, but I swore I could tell someone had been in my house.

The last place to check was the garage. It was nearly empty because we hardly ever parked our cars in there.

I began to relax a little. Maybe I had dreamed the noise. I turned off the garage light and closed the door, locking it. I went to the front door to check it and found it unlocked.

I froze for just a moment. The fantasy of Michelle coming back to be with me fueled me, making me do something not so smart—I opened the door and stepped out onto the front porch. The porch light was on and I still had the baseball bat in my hands. From the splash of light from the front porch I could see most of my front yard. There were no other vehicles parked out there. The lone street light a few feet down the road provided a little more light, but the light didn’t touch the house across the street, keeping it hidden in the night shadows.

No one outside. No movement anywhere.

I waited for a few more minutes. It was hot and humid. Crickets sang their songs in the brush and moths fluttered around the porch light, their papery wings clinking against the glass globe around the lightbulb. I went back inside and shut the front door, locking it, making sure the deadbolt was locked.

Now that I had calmed down a little, I had time to think. I looked down at my shirt, pants, and sneakers. I knew I’d gone to bed in only my underwear. When had I gotten dressed? Had I gotten dressed and couldn’t remember it? Had I woken up at some time in the night and hadn’t remembered it?

The clock on the stove in the kitchen said it was 4:38. Not too far from dawn.

I kept the baseball bat with me as I checked the house again, my skin still tingling with the creeps, my mind still buzzing with fear. After I checked every possible hiding place, I set the bat down beside my bed. I went to the office and sat down in front of the computer. The monitor was a black screen with the little green light at the bottom flashing—the monitor had been on so long that sleep mode had kicked in.

After moving the mouse around a little, the screen came back to life, showing the homepage with icons. I opened up the web and checked the search history.

Nothing recent.

I checked some of the files, not really sure what I was looking for. Did I really think that someone had broken into my house and used my computer? Or was it more likely that I had forgotten to turn off my computer and lock the front door? Wasn’t it even possible that I had woken up and gotten dressed, kind of half-awake? I’d been stressed out lately. It was possible.

But I’d never sleepwalked before, not that I’d ever been aware of. And I couldn’t help thinking that someone had definitely been in my house. I couldn’t describe the feeling, but it was just something I was sure of, like I could sense another human invading my territory.

An hour later I sat on the front porch as the pre-dawn’s light illuminated the sky in the east. I could just make out the house across the street, the house I’d seen in my dream earlier, the house that Michelle had been running to. She’d wanted me to follow her. She hadn’t even been waiting up for me.

It was just a dream. That’s all. I had Michelle on my mind constantly, and other familiar objects had made their way into the dream, even if they didn’t make any sense.

That was all.

I decided that I would drink my cup of coffee and then go back and lie down in bed once the sun had come up. Maybe I would feel better as soon as it was light, like burglars wouldn’t risk a crime in the daytime.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I was able to get back to sleep for a few hours. I got up at nine o’clock, just barely awake, and then I heard someone pounding on the front door. Just from the way the person was knocking, I knew who it was. It was the same sound I’d been awakened to yesterday morning.

I was still dressed in the jogging pants and T-shirt. I slipped my socked feet into my sneakers and brushed my hair back, trying to tame it in place a little before getting to the door.

“Mr. Hughes,” Detective Hartwell said when I opened the door.

“Detectives,” I answered, opening the door wide for them to come inside before I got threatened with a search warrant again.

They entered, both of them looking around. Detective Williams seemed annoyed by the sight of my messy kitchen. “Not much time to clean up?” he asked.

I didn’t answer.

“Too busy chasing down leads?” Detective Hartwell asked.

I was sure they thought their little skit was cute, but I was too groggy to ask them what the hell they were talking about.

“We know you talked to Kendra at the nursing home,” Detective Hartwell said.

“I’m trying to find my wife.”

“Yeah, we talked to her, too. We had a pretty interesting conversation with her.”

I was sure they had.

“We also got a call from Richard Gomez. He said you were harassing a waitress named Cindy.”

“I was just asking her some questions.”

“You need to leave them alone. Leave the questioning to us.”

“You don’t seem to be doing much to find my wife,” I blurted out before I even realized what I was going to say.

The detectives stared at me, cold and hard stares.

“All you seem interested in is me. You two seem to have your minds made up that I had something to do with this. That I did something to my wife.”

“We never said that.”

“I didn’t do anything to her. Either she was taken, or she left me. I just want to find out what happened to her.”

“Well, you need to leave the policing to us.”

I nodded. “What about going to the news?”

“The news?” Detective Williams asked, crinkling his face like I’d said something disgusting.

“Yeah, the news. Should I talk to the news? Tell them that my wife is missing. See if anyone comes forward.”

“And how’s that going to look?” Detective Hartwell asked me.

I got his drift right then and there. The reporters weren’t going to stop with me. They would interview Kendra, hear her story about how Michelle was scared of me, how she had found a way to escape an abusive husband. The news would find the story it wanted to tell, spinning it the way they wanted. Yeah, the news was definitely out of the question for now.

“We just wanted to come by and tell you to back off with the amateur police work.”

I was about to tell him he could have just called me, but I didn’t say anything. I was sure they wanted to come by in person so they could have another warrantless look around.

“I just want to find her,” I said. I sounded defeated, beat down.

“We’re doing everything we can,” Detective Hartwell said with no real emotion.

Finally, they left. I closed the door and locked it. I was still drowsy, like I hadn’t slept well.

I wondered if I should start looking up attorneys, get one lined up. I realized I was trembling. I wondered if I’d been trembling when the detectives were there.

*

I cleaned the place up a little, doing the dishes, emptying the trash. I put Michelle’s books back on the bookshelf. I might not have put them back in the right places, and there seemed to be more books than what I had taken down, but I didn’t think Michelle was really ever going to know or care. I shoved some books on top of others, wedging them in place.

It felt good to clean up. I’d never been OCD, but I’d also never been a slob. I used to get made fun of at work because I kept the inside of my lawn truck so neat. I hated it when other techs borrowed my truck and rearranged everything inside of it. I think some of them did it on purpose to bug me.

I took a shower and made some lunch. After I ate, I still felt restless, like I needed to do something. Maybe I would work in the yard this afternoon, or work out in our little gym, something to get myself tired enough to sleep tonight.

Instead I found myself looking through Michelle’s things again, certain that I had overlooked something, certain that I had missed a clue she’d left behind.

And then I found that clue inside a pair of her boots. The boots were black leather, probably came up to her knee. The heel was spikey but not terribly high. These were a pair of boots I’d never seen her wear before. I had pulled the shoes out to check under the plastic and metal racks they rested on, getting desperate in my search. One of the boots felt funny, like something was stuffed down inside of it. I reached my hand down into the boot and felt a pack of papers. I pulled out the small pack of papers held together with a few rubber bands. I sat back, staring at the papers in my hand, feeling like a treasure hunter who’d finally scored after years of ridicule.

I took the papers to the bed and turned on the overhead light, but I turned off the ceiling fan. I spread the papers out, staring at them. Some of them were bank statements, and others were notecards with a series of numbers scrawled on each one of them in pen.

I spread the notecards out—there were eleven of them. And then I spread the bank statements out, just small printouts like you’d get from an ATM. I had a brickwork of papers on my bed. I looked at each of the bank statements first because I could understand them; I didn’t know what the series of numbers on the notecards meant.

The bank statements were from a joint account that I couldn’t remember opening. I organized the statements from earliest to latest. From each statement, it seemed that money had been added to the account, never withdrawn. From the latest statement—only one month ago—I saw that the account totaled $63,629.38.

That was a lot of money. Where the hell had it come from? It seemed like Michelle had been adding money to this account over the last three years. But where had she been getting the money from? Her work? No, I saw every one of her paychecks. I did the bills each month; she always said she hated messing with the finances.

I set the bank statements aside for a moment and looked at the notecards. Each card had a series of numbers written on them. The numbers seemed random, some ten digits long on up to eighteen digits long. They didn’t seem to be dates. Maybe they were passwords to something.

I took the notecards and bank statements with me to the office. I looked up the bank’s website. There was a page to log in, but I had no idea what the username would be or the password. I typed in Michelle’s email as the user name and one of the series of numbers as the password, but it wouldn’t go through. I tried each of the eleven strings of numbers, but none of them worked. Either these weren’t passwords, or one of them was a password and the username was wrong.

I sat back, staring at the computer screen. I looked up the address of the nearest branch of the bank. There was one in Daytona Beach. I knew where it was. I would go there tomorrow, talk to the teller. Maybe I would move the money to another account, or close it. I wasn’t sure if I could close a joint account without Michelle’s signature, but I could find out.

Maybe Michelle was waiting to come and drain the account. If I could drain it first, maybe it would force her to come to me. She could have the money; I just wanted a chance to talk to her.

But then again, maybe it would look suspicious if I moved the money or closed the account. Maybe there was a way for me to be notified if Michelle tried to take some money out or move the money.

I got up and paced. The mystery seemed to be getting deeper, but I also felt better because at least I’d found something. But this wasn’t something I could tell the detectives about—it would give them even more of a reason to think I had done something to Michelle. They would never believe that I had a large amount of money in a bank account that I couldn’t remember opening.

Why couldn’t I remember opening the account?

Was there something wrong with my memory? I’d never had problems with my memory before.

Or was there a different answer? Had Michelle somehow opened the account without my being aware of it? Forged my signature somehow?

But that didn’t make sense. Why would she go to that kind of trouble? Why not just open an account in her own name? It’s like she wanted me to have access to this money. This had to have been an account that we had opened years ago, maybe one we never used for a while, and then she started dumping money into it a few years ago.

Where was she getting the money? Was she involved in something I had no idea about? Something illegal?

Questions raced through my mind like shooting stars.

*

Later that night, after taking another shower, I only dressed in my underwear. I kept the air conditioner thermostat at seventy-eight degrees so it was a little warm in the house, but I kept the ceiling fan on over the bed. I made sure my clothes and sneakers were put away in the closet. It was still pretty early, only ten o’clock, but I needed to get to sleep early because I wanted to go into work first thing in the morning to let Steve know that I needed a few days off. I could call, but I wanted to do it in person.

And after that I had some other places I wanted to go.

CHAPTER NINE

I had the dream again. It was the same dream I’d been having for the last few nights, only the dream seemed to get a little further along each time. It started like the other dreams had. I was following Michelle through the darkness. She was at least ten or fifteen feet ahead of me, running toward the shadowy house with a light shining out through the blinds of the front window. She turned around to look at me as she ran, her dark hair whipping around in slow motion. She was smiling. Her eyes seemed to be twinkling. Her expression seemed to say: Catch up to me.

She wanted to show me something in the house across the street.

Like in the previous dreams, I wanted to catch her before she got to the house. I was scared of that house, scared of what was inside of it even though I didn’t know what it was. I tried to call out to her, but my voice didn’t seem to be working. I tried to run faster, but it felt like my leg muscles were jelly, or like some kind of invisible force was holding me back, some gigantic band around my waist I was pulling against.

Michelle was at the gate to the rotting wooden fence that surrounded the back of the property. She pushed up on the simple metal latch—there was no padlock on the gate.

Moments later I was in the back yard, running through the weeds. There was a fog all around, and I could tell something waited in that mist, a creature of some kind, something dangerous. I couldn’t see Michelle anywhere, but I saw that a back door to the home was open, a weak golden light shining out of it, the light blurry in the mist and illuminating the doorway.

I walked to the doorway. I knew the doorway would open up to the back of a storage room at the end of the covered porch. I knew that another doorway inside this room would lead into the house, into what used to be the dining room, with a kitchen just off of it. I knew there would be an archway to the living room to my left, another archway in the living room that led to a short hall, doorways for three bedrooms on that side of the house. I knew all these things even though I’d never been in this house before.

But was that true? Had I never been in there before?

I didn’t want to go inside, but Michelle was in there. I had to get to her; I had to catch her before . . .

Before what?

Suddenly I was inside the storage room. The room had been empty for a long time, but there were still collections of trash and debris at the bottom of the walls all around the room, grime built up over the years. The block walls were painted a gray color and there was writing all over the walls. No, not writing, long strings of numbers.

I snapped awake in bed, sweating and breathing hard. I looked down at my body. The sheets weren’t on me—they were balled up at the end of the bed, half of them hanging down onto the floor. I had a pair of jeans and a T-shirt on, my sneakers on my feet, the laces tied. My heart thundered, my pulse throbbed in my ears. Why was I dressed?

Again, I thought a noise had awakened me. It felt like either someone was still inside my house or had been.

Like last night, I was up and searching the house, the aluminum baseball bat in my hands.

No one in the house.

But my computer in the office was on.

The lights in the kitchen were on.

The front door was unlocked.

I couldn’t pinpoint any particular piece of evidence, but I was sure someone had been in my house. Someone had been going through my papers. I swore I could tell someone had looked through the drawers in the desk. I had stuffed the bank receipts and notecards in there. Someone had seen them. I shouldn’t have been so careless.

Back in the bedroom, I sank down onto the edge of my bed. Why did I keep waking up fully dressed? Why was my computer on and the front door unlocked? Had I been sleepwalking?

It was almost five o’clock in the morning. I needed to leave for work in forty-five minutes. I kicked off my sneakers and tore my clothes off, heading for the shower.

*

The lawn company where I worked was housed in what looked like a warehouse. I’m sure it had been a warehouse at one time. There were a few other businesses at the other end, but our offices, storeroom, and loading bays took up most of the building. This was just one branch the company had, there were other branches throughout the state of Florida.

I parked in my usual spot and walked to the glass door of the building. All the lawn techs were already there and Amy, the office manager. Steve wasn’t there yet. He was usually a little late.

In my office, I checked emails, already delegating some of my service calls to lawn techs and to Steve. I knew he wasn’t going to like it, but I needed some time off. At least a few days. I was sure Steve would understand, but if he didn’t, I would talk to the regional manager if I had to.

“Hey, man,” Stan said, poking his head in the doorway.

“Hey, Stan.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah. I’m going to take a few days off.”

He nodded like he understood.

“I’m going to divide some of these service calls up,” I told Stan. “I need you and the other guys to do your best to get them done. Do whatever you can to solve their problems.”

“Steve will just come behind us and give them a free lawn service, anyway.”

I knew that was true.

Stan came all the way into my office, glancing back like he wanted to make sure no one was coming. “There were two detectives here on Saturday.”

I nodded, indicating that I already knew.

“What happened?” he asked, sitting down in one of the two chairs in front of my desk.

I didn’t really want to talk about it, but this was Stan—my best and probably only true friend at this place. I gave him the brief version.

Stan looked thunderstruck. “She left with some guy?”

“I don’t know if someone took her or if she left with him willingly. I don’t know why she would leave her purse behind.”

I could see the wheels turning inside of Stan’s mind. He was a conspiracy theorist, always looking for dark motives in any situation. He loved to argue about the moon landing and the JFK assassination. The other guys got tired of hearing his theories and joked about them. But it was good-natured bantering; all the guys got along great. I really didn’t mind talking about Michelle’s disappearance with Stan—maybe he would see something that I’d missed, some dark angle that I hadn’t noticed before.

“Hey, if you don’t mind—”

“I’m not going to talk about it with anyone,” Stan said, reading my thoughts before I could get the words out.

“Okay,” I breathed out.

“What are you going to do now?” Stan asked.

“I don’t know. Keep trying to find her. Keep talking to people.” I shrugged. “Something.” I was going to call Dr. Valentine and make an appointment, but I didn’t tell Stan about that. My bi-monthly visits with Dr. Valentine were something I’d kept secret with everyone except Michelle. I was also going to the bank and find out as much as I could about Michelle’s account. But I didn’t tell Stan about that, either.

It seemed like he could tell I was holding some things back.

“Steve’s on a rampage about the stolen spreader and the bags of fertilizer,” Stan said.

“Yeah,” I said, sighing. As if I didn’t have enough problems. The district manager was breathing down Steve’s neck about this and Steve always said shit rolled downhill; he was making everyone’s life miserable until he found out who had stolen the spreader (this wasn’t a cheap spreader you bought at Home Depot, but a five-hundred dollar spreader with inflatable tires), the bags of fertilizer, a few cans of organophosphates, and a few other odds and ends that had turned up missing. I found it hard to believe any of my five lawn techs would risk their job to steal equipment and products. My only suspect would be Ron, but my money was on one of the salesmen.

“Look,” Stan said, getting up from the chair. “You need anything, man, don’t hesitate to ask me. Okay?”

I nodded. “Okay.”

Stan got to the doorway and peeked out, then looked back at me. “Steve’s here. He brought some donuts. Are you going to check us in with chemicals, or is Steve?”

“Steve,” I said.

“Great.”

“Sorry. But I need to talk to Steve real quick, and then I really need to get going.”

“Remember what I said, man. You need anything, just let me know.”

*

It had taken longer to get out of there than I thought it would. Steve held me up for almost thirty minutes, which held the lawn techs up for thirty minutes. Steve talked about the stolen stuff, a few of the worst customer complaints; one of our customers wanted their entire lawn replaced. He talked about a former lawn tech who was suing because he said he’d gotten cancer and nerve damage from the weed killers we used. I hoped it wasn’t true, and it made my skin crawl when I thought about the contact I’d had with chemicals over the years. One perk of being a manager was that I wasn’t around the lawn sprays all day. Steve just wanted to bitch and complain, let me know how much I was inconveniencing him by taking a few days off.

I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to let him guilt me into working today. Or even tomorrow. I didn’t care if I lost my job. Now that Michelle was gone, nothing seemed to matter anymore. Maybe it was weak for me to feel that way, but I couldn’t help it. And with the newfound money in the bank account, maybe I didn’t need this job as badly as I used to. The money (assuming it was legal) emboldened me a little. I wasn’t backing down from Steve. Not this time.

Steve said again that the detectives seemed intense, asking all kinds of questions about my relationship with Michelle, and with others at work. He seemed convinced that they suspected me of something. But when a wife disappeared, the husband was usually the first suspect. I hoped that once the detectives realized that I had nothing to do with Michelle’s disappearance, they would move on and do their job.

It was still a little early when I finally left the office, so I stopped at a McDonald’s and ate some breakfast. I went inside and ate at a corner booth in the back. It wasn’t too crowded inside, but the drive-thru was nonstop. I ate slowly, not really tasting the food, just needing something in my stomach. I waited until it was a little after nine o’clock and then went out to my pickup truck. I hadn’t driven my work truck in today because I didn’t want Steve telling me that I had to leave it there.

I called Dr. Valentine’s office from the truck with the engine running. I turned the A/C on low—the morning was already sticky with the heat.

“Dr. Valentine’s office,” a woman said.

“Hi, this is Zach Hughes. I wanted to see if I could schedule an appointment with Dr. Valentine.”

“And you’ve seen her before?” the receptionist asked, but I could tell she was already looking my name up on her computer.

“Yes.”

“Okay. Is this an emergency?”

Was it?

“Kind of,” I said. “I don’t know. I just need to talk to her about some things.”

The receptionist was quiet for just a moment, but I could hear the rapid clicking of keys on a keyboard. “There’s an opening next Tuesday.”

Next Tuesday seemed so far away. “I think that could work.”

“I’ll have to double-check with Dr. Valentine, but I could put you down for next Tuesday at eleven thirty.”

“Yes, please.”

More clicking of the keys.

“Same insurance?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Same medications?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. It’s set. If there are any changes, I’ll get back to you.”

“Thank you.”

Click.

She hung up.

I put my truck in gear and drove to the bank.

CHAPTER TEN

I felt suddenly queasy as I parked at the bank. It had taken twenty-five minutes to drive up into Daytona Beach, and anxiety had built up inside of me along with each mile I drove. I could feel my armpits sweating, my fingers trembling, a film of perspiration on my upper lip. I felt jittery, a little lightheaded. I felt like I was doing something wrong, that I was about to check on something that wasn’t really mine—something that was never meant to be mine.

“Just relax,” I told myself, trying to calm myself down, trying to use the relaxation techniques Dr. Valentine had taught me. Well, she hadn’t really taught them to me, she’d given me a few pamphlets and a list of websites to look up.

The slow-breathing drills helped a little.

I got out of my truck and went into the bank. There was only one person in front of me in line. I eyed each of the tellers, trying to guess which one would be mine.

“Next, please.”

I walked up to the counter and a young, dark-haired woman smiled back at me with perfect teeth. She had a wedding ring with a diamond the size of an M&M on it.

“How can we help you today?”

My hands were shaking just a little as I produced the bank statements and slid them to her. I also fumbled with my wallet and pulled out my driver’s license, ready to identify myself.

The teller sifted through the receipts like a machine, clicking on her keys with her polished fingernails. She smiled at me. “Account number.”

Here we go.

“Uh, I don’t have it with me. Is there any way you could look it up?” I slid my driver’s license to her. “My wife has the account number,” I said, and then realized that I should just shut the hell up before I accidentally revealed something I shouldn’t.

The teller smiled and checked my license. “Last four digits of your social?”

I gave them to her.

“Okay,” she said, obviously satisfied with whatever window had opened up on her computer screen. “How can we help you today, Mr. Hughes?”

I was stumped for a moment, not sure what to do next. I hadn’t really thought this through. I knew there were some questions I wanted to ask. “Uh, I’d like to take some money out of the account.”

She plucked a deposit slip out of a plastic tray and slid it to me. “Just fill this out.”

My fingers were shaking as I jotted down two thousand dollars. I had intended to clean the account out, but I didn’t want to drain it all at one time. I was fairly sure that taking out sixty thousand dollars in cash would raise some eyebrows. I wasn’t even sure if you were allowed to do that, or if the bank had that kind of cash on hand. Two thousand seemed good for now.

I slid the deposit slip back to her, still bracing myself for some kind of alarm to go off, or for the teller to ask me more questions. I felt like I was trying to escape through a Soviet checkpoint.

The teller entered a few more things into the computer, ran the deposit slip through some kind of machine. A drawer opened. “Any particular way you’d like the money?”

Shaking my head, I said: “No. Anything’s fine.”

She counted out mostly one-hundred-dollar bills and then a few fifties and twenties. She counted them out for me with the speed of a blackjack dealer. “Anything else we can do for you today?”

I smiled. “Sorry. Is there any way I could get the account number?”

The teller turned my transaction receipt over and wrote down the series of numbers.

“Could you tell me when this account was opened?” I asked.

The teller frowned, but turned back to her computer, clicking a few more keys. “You’ve been banking with us for seven years now.”

I nodded. “Sorry.” I felt like I was beginning to push my luck with her. I wanted to ask if I could close the account, but I was afraid I was going to raise a few red flags somehow. I wanted to ask how to change my password online, but I didn’t even know the username. I would check on it again at home. Maybe I could change it from the computer.

“Anything else we can help you with, Mr. Hughes?”

“No, thanks,” I said and left the bank.

*

Before going back home I stopped at an electronics store and bought a digital video camera. We didn’t have one because if we taped anything we usually used our phones. But I didn’t want to use my phone for what I was going to do.

The guy at the store was friendly, helping me select a camera that was easy to use and easy to download onto my computer. I’m sure he was showing me the more expensive brands, but I didn’t really care—I had two grand burning a hole in my pocket.

Next, I stopped at a supermarket and bought a few groceries, mostly frozen stuff so I didn’t have to cook anything, and then I waited in line for what seemed like an hour.

When I turned onto my street, driving down toward my house, I saw a black SUV parked across the street from my house, right in front of the empty house. As I got closer to the SUV, its brake lights flashed for a millisecond, like it was shifting into drive, and then it sped away. I knew the only way out of our subdivision was to turn left at the end of my road, from there it would loop back toward the entrance. For just a moment I thought about following the vehicle.

But I didn’t.

What was that truck doing there?

Had it been a cop staking my place out? It wasn’t the vehicle that the detectives drove—they drove a dark sedan. Could it be another detective? Someone from the FBI?

I was letting my imagination run away with me. I wished I would have had time to take a picture of the license plate with my phone (or my newly-acquired digital video camera if I would have had it charged up and working). But the moment was lost. I remembered a conversation I’d had with Stan. He was defending the idea that there should be more UFO and Bigfoot footage now that everybody carried cell phones with cameras in them. But Stan argued that when most people saw a strange phenomenon, they didn’t have time to pull their phones out. Or even if they did manage to film something, often the footage was either too grainy, blurry, or too dark if taken at night. And at this moment, I agreed with Stan. Maybe if I would have thought about taking my phone out the instant I saw the SUV, I could have started filming, but I’d been too surprised and I hadn’t reacted quickly enough.

I parked my pickup truck next to my wife’s car and turned the engine off. I got out and grabbed the video camera in one bag and a bag of groceries. I left the passenger door open because I needed to make a few more trips to get all the groceries inside. Instead of walking to the front porch, I walked to the edge of my front yard where it met the street. I looked up and down the street, thinking I might spot the SUV coming back down the street.

The street was empty.

I stared at the house across the street for a moment, focusing on the front windows. In my dreams I’d seen a golden light coming from between the blinds of the front windows. I’d never gone across the street to look more closely at the house—this was the closest I’d ever been to it. The lawn in front of the home needed to be mowed. Once every two weeks a lawn service came and mowed the lawn. There was no lock on the large wooden gate that led to the back yard, and the lawn crew rode their lawnmowers into the back. It usually only took them about twenty minutes to do the whole lawn. They didn’t really do a good job. There were a few old newspapers on the carport underneath the awning that was part of the roof. Beyond the carport was a block structure connected to the house. It was the storage area with a back door, and there was a door inside that led into the house. That’s what I’d seen in my dreams.

I shook my head, bringing myself back into the real world. I went inside and set the groceries on the kitchen counter and the smaller bag with the video camera on the kitchen table.

The person in the SUV might have been a real estate agent, or some kind of developer or house flipper, jotting down an address, trying to locate the owner (most likely a bank) so they could buy the house. That’s probably all it was. And good. If someone came and fixed that house up, it would definitely help my property value.

A few minutes later, after bringing all the groceries into the house, I locked the front door and then went throughout the house, checking the sliding glass doors that led out to our back yard, and then checking all the windows. I looked everything over, trying to see if anything had been disturbed. But everything looked the way I had left it at five-thirty this morning.

*

I had wasted the hours away through the afternoon and into the evening. I had checked my account number at the bank with the numbers on the notecards, but none of them matched the account number. Then I successfully changed the password and username on the bank account online, using a text sent to my wife’s phone. At least now I could see if anyone (Michelle) came along and took money out. I scrolled back through the transaction history and saw that Michelle had been depositing money every month or so for the last few years. The years before that there had been no activity. She deposited six thousand here, four thousand there, seven thousand the next time. But never round numbers, always something like: $6,349.89. And there was no way to tell how she had deposited the money, via cash or from a check. I clicked on the deposits, but it would only bring up the amount deposited and the time and date. I’d read somewhere that if you deposited more than nine thousand nine hundred dollars that the bank was obligated to notify the government, including the IRS. I didn’t know if that was true or not, but it seemed like Michelle was keeping the deposits well below the ten thousand mark.

I wondered if there was a way I could find out how the money was being deposited. But I wasn’t quite courageous enough to ask the teller just yet. I was sure that would raise some suspicions.

For the rest of the evening I checked emails and phones, rechecking them again and again for a message from Michelle. I called some people on Michelle’s contact list again, but all I got were voicemails. I didn’t leave any messages this time. Her sister’s number was still disconnected. I tried looking Brenda up online, but I didn’t have any luck. I wondered if Michelle had gone to her sister’s house, but I barely remember Michelle speaking to her, or even much about her. They’d had a huge falling out after their mother’s funeral.

I got the video camera set up and charged up, reading the instructions. I wasn’t the greatest at tech, but it seemed fairly simple to operate.

As I got ready for bed, I set the camera up on the dresser and recorded the bed for a few minutes. Then I watched the footage, making sure I could clearly see the bed with the bathroom light on. I realized that maybe I should have bought a camera that had night vision or something. But I would just sleep with the bathroom and hall lights on—that seemed to be enough light for me to see the bed well enough.

“Testing,” I said into the camera, holding it in front of my face. “My name is Zach Hughes and I’m going to film myself tonight. See what happens.”

I got the camera set again on top of the dresser; I angled it so that it was filming the bed. I felt self-conscious as I lay down in bed with only my underwear and T-shirt on, but I needed to see what I was doing at night, when I was getting up and getting dressed, when I was putting my shoes on.

It took a while to fall asleep. I wasn’t sure how long the battery on the video camera would last. I had asked the guy at the store to find me a camera that had the longest battery life, and this was the one he had shown me. But he said I could keep the charger hooked up to the camera so that the battery wouldn’t wear down.

I had taken my anxiety meds, as I usually did, but I had been skipping the sleep-aids for the last few nights, worried that I was getting some kind of side effects from them, like sleepwalking, or maybe more accurately, sleep dressing.

But, little by little, my eyes closed, and I drifted off to sleep.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I jumped awake at seven o’clock. I sat up in bed and looked down at my legs. I had my jeans on, the same ones I’d worn the day before. I had my sneakers on and the same T-shirt I’d gone to bed in.

Remnants of the dreams were coming back to me as I sat there. It was the same dream I’d been having, chasing Michelle across the street to the empty house, that strange fog everywhere in the back yard, something hidden in that fog. Only this time I was in the house again, inside the storage area. I’d seen the series of numbers scrawled on the walls in different colored markers, and there were other things on the walls: words, sentences, drawings, some kind of graffiti.

I saw the video camera on the dresser. I jumped out of bed and grabbed the camera. The charger was still connected to the camera so the battery wouldn’t wear down. I unhooked everything and brought it with me into the office.

My computer was already on, which had been happening every night for the last few nights, and I was sure some lights in the kitchen and living room were on and that the front door was unlocked.

I was shaking as I plugged in the adapter from the camera to the computer. I had already installed the software last night, so my computer already recognized the camera. I downloaded the video. It took much longer to download than I thought it would, so I went to the kitchen. I needed some coffee.

The house looked normal, but it didn’t feel normal. It seemed like things were just slightly out of place, like things had been moved just a little. I turned off the front porch light and opened the front door. I stepped outside into the thick, humid air. The sun was bright, almost a golden color at this time of the morning. The house across the street stood under that golden light, neglected and abandoned, the windows dark with blinds drawn.

I knew I still had some time before the video was completely downloaded, so I made a quick breakfast, some scrambled eggs and frozen sausages that I microwaved and then fried in a pan. I ate quickly, checking my phone for emails. I’d gotten several emails already this morning from Steve and from Stan. Steve wanted to know what Ms. Bergman’s deal was with her lawn. Of course he was sending Stan back out there to do a completely free lawn service and Stan was complaining about it. The lawn techs worked off of commissions, so any free work they did they didn’t get paid for. But anything to keep a customer happy, even if they refused to water their lawn.

Finally, it was time to sit in front of the computer and watch the video. Finally, I was going to see what I was doing in the middle of the night.

*

Five hours later I sat motionless in my office chair. I had watched the video for four hours, then I rewound it and watched a few parts over and over again. I watched myself on the video after I had finally fallen asleep. I was on my back for twenty minutes, and then I rolled over onto my side. I lay like that for almost an hour, breathing heavily.

There was a quick splash of a light from outside the windows behind the bed, just visible through the crack in the curtains, like someone out there had shined a flashlight around. Then the light was gone. I rewound that moment at least six times, making sure that a light had really been there. Had someone been outside my windows last night, maybe the same someone who had entered my house before?

After the light was gone, I sat up in bed on the video; it wasn’t a sudden, bolt-upright movement, but more like I’d just been gently roused from sleep. My eyes were open, and I looked around for just a moment, maybe it was like I’d heard something, perhaps the noise made by whoever was outside my windows. I got out of bed and walked around the foot of it, walking right past the camera, on my way to the closets and the bathroom. I wasn’t walking like a zombie or someone in a trance, the cartoon caricature of someone sleepwalking with their arms straight out. I looked like I was awake and alert, and it was giving me chills watching myself.

Two minutes later I came back into the view of the camera with my jeans on and my sneakers in my hand. I sat down on the edge of the bed and put my sneakers on, tying up the laces. I never looked at the camera, but my eyes were open the whole time. I sat there on the edge of the bed for a few more seconds, then I got up and walked toward the bedroom door and out of the frame.

I was gone from the bedroom for almost an hour and a half. There was a time code down at the bottom of the footage in a corner. I watched the time tick by. I got a spiral notebook out, opened it up. I wrote down the date, the time I woke up, the time I left the bedroom, and then the time I came back.

When I came back I climbed into bed still fully clothed and with my shoes on. I lay on my back for a few minutes, my eyes closed, breathing deeply. Then I rolled over and went back to sleep. I slept, tossing and turning just a little, until almost seven o’clock this morning when I jumped awake.

I sat back in my office chair, staring at the screen as I watched myself again and again, watching myself get up and get my shoes on, then fast-forwarding to myself coming back into the bedroom and lying down in the bed with my sneakers still on. I rewound the footage again, going back to the beginning, to my stupid face filling up the screen, smiling. “Testing,” I said into the screen. “My name is Zach Hughes, and I’m going to film myself tonight. See what happens.”

Yeah, I’d seen what happens alright.

Where had I gone to for almost an hour and a half? Was I somewhere else inside the house? Obviously I had gone to my office and turned my computer on because it was on again this morning like it had been the last few mornings since Michelle had disappeared. And I had turned some lights on in the kitchen and unlocked the front door. Had I gone outside? Had I gone across the street to the empty house? Had I met with whoever was outside my bedroom windows?

It frightened me to think that I was sleepwalking. This was dangerous. What if I cooked something at night and left something on the burner, started a fire? What if I walked in front of a car? What if I drove somewhere? I decided right then and there that I needed to start keeping track of the mileage on all three of the vehicles.

I’d never walked in my sleep before. Or if I had, I’d never known about it. I wondered for a moment if Michelle had caught me sleepwalking. Had I done something in my sleep that had scared her? Would that be reason enough for her to leave me? It seemed hard for me to imagine that. It seemed like she would want to help me instead of running away.

I had to get up and move around. I usually got up and paced when I felt a panic attack coming on. But this wasn’t a panic attack; this was more like an invisible weight crushing down onto me. It felt like I’d gotten some kind of terrible diagnosis, not something life-threatening, but something life-altering that I would have to learn to cope with. It felt like I had changed and I would never be the same again.

I went outside onto the front porch. I stared at the house across the street for a moment, contemplating walking over there and inspecting it. Instead, I walked over to my vehicles and peeked inside. The doors were all locked and everything looked normal to me. I went around to the side yard where our bedroom windows faced. I looked down at the ground outside the windows, studying it.

What was I looking for? Footprints? Like I would be able to tell tracks in the grass. But I looked anyway, searching for any kind of sign: maybe a cigarette butt, a piece of trash, a slight impression left in the dirt.

But I couldn’t find anything.

I went back inside the house, pacing again, thinking about walking in my sleep.

Dr. Valentine. She could help.

A moment later I was on the phone with Dr. Valentine’s receptionist again.

“I called you yesterday about setting up an appointment for next Tuesday,” I reminded the receptionist after I gave her my name.

“Yes,” she answered. “I haven’t gotten a confirmation from Dr. Valentine yet, but I will call you back as soon as I hear from her.”

“Yeah, but here’s the thing. I might need to see her sooner than that. Remember when you asked me yesterday if this was an emergency?” I didn’t wait for her answer. “Well, I think it might be.”

“If you think you’re having an emergency, then you should call 911, or if you’re able to drive yourself to the hospital, you should check yourself in.”

It sounded like she was reading from some kind of card.

I didn’t want to go to a hospital. I could imagine being admitted to a psychiatric ward against my will for the next seventy-two hours. And wouldn’t that just give the detectives a little more fuel for their fire, another log to throw on the case they were building?

“Okay,” I said, sighing, trying to use the breathing exercises that Dr. Valentine (I mean the pamphlets) had taught me. “Okay. I just really need to see her this coming Tuesday.”

“I can’t make any promises.”

“Is there any way she could call me? Talk to me on the phone? Just for a few minutes?”

“I’m not sure. I will have to check with her. Are you having some kind of issues with your medications? Side effects of some sort?”

I wasn’t sure. “I don’t think so.” I didn’t know if I should tell her that I’d begun sleepwalking. I wasn’t sure if what I said to a receptionist was covered by doctor-patient confidentiality. And was the sleepwalking a side effect of the meds? I wasn’t sure. I needed to talk to Dr. Valentine to find out. I had stopped taking the sleep-aids, but not the anxiety meds. Maybe I should stop those for a few days, too.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?” the receptionist asked. She sounded like the teller at the bank.

“No, thanks. If you could just get with Dr. Valentine. I really need to see her on Tuesday.”

“Of course.”

I hung up the phone. I wondered if I should just go down to the medical center, to Dr. Valentine’s office. Maybe if I showed up, she would find a few minutes to see me. But then I imagined the police being called, the detectives showing up with smirks on their faces, a gleam in their eyes as they hoped I would screw up like that.

No, I just needed to calm down and think for a bit.

I had been sleepwalking for the last few nights, getting up out of bed in the middle of the night and getting dressed, putting my shoes on. I had definitely turned on some lights and my computer, unlocked my front door. But why had I put my shoes on? Had I gone outside? Had I gone to the house across the street? Had I broken in there? Was that why I was dreaming about the house so much?

Okay, I had questions, but now I needed answers.

What could stop me from sleepwalking?

Maybe the sleepwalking was a side effect from the pills. I had stopped taking the sleep-aids, and I would stop taking the anxiety meds. I thought that I wasn’t supposed to stop taking the meds without Dr. Valentine’s approval, but maybe when she called—if she would ever call—I would talk to her about it. But for now, I had decided to stop taking them.

Maybe I should tie myself down to the bed so I wouldn’t go anywhere. Tie a rope from my ankle or wrist to the bed, nothing too restraining, just something to keep me from walking away from the bed.

But then I imagined myself getting up and falling, hurting myself. Or simply untying what I had tied. If I could get my shoes from the closet and tie up the laces, surely I could untie a rope from around my wrist or ankle.

I knew what I had to do—I needed to see where I was going at nights. And for that I needed more cameras.

CHAPTER TWELVE

It was early afternoon when I called Stan. He’d said if there was anything he could do to help, just ask. Stan was good with tech stuff and computers. If anyone knew how to hook some cameras up, it would be him.

I felt funny calling him, but I had nowhere else to turn. Maybe he could point me in the right direction, recommend a company that would install cameras for me. But would a company install the cameras the way I wanted them installed? Better to call Stan first.

Stan didn’t pick up, so I left a message, urging him to call me back as soon as possible.

I cleaned up a little and turned on the TV. What I didn’t do was watch the video again. I didn’t want to watch myself getting up and walking out of the bedroom. I wanted something to distract me from it for a little while, but no matter what I did, my thoughts kept returning to it.

Thirty minutes later Stan called.

“What’s up, man?”

“Stan, hey.”

Stan could tell by the tone of my voice that something was wrong. “Hey, you okay?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess. Remember when you asked if there was anything you could do?”

“Yeah.”

“I need a favor.”

“Shoot.”

I told him what I wanted and thank God he didn’t seem to think the request was too bizarre. I asked if there was any way he could help me hook them up tonight, and of course it was no problem. I just needed to go get the cameras I needed, but he warned me that it might be a bit pricey. I didn’t care. I asked him to send me a text of exactly what I needed so I could ask the people at the electronics store. He told me there was something called a spy store in Port Orange (something I never even knew existed). He said he would send me the address along with the list.

“I know those guys there,” he told me. “So mention my name. You might even get a discount.”

“I will. Thanks, Stan. I’ll pay you for this. Whatever you want.”

“Naw, man. Just some pizza and beer.”

I asked what he wanted on his pizza and I hung up the phone, ready to go get the cameras I needed.

*

Three hours later I was on my way home with the camera equipment, wiring, and some router-type device that hooked up to my computer that Stan told me to get. I stopped at a corner store and got a twelve-pack of Bud Light, then I got two large pizzas—one pepperoni and the other some kind of ultimate supreme—from the pizza shop around the corner from the gas station.

Stan got there half an hour later. After he smoked a cigarette outside, he went right to work hooking up the cameras exactly where I wanted them. He had two tool boxes with him and seemed to be somewhat familiar with what he was doing. He explained that the cameras were remote and would beam to the computer via the router he asked me to buy. He hooked a camera up in the office, one in the living room, one in the kitchen, and one outside on the front porch, but aimed away from the front door and pointing across the street at the vacant house. To his credit, he didn’t question me, but I knew he was curious and eventually he would ask me about it.

While Stan worked, we talked about Jay suing the company for his cancer, discussing his chances of winning. Jay had reached out to each one of us to be a witness for him, but of course none of us could help if we planned on keeping our jobs. Jay had also reached out to people who used to work there.

We also talked about the big theft at work. It was kind of a big deal because the only other time I’d heard of anyone stealing anything in the six years I had worked there was when a new salesman tried to lift a couple of spray cans of insecticide worth about twenty dollars. Steve told him he would have given the cans of insecticide to him if he really needed them, but he couldn’t tolerate someone stealing from him. He fired him on the spot.

After Stan downloaded the software and got the cameras online, we went into the kitchen. Stan sat down and cracked a bottle of beer open while I heated up some plates of pizza in the microwave oven.

“I gotta ask,” Stan said. “What do you need the cameras for?”

I knew it was bugging him. Stan was a conspiracy nut, and I’m sure he had installed similar cameras in his mom’s house. He probably didn’t even find what I was doing that strange, but definitely intriguing. He wanted in on the loop.

“Here’s your pizza,” I told him, setting the plate down in front of him.

I sat down opposite him, wondering how much I should tell him.

He ate half the slice of pizza in a few bites, watching me as he chewed like a horse. He swallowed and then drank down half his beer. He was waiting for me to divulge my reasons.

“I think someone’s been in my house,” I told him.

His eyes widened. “You mean like someone broke in?”

I shrugged. “That’s the weird part. I haven’t seen any signs of a break-in. No busted locks or windows. But . . . I don’t know; you’re going to think this is kind of weird.”

No he wasn’t. He hunched forward, suddenly intrigued, like a kid listening to a bedtime story just when it was getting good.

“It’s just a feeling I get. It’s like I can tell things have been moved around a little. Disturbed. I’m not sure if someone has come in when I’ve been out, or when I’m sleeping.”

“You think someone’s been coming into your house while you’re sleeping?”

I shrugged again. “That’s the thing—I don’t know. I woke up a few times and heard some noises. I went through the house with a baseball bat. But I didn’t find anyone in the house.”

“But you found something,” Stan said. He got up and got another beer out of the refrigerator. He didn’t offer me one because he knew I didn’t drink anymore. He sat back down at the table. He looked like he was already catching a buzz. “Something bad enough to make you want to install cameras.”

I nodded. “A few times there were lights left on in the kitchen. And the front door was unlocked.”

Stan thought it over for a moment, draining down half of his beer. “You think it’s Michelle?”

The thought had crossed my mind, but I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“But why would Michelle come back if she left you?”

“I don’t know. None of her stuff was taken. Not even her phone. And if it’s Michelle, then you would think she would wait until she thought I was at work.”

“But I thought you said Michelle was taken.”

“I don’t know if she was. All I know is that she left with some man and she never took any of her stuff with her. Not even her purse.”

“Maybe whoever took her is looking for something of hers.”

I thought of the money in the bank account, but I had left those bank statements in the desk drawer in the office. And if whoever had her just wanted the money, which wasn’t a terribly large amount of money, they could just make her go to the bank and withdraw it or move the funds into another account on a computer.

“Why don’t you go to the cops?” Stan asked. “Tell them you think someone’s been in your house.”

“Because I don’t think they’d be too worried about it. They think I’m the prime suspect in my wife’s disappearance right now.”

Stan nodded like he understood that.

“I figured I would get something on film first. Then maybe go to them.” I wasn’t so sure all of that was the truth.

Stan stared at me, shaking his head a little. “I can’t help thinking there’s more to this. Something you’re not telling me.”

I sat there for a moment, wondering if I should tell Stan more. I really wanted to unload some of this onto someone else, take some pressure off of myself. Of course Stan might think I was a little nuts, but why the hell not?

“I’ve been sleepwalking,” I said.

Stan’s eyes widened. I’m sure he had been thinking of scenarios, trying to guess what else could be going on, but he hadn’t thought about that. “Sleepwalking?”

“I’ve been waking up the last few nights with my pants and shoes on, even though I went to bed in only my underwear and a T-shirt.”

“So, you got up, got dressed, and don’t remember it?”

“Not just that, I think I might have been going somewhere.”

“Where?”

“Other places in the house. Leaving lights on. My computer on. My front door unlocked.”

“So these cameras aren’t about someone breaking in, they’re about you sleepwalking.”

“Well, yes and no. Definitely for the sleepwalking, but I still think someone might have been inside my house. At least outside my windows.”

He just stared at me.

“I bought a camera and filmed myself last night.”

“You filmed yourself?”

“Yeah. While I was sleeping. Maybe it would be easier if I showed you the film.”

*

Twenty minutes later Stan sat in my office chair staring at the computer screen. It was at the point right before I woke up in the middle of the night, right when the flash of light shined for just a second between the closed curtains of the bedroom windows. He rewound the footage again and again, pausing it, studying it.

I paced, then stopped, watching him. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know. Could be someone out there with a flashlight. Or maybe lightning?”

“I guess. I mean there weren’t any thunderstorms last night, but maybe it was heat lightning.”

He turned and looked at me. “You really don’t remember sitting up in bed, getting up and getting your shoes on?”

I shook my head no.

“You’ve never walked in your sleep before?”

“Not that I know of. If I have, no one’s ever told me before. Not my parents. Not Michelle. I don’t know why I would be starting now.”

“Maybe it’s the stress of . . . you know, what happened to Michelle.”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. I was sure that was part of it, but it felt like something more. “I’ve been seeing a doctor.” I didn’t want to say the word psychiatrist. “She gave me something to help me sleep.”

Stan didn’t say anything; he just waited for me to continue.

“I thought maybe I was having a bad reaction to them. Like a side effect.”

“Yeah, that could be it.”

“But I’ve been taking those for a few years now and I’ve never had these problems before.”

“Maybe it’s a combination of the sleeping pills and the stress.”

That could be possible. “I stopped taking the sleep aids a few nights ago and I’m not taking any of the other medication until this sleepwalking stops. I’ve got an appointment with my doctor, but it isn’t until next Tuesday.”

“Yeah, maybe it’s a good idea to stop all the meds.”

“It’s driving me crazy. I don’t know how to explain it, but it doesn’t feel like I was getting up and wandering around, but like I was getting up and going somewhere specific. Doing something specific. That’s why I wanted to get these cameras in here, to see what I’m doing in the middle of the night.” I paused for just a second. “And to make sure no one else is coming into my home.”

“Well, these cameras will do it. I’ve sent the footage to a remote access point in the cloud so you can download from there to your phone, just in case someone were to tamper with your computer, or take it, or try to destroy it or the cameras. At least you would still have access to the footage.”

“I don’t know how to thank you, Stan. I know you must think I’m crazy.”

“No, not at all.” He stood up, obviously ready to leave, getting his cigarettes out so he could light one on the way to his truck. “Let me know what happens. Will you?”

I promised him that I would.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I made Stan take the rest of the beer with him when he left—I didn’t want to be tempted. I cleaned up a little, putting the leftover pizza in the fridge, wiping down the table. I was trying to stay busy as I thought about tonight. I knew it was going to be hard to get to sleep knowing cameras were going to be running the whole time.

After a long shower and some TV, I lay down in my bed. I kept the video camera on that I had bought the day before, still in the same spot on top of the dresser so it was trained right on the bed. I lay there on my back, dressed only in my underwear and a T-shirt, staring up at the ceiling fan, which was spinning on its lowest setting. I had the A/C turned down to seventy-five degrees, comfortable enough for me to sleep.

And then soon I drifted off, and soon I was dreaming.

*

The dream started off just like the others had. I followed Michelle through the darkness, which I now knew was the street in front of our home. She turned to look back at me, smiling at me, gesturing for me to catch up with her, to follow her.

I called out for her to wait, but she didn’t. She was across the street and beyond the carport, at the wooden gate that opened up to the large back yard.

The gate was shutting, just about to latch, but I caught it before it closed all the way. I pushed the gate open and entered the back yard, standing in the weeds and sand. There was a golden light shining through the fog to my right. I turned and saw an eagle perched on top of the fence about ten feet away. The bird barely moved, but I could tell it was looking right at me. I looked to my left and saw that the back door to the storage area was open, a splash of light shining out from the doorway, washing the weedy lawn in a dim yellow light in the mist. I felt the presence of something else in the fog, something large and dangerous, but even though the thing in the fog frightened me, I needed to find Michelle. I hurried to the back door of the house.

A moment later I was at the doorway, then I was entering the storage unit, staring at the walls; the graffiti was there and the strings of seemingly random numbers. The door to the interior of the house was open.

Time shifted in the dream, and the shadows had thickened now that I was somewhere inside the house. I had something in my hands, my fingers wrapped around something. I looked down and saw Michelle’s terrified face staring up at me, her mouth frozen in a scream, her tongue protruding, her eyes bulging. I had my hands around her neck, my thumbs pressing down against her windpipe as hard as I could. She had been struggling, beating at my arms and face with her hands, trying to pry my fingers away from her flesh. But I held fast, I kept on choking, squeezing.

I jerked awake, sitting up in bed, unable to catch my breath for a moment. It felt like someone was sitting on my chest, squeezing my lungs shut as firmly as I had squeezed Michelle’s windpipe shut in the dream.

“Oh God,” I whispered as I looked around.

I looked at the alarm clock beside the bed with my two bottles of prescription pills and the bottle of water next to it. It was a little after three a.m.

I looked down at my body, not surprised to see that I was fully dressed in pants and sneakers. My breaths were still rapid, my heart still thundering. I could feel a sheen of sweat on my tingly skin.

Something felt wrong, like something bad had just happened.

“I didn’t do that,” I whispered to myself. “That was just a nightmare.”

But it hadn’t felt like a nightmare—it felt like a memory.

A sudden burst of energy surged through me. I got up and rushed across the room to the dresser, yanking the video camera free from the wall charger. I took it with me into the hall and then to the office. My computer was on and the desk lamp on the shelf right above the monitor was turned on.

I sat down and moved the mouse so the screen lit up. There were no windows open, just the home screen. With trembling hands I hooked up the video camera to the computer, downloading the footage. I wanted to check the cameras that Stan had hooked up, but I made myself wait. I told myself that I wanted to watch everything in order from when I first got up and walked in my sleep. But maybe the truth was that I didn’t want to see just yet.

While the footage from the digital camcorder downloaded onto my computer, I got up and went out to the living room. The light was on over the stove and the light was on in the foyer. I did a quick search of the house, but everything seemed to be undisturbed. I checked the front door. It was unlocked. I locked it, not bothering to open the door and look outside. I had some leftover sweet tea in a pitcher on the counter from when Stan was over earlier. I poured myself a plastic cupful and heated it up in the microwave.

A few minutes later I was back in front of my computer screen with the cup of hot tea. The video was done downloading, so I watched it.

I fast-forwarded for a little until I saw myself sit up on the bed, then I stopped and rewound it. I watched myself sit up in bed just like I’d done last night. Only this time I didn’t see any flash of light through the crack in the curtains. I would watch the whole video later to see if there were any lights, but right now I was impatient to see where I had gone after I got out of bed.

Before checking the feed on the other cameras, I fast-forwarded again until I came back onto the screen, then slowed it down, noting the time. Two thirty-three a.m. Not even an hour ago. I came into the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed, then laid down and rolled over, falling back asleep.

I checked the feed on the other cameras. It took a little while to synchronize everything, but I realized where I had gone when I had left the bedroom. I had gone into the hallway, then the kitchen, flipping on a few lights along the way. I went right to the front door, unlocked it, opened it, and went out onto the front porch. I shut the door and left the front porch. I watched from the front porch camera as I walked right across my front yard, crossing the street, then disappearing into the darkness as I walked toward the empty house.

I was over there for almost forty-five minutes. Then I came back across the street, climbed the steps of the front porch, entered the house and went down the hall to the office. I turned on the computer and waited in front of it as it booted up. Moments later I moved the mouse around, clicking it a few times. From the vantage point of the camera I couldn’t see the computer screen. I would have to either try to move the camera or move the monitor so I could see the screen the next time I walked in my sleep—see what I was typing. On the footage, I typed on the keyboard for a minute and a half, then clicked the button on the mouse a few times. I got up and went back to bed.

God, it was so strange to watch myself doing this. I couldn’t remember any of it, yet I looked like I was fully awake while doing all of those things.

I got up and paced around the small office, then out to the hallway.

I’d gone across the street to that house for almost forty-five minutes. Why? What was I doing over there?

The nightmare I’d had flashed through my mind. I saw myself choking Michelle.

That had nothing to do with it, I told myself. It was just a nightmare.

Was it?

But I knew what I had to do now. I needed to go across the street to that house. I knew I should wait until morning to do it, but I couldn’t wait any longer—I had to see.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I went to the kitchen and grabbed a flashlight from the kitchen drawer, turning it on to make sure it worked. I paused for a moment. I hadn’t taken a flashlight with me while sleepwalking. Did that mean there was some kind of light over there? I’d seen a line of light in the front windows in my dream, but I really didn’t think the electricity would be on in that house with no one living there for the last four years.

Should I take a knife or my baseball bat with me? But I’d just been over there an hour ago. If there was something over there that could hurt me, it hadn’t done so before. I decided to leave the bat. It was bad enough I was going across the street to an abandoned house with a flashlight in the middle of the night—I’m sure that was some kind of crime. Taking a weapon with me seemed to make it worse.

Then I froze. I knew the detectives suspected me of doing something to Michelle, or at least bothering them with filing a false police report because my wife had left me. Could they be staked out down the street and watching my home?

But I dismissed that idea right away. If they were watching me, they would have been at the house in seconds, arresting me, using any excuse to bring me in. No, they probably had more important things to do than staking out my home; they were waiting patiently until something else turned up before they wasted their time on me.

I inhaled a deep breath and let it back out. I was ready to go.

Making sure I had my car keys with me (with a house key on it), I opened the front door and stepped outside. I thought about locking the door, but why bother? Apparently I had been leaving the house at least the last three nights that I’d been waking up fully dressed with my shoes on. That’s why I had gotten dressed, so I could go across the street to that house.

I stood there on the front porch for just a moment, looking at the street. I could see a little better in person than I could from the front porch camera earlier; the streetlight a few feet beyond the corner of my driveway nestled next to a scrub of palm bushes helped quite a bit. Insects buzzed in the brush all around the house and the fields across the street. Moths fluttered around the porch light, bumping against the glass gently.

The grass was dry, crunching under my footsteps as I walked to the end of the lawn. I hadn’t been watering the lawn lately, not really caring anymore, and the afternoon thunderstorms hadn’t started just yet. Another few months and those storms would come as reliably as an alarm clock.

When I got to the street, I looked up and down, still scared I would spot a dark sedan parked a block away, two men inside, just the bright red dots of the cigarettes they smoked. Or maybe even the black SUV I’d seen driving away the other day. But there were no vehicles parked along the side of the road for as far as I could see. The sky above was clear with stars everywhere and a nearly full moon, which helped me see well enough even without the flashlight. There was barely a hot breeze.

I walked up to the front of the house, walking through the much drier front yard, the bottom of my sneakers crunching the dried weeds and mixed wild grasses. My footsteps sounded so loud, my breathing, my heartbeat.

The one-story house had a narrow front porch that led off from the carport area. A rotted wooden railing seemed to barely hold back the overgrown hedges that pushed against it. I walked to one of the front windows and stopped in front of it, staring at it. I couldn’t see much because a set of blinds inside was pulled down. I cupped my hands to the sides of my face, trying to peek in between the closed blinds. It was way too dark to see inside. I thought about shining the flashlight at the window, but I knew the glass would just reflect the light right back to me.

I went to the front door and stood in front of it for a moment. For those few seconds I wasn’t sure what to do. I hadn’t thought this out too well. Should I knock? Try the doorhandle?

I did both. I knocked first. Not a pounding, open-up-it’s-the-police knock, but loud enough for someone inside to hear me. I glanced around after knocking, like the sound might echo down the street and alert the neighbors a few blocks away around the bend. I waited for a moment and then knocked again.

There was no answer, no noises from inside the house.

I touched the doorknob, just a plain metal doorknob. I grasped it firmly and then tried gently turning it. There was no give. As soon as I let go of the knob, I realized that I probably should have worn some gloves. But again, why bother? I’d obviously been over here at least once, at least tonight, so maybe my fingerprints and DNA were all over the place already.

The door was locked.

What had I come over here to do?

I walked down the narrow porch area and walked under the carport roof, feeling better once I was hidden in the deeper shadows. There was the storage area at the end of the carport, the area—if what I’d seen in my dreams was correct—had a door that led to the interior of the house.

The dreams.

In the dreams I’d gone into the back yard where the mist was, where something waited in the mist, breathing and snorting, watching me. In the dreams the back door was open, a light from within shining out.

I walked across the concrete drive under the awning that was really part of the house’s roof. I entered the side yard, stepping back out into the milky moonlight, walking toward the wood fence that was built off of the back corner of the house. The gate was about eight feet down, a double gate big enough for a riding lawn mower to drive through.

Just like in the dream there was no padlock on the gate’s clasp. I opened the gate, swinging the one door open. I stepped inside the back yard, hidden by the fence’s night shadow. I closed the gate almost all the way and looked toward the house, expecting to see the fog and the light coming from an open doorway.

But there was no fog and no light coming from the doorway.

Because this isn’t the dream. The dream was only a dream. It wasn’t real.

I was back here now, and I wanted to keep going. Everything inside of me told me to turn around and go back. I’d come over here and looked around. Maybe I could come back in the daylight.

But I needed to keep going. I knew I had come back here for something in particular, and I needed to see what it was or it was going to drive me crazy.

I walked across the back yard, keeping close to the fence. I still hadn’t turned on the flashlight yet, not really needing it in the moonlight. I got to the door at the back of the storage room. The door was closed, not open and waiting for me to enter like in the dream.

Just try the doorknob. If it’s locked, then go home. Just go back home.

The doorknob was unlocked, turning easily in my hand. I pushed the door open and stood there in the dark doorway.

“Hello?” I said, my voice higher than usual and jittery.

I waited for a moment, hoping no one would answer. I stood there for a moment longer, trying to think of an excuse of why I was there if someone showed up. I fumbled through my mind with something like I’d seen a light and thought someone was trying to break into this house.

After another deep breath I turned on my flashlight and shined it into the storage room. I stepped closer to the doorway as I swept the light around. The room was about the size of my office, maybe a little bigger. It was empty.

(just like my dream)

It smelled faintly of old oil and decay. There were trash and papers all over the place, some kind of grime built up along the base of the walls. A collection of something was nestled in the far corner, perhaps some kind of animal’s nest. Cobwebs hung from the corners of the ceilings.

I stepped inside and shined the flashlight along the walls, looking for the graffiti and the series of numbers I’d seen in my dream. But there was nothing written on the gray walls.

Letting out a sigh of relief—a breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding—I smiled. There was no writing on the walls, no numbers. That had just been the dream, and the dream wasn’t true. I hadn’t followed Michelle over here. I hadn’t choked her. None of that was real.

Feeling a little better, I thought about turning around and going back home. But something still tugged at me. I knew I needed to see the inside of the home. In tonight’s dream I’d gone inside the house for the first time. I needed to prove to myself that the images I’d seen were just nightmares.

I tested the knob on the door that led inside, hoping that it was going to be locked, but knowing it wasn’t. It turned easily. I opened the door, the creaking hinges so loud in the silence. I shined the light in through the doorway, guiding my way inside. I heard something skittering around, but not big enough to be rats, maybe cockroaches. I shined the light down at the cracked linoleum underneath my sneakers, hoping I wouldn’t see a sea of cockroaches all around my feet.

If there were bugs, they had scattered away from the light.

The smell inside was musty with just the hint of wood rot and decay, but not overpowering. I was in the kitchen. I shined the light along a countertop, cabinets, and spaces where appliances used to be. There were blinds over the windows that looked out onto the back yard; the blinds were the only thing in the house that looked newer and somewhat clean. There was no furniture in the kitchen, nothing left behind. Some of the cabinet doors were open, revealing bare shelves.

I panned the flashlight beam from the cabinets to the wall with an archway that led to a dining area, and then I froze.

On the wall was graffiti, the same stuff I’d seen in my dreams: vulgar phrases, swastikas, crude drawings, racist slurs. But the thing that disturbed me the most were the series of numbers written neatly in black marker, the numbers big enough for me to see them from where I stood.

Just like the dream.

I had to keep going. I knew there were going to be more numbers in the dining room and the living room. I had to see.

A moment later I was in the archway, and then in the dining area. I panned the flashlight into the living room, toward the windows and the front door that led out to the front porch and front yard.

I froze again, my hand trembling as I shined a light on a woman hanging by a noose from the ceiling.

It was Michelle.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Michelle. I saw her long brown hair tumbling down the back of her beige coat, her arms hanging down loosely at her sides. Her blue jeans were tucked down into a pair of black leather boots, the same boots where I’d found the bank statements and notecards stuffed inside.

Tears stung my eyes as I shined the light on Michelle, panning up to a rope that was tied around an exposed rafter where the ceiling had been torn away.

I wanted to call out to her. Images of my hands around her neck came back to me, her eyes bulging as I choked the life out of her. But the dreams weren’t quite correct, it hadn’t been my hands but a rope that had crushed her windpipe and killed her.

“Oh God, no,” I whispered.

And then I was running to her, my arms out like I was going to catch her, like I could do something to save her now.

As I ran, in those few seconds, I knew there was something wrong about all of this. Something wrong about Michelle’s clothes, about the tilt of her head, about the heels of her boots on the concrete floor. She wasn’t hanging there, she was standing there.

I bumped into her when I got to her back and heard a hollow thump, felt the hardness beneath her clothes, the lightness of her body, almost like she was a hard husk now, a shell of what she once was.

“Michelle,” I whispered, tears already blurring my eyes as I circled around to the front of her.

It wasn’t Michelle. It was the face of a mannequin.

I stepped back as a wave of disbelief washed over me, other emotions competing: relief, incomprehension, and fear—the fear was still there. I thought I felt something touch my leg, and I whirled around toward the front window of the living room right behind me, shining my flashlight down at the darkness, at whatever had just brushed by my leg, but I didn’t see anything.

I turned and shined my flashlight beam back at the mannequin, breathing hard as I studied it, my wife’s clothes on it like a giant doll. The blank eyes of the mannequin stared back at me, the arms down by the sides.

Why was this here? Why was it dressed in Michelle’s clothes?

Had I done this?

I stood there for another moment, wondering about the clothes, specifically the pair of boots. Those boots were in my house a few days ago because I’d found the bank deposit statements and notecards stuffed down in one of them. How did the boots get here in this house? Had I brought them here on one of my sleepwalking trips? Had I taken the boots and clothes across the street in the middle of the night and dressed this mannequin as my wife? Had I then taken a rope and mimicked hanging her?

That sense of disbelief washed over me, and for just a second I was afraid of fainting here in this house, passing out on the floor with the rat droppings and dead bugs.

I needed to get out.

I hurried back through the house, into the kitchen, then the storage area, closing the door behind me, but not locking it, leaving everything just as I had found it.

When I was outside in the back yard, it felt like I could breathe again. I wanted to bask in the moonlight and breathe in the humid air, feel the warm breeze on my sweaty skin, but I ran to the gate and peeked out at the street before emerging into the side lawn. Everything seemed clear; I didn’t hear any strange noises. I crept out through the gap in the gate and then closed it.

I darted across the street, looking up and down the street as I hurried back to my house. I still didn’t see any cars or trucks parked anywhere, I didn’t see any headlights flashing on or police lights exploding in the night.

A moment later I was back inside my house, inside the foyer, closing and locking my front door. I kept the front porch light on so I would be able to see the front porch from the camera out there that Stan had installed.

I hurried into my bedroom, then to my wife’s closet, flipping on the light. I stared down at the line of shoes and boots. I knew right away that the pair of boots was gone. I was sure that a pair of jeans and her beige coat would be missing, too. When had I taken the clothing across the street? And where had I gotten the mannequin from? The wig? The rope for the noose?

Feeling queasy, I had to leave the bedroom.

I went into the kitchen and looked at the clock over the stove. It was getting close to dawn, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep. This was getting serious. I needed help. I needed to talk to Dr. Valentine.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I didn’t go back to sleep. I didn’t even go lie back down in bed. I took a long shower just before dawn and shaved. I dressed in a nice shirt and jeans. I wanted to look presentable—I didn’t want to look like a crazy man when I burst into Dr. Valentine’s office, demanding to see her.

But it was still too early to go. I made coffee and tried to eat a little something, some kind of frozen breakfast sandwich I’d heated up in the microwave, but my stomach practically heaved after a few bites, and I was sure I was going to throw it back up again.

I still had some time before I needed to leave. As usual, I checked for any texts on the phone, voicemails, or emails from Michelle—but there was nothing. Next, I called Stan, hoping to catch him as he was leaving the shop for his first stop of the day.

“Hey, Zach,” Stan said.

“Stan, is there any way you could come by after work?”

He was quiet for just a second. “You got something on film?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“It would be easier if I showed you.”

“Come on, man. What is it?”

“I just need you to come by.” I hesitated for a moment. “I’ll tell you everything when you get here.”

“Okay,” Stan said. “I’ll try to get done as quick as I can.”

“Alright.”

“I’ll call you when I’m about ready to get out of here.”

“Okay. Hey, Stan. Thanks.”

“No problem, man.” He paused for a moment. “You okay?”

“I don’t know.”

Stan didn’t bother asking again if everything was okay. I thought about telling him not to cut corners on his lawns so he could get off early, but at this point I didn’t really care about the lawns anymore, or anything about work.

After hanging up, I paced around the house with my cordless phone in my hand. I had the TV on in the living room, some twenty-four-hour news station. They were talking about a possible terrorist attack from last night in Milwaukee, Wisconsin—a man had driven a van into a crowd of people on a city street. And only a week ago there had been another school shooting. These terrible acts seemed to be commonplace now. I thought about changing the channel, but I didn’t.

I wanted to make another phone call. I was worried that the two detectives were going to come by for another round of harassment, and I didn’t want them to see the cameras that Stan had installed inside my house. I’m sure they wouldn’t be too suspicious about the camera mounted near the ceiling on my front porch, but if they came inside and saw the cameras in the different rooms, I’m sure it would pique their interest. And if I declined to allow them inside, I’m sure that would only rile them up enough to try to get some kind of search warrant.

My brilliant idea was to call Detective Hartwell before they came out to my house. I didn’t want to call him, but I felt like I needed to.

I had the detective’s business card in my hand a moment later and I dialed his number. I expected to hear a message on his voicemail, but he answered on the second ring. “Detective Hartwell speaking.”

“Hi, detective. It’s Zach Hughes.” I thought of reminding him who I was: You know, the guy with the missing wife.

“Mr. Hughes,” Detective Hartwell said; he seemed insistent on calling me Mr. Hughes.

“I was just wondering if you’d gotten anything yet.”

“Gotten anything yet?” he said like he was purposely mimicking me.

“Yeah. Any kind of news about my wife.”

“No, nothing yet,” he said. His words were clipped. I imagined him gripping his cell phone tightly and staring into it, or motioning with his eyes at his partner to start recording this phone call.

“It’s been four days now,” I said, trying to sound angry, trying to sound like I was supposed to. But I felt like an imposter, and I swore Detective Hartwell could tell that I was putting on an act.

I realized now that this was a bad idea.

“We’re still investigating,” Detective Hartwell said. “We’ll let you know if we find anything. You can believe that.”

“Okay,” I said, not sure what else to say. I didn’t want to slip up and reveal too much. “I just wanted to touch base with you.”

“Good to know. Base has been touched.”

We hung up, and I wondered if my phone call had just alerted some kind of suspicion in Detective Hartwell. But I figured if I didn’t call them and bug them, then that might be even more suspicious. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I couldn’t worry about it now. I had made the phone call, and it was done.

Right now I was going to Dr. Valentine’s office, and I wasn’t going to leave until she saw me, even if it was for only a few minutes.

*

I knew something was wrong when I pulled up in front of Dr. Valentine’s office. Her office was in a medical center across the street from the hospital, a maze of plazas with clay-tiled roofs, stucco exterior walls, and tropical landscaping. Her office was near the end of one of the lines of offices, in between a dermatologist and a foot doctor.

But her office wasn’t there anymore.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I sat there in my truck for a moment, the motor still running. I stared at the dark windows and the glass door that led inside. All the lettering that had been on the windows and door—Dr. Valentine’s name, phone number, hours of operation—was gone, not a trace of it left behind.

“What the hell?” I whispered as I sat there.

Was I in the wrong place? I didn’t think so. I’d been coming to see Dr. Valentine for almost two years now, once every few months. I knew this was where her office was.

I put my truck in reverse and drove around the other offices, driving from parking lot to parking lot, searching for her office. Maybe I had misremembered where it was; I’d been under a lot of stress lately. But after several trips around the lines of offices, I was sure that she was gone.

“She moved,” I told myself as I parked back in front of the empty office again. I left the engine running for a moment, the air-conditioning blasting. My skin was suddenly hot and clammy; I could feel the armpits of my shirt getting wet already. I struggled to take a full breath in, and that sense of pressure on my chest was back. I was bordering on a panic attack.

I breathed in deeply, then let it out slowly. I had to do that a few times to get myself calmed down enough to function.

“She moved,” I whispered. “She moved her office. That’s all.”

I thought of the phone calls I’d made to her office in the last few days, scheduling an appointment with the receptionist—she hadn’t bothered to tell me that they had moved.

With shaking hands I got my cell phone and dialed Dr. Valentine’s phone number. I lifted it up to my ear and immediately heard the tone right before a recorded message told me that the phone number I had just dialed was no longer in service.

It felt like my world was tilting just slightly, like everything was about to slide to one side. I even put a hand out on the arm rest of my driver’s door like I was trying to steady myself. I dialed the number again and got the same message telling me that the number had been disconnected. I checked the number in my contact list.

“This can’t be right,” I said, shaking my head.

I checked for Dr. Valentine on the internet, looking to see if she had a website, looking to see if there was some kind of announcement that she had moved. But I got nothing except a Dr. Valentine in Miami and a Dr. Valentine in Jacksonville, neither one a psychiatrist and both were men.

Someone around here would know where she had gone to.

I got out of my truck and went into the dermatologist’s office. I felt the pressure pushing on my chest again, but I inhaled a breath and let it out slowly. There were three people waiting in the lobby, a couple and a woman by herself, all of them elderly. A TV was on in the corner, more dismal news, round-the-clock coverage of the possible terrorist attack in Milwaukee. But the patients waiting their turn to see the doctor didn’t seem too concerned with the TV, all of them browsing magazines.

A receptionist sat behind a glass window with a large space underneath where clipboards with forms could be passed back and forth. I walked up to the window.

“Can I help you?” the receptionist asked. She was young and smiling.

“Uh, actually, I was here to see Dr. Valentine next door.”

She frowned, like she had no idea what I was talking about.

“Yeah, I used to see Dr. Valentine,” I said. “But I guess her office moved.” I felt like I was bumbling my words. My face felt hot and I could feel more lines of sweat breaking out on my upper lip.

“I’m not familiar with a Dr. Valentine,” the receptionist said.

“Is there anyone else here who might know where she moved to?”

The receptionist’s expression of confusion was turning to concern, and I could see the beginning of fear in her eyes that she was dealing with a disturbed individual. “Uh, I could ask, but I don’t think so. I think the place next door has been empty for a while.”

I felt a stab of panic, but I did my best to push it down. “I was here, like, a month or two ago.” I realized how that sounded—not really a short time ago.

“Have you tried to call them?”

“Yes. I actually talked to the receptionist and set an appointment for this coming Tuesday, but she never told me they’d moved.”

I could see the question on her face: If your appointment is for Tuesday, then why are you here now?

This was about to spiral out of control. I could feel the people in the lobby staring at me.

“It’s okay,” I said, smiling. “Sorry. I just thought you might have known where she moved to.”

The receptionist smiled with relief now that she could tell I was going to be leaving.

I left. I didn’t need her calling the police. And I sure as hell didn’t need the dynamic detective duo showing up. There would be a lot of questions about who I was coming to see and why.

I stopped at the window to Dr. Valentine’s office. I cupped my hands beside my face and tried to peek in through the tinted window, but there were only closed blinds on the inside. I searched the glass for evidence of her name and phone number on the window, but there was nothing—it had been wiped clean. Same with the door. For one crazy moment, I thought about testing the door, pulling on it to make sure it was locked.

A moment later I entered the office next door, the one on the corner, the podiatrist. It was set up similar to the dermatologist’s office, but the window didn’t have glass in it and the lobby was a lot bigger. There was a TV on with the volume turned down low and subtitles crawling across the bottom, CNN or FOX or some local news channel. There were chairs, and small wood tables, and magazines. Carpet and fake plants.

I tried again with the receptionist, this one an older woman who didn’t look afraid of me when I asked about Dr. Valentine next door—she looked annoyed that I was wasting her time. She had nothing for me, either. She couldn’t remember who had been next door, but she knew nobody had been there for a while.

Thinking of the police being called if I pressed too hard, I backed off, thanking her before leaving the office.

I stepped outside, feeling that surreal sensation wash over me again, like I was trapped in a dream, like I was still sleeping and none of this was real.

But it was real.

How long had Dr. Valentine been gone? At least three weeks both receptionists seemed to think.

Three weeks. The same amount of time Kendra said Michelle had quit working at the nursing home. Could it be a coincidence? I didn’t think so.

I wasn’t ready to leave. I wanted to do something, but I wasn’t sure what to do. This wasn’t right. I decided to go around the corner to the back of the offices. Maybe I would find something back there. I didn’t know what, but maybe something.

There was a wide alleyway between the two buildings, nearly big enough to drive a car down. I walked close to the building and when I turned the corner, I froze. A man dressed in a pair of light-blue scrubs was leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette. He looked nearly as surprised to see me as I did to see him.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Just taking a quick smoke break,” he said, smiling. He was young, maybe early twenties with short black hair and an olive complexion to his skin. He took a drag and exhaled, keeping his cigarette down low beside him like the smoke might bother me.

“I was just looking for something,” I said as I walked past, trying to return his smile, trying to act like it was normal for me to be snooping back here.

The guy didn’t really seem to care.

There were a few cars parked back here near the fence—employees’ vehicles. There was a large trash dumpster about halfway down. I checked the trash dumpster, opening up the heavy plastic lid and looking inside. I don’t know what I was expecting to find, maybe some kind of evidence that Dr. Valentine’s office had been here. But if she had moved three weeks ago, the trash would have been picked up quite a few times since she had left.

I turned and started walking back to the corner again.

The nurse was still smoking his cigarette, watching me as I approached.

What the hell—I might as well ask if he knew anything.

“I came here to see Dr. Valentine,” I said. I gestured at the metal back door to her offices. “I guess she moved, but she never told me. I had an appointment today. I tried the phone number, but it’s disconnected.”

The nurse shrugged and took another drag from his cigarette. “I remember her office. Yeah, she was just gone one day. The windows scraped clean.”

“You wouldn’t have any idea where she moved to, would you?”

“No. Not at all.”

“You think anyone else around here might know where she moved her office to? The doctor you work for?”

“I could ask, but I don’t think she was really close to anyone around here. In fact, if I’m remembering correctly, she wasn’t here that much.”

“What do you mean, she wasn’t here?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Her offices were closed a lot. She didn’t seem to have that many patients. I figured she closed her doors because she didn’t have enough business.”

“I came to see her once every six weeks or so,” I said. I tried to remember if there were other people in the waiting room when I had come, but I couldn’t remember. I figured she scheduled her patients one at a time for reasons of discretion. “I’ve been coming to see her for two years now.”

“Yeah,” he said. “She was here for a while. I’ve only been working here for a year. But I never really saw anyone over there. Maybe a few people.”

That couldn’t be right, but I didn’t want to argue with him. I nodded at him as I walked past him back to the corner. “Thanks,” I told him.

He nodded back. “No problem. I wish I could help you more.”

I was back around the corner and then back in my truck a few moments later. It still felt like I was working my way through the thick air of a dream, everything slowing me down and dragging. I turned the key and started my truck. I drove away. I tried Dr. Valentine’s number two more times on the way back home, but all I got was the recording saying the phone number had been disconnected.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Stan came over around six o’clock. He was dressed in a Megadeth T-shirt, a pair of tan shorts, and sandals. He had a six-pack of beer with him and he was finishing up his cigarette as he walked up to my front door.

“So,” he said, “what’s going on?”

We were in the kitchen a moment later. I was drinking a cup of coffee and he cracked open one of his beers. I knew he was waiting for me to explain. It felt strangely like a repeat of the previous night.

“I woke up about four o’clock this morning,” I told him. “I was dressed in my pants and shoes again. I checked the footage on the cameras. I’d gotten up and gotten dressed, just like the footage you’d seen before. Then I left my bedroom. But now I could see where I had gone in the middle of the night.”

“Where?”

“Across the street.”

“You went across the street?”

I nodded. “From the front porch camera, I watched myself walk outside, then across the street to the house.”

“What did you do over there?”

I shrugged. “I don’t remember. But I know I was over there for about forty-five minutes.”

Stan looked at me for just a second, a smile forming. “You went over to that house and checked it out, didn’t you?”

Again, I nodded. “Yeah. I didn’t really know what I was looking for. I just wanted to see why I was over there. I brought a flashlight with me, but I didn’t use it because I could see well enough with the moonlight. I went to the front door and checked to see if it was locked. It was. Then I went around to the side yard, to the gate that led to the back.” I didn’t bother telling Stan about the dream I’d had, the one where I had been choking Michelle to death. “I went into the back yard and checked a back door, the one that led to the storage area just off of the house. It was unlocked.”

“And you went inside.”

“Yeah.”

“Well? What did you see in there?”

“There’s all this graffiti in there. The usual kind of stuff. But there were also these long series of numbers written on the walls.”

“Series of numbers? What kind of numbers?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you take a picture of them? Video?”

I shook my head no. “I didn’t take my phone with me. Just the flashlight.” I paused for just a second. “But there was something else inside that house.”

“What?”

“It’s weird. There was this . . . this mannequin, dressed in a wig and women’s clothes. Michelle’s clothes.”

Stan looked shocked, sitting up a little straighter. “Michelle’s clothes? How do you know?”

“Well, I can’t be positive about the coat and jeans, but the boots were definitely hers.”

Stan held off on his questions for a moment.

“But the strangest thing was that there was a rope tied around the mannequin’s neck. Like a noose. It was connected to the rafters in the ceiling.”

We were quiet for a moment. I wasn’t sure what Stan was thinking. I thought he might come up with some kind of excuse to leave. We’d been friends for years now, and I hoped he knew that I wasn’t some kind of psycho, but things were getting pretty strange pretty quickly.

“We need to go over there,” Stan said, standing up and then draining the rest of his bottle of beer down in a few swallows.

“I don’t know if that’s the best idea.”

“Why not? You were already over there before. Probably a few times now.”

“It’s still daylight out.”

Stan nodded. “Okay. We’ll wait until it gets dark and go over there.”

*

When it was almost dark, we went across the street to the abandoned house. Stan took the video camera I had bought with him and I took my flashlight. We left my house as the sun was setting behind the woods across the street. The world was already darkening with the night, the streetlamps on, mosquitos out and on the hunt. The air was thick and heavy with the day’s heat, the night barely cooling the air down. We hurried across the street, and once again I checked up and down the street, looking to see if there was a police sedan staking out my house.

But there were no cars.

Like last night, I entered the back yard through the gate. Stan was right behind me. He closed the gate, and we hurried over to the back door of the storage area. I went inside and Stan followed me in, turning the camera on.

“There’s nothing in here,” I told him, already walking to the door that led inside.

Stan stepped into the kitchen and filmed the walls, panning back and forth. “Whoa,” he whispered.

There was still the last bit of twilight to see by, but it was much darker in the house than it was outside. I turned on my flashlight, but kept my hand cupped over the front of it to cut down the light a little.

We went into the living room next.

The mannequin was still there. For a moment I thought it might be gone. For a moment I thought I might have imagined it. I hoped I had. But there it was, standing in the same spot with the rope tied around its neck, the other end tied around the exposed rafters.

“Holy shit,” Stan said in a low voice as he circled the mannequin, shooting film.

There were more series of numbers and graffiti on the living room walls, and Stan filmed all of that, panning slowly.

“What do you think all these numbers mean?” Stan asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, but that was a lie because I was beginning to form a vague idea of what they could be.

I was getting nervous, wanting to leave, but Stan wanted to check out the bedrooms and the bathroom. There was nothing back there, no more numbers and only a little of the graffiti and some garbage and crushed beer cans and fast food bags. The place smelled faintly of urine, and I wasn’t sure if it was from the rodents or the kids who had partied here at some time in the past.

Finally, Stan was ready to go.

It was full dark when we got back outside. We hurried across the street back to my house. Back inside, I felt a little better.

After Stan downloaded the footage he’d just filmed onto my computer, he gave the video camera back to me. I went back to my bedroom and set it back in its spot on the dresser, plugging it back into the charger and turning it on, making sure that it faced my bed. I was definitely going to film myself again tonight.

When I went back into the kitchen, Stan was on his second beer, half of it gone already. I heated my cup of coffee back up in the microwave.

“You think you did that?” Stan asked. “Dressed a mannequin up like your wife?”

“I don’t know.”

“You said those were Michelle’s clothes. What makes you so sure of that? I mean, it looks like kids had some parties in that house. Maybe they took a mannequin in there, dressed it in women’s clothes. Hung a noose around its neck. Some kind of joke or sick ritual or something.”

I just shrugged, not really believing that some kids had brought a mannequin with them while sneaking beers and pot into an abandoned house.

“But you’re sure those are your wife’s clothes?” Stan asked.

“Like I said, I’m not positive about the coat and jeans. I mean, I remember a coat like that, but I can’t be sure. But I am sure about the boots.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I saw those same boots in her closet a few days ago. And now they’re over there in that house. On that mannequin.”

He just stared at me.

I knew I needed to explain. “A few days ago I was looking through Michelle’s stuff. Trying to find some kind of clue why she left. I found something stuffed down in one of her boots. Those pair of boots over there.”

“You found something?” he asked. “What?”

I hesitated.

“Zach,” he said and stood up, walking away and then back again. “I’m trying to help you and you’re holding shit back from me. What else are you still hiding?”

“I know. It’s just that . . . this is getting crazier and crazier.”

“You have to tell me everything,” Stan said. “If you want me to help you, then you need to tell me everything. I’m not going to tell anyone else. You can trust me. You know that.”

I nodded, sighing. “Look, I don’t want you to think I did anything to Michelle, because I didn’t. I loved her. I know I never would have hurt her.”

“I believe you.”

But did he? I wasn’t so sure. I wondered if Stan was more intrigued by this mystery than scared of me at that moment. And did I even believe myself? In the last few days I had just found out that I’d been sleepwalking for the last few nights, going across the street and possibly dressing a mannequin in my wife’s clothes and tying a noose around its neck.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll tell you everything.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I told Stan everything. I started from the beginning. I started with Michelle leaving the restaurant and the elderly woman who claimed to have seen Michelle leave with a man who looked a lot like me. I also told Stan that the elderly woman’s husband said she had some kind of dementia. I told him about talking to the cops, and then to the two detectives the next morning. I told him about waking up and thinking someone was in the house, and how I was sure that things in my house had been moved around. I told him about Kendra at the nursing home where Michelle had worked, and how Kendra had told me that Michelle had quit three weeks ago.

“Three weeks ago?” Stan said.

“Yeah. I was shocked. It means that for the last three weeks before she left me in that restaurant she had been pretending to go to work. And the detectives talked to Kendra. Needless to say, they also found that a little suspicious. But the worst part is that Kendra said Michelle was scared of me.”

“Scared of you? Why?”

“I don’t know. She wouldn’t say. We never fought. The day we went to the restaurant, we were getting along great. But obviously something was wrong. The only thing I can figure out is that she’d caught me sleepwalking. Or I had done something while sleepwalking. Something so bad she didn’t want to tell me about it.”

“Maybe,” Stan said.

“But it doesn’t seem like Michelle. I mean, if there was something wrong, she would have told me. She would have told me that I’d been sleepwalking, or that I had scared her. I don’t think she would have pretended the whole time. If she was really scared of me, really that scared, then she would have left me in the middle of the night, or the next day while I was at work. She had plenty of time to pack up and leave.”

Stan nodded. “You said you found something.”

“Yeah. After I talked to Kendra and then the detectives, I looked around through Michelle’s stuff again. I don’t know how to describe it, but it felt like I was missing something, some clue. It kept nagging at me. I looked through her clothes in the closet and her drawers again, going through all the pockets. And then I found something stuffed down in one of her boots.”

“What?”

“It’s in the office.”

Stan followed me to the office. I opened the drawer and pulled out the bank deposit receipts and the notecards.

He took the rubber band off of the stack of papers and sat down in my office chair, looking at the papers under the glow of my desk lamp on the shelf above my computer monitor. He didn’t say anything as he studied the notecards and bank statements carefully. Then he looked at me and let out a whistle. “That’s a lot of money you guys saved up.”

“Those deposits are to a different bank, not where I put my checks from work. It’s a joint account, and I don’t remember ever opening it.”

He cocked his head a little. “You mean you never knew about this money?”

“No.”

“You never deposited any of this money?”

“No. Michelle must have been depositing the money over the last few years.”

“Her checks from work?”

“No. Those went into our checking account.”

“What’s this money from?”

“That’s the thing. I don’t know.”

Stan thought about it for a few seconds. “That’s a lot of money. Could she have had a side business or something? Something you didn’t know about?”

“I don’t know. I don’t see how.”

“Maybe she was getting money from her family or something.”

“Her parents are dead, and she’s not close to anyone in her family that I know of. Not even her sister. They didn’t get along. Her number is disconnected and I can’t find her anywhere online.”

“A rich uncle?”

“I don’t know. What about those numbers? You know what those could be?”

“Account numbers?”

“If they are, they don’t match that bank account.” I thought for just a second. “You think they could be account numbers to other bank accounts?”

Stan shook his head. “I don’t know. Man, that would be crazy if there are other bank accounts with this kind of money in them.”

“What else could those numbers be?” I asked.

“Passwords? I don’t know. They’re too long to be dates, unless it’s two dates put together.” He counted one of the series of numbers then shook his head. “No, too short for two dates put together.”

“Maybe these numbers on these cards are the same numbers written on the walls in that house across the street,” I said.

Stan’s eyes lit up. He turned to my computer and pulled up the footage he had just downloaded, playing it back.

I got right behind him as he watched the footage. He had zoomed in on some numbers when he’d been filming. He paused the footage and checked the numbers on the notecards.

“Do they match?” I asked.

“Yeah, these do.”

He started the film again, watching as it panned to the next series of numbers. He hit pause again and checked the notecards.

“What about those numbers?”

He shook his head. “I can’t find them. But some of these numbers match these notecards, and some don’t.”

He let the video keep playing, checking more of the numbers, writing down the ones that matched on the spiral notebook I had given to him. When he was done, he studied the numbers for a few minutes.

“Anything?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Like I said, they could be passwords, or some kind of code. But look at this one.” He pointed to one of the lines of numbers. “See anything familiar about this one?”

I stared at the line of ten numbers he was pointing at.

“I think part of it’s a date,” Stan said. “See these last two numbers end in this year. And the four numbers before it: Zero, four, one, one.” He looked at me. “April eleventh.”

“That’s just a few days away.” I looked back down at the numbers. “What about the four numbers in front of that?”

He shook his head just a little. “One, six, three, zero.” He shrugged. “A time?”

“A time?”

“Yeah, maybe military time. Sixteen thirty would be four thirty in the afternoon.”

“Four thirty on April eleventh. What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know,” Stan said. “Let’s check the footage from inside your house.” He looked up from the numbers on the notecards. He pulled up the footage on my computer from the cameras he had installed in my house, watching it for a few minutes.

“What is it?” I asked. I could tell that he’d just noticed something.

“Look at this. When you came back from the house across the street, you came in here and turned your computer on, typing something on here before you went back to bed.”

I nodded. “But we can’t see the computer screen from this camera. Maybe I should either turn the computer monitor towards the camera tonight or maybe change the camera’s angle, if we can.”

He didn’t answer. He watched the footage of me sitting at the desk, clicking away at the keys. I was only there for a few minutes. Then I clicked a few times on the mouse and got up, walking toward the door to leave the office.

“You weren’t sleepwalking very long,” Stan said. “You got up. You went across the street to that house. You didn’t bring anything with you, none of your wife’s clothes or a rope for a noose. You were only there for about forty-five minutes. You came back to your house and went here into your office. You used your mouse, then typed something. Then you used your mouse again. And then you went back to bed.”

Yes, I was aware of all of those things.

“You did something on the computer,” Stan said, like he was talking to himself now. He clicked out of the video footage and pulled up the main computer screen with the icons on it. He started opening programs, looking through Word files.

“There isn’t a lot on here,” Stan muttered as he searched.

“I don’t use the computer a lot.”

He opened up the internet and went to the bookmarked pages, opening my Facebook page. “You don’t have any of your stuff password protected.”

“I let the computer save my passwords for me.”

“That’s not really a good idea.”

“Well, it’s just me and Michelle here, so I didn’t really think it was anything to worry about.”

“Hackers.”

“I don’t go on Facebook much,” I told him defensively.

He didn’t answer, scrolling through my timeline.

I watched over his shoulder, looking at posts from me over the last few months, a lot of it was just stuff I had shared from other friends. He went to my list of friends and opened up Michelle’s page. It was similar to mine, a few cat pictures and videos shared, nothing really exciting.

“You only have eighteen friends?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought I had a lot more than that.” I saw a few guys from work on my list of friends (not Stan because he didn’t believe in Facebook, always warning us that Big Brother was watching us through platforms like that). I didn’t really have any family, a few distant relatives who were on Facebook about as much as I was.

“What about Twitter?” Stan asked.

“No. I’ve never been on there.”

“Instagram? Snapchat? Any others?”

“No,” I told him.

“Email?” he said as he opened my email. “Your password?” He got out of the chair so I could sit down and punch it in. “You mind if I look at the last emails you’ve sent?” he asked from right behind me.

“No,” I said, and we changed places again. “I don’t remember sending anything recently except at work.”

Stan looked through the email I used for work, looking through everything I’d sent. “Any other emails?” he asked.

“I sent one to Michelle’s email address. She never uses it, but I thought maybe she might look at it if she’d left me.” I pulled it up for him and opened it so he could read it. The email I had sent her was a little embarrassing, begging her to come back to me.

He shook his head. “You did something on this computer.” He clicked on a few more icons, opening up areas of my computer I’d never seen before. “Maybe you deleted something.” But he didn’t seem to find what he was looking for.

“What about this email address?” he asked. “Zach20202@gomail?”

I stared at the computer and shook my head. “I don’t know that email.”

“This isn’t your email address?” he asked, suddenly excited.

“No. I’ve got an email address I use, similar to the gmail account that Michelle has. But mostly I use my work email. I’ve never seen that one before.”

Stan smiled at me. “Let’s open it up.” His words died as he stared at the screen.

“What’s wrong?”

“This one’s password protected.”

I shrugged. “Like I said, I’ve never seen that email address before.”

Stan looked at the lines of numbers he’d written down in the spiral notebook. “Maybe one of these is the password. One of them except the date and time.” He started entering the lines of numbers one by one.

The fifth line of numbers opened the email.

It was a site I’d never seen before.

“There aren’t any inbox emails,” he said. Then he clicked on the Sent folder. A line of emails popped up. “You sent a lot of emails,” he said. “And one of them was last night around three thirty a.m.”

“Open it,” I told him.

He looked at me like he was making sure I really wanted to do this. Then he looked back at the computer and opened the email. I stared at the email for a moment, not sure what I was looking at.

“It’s just more of those strings of numbers,” Stan said. “Strings of numbers like on these notecards.”

“And like on the walls in the house across the street.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Stan wanted to stay the night with me. He insisted on it. He wanted to be there when I woke up from sleepwalking. He said the cameras he had installed were good, but it would be better if someone could follow me with a video camera. And he was worried that I was right about someone watching me, and maybe someone entering my house. He reminded me about the flash of light between my curtains two nights ago, the first night I had videotaped myself.

“Maybe someone’s trying to set this up to look like you’ve done something to Michelle.”

“To frame me? But how? And why?”

“I don’t know. That’s what we need to figure out.” He got up, ready to go home and get a change of clothes for tomorrow.

Part of me was happy Stan was staying the night, but another part of me wasn’t too crazy about the idea. I worried that I might not act like myself while I was sleeping. I still had a concern that I was somehow dangerous while sleepwalking, that the reason Michelle had fled without taking anything with her was because I’d done something so terrible while sleepwalking, something that had frightened her so badly.

“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” I told him.

“Why not?”

I told him about my fears of doing something bad while walking in my sleep.

“If it gets too bad, I’ll wake you up.”

“What if you can’t wake me up?”

He didn’t seem to understand what I was talking about. “I’ll have a bottle of water with me. I’ll splash you with it.”

Finally, I relented. I nodded.

He was about to go home to get a change of clothes for work tomorrow, intending on leaving right from my house to work.

Right before he went out the door, I stopped him. “Stan, thanks. I mean it. I think a lot of people would have run out of here screaming after seeing the things you’ve already seen.”

“No problem. This is actually kind of fun.”

For you, maybe. But I didn’t say it.

*

While Stan was gone, I ordered a couple of pizzas, getting them delivered—I didn’t feel like going anywhere. As soon as the pizza got there, I ate a slice and made some tea, swearing off the coffee for the rest of the night.

Thirty minutes later Stan was back with his change of clothes, his own small video camera so I could keep mine in my bedroom, and a laptop computer that he said was “clean,” not connected to him in any way.

“I want to download all of the footage onto my laptop and send it to another site, somewhere to keep the stuff safe,” he said.

I nodded that it was okay with me.

“I’ll sleep on the couch,” he said. “I’ll try to stay awake all night.”

“What about work tomorrow?”

“If I feel like shit, then I’ll just call in.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding. As his manager, I knew I shouldn’t be going along with that, but I needed his help. “Listen, earlier, there was something I forgot to tell you about.”

He frowned at me.

“I’m not holding out on you, I just forgot.”

“What is it?”

I hesitated. It was something I’d never told anyone about besides Michelle. But if Stan was going to help me, then he needed to know everything. “Remember when I told you about the doctor that gave me the sleeping pills?”

He nodded.

“She’s a psychiatrist. For the last two years I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist.”

Stan just stared at me.

“I’m not crazy,” I said quickly. “It’s just that I’ve suffered with anxiety and depression in my life. It started right after my parents died in a car crash.”

He nodded like that made sense to him.

“I was twenty-one years old when my parents died, my second year in college. I was devastated. I couldn’t concentrate on my schoolwork. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. I saw a doctor back then, and he helped a lot. He prescribed some anti-anxiety and depression medicine, but all it did was kind of take the edge off of things. What really helped was meeting Michelle. We started dating, and suddenly it felt like there was something good in life, something to live for.”

“So you’ve been taking those medications all these years?”

I saw the doubt in Stan’s eyes, the suspicion that all of this might be my mental disorders and not the conspiracy he hoped it was.

“No. I got off of them a year after me and Michelle were together. But about two years ago the panic attacks started coming back. And the depression.”

“When you became a manager,” Stan said. “Maybe it was the stress. I know Steve would drive me crazy.” He clamped his mouth shut as if he had offended me somehow by using the word crazy.

“Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know. I struggled with it for a few months. Michelle was worried about me. She told me about a friend of hers who saw a therapist, Dr. Valentine. So I went to see her. She was nice, not really much into therapy, but she prescribed some medications for me. Not the stuff I had taken before, but something new.”

“Did it help?”

I shrugged. “I guess. I had my ups and downs. About a year ago I had some bouts of insomnia, basically crawling into work after hardly sleeping all night. So Dr. Valentine prescribed me a sleep-aid to help me sleep.”

“Maybe your sleepwalking is a side effect from the sleep-aids you’ve been taking. I’ve heard about people sleepwalking after taking sleep-aids.”

I could still see the disappointment in Stan’s eyes, the realization that much of this might not be some evil conspiracy, but a side effect from a medication. But he wasn’t running for the door just yet.

“Maybe,” I said. “But after that first night when I woke up with my clothes on in bed, I stopped taking the sleep-aids. I stopped taking all the medication.”

He nodded. “That’s good. But maybe there’s some kind of aftereffect, like a long-term effect until all the medication gets out of your system.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“What is it? There’s something else?”

“Yeah. I was worried about the side effects, so I called my doctor’s office and talked to the receptionist. I called on Monday, right after I left work, after I told Steve that I needed a few days off. The receptionist told me the earliest Dr. Valentine could see me was this coming Tuesday.”

“Okay. You should probably keep that appointment.”

“When this sleepwalking started getting worse, after I filmed myself getting up and getting dressed, leaving my bedroom, I called again. I talked to the receptionist again and told her I needed an earlier appointment. She said she would talk to Dr. Valentine and get back to me.”

“Maybe you should just go in and see her.”

“I tried that today. I went to her office, but her office isn’t there anymore.”

The gleam of excitement was back in his eyes again. “What do you mean?”

“She moved her office somewhere. It’s just an empty office now. I asked the people next door to her office about it. They said she’s been gone three weeks now.”

“Three weeks?”

“The same amount of time that Michelle has been gone from her job at the nursing home.”

“Wow,” Stan whispered.

“I went behind the building, hoping to find some kind of evidence that Dr. Valentine had been there. I saw a nurse smoking a cigarette back there. I talked to him about Dr. Valentine. He said the same thing the others had, that she moved a while ago. But he also said that Dr. Valentine was never busy, hardly ever seemed to have any patients coming by. A lot of the times her office was closed.”

“So she moved,” Stan said. “Right? I mean you said you just talked to the receptionist and set up an appointment for this coming Tuesday.”

“But when I called back, the phone number was disconnected. I tried at least ten times today. I checked the internet, looking for any sign of where she could have moved to, but there’s nothing about a Dr. Valentine on the internet, only two other Dr. Valentines in Florida—one in Miami and one in Jacksonville, both men, and neither one a psychiatrist.”

“That’s some crazy shit.”

“I know.”

Stan got up from the kitchen table. “Hey, you mind if I take a picture of your meds?”

“Why?”

“I know someone. Her name’s Alicia. She’s in medical school. Working on becoming a psychiatrist or therapist or something like that. She would know about your meds, if they might cause side effects.”

“Okay. Why not?”

Stan darted down the hall to my bedroom. I followed him in there and watched as he took photos of the bottles of prescription pills on the table next to my bed. He started texting on his phone, his thumbs moving quickly.

“Sent,” he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

After eight o’clock I switched from sweet tea to water, wanting to be able to sleep. Again, I was tempted by the bottles of beer in the fridge, knowing a few of those would help knock me out, but I resisted the urge.

I took a long shower, hoping it would help me relax. But it didn’t. Questions still ran through my mind. Stan had said that maybe someone was setting it up to look like I’d done something to Michelle.

Could that be possible? And if so, then how did they know about my sleepwalking? Had the pills I’d been taking put me into some kind of stupor like Stan seemed to think? But if the pills had something do with all of this, then did that mean Dr. Valentine was involved with this? She’d closed her office three weeks ago—the same time that Michelle had quit the nursing home.

And then the question surfaced that I really didn’t want to ask: Was Michelle involved with this?

If Michelle was trying to frame me, then why? For the money? That didn’t make any sense to me. She’d obviously already had access to large amounts of money. Why would she need to frame me to get to it? Was there another reason she wanted to frame me for her disappearance? Did she hate me that much? And if all of this was just to frame me, then why let it go on this long? And was Michelle working with someone else? With others? And if so, then they had all they needed now. Why wouldn’t they call the cops now? Those two detectives were itching to find anything to bring me in. Maybe the mannequin would be enough.

I got out of the shower and dried off. I dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of shorts. It was still too early to go to bed.

Stan had made up his bed on the couch with some extra bedsheets and pillows Michelle had in the hallway closet. He had pulled the coffee table closer to the couch with his collection on top of it: the video camera he had brought with him, his laptop, a flashlight, his cell phone, his cigarettes and lighter, and, as promised, he had a large cup of water down on the floor at the end of the couch to wake me up if he needed to.

“Alicia called me back while you were in the shower,” Stan said. He was sitting at the corner of the couch, the pillows behind his back, his socked feet up on the coffee table, a bottle of beer in one hand.

I sat down in the recliner across from the couch, staring at him. “Who?”

“Alicia. The one I told you about—the medical student. I sent her the pictures of your meds.”

I nodded. “She say anything?”

“She said it’s pretty normal stuff for insomnia, and the stuff for anxiety and depression.”

That didn’t get us anywhere.

“I told her you were seeing a Dr. Valentine.”

“How much else did you tell her?”

“As much as she needed to know. She did a quick search while I was on the phone with her and she found out the same thing you did, that there isn’t a Dr. Valentine registered as a doctor anywhere around here. There are only two Dr. Valentines, one in Miami and one in Jacksonville.”

I nodded. I knew there was more he wanted to say—I could see it on his face. “What else did you tell her?”

“Man, the more minds we have working on this, the better.”

“What else?”

“I told her about your sleepwalking.”

Great.

“She’s definitely intrigued,” Stan said. “I told her about the office where you used to go to see this Dr. Valentine, and she found out that the address of that office is for lease now. She was able to look up the former renter.”

“Let me guess, it’s not a Dr. Valentine.”

“No,” Stan said with a smile. “It isn’t. The office was rented for the last three years by a corporation called D&C Logistics.”

I shook my head. This was getting more and more weird.

Stan sat up and set his beer down on the coffee table. He turned his laptop around on the table so that it faced me. “I looked up the company.”

“They have a website?” I was assuming it was some kind of fake name.

“Yeah, but there’s not much to it. Pretty generic stuff. A home page, an About Us page, a Contact page. Here, look.”

I got up and crouched down in front of the coffee table, staring at the laptop screen. The homepage showed a corporate office building with a cloudless blue sky behind it. Their name was at the top of the page in fancy script. I skimmed through the About Us page. There were bios of the key officers in the corporation.

“I called the phone number,” Stan said. “Disconnected. I sent an email to their contact email; it got bounced right back to me. I looked up the CEO and a few of the others, all dead ends.”

I stared at the CEO on the computer screen; the photo was a headshot of a balding man with glasses and a big smile.

“I don’t think those are real people,” Stan said. “I don’t think those are their real names. I looked up their corporation registration.”

“You can do that?”

He nodded. “They’re incorporated in Delaware, one of the easiest places to incorporate. You don’t even need to live there. Tons of shell companies are incorporated there.”

“Shell companies. You mean companies created to hide money?”

Stan was getting excited. He nodded. “Launder money might be the more accurate term.”

I suddenly felt a little sick to my stomach. “You think that’s what this money is that Michelle was depositing into our account? Money that’s being laundered?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

I thought about the series of numbers, wondering if they were all account numbers, imagining banks all over the world where deposits had been made. No, I couldn’t think about that. Maybe the numbers meant something else. I had been typing the numbers into an email address while sleepwalking. Was I giving someone account numbers or passwords?

Stan turned the laptop back toward him and started tapping on the keys again.

“What are you doing now?” I asked as I sat back down in the recliner.

“I’m looking up the address of the house across the street. Looking to see who owns it. Should be public record.”

I glanced over at the TV. It was on with the sound turned down low. The news was on, more reports about the domestic terrorist attack in Milwaukee. Eight people dead now from when the truck had plowed into the crowd of people. There were at least forty injured, some of them severely. I read the newsfeed crawling by on the bottom of the screen.

Stan whistled and sat back on the couch, staring at his laptop.

“What?” I asked.

“You’ll never guess who owns the house across the street.”

But I could guess. “D&C Logistics?”

He nodded. “All of this is connected somehow.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I had a tough time sleeping. It felt strange not only with the bathroom light on and the video camera on top of the dresser taping me, but also that Stan was in the living room. I wondered if he was still awake, or if he had already fallen asleep. I was having trouble sleeping, the insomnia back. I wasn’t really tired even though I hadn’t slept that much last night, it was more like I couldn’t turn my mind off. The questions and scenarios kept running through my mind.

Who was Michelle? It suddenly seemed like I didn’t even know the person I’d been married to for the last few years. Had she been living a secret life? Had all of that stuff about her parents been a lie? Was Brenda really her sister? Why would she have told Kendra that she was scared of me?

There were too many questions, too many things that didn’t seem to add up, and all I was doing was driving myself crazy trying to think about it.

An hour later, well after midnight, I finally dozed off.

The dreams came again. It started off like the other dreams. I was trying to catch up to Michelle as she hurried across the street toward the dark house. That muted golden light was coming from the front window, from around the drawn blinds.

“Michelle, wait,” I told her. “Don’t go over there.”

I knew I was running as fast as I could, yet Michelle was always ten or twelve feet in front of me even though she didn’t seem to be running that fast.

We were in the back yard, the fog everywhere. Then I was at the doorway that led into the storeroom. Michelle wasn’t inside—the room was empty. I stepped inside and looked down at my hand; I was carrying the aluminum baseball bat that I’d had with me when I had searched my house a few nights ago.

There were rustling sounds from somewhere inside the house. Someone was moving around in there, in the dark. Was it the thing in the fog? Or was it Michelle?

“Michelle,” I whispered, taking a step toward the doorway that led into the kitchen. “Michelle, answer me.”

A whisper came back to me from the darkness. It sounded like Michelle, but I couldn’t be sure. It sounded like the voice was strained, gravelly, and forced, like something was choking the person. “You have to go back home now.”

I rushed at the doorway with the baseball bat in my hands, gripping it, ready to strike, ready to hurt someone, ready to kill if I had to. “Whoever you are, you let my wife go!”

But then I stopped.

Michelle appeared in the doorway, materializing out of the darkness. She wore a beige coat and blue jeans, her arms hanging listlessly down at her sides. She had on the knee-high black boots, but it seemed as if she was floating an inch or two above the cracked linoleum floor. There was a noose tied around her throat, the rope pulled taut, disappearing up into the darkness. Michelle’s eyes were bulging, her tongue swollen, her face pale and puffy.

“No,” I whispered. Maybe I could get to her in time, get the noose off of her neck, save her before she died.

“Go home,” Michelle whispered. “There’s someone inside your home. He’s trying to hurt you. He’s trying to kill you.”

I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to help Michelle.

Michelle smiled, her swollen tongue taking up most of her mouth, her bulging eyes ready to pop out of her face. “Use the bat, Zach. Use the bat to kill him.”

*

I felt a splash of cold water on my face and then a burning on my forearm.

I opened my eyes, expecting to see Michelle standing in front of me with the noose tied tightly around her neck, the rest of the rope disappearing up toward the ceiling, disappearing into the darkness.

But Michelle wasn’t there. I wasn’t in the house across the street anymore; I was in my own house now. I looked down at my hands. I had the aluminum bat in my hands, clutching it like I was ready to swing. My right forearm was still burning; there was a charred mark on my skin.

“Zach!”

I looked to my left a little. I was in the living room. I saw Stan a few feet away. He was crouched down just a little, like he was ready to either run or defend himself as best he could. I looked back at the coffee table. It was cracked in half. Stan’s laptop was on the floor, his cell phone, his cigarettes, and a shattered beer bottle. The plastic cup with the water in it was lying on its side.

“Zach,” Stan said. “You okay?”

Stan had his cigarette lighter in his hand, holding it like a weapon.

I could feel the water dripping down my face, my hair wet, the front of my T-shirt soaked. I was dressed in jeans and sneakers.

Oh God, I had walked in my sleep again.

“Zach, you with me, man?”

I blinked the water out of my eyes and dropped the bat onto the carpeted floor. I didn’t want that thing in my hands. I didn’t want to touch it.

“Stan,” I whispered. “What happened? Did I . . .” I let my words die away.

Stan breathed out a sigh of relief. “You’re awake.”

“I was sleepwalking, wasn’t I?”

Stan didn’t answer. He seemed to be catching his breath; he looked like I did when I was having a panic attack.

“I was sleepwalking,” I said again. “Wasn’t I?” My voice was rising.

“Yeah.”

“What did I do?”

He looked at me, shaking his head a little.

“I tried to attack you, didn’t I?” My voice was now a whisper, and it seemed tough for me to get the words out. “I tried to hurt you.”

“It was . . . it was kind of difficult to get you to wake up,” Stan said.

He still seemed out-of-breath. I wondered if I had been chasing him around with the baseball bat. I looked around at my house. The lamp by the recliner was knocked over. The lights were on in the kitchen. I glanced back at the hallway, there was a light coming from the office. I felt drawn to the office, like I needed to do something in there, like I’d left some kind of business unfinished.

Stan straightened up to his full height again, exhaling a long breath; he still had the lighter clenched in his hand.

“Why was it so hard to wake me up?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Stan said. He walked around the other side of the couch to get to the dining room and then the kitchen. “I tried splashing you with the water, but it didn’t work. I couldn’t think of what else to do. I’m sorry I had to burn you with the lighter. It was the only thing I could think of.”

I followed him into the kitchen. He was grabbing a bottle of beer out of the fridge, twisting the top off. I glanced at the clock on the stove: it was almost four o’clock in the morning.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

He didn’t answer me. He chugged a third of the beer down, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his skinny neck as he swallowed. His hand was shaking; his whole body was trembling.

“What about work?” I asked.

“I’m not going to work,” he said, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’ll call Steve in an hour. Leave a message for him.”

I figured Steve might think Stan was playing hooky to hang out with me, but I really didn’t care at that moment. Right at that moment, my life seemed to be in shambles. It was bad enough that Michelle was gone, but I knew right then that there was something wrong with me, something seriously wrong.

“I want to watch the tape,” I said.

Stan just stared at me.

“Stan, I need to.”

He nodded. He knew he couldn’t stop me.

We went into the office and Stan got everything set up for me. Like the last time, I wanted to watch the footage from my camcorder in the bedroom first, start things from the moment I woke up.

As soon as the footage was downloaded from the video camera, Stan played it for me, and then he got up to leave. “I need a cigarette,” he said.

He was pretty shaken up. What had I done to him?

I fast-forwarded the footage, not bothering to look for any lights flashing between the crack in the curtains. I watched my body twist and turn on the bed in fast motion, and then I sat up. I paused the footage and rewound it back to the moment I sat up.

Like the previous nights, I sat there for a moment in bed. I wasn’t really looking around, but my head was tilted just slightly, almost like I was listening to something. I turned the audio all the way up, but I couldn’t hear anything except for the hiss of silence. As I got out of bed the rustling of my legs against the bedsheets was loud; I turned the volume back down. I watched myself walk around the foot of my bed toward the two closets and the bathroom, walking out of the frame of the video.

A moment later I was back on the screen with my jogging pants on and my sneakers in one hand and the aluminum baseball bat in the other. I set the bat on the bed and sat down beside it so I could put my sneakers on, lacing them up. Then I stood up and picked up the baseball bat and left the bedroom.

There was no sense in watching any more of the video, fast-forwarding to when I came back, because I had already woken up in the living room. I switched to the feed from the security cameras Stan had installed in the house. I checked the one in the office first. The footage was dark and then the light turned on. I entered the office and sat down in my chair in front of the computer, leaning the bat against the bookcases for a moment while I turned on the computer and the little lamp with the green shade on the shelf over top of the monitor. I sat there for a moment as the computer booted up, and then I got up again, grabbing the baseball bat and leaving the office.

Next, I checked the footage from the camera in the kitchen and dining area, most of both rooms visible from this angle. I saw myself walk through the dining room with the bat in my hands. I entered the kitchen and turned on the overhead light. I stood there for a few seconds, and then I left the kitchen, walking toward the living room.

I checked the living room footage next. From the lights in the kitchen I could see myself well enough as I walked up to the end of the couch with the baseball bat in my hands. I stared down at Stan who was sleeping on the couch on his side, the bedsheet over top of him. His laptop was open on top of the coffee table, his cell phone near it, the large cup of water on the floor next to the end of the couch.

I watched myself as I raised the baseball bat up, ready to swing it down and strike Stan’s body. My mouth was moving. I was whispering something, or talking.

“Oh God, what am I doing?” I whispered as I watched myself on the video swing the bat down.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“I guess you’ve seen the whole thing,” Stan said when he finally came back into my office.

I nodded, still staring at the computer screen. I had paused it for a moment after watching the footage from the living room camera over and over again. I turned around and looked at Stan. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Stan had a beer in his hand. I think it was his third. I’m sure if I had anything stronger in the house he would have been drinking that right then.

“I can’t believe you’re still here,” I muttered, glancing back at the screen. It was frozen with me swinging my baseball bat down at the coffee table. At the last second, instead of hitting Stan on the couch, I had swung the bat at the table, smashing it down to the floor, smashing the corner of his laptop, his cell phone flying away.

Stan had jumped awake and scrambled back to the end of the couch, drawing his legs up, instantly alert.

I brought the bat back up and he was up and off the couch in a flash. “Zach,” he yelled. “Zach, it’s me! It’s Stan! What are you doing?”

I kept swinging the bat at him. I chased him around the living room. I swung at him, and nearly hit him, but I’d hit the lamp instead, the shade flying off, the lightbulb shattering, the rest of the lamp crashing to the floor.

Stan made it back to the couch and picked up the big plastic cup of water.

I was charging him, saying something to him that I couldn’t make out.

And that’s when he had thrown the water at me.

But I kept coming.

He pulled his cigarette lighter out of his pocket and tackled me after I had swung the bat again, flicking the lighter and holding it against my forearm.

I screamed in the video and pulled away from the flame and Stan. My eyes were wide open, and I dropped my hands down like my arms had lost all of their strength. I looked stunned, like I’d been slapped. And I guess, in a way, I had been. Stan scurried back away from me by the broken coffee table, crouched down, his lighter still in his hand, ready to use it again if he had to.

“I’m so sorry,” I said to Stan again, looking away from my frozen image on the computer screen. “I don’t remember any of that.”

Stan nodded. “It was quite a trip.”

“God, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe this is why Michelle left me. Maybe I tried to attack her in my sleep. Maybe that’s why she was afraid of me.”

“Maybe,” Stan said. “But I think she would have woken you up. You know, like I did.”

“You said it wasn’t easy to wake me up. You were yelling at me to stop. Yelling my name. The water didn’t do it, only the fire did. What if Michelle tried to wake me up while I was sleepwalking? What if she didn’t have any water? What if I had chased her out of the house? What if I had chased her across the street to that house?”

Stan sighed. “I think if something like this would’ve happened with you and Michelle, she would’ve told you about it. You’ve always woken up before. She would have waited until you were awake again and told you about it.”

That seemed to make sense, but then again nothing seemed to make sense anymore.

I looked back at the computer screen. “I was saying things when I was swinging the bat, but I couldn’t hear them on the tape. What was I saying?”

“I can’t remember everything,” Stan said. “I was going to play the footage back. See if I could make out your words a little better.”

“You still want to do this?” I asked.

“I want to help you,” he said. “Let me sit there.”

I got up and Stan sat down. He set his beer to the side and went to work on the computer, moving the mouse around, pausing and then turning up the volume.

“You got that notebook I used before?”

I grabbed the spiral notebook out of the drawer that I had used to jot down the times I’d gotten up in my sleep and when I had returned to the bedroom.

Stan played the video back and forth, writing down words quickly.

I left Stan in the office and went to the kitchen. I got the coffee machine ready. My hands were shaking the entire time, and maybe coffee wasn’t the best thing for my nerves, but I felt like I needed it. I grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge and sipped it while I waited for the coffee to brew. I went back into the office.

“This is what I’ve got so far,” Stan said, sitting back in the office chair, holding the spiral notebook up so he could read it. “I can’t make everything out that you said. Maybe you can tell what some of the words are. But I’ve got: There’s someone in your home. Someone trying to hurt you. Use the bat.” He looked at me. “You said, ‘Go home’ and ‘use the bat’ a few times.”

There was another smaller chair in the corner of the office. I pulled that up and plopped down in the seat.

“Does any of that mean anything to you?” Stan asked. He stared at me suspiciously. He knew damn well that those words meant something to me—he could probably see it on my face.

“I was having a dream right before you burned me and woke me up. Kind of like a nightmare.”

Stan waited patiently for me to continue.

“I was running after Michelle. She was running across the street to that empty house. It was dark. I was trying to get her to stop, but she wouldn’t stop. She went into the back yard, through the gate. I followed her. And then I was inside the house, inside that storeroom area, or whatever it used to be. I heard someone moving around inside the house. I called out for Michelle, about to go inside. I looked down and realized that I had my baseball bat in my hand.”

“The same one?” Stan asked.

“Yeah. The aluminum baseball bat. Just like the one in the living room. I thought someone was in the house hurting Michelle, and just as I was about to go inside, Michelle came to the doorway, kind of like emerging from the darkness.” I didn’t want to describe what Michelle looked like in the dream to Stan—I didn’t want to see that horror in my mind again—but I needed to tell him everything. So I went on. “She had the noose around her neck, and it was so tight her eyes were bulging, her face puffy and dark, her tongue swollen and black. The rope seemed to go up to the ceiling somewhere inside the room, and her feet, they were hanging a few inches above the floor.”

Stan just watched me, his arms folded over his chest.

“Michelle was saying something to me,” I said. “Telling me to go home. Telling me that there was someone in my house, someone who wanted to hurt me. She told me to use the bat, the one I had in my hands.”

“So you were saying the same things that you were dreaming,” Stan said. “You were saying the same thing Michelle said in your dream.” He glanced down at his spiral notebook. “You said, ‘Go home’ and ‘Someone’s in your house’ and ‘Use the bat’.”

“Yeah, I guess so. It seems like it.”

Stan set the spiral notebook down.

“This wasn’t the first dream I’ve had,” I told him.

He looked at me, grabbing his beer and taking a long pull from it, waiting for me to go on.

“I think I’ve had a similar nightmare every night since Michelle left me. It always starts out the same. She’s running across the street toward that house, and I’m running after her.”

“Chasing her?”

“No. Well, yeah. Kind of. But it’s not like she’s afraid. She’s smiling at me in the dream, like it’s some kind of game. I tell her to wait up, to stop and wait for me. But it’s like there’s something so important in that house that she won’t even wait for me. And she won’t stop, like she’s trying to get me to follow her.”

“Because she wants you to see something in that house.”

I shrugged. “I guess. Each night I got a little further in the dream. I knew I didn’t want to see what was in that house. She seemed excited, but I wasn’t. I was scared of what was in there, scared of what was hiding in the fog. I’d never been so afraid of anything in my life.”

“And did you ever go inside the house? I mean in your dreams.”

“Yeah. Tonight I didn’t go all the way in, but I might have if you hadn’t woke me up. But last night . . . last night I went inside the house.”

“What did you see in there?”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to put it into words, but I needed to tell Stan everything. I owed him that for all that he’d been through with me so far. “I was choking Michelle. Squeezing her throat, my thumbs pressing down on her so hard. She stared up at me with this . . . this look. Her eyes were bulging, her tongue swollen.”

Stan looked away, drinking more beer. His hands were trembling a little again.

“But I wouldn’t ever do anything like that to Michelle.”

Stan didn’t say anything.

“I didn’t do anything to her,” I nearly shouted. “She was at the restaurant with me on Friday night. She went in there with me. She left the restaurant without me. She left with some man. Either willingly, or she was taken.”

“Okay,” Stan said. It seemed like he was trying to calm me down. “I know. You didn’t do anything to Michelle. But these dreams might mean something. Obviously they’re tied to what you’re doing while sleepwalking in some way.”

I nodded, sipping my water, calming down. I wanted to go make a cup of coffee, but I didn’t want to walk away from Stan just then.

He was thinking things over for a moment. I was sure he was plotting how to get out of my house and never come back again. I knew he liked this weird kind of shit, but maybe it was different when you were actually living through it rather than reading about it or watching a movie.

“Alicia,” he said and then looked at me. “I’d like to ask her to come over. Remember I told you about her? She’s studying to be a psychiatrist. Maybe she can help. You know, with the dreams and stuff. Maybe she can tell what’s going on.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You’re probably going to need to talk to someone,” Stan said. “You said you’ve been seeing a psychiatrist for a few years now.”

I nodded. “Okay. Yeah, sure. I mean anything that could help would be great.”

“We’re going to need to tell her everything that’s going on,” Stan said. “You cool with that?”

“Yeah,” I answered.

Stan stood up. He seemed more animated now that we were beginning to form a plan. He left the office. I followed him to the kitchen. It was my chance to make a cup of coffee.

“There’s something else,” Stan said.

I looked at him, frozen in the preparations of my coffee. What now?

“That mannequin in the house across the street.”

“Yeah?”

“I think we need to get it out of there.”

I knew exactly what he was talking about. If the cops decided to really start probing, then they might get a warrant to search the house across the street, hoping to find evidence of Michelle over there. A mannequin with her clothes on it and a noose around its neck wasn’t going to look good.

“Bring it here?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Maybe not everything. I mean the mannequin itself is no big deal. Like I said before, maybe some kids brought it there. But I think we need to get your wife’s clothes and boots back here. And probably the wig and the rope, too.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Stan and I got Michelle’s clothes, the wig, and the rope out of the house and across the street to my house before dawn. As far as I could tell, nobody was watching us. I hadn’t seen any cars or trucks parked down the street in either direction, but that didn’t mean somebody wasn’t watching us from somewhere else. They could be anywhere. They could be in the brush or even taking photos from a drone in the night sky.

Maybe Stan’s paranoia was beginning to rub off onto me.

Stan had asked me if I wanted to leave, maybe stay at his house or get a motel room. I told him that I didn’t want to for a few reasons. Number one, I was sure that if I left, it would raise suspicions with the two detectives. Number two, I wanted to be at home and waiting on the remote possibility that Michelle might come back or try to contact me. And number three, I didn’t want to run from this. Something was happening to me, obviously whatever sleep disorders I had, but it was something more than just the sleepwalking; I was involved in something, I just wasn’t sure what it was yet. I needed to know what it was.

After two cups of coffee, Stan left my house around seven o’clock.

I cleaned up the house. I threw the broken pieces of the coffee table and the lamp into the garbage can outside. Somehow, I hadn’t totally damaged Stan’s laptop or his cell phone when I had hit the table with my baseball bat. I thought about adding the baseball bat to the garbage outside, but I didn’t.

After checking emails and my phone a few more times, I wasn’t sure what to do next. I was still tired, and I felt like going back to sleep, but I was too scared to sleep. What if I walked in my sleep again? What if I walked across the street in the daytime?

Maybe it didn’t work in the daytime, but I didn’t want to take a chance.

*

It was almost noon when Stan called to tell me that he was coming back with his friend Alicia. He let me know that he had shown her the video he had downloaded onto his laptop.

“She wants to help,” he told me.

Twenty minutes later they were at my front door.

Alicia wasn’t what I’d been expecting. I don’t think I had a picture in my mind of what she was going to look like, what she was going to be like—Alicia was more of an abstract idea to me before I saw her in my doorway, a person who could help me get closer to the answers I needed, closer to finding out what had happened to Michelle, and what was happening to me.

She stepped inside my home and offered her hand. I shook it, a quick and tender shake, but that brief contact of my skin against her skin jolted me. I’m ashamed to say that for a few seconds my primal urges seemed to take over, some reptilian part of my brain found myself instantly attracted to her.

Maybe Stan noticed the lingering eye contact between us, the awkward silence for just a moment. I wasn’t sure what Stan’s relationship to Alicia was—I hadn’t even thought to ask. Maybe she was Stan’s girlfriend, or maybe she was someone he wanted to be his girlfriend.

In fact, it made me wonder how Stan knew Alicia, a medical student studying to be a psychiatrist. I knew Stan had a lot of friends. Even with his wild conspiracy theories, people seemed naturally drawn to him. I heard about it nearly every day from the customers on his route. We just love Stan. We don’t need a manager to come out, just send Stan.

“Alicia,” Stan said. “This is Zach, the guy I’ve been telling you about.”

She nodded and flashed a bright smile of perfect teeth that seemed even whiter against her tan skin. Her hair was jet-black and tied up in some kind of intricate bun. She wore jeans, a strappy kind of blouse, and sneakers. She smelled like Ivory soap with just the hint of something flowery.

“Zach, Alicia,” Stan said, gesturing at her like a game show host.

“Hi, Alicia,” I said, finally finding my voice. “Thank you so much for coming by. I’m sure this isn’t normal for you.”

“What’s normal?” she said.

I was struck for a second.

She smiled, and I realized she was trying to make some kind of joke.

“Sorry. Psychiatry humor.”

“You want something to drink?” I asked, stepping into the kitchen. I needed to step away from her gaze for a moment. The way she was staring at me sent shivers along my skin. But I needed to be realistic. I mentally slapped myself. She wasn’t looking at me because she was attracted to me, but because I was some kind of enigma to her, something to be studied. I knew Stan had shown her the tapes of my sleepwalking episodes, told her about my missing wife, filled in all the other details including the mannequin with my wife’s clothes and the noose around its neck.

Stan and Alicia followed me into the kitchen.

“I’ve got a few cans of Coke,” I said as I opened the fridge, still trying to avert her gaze, but I could feel her watching me. “Bottles of water. I could make some tea or coffee.”

“Water’s fine for me,” Alicia said.

“I’ll take a Coke,” Stan said.

I handed them their drinks.

“So what do we do now?” I asked.

“I’d like to talk to you for a little while,” Alicia said.

I nodded, my mouth suddenly a little dry. “I figured Stan would have told you everything by now.”

“He told me a lot, but I’d like to hear it from you.”

We went into the living room.

Stan had his “clean” laptop, as he called it, where he had downloaded clips of the videos onto files on his computer. He opened his laptop and turned it on.

I sat down in the recliner (that no longer had a lamp next to it because I had destroyed it with a baseball bat last night). Alicia and Stan sat down on the couch, but not too close to each other, a respectful distance away. I found myself wondering again how close their relationship was, and I forced myself to stop thinking about it.

“Tell me what happened,” Alicia said. “Everything you remember.”

I glanced at Stan next to her on the couch, then I looked at her again. I started from the beginning. I told her everything, even the strange dreams I’d been having.

Alicia sat patiently through my story, taking a sip of water every so often, asking a question here and there. And then, fifteen minutes later, I was done.

“Thank you,” she said. “I know telling me all of that couldn’t have been easy.”

It wasn’t, but I didn’t say so. “So, what do you think?”

“I’ve looked at the footage where you’re sleepwalking,” Alicia said. “And I’m not so sure you’re sleepwalking.”

“No? But I’m asleep, and then I get up and do things without remembering them. Isn’t that sleepwalking?”

“Yes, it can be. But I have the feeling that you’re actually in a hypnotic state when you get up during your sleep.”

“Hypnotic state?” I asked, mulling the words around in my mind for a moment, trying to understand what she was saying. “You mean like someone hypnotized me?”

“Or maybe self-hypnosis,” Stan offered. “Right?”

Alicia glanced at Stan and shook her head. “I don’t think it would be self-induced.” She looked back at me. “To me, your actions look like you’re wide awake and alert. I’ve seen plenty of footage of sleepwalkers before, and I’m not so sure that’s what you’re doing here.”

“You think I’m hypnotized.”

“Maybe. I can’t be sure.”

“But . . . how? I mean who would have hypnotized me?”

“It might make some sense,” Stan said, getting excited. “Remember that flash of light outside your bedroom windows on the first video you took of yourself sleeping?”

I nodded.

“The light between the curtains? It was like someone was outside with a flashlight. Even you thought that. Remember?”

I nodded again. I remembered.

“And you said you thought someone had been in your house a few times,” Stan continued. “Maybe whoever this is, they are the people, or the one who is hypnotizing you.”

“The same people who took Michelle,” I said.

“Yeah,” Stan agreed. “Maybe if we find out how and why they’re hypnotizing you, then we can figure out why they took Michelle and where she is.”

I looked at Alicia, waiting for her to chime in.

“You get up and go across the street,” she said. “At least you have a few times. Then you come back and turn your computer on, log in to an email account and send out the series of numbers.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know why someone would go to all of this trouble to hypnotize me just to send some numbers by email. Whey even send me across the street? Why not just send these numbers themselves?”

“These numbers have to mean something,” Stan said. “I bet they’re some kind of code.” He got up and darted to my kitchen for another can of Coke.

“Last night,” Alicia said, “when Stan was finally able to break your trance . . .”

I noticed that she hadn’t used the words “wake me up,” but instead she’d said: “break your trance.” I was also still a bit embarrassed at what I had done, trying to attack Stan with a baseball bat. That didn’t seem like me in that video—that was a madman swinging wildly at Stan, trying to kill him. Once again I was amazed (and grateful) that Stan was still sticking around, and that he had brought someone to help me.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Stan broke your trance by burning you,” Alicia continued. “But you hadn’t gone across the street last night, and you hadn’t emailed any numbers.”

That was right. I hadn’t even realized that.

“Maybe Stan woke you up before you could complete what you were supposed to do last night.”

“Maybe.”

“Did you have a feeling, after you were awake, that you had some unfinished business to complete? Did it seem like something was nagging at you, something that you needed to get done?”

“Yes,” I said. I remembered feeling that exact sensation, like I had forgotten to do something important, but at the time, it had been buried under my horror at what I’d done, and almost done, to Stan.

“It’s like you were hypnotically instructed to do something, but then you weren’t able to complete the task before you were woken up.”

That seemed to make sense to me. “But how could I have been instructed, hypnotized, to attack Stan? I wouldn’t ever do that.”

Alicia didn’t answer my question. Instead, she said: “I’d like to try something if you want to.”

“What is it?”

“I’d like to put you in a slight hypnotic state.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“You want to hypnotize me?” I asked Alicia.

“Well, not exactly. It would be a slight hypnotic state. I just want to try. It might not even work.”

I didn’t say anything, thinking her request over.

“I want to see if it can be done,” she added quickly. “Perhaps rule it out. I’d like to see how suggestible you are.”

Obviously pretty suggestible, I thought, or at least Alicia seemed to think I might be. “Okay,” I said. What did I have to lose?

“You don’t have to be nervous,” she said.

“What if it doesn’t work?”

She smiled and shrugged just a little. “Then it doesn’t. No pressure. Like I said, at least it’s something we can rule out.”

Alicia looked relaxed and confident, but I couldn’t help feeling that it was all an act. I could sense something just behind her façade; I just couldn’t tell if it was excitement or fear.

“Okay,” I said.

“I want to record this,” Alicia said. “Is that okay with you?”

I nodded, giving my consent.

“I just want to have this session on video so you can see it,” she told me. “You can keep the video.”

Stan was already getting his video camera turned on, holding it up to his eye so he could move around while filming.

“Just go ahead and sit back in the chair,” Alicia told me, her voice already a little lower and softer, but there was also just the hint of a sharper tone.

I sat back in my chair, getting comfortable. I didn’t know why I was so nervous. I’d never had surgery before, but this was what I suspected that apprehension might feel like right after I was given the knockout drug or a breathing mask was placed over my face, that helpless feeling of surrendering my mind and body over to someone else, trusting them to take care of me while I was in my most vulnerable state.

“Most likely nothing will happen,” Alicia assured me. “This is just like a test run. And we’ll show you everything we filmed when it’s over.”

Her words were comforting, her tone relaxing. I wondered if this was the way she’d been trained to talk to a patient, or if it just came naturally to some people.

I reclined my chair back and put my feet up even though I still had my sneakers on. Alicia sat on the couch across from me. Stan was on his feet filming. Everything around us was quiet.

“Zach, I just want you to relax.”

I nodded.

“Go ahead and close your eyes and relax. You’re safe now. No one will hurt you. No one can hurt you. Okay?”

I nodded and closed my eyes.

“Zach, I want you to take a deep breath for me. Okay? And then hold that breath for three seconds and then let it out.”

I did as she instructed. And soon she had me breathing deeply and slowly, but not an exaggerated breathing pattern. It became like my normal rhythm of breathing.

“I want you to imagine you’re in a swimming pool on a warm, sunny day. No one else is around and you’re completely safe. You’re relaxed and enjoying the warmth. You’re on an inflatable raft, just drifting along the surface of the pool.”

For just a few seconds, I thought the idea of floating in a pool was hokey. We didn’t have a pool. My parents had never had a pool while I was growing up. But then I thought of a childhood friend, Scott. He lived down the street from us and his parents had a pool. I used to go swimming over there sometimes, splashing around and playing, but never floating.

But instead of those memories, I imagined myself in Scott’s pool. I pictured myself lying on an inflatable raft, my butt sunk down into the water, one hand drifting lazily, my eyes closed, the warm sun shining down on me. Scott and his parents weren’t there. I imagined that he had inherited this house from his parents and that I had come to visit him, but he’d had to work and I was there all day by myself. Alone and at peace.

Just floating.

Sinking down into the water.

From somewhere far away I heard Alicia’s voice. She was telling me she was counting down from the number ten. I wasn’t picking up everything she was saying, but it felt like I was sinking down deeper into the raft, little by little. Not down into the water—it wasn’t a panicky feeling, but more like I was getting more and more comfortable, sinking down into a cocoon that would protect me.

Just floating.

“Six . . . five . . . four . . .”

I didn’t hear the rest of the numbers that Alicia counted down because I was at peace. I was floating.

*

“. . . awake now, okay? Zach, do you hear me?”

I could hear Alicia’s voice coming from far away, but there was something wrong with her tone now. She sounded upset. She sounded scared.

“. . . six . . . seven . . . eight . . . you’re coming out of the pool, off of the raft.”

I hadn’t opened my eyes yet, at least I didn’t think they were open. I saw myself getting out of the raft at the side of the pool, hurrying now, scrambling as the raft moved around under me. It seemed like my friend Scott had come home suddenly, or some other people, some bad people. The sun was gone, a storm coming.

Everything had changed.

“Zach, you’re going to come fully awake when I reach the number ten and I snap my fingers.”

I wanted to nod, to tell Alicia that I could hear her, but I was still in Scott’s back yard, inside of the screened-in pool area. I wore only my pair of swimming trunks. I felt vulnerable just then. It felt like something bad had just happened, I just didn’t know what it was.

“Nine . . . ten.” A snap of Alicia’s fingers, like the crack of a whip. “You’re fully awake and conscious now.”

I opened my eyes, but it was strange. It seemed like my eyes had already been open, but now a veil had been lifted and I could see everything around me. I was sitting up in the recliner, my feet on the floor. I was tense, ready to run or fight back.

Alicia was standing a few steps away from me, not seated on the couch. Stan was off to her left, near the archway that led to the hallway and the bedrooms. He had the video camera up to his eye, still filming.

“Zach?” Alicia said.

“Yeah.”

“You’re completely awake and conscious now, correct?”

“Yes.”

Alicia seemed relieved, the tension easing out of her.

Stan lowered his video camera just a bit, staring at me.

“What happened?” I asked. I couldn’t help feeling that something horrible had just happened, something I couldn’t remember.

“You okay?” Stan asked. He was looking at me like he didn’t know me.

“Yeah,” I snapped. “What happened?”

Stan hurried over to his laptop on the coffee table, attaching a cord from the camcorder to his laptop so he could download the footage.

“Let me see that,” I told him, sitting up straighter.

“It’s not finished yet.”

I glanced around, making sure the living room wasn’t damaged, or the dining room. I had attacked Stan with the baseball bat when I’d woken up early this morning, but I didn’t have a weapon on me right now. Everything seemed the same; everything seemed okay, except that Stan and Alicia looked wary of me. I checked my forearms for more burn marks.

“What did I do?” I asked Alicia. “Did you hypnotize me?”

“Yes. I was able to.”

“So I’m suggestible, or whatever you called it?”

“Yes. Apparently you seem highly suggestible.”

I was about to ask what I’d done again, running out of patience, when I heard a slight noise coming from the kitchen. I looked that way. “What’s that?”

Alicia took a step closer to me, her hand out toward me like she was gesturing at me to remain in the recliner. “Zach, wait. I think you should watch the video first.”

The noise in the kitchen stopped.

Stan stood up and backed away from the laptop. “Okay,” he told me. “It’s ready to go.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Alicia got me calmed down enough to sit on the couch in front of the laptop.

“Just watch this and I’ll explain everything,” Alicia told me.

The video was on the laptop screen, on pause. I saw myself sitting in the recliner, my head back and my eyes closed. I hit play.

The camera panned just a little, and I saw Alicia sitting on the couch. She told me to relax and to imagine that I was floating in a pool. I remembered her saying that to me. I remembered picturing myself floating in my friend’s pool.

“Could you fast-forward through this part?” Alicia asked Stan. “To the part where I’m past counting down?”

Stan came toward me and I slid the laptop to him. He fiddled with the computer for a few moments. I heard bits and pieces of the audio as he tried to find the right part to play again. I glanced at Alicia, wondering if she didn’t want me to hear her counting down again. Would I go back into a hypnotic state that easily, just from hearing her again?

She didn’t say anything.

Stan slid the laptop back to me and I hit play again. I saw myself sitting in the recliner, totally relaxed, my eyes still closed.

“Zach,” Alicia said on the video. “You’re safe. Okay?”

“Yes,” I answered. I expected to hear myself mumbling the words, but I spoke as clearly as if I was awake. But I couldn’t remember any of it.

“You can stay there for a moment longer,” Alicia said to me on the video. “But in a moment we’re going to go into the kitchen.”

I nodded on the video. “Yeah, sure.”

Alicia didn’t seem frightened on the video like she seemed to be now, and maybe shocked was an even better word; it was like she’d seen something terrible that she couldn’t shake. But in the video, even though her voice was calm and even, with just that hint of authoritative command to it—the voice of a doctor—I could tell she was excited. I don’t know how I could tell, it was something in her mannerisms, something in her eyes, the slightly nervous rigidity in the way she sat on the edge of the couch, like she couldn’t wait to get up, couldn’t wait for me to get to the kitchen with her.

“First, Zach, I need to tell you a few things,” Alicia said to me on the video.

“Sure.”

“I want to talk about your job and the things you do there. Your responsibilities at work.”

“It’s pretty boring.” I chuckled a little.

I stared at the screen, amazed that I was carrying on a normal conversation with Alicia that I couldn’t even remember, my head back, my eyes still closed.

“That’s okay,” Alicia told me. “I’d still like to hear about it. If you want to talk about it.”

“Nothing I like more than talking about myself,” I said on the video, my head still back, my eyes still closed, my hands resting on the arms of the chair. A joke. I’d actually made a joke (and not a very good one). It was so bizarre watching myself act like that.

“While we talk,” Alicia said, “I’m going to ask you to do something in the kitchen. I’d like you to do this thing for me, okay? Whatever I ask you to do. Okay?”

“Sure.”

“I would really appreciate you doing what I ask you to, Zach. No questions. Okay?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Okay, Zach. You’re doing great. I’d like you to open your eyes and look at me.”

On the video I opened my eyes and looked at her.

“What do you do for a living, Zach?”

“I’m a manager at Carlton’s Lawn and Pest Service. We treat lawns with fertilizer and pest control. We also do shrubs and trees.”

Alicia nodded. “Do you like your job?”

“It’s okay. Long hours. A lot of customer complaints. I think I liked it better when I was still a lawn tech.”

Alicia nodded. “Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“Who are you married to?”

“Michelle.”

“Are you happy with Michelle?”

“Of course.”

“Do you ever fight with Michelle?”

“No.”

I could see on the video that I was beginning to get a little defensive.

“Okay, Zach. You’re doing great. I want you to stand up and go into the kitchen. Okay?”

“Sure.”

I watched myself on the laptop screen get up from the recliner. The camera followed me as I walked through the dining room and into the kitchen. Alicia was still in the dining room, hanging back. I was the only one in the kitchen. There was a small cage on the countertop next to the sink. The camera zoomed in and I saw a small gray kitten inside.

“Zach,” Alicia said.

I looked back at the camera.

“Have you ever hurt Michelle?”

“God, no! Why would you ask me something like that?”

“Do you know where Michelle is?”

I shook my head no. “Someone took her.”

“When’s the last time you saw her?”

“We went to a restaurant last Friday night. We went inside. I went with the hostess to our table while Michelle went to the restroom. But she never came back. I looked for her, but she was gone. An old lady said she saw Michelle leaving the restaurant with a man.”

On the video I was definitely distraught by what I was saying. My eyes drifted to the kitten crawling around inside the cage, rustling the newspaper inside. Why was that cat there?

“Zach, do you see that kitten on the counter?”

My video self glanced at the counter and nodded. “Yeah. It’s a cute kitten.”

“I’d like you to place that cage inside the oven.”

My heart leaped as I watched myself pick up the cage and carry it over to the oven. I opened the oven door and took out one of the grates, moving the other one all the way to the bottom so I could fit the cage inside. Then I gently set the cage in the oven.

“You’re doing great,” Alicia said on the video.

I couldn’t see her on the laptop screen because Stan had zoomed in on me setting the cage in the oven. But I could hear that Alicia’s voice was trembling. It seemed like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, like she’d caught a glimpse of something she never believed could have existed, some mythical creature.

“Please shut the oven door, Zach.”

I did.

“Zach,” Alicia asked from the kitchen archway that led into the dining room. “Do you remember going across the street to the empty house?”

I shook my head no.

“Do you remember sending emails? Series of numbers?”

I frowned on the video, Stan zooming in on me. I shook my head, looking confused.

“Zach, I want you to turn the oven on,” Alicia said on the video. “Three hundred and fifty degrees.”

“I can’t watch this,” I whispered, looking up from the laptop at Alicia. “What the hell did you make me do?”

“It’s okay,” Alicia said, nodding toward the laptop in front of me.

I looked back at the screen, watching myself set the oven, the oven beeping when it was set.

“Okay, Zach,” Alicia said on the video. “You’re doing great. But I’ve changed my mind. I need you to turn off the oven and take the kitten back out. I want you to set the cage back on the countertop, right where it was before.”

I followed orders without question.

“Let’s go back into the living room and sit back down,” Alicia said.

The camera followed us as we went back to the living room. I sat down on the recliner again, hunched forward, almost mimicking Alicia’s posture.

“I want you to close your eyes and relax,” Alicia said. “You’re in the pool again, floating on the raft.”

I sat back and closed my eyes, breathing deeply.

“You’re safe, and you’re going to slowly wake up now. I’m going to count from one to ten, and when I get to ten and snap my fingers, you’ll come fully awake and conscious. Is all of that clear, Zach?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Alicia said and looked at Stan.

Stan came over and stopped the laptop before she started counting again, freezing the video.

I got to my feet and backed away from the coffee table, staring at Alicia. “How is that possible?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“How is that possible?” I asked again.

“You’re a highly suggestible person under hypnosis,” Alicia answered.

“You had me put a cat in my oven,” I spat out. “Why did you make me do that?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Where did you get a cat? You brought it here to do this?”

“It’s my friend’s kitten. Her cat just had kittens.”

“Where was the kitten before? I didn’t see you bring it in.”

“I left it in my car,” Alicia said. “I left the car running with the air-conditioner on. Stan went out and grabbed it right after we started our session. We shut the camera off while he got the cat.”

I didn’t say anything; I was still stunned by what I’d just seen myself do on film.

“I know it seems cruel,” Alicia said, “but the kitten was never in danger. I would have brought you out of hypnosis if you failed to follow my instructions or deviated from them.”

I swore I saw nervousness in her eyes, and doubt. I also sensed relief from her, like she had nearly averted a disaster.

“I needed to see if you would do something under hypnosis that you would never do while conscious.”

“It’s sick,” I muttered.

“You wouldn’t put a cat in the oven normally, would you?”

“Of course not. What kind of question is that? Why didn’t you use a rat or a Guinea pig or something? Isn’t that what scientists normally use for experiments?”

“Because, to some people, killing a rat is no big deal; it’s like killing a cockroach to them. But a cat is usually different. Most people wouldn’t harm a cat or a dog, especially not a kitten or a puppy.”

“Except for a psychopath,” I said. “A serial killer or something.” I let out a trembling breath. “Oh God, what am I? Is that what I am? Some kind of psycho?”

“No,” Alicia said. “Please, just sit down and try to relax.”

I felt the pull of her words, of her voice. I wanted to pace around my living room, but I sat back down in the recliner, suddenly unsure if it had been my own decision or if it had been a suggestion from Alicia that I had no choice but to follow.

“It doesn’t mean you’re a psychopath; it just means that you’re highly suggestible under hypnosis,” Alicia said.

“So somebody can hypnotize me and make me do anything they want? If somebody told me to jump off a bridge, I would do that?”

“Would you?” Alicia asked.

I sighed in frustration. It felt like she was playing games with me. “No. I mean, I don’t know now.” Dread crept through me just then. Nothing seemed real anymore. I felt like everything I’d been told had been a lie, and now I was finally awake, truly awake.

“No,” Alicia said. “Stan could tell you to jump off a bridge right now and most likely you wouldn’t do it.”

“Most likely?”

She shrugged. “You can’t predict what a person is going to do one hundred percent of the time. You don’t want to kill yourself by jumping off a bridge, do you?”

“No.”

“Then I believe you wouldn’t jump off a bridge.” She sighed, suddenly exasperated, but maybe full of pent-up excitement or nervousness, or both. “Maybe a better example is something like cutting your finger open. If Stan told you right now to get a knife and cut your finger wide open, do you think you would jump up and do it without question?”

I had to really think about it for a moment.

“What would you do if he told you to do that right now?”

“I would probably ask him why he wanted me to do that.”

“Good. Because you are in control of your actions while you’re in a conscious state.”

“I wouldn’t tell you to do that, by the way,” Stan said.

“Again, the same question,” Alicia said, still looking at me. “What would you do if I told you to go get a knife and cut your finger wide open, or cut your finger off?”

“I’d say the same thing, wondering why you wanted me to hurt myself. But if I was hypnotized, would I do it then?”

Alicia didn’t say anything.

“Alicia?”

“Yes,” she said, frowning a bit. “Based on what I’ve seen while you’re under hypnosis, I feel it’s possible you could hurt yourself.”

“Or hurt someone else,” I said. “Like Michelle.”

“You couldn’t have done anything to her,” Stan said. “Remember? You went to the restaurant with her. You were there with her and then she left. You remember all of that.”

Suddenly I didn’t trust my memories so much. I shook my head, looking down at my hands. “I can’t even believe this is really happening.”

“There are others like you,” Alicia said. “It’s rare, but there are others out there.”

“You’ve seen them before?”

“Not personally, but . . .” Her words trailed off, and she looked at Stan. “Could I borrow your laptop?”

“Sure,” he said, sliding it across the coffee table to her.

She went to work on the keyboard, typing something.

“What are you looking up?” I asked.

“Something to help you understand this better. There was a psychiatrist named Carl Westbrook who specialized in this kind of thing. He did some groundbreaking experiments years ago. He’s not a household name like Freud or Jung, but in my world he was a legend.”

“Was?”

“He died a few years ago under mysterious circumstances.”

“What kind of circumstances?”

She didn’t answer. She got up and gestured down at the laptop. “All you need to do is hit PLAY.”

I got up and went over to the couch, sitting down in front of the laptop on the coffee table. Frozen on the screen was a young girl sitting in a plush leather chair that almost looked like a dentist’s chair. A tall, lean man was seated in a foldable metal chair right next to her. He wore a white lab coat over his clothes.

“This is a video of one of Dr. Westbrook’s patients. He had done some research on a patient called Girl M, which he documented in his most famous book.”

“Girl M?”

“M was the initial for her name, to protect her identity.”

I looked down at the frozen video again. Under it was the title: The case of Girl P. “This one says Girl P.”

“Yes, Girl M wasn’t ever videotaped; at least there is none that we know of. But this video of Girl P has survived, and this experiment is similar to the experiments that he did with Girl M.”

“What kind of experiments?” I asked, my skin crawling just a bit. Alicia had commanded me to put a kitten in the oven—I could only imagine what this doctor was going to make this little girl do.

“It’s better if you just watch it first,” Alicia said.

I hit play and watched the screen.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The video was a little grainy and jumpy, like someone was filming with a handheld camera.

The experiment with Girl P seemed to take place in some kind of doctor’s office or research center. Girl P seemed to be about eight or nine years old. She wore a colorful shirt, blue jeans with patches on the knees, and white sneakers. She had blond hair and light skin. Her eyes were closed. She looked peaceful, almost like she was sleeping. But I knew she wasn’t.

The man next to her, who I assumed was Dr. Westbrook, had a clipboard on his lap as he watched the girl. He spoke softly to her, but there was still the tone of authority in his voice—there was no mistaking that. It was the same barely perceptible tone I’d heard in Alicia’s voice.

“Hello, Girl P,” Dr. Westbrook said to the girl.

“Hello, doctor.”

“I’m going to put you in a deeper trance now.”

The girl nodded slightly.

“You’re going to feel fine,” the doctor said. “Nothing bad will happen to you. Everything we do will be good—nothing we do will be bad. You believe that, don’t you?”

“Yes, doctor,” the girl answered.

“Good. You’re doing so well.”

The girl didn’t say anything.

“I’m going to begin counting down backwards from ten, and you will fall into a deeper state of relaxation. And when I get to one, I’m going to ask you to do me a favor. Is that okay?”

The girl nodded. “Yes, doctor.”

“Good,” he purred in his soft voice; it was so low and even, so calm and reassuring.

He counted down from ten to one on the film. I swore I could feel the pull of those numbers, the pull into that place I’d just been, floating on the raft in the pool, but I resisted, concentrating on the bottom corner of the screen where a time and date code were.

“You are now totally relaxed, in a safe place where nothing is wrong,” the doctor told the girl. “Everything is okay.”

Girl P nodded.

The doctor leaned over and picked up a small hand ax from the floor near his chair. The camera zoomed in on the weapon for a few seconds. I could tell the ax was real, and that it was very sharp. “Take the ax,” he said in a soothing voice.

The girl took the ax. It looked like it was a little heavy for her, but she held onto it. She sat up straighter in the chair, her eyes open.

“Your mother is lying down in a room down the hall, the first room on your right. She’s asleep.”

Girl P nodded.

“I want you to walk down the hall, go into her room, and then chop this ax down into her head. I want you to do it over and over again until you’re sure she’s dead. You can do that, can’t you?”

The girl nodded. She got up out of the chair with the ax in her hand, walking toward the door.

I paused the video, my stomach churning. I looked at Alicia. “What the hell is this? I’m not watching this.”

“Please,” Alicia said. “It will help you understand.”

“Does she actually do this? I mean, he stops her before she does it, right? Like you stopped me.”

Alicia didn't answer me. She just nodded down at the laptop.

I could feel Stan hovering somewhere near me, it felt like he was watching the video too, waiting to see what happened. I hit Play again. I tried to be rational—the doctor wasn’t going to let Girl P follow through with this.

I was wrong.

I watched as another camera from inside the mother’s room picked up the footage. The room was large and only some lights above the counters on the other side of the room were on, leaving the room in near-darkness, but the footage seemed to be filmed in some kind of night vision, aiding the bit of light there was.

A woman lay on what looked like a stretcher. She was on her back with a white sheet pulled up to her chin, just her head visible, her face placid, her eyes closed, her dark hair spilling over her pillow.

Girl P didn’t hesitate—she walked right up to her mother and lifted the ax up and swung it down as hard as she could right into the middle of the woman’s face.

I jumped back a little, expecting to see a fountain of blood erupt from the woman’s face. “Holy shit,” I breathed out, my wind gone for just a moment.

“It was just a dummy,” Alicia said quickly. “That wasn’t really her mother.”

I looked at Alicia.

“Dr. Westbrook explains everything in just a moment.”

I looked back at the video. The girl struck the dummy’s head several more times with the ax; there were no grunts of effort, no emotion on her face. When she was done, she took the ax with her and left the room, walking back down the hall to the room where Dr. Westbrook was waiting for her. The footage picked up from the handheld camera again, whoever was filming tracked the girl as she walked back to the plush leather chair and sat down.

“Good,” Dr. Westbrook purred. “You did very well.”

Girl P did not respond.

Dr. Westbrook walked towards the camera. He had a sly smile on his face. The camera followed him out into the hall and then to the first room on the right. He flipped on the overhead lights. The camera zoomed in on the woman’s head on the gurney, the flesh created from some kind of gelatin that mimicked human flesh. Alicia was right—it was just a dummy, just a mannequin.

The camera zoomed in on the doctor. “It is proven,” he said. “Under the right hypnotic state, and with certain triggers put in place, a person can be made to do anything. True mind control.”

The doctor left the room, walking back down the hall to Girl P. The camera followed him.

“Do you mind?” Alicia asked, swooping in beside me.

I picked up that faint scent of flowers and soap again, and I scooted away so she could sit down in front of the laptop. I got the feeling she didn’t want me listening to him counting down and bringing Girl P back to consciousness. She closed the video.

I sat there, stunned. All three of us were quiet.

“It was just a dummy,” I said, looking at Alicia. “It wasn’t really her mother, but to that girl it was really her mother. That doctor told her to kill her own mother, and as far as she was concerned, she did it.”

Alicia nodded. “Yes. That was the experiment. To prove that there are certain people who can be coerced into doing things they would never do while conscious.”

“And I’m like her.”

She shook her head, obviously frustrated. “Maybe. In some ways. But the truth is I don’t know. I’ve never worked with someone like you.”

“Someone who is so suggestible?”

“I guess. But it seems like it’s more than that.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Like you’ve kind of been programmed.”

“Like the Manchurian Candidate,” Stan said.

I turned and looked at him.

“You ever see that movie?” he asked.

I shook my head no. I was pretty sure he had asked me that several times before through the years.

“It was a movie with Frank Sinatra in it,” Stan said, getting excited. “They did a remake with Denzel Washington. It’s about these American soldiers in a war, the Korean War I think, and they’re captured by the enemy, but they’re taken to Manchuria where they are brainwashed by Chinese scientists. And maybe there were Russians involved too. I can’t remember.”

“Brainwashed them to do what?” I asked, but I felt like I already knew the answer.

“They planted these . . . like these triggers in them. After the soldiers were back home they didn’t remember anything about being hypnotized, but they would get a phone call, someone telling them to deal a hand of cards. And then they would see the Queen of Hearts—that was their trigger. They wanted them to assassinate people.”

A shiver ran through me as I looked at Alicia. “And you think that’s been done to me?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible. Someone is making you get up in the middle of the night to do things, to go across the street, to send numbers to an email address, commands that are buried deep inside your mind.”

“Maybe I should send a message to that email address,” I said. “Tell them I’m on to them. Tell them I want to see Michelle.”

“No,” Stan barked. “That might tip them off.”

“So what?”

“We need to find out who’s doing this,” Stan said.

“Yeah, through the email.”

“You really think they’re going to just tell you who they are and why they’re doing this?”

Stan was right. I was getting frustrated, too emotional. I needed to calm down a little.

I looked at Alicia. “You already suspected something like this, didn’t you? That I was being hypnotized and manipulated by someone.”

“I watched the video that Stan showed me. I couldn’t believe that you might really be that suggestible. You don’t know how rare that is. But yes, I had my suspicions.”

“Now we need to find out who’s doing this,” Stan said. “It’s got to be someone close to you. Someone close had to have planted these triggers.”

I caught on to what he was implying immediately. “Are you trying to say Michelle was doing this? That she’s involved with this somehow?”

“Zach,” Stan said. “You have to admit that some things seem strange. Michelle left with a man last Friday night from a crowded restaurant. She quit her job three weeks before that without telling you, pretending like she was still going to work. She had that bank account that she didn’t tell you about, the one she kept adding money to.”

“So you think Michelle is doing this.”

“I’m not saying that,” he said quickly. “I’m just saying we need to look at everything here.”

“What about Dr. Valentine?” I asked, grabbing at anything else that wasn’t Michelle, clinging to it like a life raft. “Maybe it was her. If anyone would know how to hypnotize me, plant triggers, it would be a psychiatrist. Right? It would be her.”

Alicia nodded in agreement. “She could be in on it. You said she prescribed you some medications, the medications that Stan asked me to look up.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You said the medications seemed like normal stuff.”

“I guess. Do you think I could take a few pills with me and have them tested? I know a chem major who would do it for me.”

“Sweet on you?” Stan asked.

I noted just the hint of jealousy from Stan.

Alicia didn’t answer Stan—she just smiled.

“Okay,” I said. I went to my bedroom and grabbed the bottles of pills and shook out a few of them into a plastic sandwich bag for her. The kitten was curled up in a small blanket in the bottom of the cage on the newspaper. I didn’t want to look at the cat, didn’t want to think about what I’d been manipulated to do, what I could still be manipulated to do.

Stan and Alicia were getting ready to go.

“I’m going to get the results back on these pills as quickly as I can,” Alicia said.

“You don’t think they’re what the label says?”

“I don’t know. I just want to make sure. Rule things out as we go.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Three hours later Stan came back. He had an overnight bag with him.

“Moving in?” I asked him.

“Someone needs to keep an eye on you.” He set his bag down on the couch and turned to look at me. “But first we need to go somewhere.”

“Where?”

“I know two guys who might be able to help.”

“Why do you think these guys can help?”

“Because they used to be in the deep state. At one of the alphabet organizations.”

Immediately I was doubtful. “Where did you meet these two?”

He hesitated for just a few seconds before answering. “Online.”

“What? Like a chatroom or something?”

“I’ve talked to them for a few years. They just came down here to Florida.”

I must have given him a quizzical look. I wondered if he had talked to them about me, and if they had come to Florida because of that—was that what he was trying to say?

“They travel around a lot,” he explained. “They try to stay on the move. They’ve moved around since they left the agency.”

“Left?”

“They don’t really talk specifically about what happened there, not online at least. But I’ve corresponded with them through encrypted emails. And yesterday I told them a little about you.”

“Stan,” I groaned.

“Let’s just say their curiosity was piqued. And today, I sent them a few videos from my laptop. All encrypted, of course.”

I sighed and shook my head.

“Look, these guys might be able to help.”

I couldn’t help thinking Stan was some kind of fanboy hoping to meet his idols.

“Where else are we going to go?” he asked. “You want to talk to your detective buddies about all of this? About the money in the bank, the numbers written on the walls in the house across the street, the mannequin, the videos of you sleepwalking?”

For just a second it sounded like a threat.

“There are a number of crimes here, Zach.”

“Sleepwalking’s not a crime,” I said. “And the other stuff is minor. Vandalism and trespassing.”

“You know they’re trying to pin Michelle’s disappearance on you. And you know as well as I do that there are others involved with all of this.”

“Others besides Michelle, you mean.”

Stan stopped talking for once.

“You think Michelle is involved with this. You have from the beginning.”

“Even if Michelle and Dr. Valentine are involved, you have to see that they can’t be the only ones. There have to be others behind them. Somebody . . .” He paused for just a moment like he was searching for the right word. “. . . programmed you for something. I’m guessing a lot of people were involved with this, and a lot of money was spent. Whoever they are, they’re going to want to complete what they started. Or end it all. I can’t help feeling like we’re running out of time.”

A chill ran across my skin. Deep down I knew he was right.

And Stan seemed to sense that. “Come on, man. Let’s just go talk to these guys. If they can’t help, at least we tried.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“Good,” Stan beamed. He grabbed his laptop to take with him. “I found some pretty interesting things that you need to see.”

“What?”

“I’ll show you on the way. But first you need to take your battery out of your phone.”

*

I had taken my battery out of my cell phone and left it in the center console of my truck. I looked over at Stan as I drove my pickup truck. He was looking stuff up on his phone while he puffed on a cigarette. I usually didn’t let him smoke in my truck, but I let him tonight. He kept the cigarette outside the window most of the time.

“How come you haven’t taken the battery out of your phone like I did?”

“This isn’t my phone. I left mine at home. This is a clean one.” He glanced at me for a second. “But I’m going to take the battery out before we get there. It’s one of their rules.”

I looked back at the road again. “You didn’t tell these two guys about the bank account Michelle was putting money into, did you?”

“Vaguely. I didn’t say how much money was in there.”

“Stan, these guys could be setting this up to rob us.”

“I know these guys. Besides, you’ve got bigger fish to be worrying about than two old guys.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you been on Facebook lately?”

“I just posted a few things about Michelle,” I told him as I drove. “Just that she was missing, and if anyone knew anything to contact me.”

“Did you get any responses?”

“Only a few sympathetic ones, a few likes and emojis with teardrops. Stuff like that.”

“What about Michelle’s page? Did you reach out to anyone there?”

“Michelle doesn’t have a Facebook page.”

Stan looked at me like I was an alien from another planet.

“She didn’t like Facebook. She never went on there.”

Stan looked back down at the phone in his hand.

“You don’t go on Facebook, either,” I added.

“I’m not so sure the Facebook page you’re seeing on your computer and phone is what everyone else is seeing.”

“What do you mean?”

He held up the smartphone; the screen was lit up. “I got this phone from someone else. It’s a clean phone. Not connected to me in any way. Or you.”

“So?”

“So I looked up your social media accounts on here: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.”

“I told you, I don’t have a Twitter or Instagram account.”

“You do on here.”

My heart seemed to stop for a moment. I clenched the steering wheel harder, driving past trees and houses, but everything seemed a little blurry in my peripheral vision suddenly. “What do you mean?”

“Let’s start with the Facebook account first,” Stan said, looking back down at his phone again.

My eyes were back on the road.

“For the last three weeks you’ve been posting racist things.”

“Racist things?”

“Mostly about Jewish people and Israel.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Stuff about Jews running the world. Praising the guys who shot up the synagogues. Even praising terrorist groups that target Jewish people.”

“I didn’t write that stuff. I don’t believe in that kind of stuff. You know me. I’m not even religious.”

“Remember when I looked up your Facebook page the other night? I told you that you didn’t have that many friends, but you remembered it being more. Well, maybe they’ve been unfriending you because of statements like these.”

“But I didn’t write those things.” Then I stopped. I thought about the sleepwalking episodes. “Did I write them in my sleep?”

“Maybe.” Stan said. “I guess it’s possible. Maybe those strings of numbers are codes that trigger pre-written statements to be posted on your pages.”

I didn’t say anything.

“But that would mean that you’ve been sleepwalking for longer than you thought,” Stan continued. “It would mean that you’ve been sleepwalking before Michelle left. Like I said, some of the posts on Facebook and Twitter are from three weeks ago.”

Stan didn’t have to say that this new evidence only reinforced the idea that either Michelle knew about my sleepwalking and got scared, or that she was involved with this. I still wanted to cling to the idea that maybe Michelle knew that I’d been sleepwalking and she’d gotten scared. Maybe she had set it up with some friends to leave me. Maybe she left me at the restaurant so there would be witnesses and it wouldn’t look like foul play.

But it already looked like foul play. If Michelle left me at the restaurant so there would be witnesses, then it had backfired. Only one old lady with dementia had seen her leave. And the security cameras hadn’t been working. And Michelle had left her purse behind. She hadn’t left a note or tried to contact me or anyone else I knew or the police since she’d left.

Yes, I was trying to cling to the theory that Michelle wasn’t involved with all of this, but it was getting more and more difficult to do so.

“Here’s some stuff on Twitter,” Stan said.

“I don’t want to hear it.”

Stan obliged my request. “I bet if I went to the dark web I’d find anti-Semitic posts from you all over the place. And angry posts about violence and guns. Praises about assassins, bombers, and terrorists.”

My stomach was flip-flopping as I drove.

“I bet if I researched some white supremacist sites, I’d find your posts on there too.”

I felt sick, sure that I was going to have to pull over and puke. “And you think I sent all of these?”

“Maybe. But maybe not. You said you thought people might have been in your home while you were sleeping. Maybe they made a slave of your computer so they can post from what looks like your IP address. Same thing with your phone. But they must have installed a program into your computer where you see what they want you to see on social media sites. They wouldn’t want you seeing these crazy posts too soon. You would be posting that you didn’t write these, or you would start deleting all of them.”

“That’s what I want to do. I want to delete them.”

“Well, there’s a few problems with that. Number one, even if you delete them using this phone or another computer, those posts are already out there on the internet. I guarantee they’re saved in some places, most likely by the ones who are doing this. Those posts will pop back up. Once it’s on the internet, it’s on there forever. When these people want to use these against you, they’ll pull them back up. The other problem, like sending an email to the address you’ve been sending the numbers to, both of those would tip these guys off that you’re on to them, that you’ve figured out what they’re doing.”

I didn’t answer. I stared out the windshield at the trees whipping by.

“We’re getting close,” Stan said as he slipped his “clean” phone into his pocket. “Make a right up here. At the RV park.”

“RV park? That’s where we’re meeting these guys?”

“I told you they travel a lot.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

The RV park was rundown, many of the RVs looked permanently parked there, some with arrays of lawn furniture situated in front of them, rusty cookout grills, flags and banners. A few of the RVs and travel trailers had what looked like wooden and metal awnings built right onto the sides of them. Under one of the awnings was a set of living room furniture. The RVs and trailers were each on their own plots and spaced far enough apart, but with the cars, trucks, and motorcycles parked next to them, the whole place looked crowded.

“They said they’d be towards the back,” Stan said. “Lot 376.”

I navigated the twisty paths through the trailers and RVs, meandering through the maze of metal. Elderly people walked along the side of the road, a few riding bicycles.

We passed a block building that housed restrooms and showers, and we had driven by a building near the entrance that must have been some kind of clubhouse. Beyond a chain-link fence was a swimming pool with no water in it and signs warning to keep out.

“Nice place,” I said.

Stan didn’t respond to my quip. “It must be down that road.” He pointed at a narrower side street. A wooden sign carved in the shape of a large arrow with sets of numbers etched into it pointed the way.

I drove down the side road and found Lot 376. The RV parked there looked newer than the others. There was no lawn furniture or grills outside on the concrete pad it was parked next to. There were no cars or trucks or motorcycles next to it in the grassy areas between the RV and their closest neighbors.

I pulled up to the left of the RV, next to the concrete pad in front of the door on the side of the large vehicle. I watched the door, expecting to see someone open it. But no one did.

We got out and walked to the RV. Stan had his small laptop tucked up underneath one arm. He stepped up to the door and knocked three times, then twice, then three more times.

A code? What was this, a secret knock on a kid’s clubhouse?

A moment later I heard someone coming to the door, and then it swung open. A large man stood in the doorway. He was a few inches taller than me and at least fifty pounds heavier. He had very little hair left, just a patch above his ears that went around to the back of his head. Even though he looked soft and fleshy, there was something solid and hard about him. Dark sunglasses hid his eyes, but I could tell that the eyes behind those shades were going to be small and cold, watchful like a predator’s eyes. I could also tell from the almost unnoticeable movements of his head that he was studying the two of us, taking in every detail like he was photographing us with his mind and then analyzing the data with the lightning quickness of a computer. It was the same feeling I’d gotten when the two detectives had questioned me, like I was being scrutinized and measured.

“Adam?” Stan said, breaking the momentary silence. He didn’t reach a hand out toward the man to shake, and the man didn’t reply. He just looked at Stan. “I’m Stan. I’ve been corresponding with you online.”

I had expected a hokey display of secretiveness from these two men, ready for a fake display of shiftiness and wariness, two guys hunted by the feds and desperate enough to protect their secrets. I had prepared myself not to laugh and to keep an open mind for as long as I could. But in those few seconds I felt that everything Stan had said about these men was true. I couldn’t describe it—it just seemed to be something I felt in my bones.

The man still hadn’t spoken; he just backed away into the RV, leaving the door wide open.

Stan took the open door as an invitation and climbed the steps. I followed him inside, closing the door behind me. As soon as we were inside, Adam had some kind of thick metal wand in his hand, waving it in front of Stan like it was a metal detector. I could hear the slight vibrations coming from it.

These guys obviously took their security seriously.

He passed the wand in front of me a few seconds later and then seemed satisfied with the readings he was getting.

The RV was much bigger inside than I thought it was going to be. I realized that it was one of those vehicles where the sides could be moved out to make more room. The place was neat and clean, with computer equipment tucked into shelves.

Adam sat down at a built-in dining room table and gestured at us to join him. Stan sat down on the bench seat, moving around to the inside, and then I sat down beside Stan. A moment later another man came out from the back rooms of the RV.

“This is my partner, Joel,” Adam said as the man walked past us to the front of the RV. He swiveled the passenger seat around and sat down. Where Adam was tall and large, Joel was shorter and lean, bordering on emaciated. His skin was darker than Adam’s, and his curly hair was black with strands of gray streaking through it on the sides. His eyes were dark little pebbles staring at us.

Joel nodded at us and we nodded back.

Adam turned his attention to Stan—he still hadn’t taken his sunglasses off. “You’ve sent me some interesting things. Otherwise we would never be meeting like this. I try to help as much as I can online, from behind the scenes. I rarely ever meet anyone in person.”

Stan looked honored.

Adam looked at me. “You’re Zach.”

“Yes.”

“Your wife left you almost a week ago.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me everything that’s happened so far, if you would.”

I told him everything. I didn’t leave anything out. Stan jumped in a few times to make the details a little clearer, but other than that no one interrupted me. Adam and Joel waited patiently, listening with the same intensity as their stares.

Twenty minutes later I was finished with my story.

Adam seemed to be thinking everything over for a minute after I was done, and then he turned to Stan. “Could I see the tape of this hypnosis session with Alicia?”

Stan pulled it up on his laptop within seconds and slid the machine over to Adam.

Adam watched the video in silence. I heard myself talking on the video, my voice sounding a little tinny as it came from the laptop. I heard Alicia tell me to put the kitten in the oven, to shut the door, to set the oven for three hundred and fifty degrees. I cringed, embarrassed at what I had done so willingly.

“Highly suggestible,” Adam said. “And it looks like it’s more than just some simple triggers planted, some pre-suggestions loaded into the subconscious.” He looked right at me. “It looks more like you’ve been programmed. Like mind control.”

“So, someone’s controlling my mind?”

“To a degree, yes.” He glanced back down at the laptop, frowning. “Programming like this takes a while. Years, usually.”

My stomach sank as I glanced at Stan. I could tell that Adam was going to say the same thing Stan had been dancing delicately around for my sake—that Michelle had been involved with this from the beginning.

“How is this program triggered?” I asked. “I mean, if I’m being hypnotized, then who’s doing it? Nobody’s been at my house for a few nights. I’ve recorded myself, and I just wake up in the middle of the night and get dressed. Then leave the house and go across the street. But who’s telling me to do these things?”

Stan was already pulling up the videos he had stored on his laptop in case Adam wanted to see them.

I waited for Adam’s answer. It was almost like I had challenged him to come up with an answer because I still didn’t want to believe Michelle was involved. If she’d been the one who had been hypnotizing me before, then who was doing it now that she was gone?

“I don’t know,” Adam answered. “Maybe the triggers were pre-programmed weeks ago. Months ago. Instructions set at certain times and dates—almost like an alarm clock going off in your mind. Or maybe someone’s beaming signals at you.”

“Beaming them at me?”

“Like from a parabolic microphone. They have these directional microphones now that can transmit as well as receive. And they’re unbelievable sensitive and effective. A person could use one and whisper something to you from fifty feet away—hell, a block away—and you would swear you’d just heard the voice in your own mind. You would swear that it was your own thoughts. Or maybe the signal’s coming from somewhere inside your own house. It could be coming from anywhere.”

“What about an RFID chip?” Stan suggested.

Adam gave a slight shake of his head. “No, those are usually used to track people.”

“I don’t have one of those, do I?” I asked.

“No,” Adam said. “I checked for those when I scanned you earlier.” He paused for just a second. “I was thinking more along the lines of smart dust.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Smart dust is dust so small you can’t see it with the naked eye. When it’s inhaled, it sticks to brain cells and then can become a network of antennas to receive signals beamed to it.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think . . . I can’t have that inside of me.”

“There are other ways to create an antenna to receive signals,” Adam continued, ignoring my protest. “There are metals like mercury and aluminum that can collect in the brain to help receive signals. The metals cling to the cells, staying there for life. There are also things called carbon nanotubes in aerosols.”

“Yeah,” Stan said. “The ones they spray from the chem trails.”

I began to feel overwhelmed, like I had just stepped onto a professional playing field without ever learning the rules of the game.

“Obviously they want him to do something,” Stan said to Adam. “Like a Manchurian Candidate.”

Adam gave a slight nod, and his expression managed to say that Stan was stating the obvious.

“Who’s they?” I asked. “The government? Our own government? Another government? A terrorist group?”

Adam took a deep breath and exhaled slowly through his nose, his mouth a tight line in his jowly face. “Any of them could be possible. It seems to me, with all of the social media posts, your wife leaving and telling coworkers that she was afraid for her safety, with all of that, they’re setting you up as a patsy.”

“A patsy like Lee Harvey Oswald,” Stan said, jumping in. “Or Sirhan Sirhan.”

I’d heard Stan’s conspiracy theories many times before about the JFK assassination, how Oswald had never fired a shot, how a different man had been at the sixth-floor window of the book depository building, shooting three times, one of the bullets hitting the street, but the kill shot had come from the other direction. Stan believed that once Oswald realized someone else was shooting from the building, he panicked and ran.

I didn’t believe in all of that stuff; I just wanted to know what they—whoever they were—had planned for me.

“Our government and the Soviets experimented with mind control,” Adam said. “But there were probably more: the British, the Chinese, the Koreans.” He shrugged like the list could go on. “They did all kinds of experiments; one of the most famous was the MK Ultra project, where they used LSD. They created LSD as a mind control drug, but it never worked the way they wanted it to. They tested it on both willing participants and others who had no idea they were being given the drug, like patients in mental hospitals, soldiers in the military, and prisoners. Some famous people who had been used in the experiments were: Whitey Bulger, Ken Kesey, and Ted Kaczynski—the Unabomber. In one famous experiment, prostitutes would slip the LSD into the drinks of their johns while CIA agents watched and filmed from behind a two-way mirror. They hoped the LSD would make a person tell the truth, and maybe even become highly suggestible or able to be manipulated. But like I said, LSD had a different effect on most people. But it wasn’t like they just gave up on mind control after a few failed experiments. They moved on to other techniques.”

“It’s hard to believe our government experiments on people like that,” I said.

“They’ve been doing it for a long time,” Adam said. “Not just giving people LSD without their being aware of it, there was also the experiment where the CIA gassed a subway station in New York City with bacteria to see how long it would take for the bacteria to get to the people in the tunnels. The bacteria wasn’t dangerous. It was just a trial run.”

“The Tuskegee Experiment,” Stan said.

I had heard about that one before, probably from Stan.

“Like I said,” Adam continued, “they didn’t get what they wanted from LSD, but it wasn’t like they just gave up on mind control. They went in a different direction, finding people who are highly suggestible, then programing them over a long period of time. There could be hundreds of people like you all across America, thousands of them, all over the world. They call them sleepers. Maybe many will never be used, but when one is activated . . .” He let his words trail off like the rest was too grim to speak of.

“Activated,” I said. “Like I’ve been.”

Adam didn’t answer.

“How?” I asked. “I mean how do they know that I’m this suggestible?”

“DNA,” Adam answered. “It’s in your DNA.”

“But how did they get my DNA?”

Adam shrugged. “Maybe you signed up to search your genealogy.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Maybe your DNA came from your medical records. All information is online now, all susceptible to hacking, all shared and sold to each other by the cabal. DNA collection has been going on for decades, long before citizens knew the power of DNA. Just like data mining—listening to and collecting all of your phone calls and emails—goes on now, so they have them if they need to use them in the future. DNA works the same way. They’ve been collecting a database of DNA for a long time. They’re so far ahead of what you think of as far-fetched sci-fi; whatever you think they might be doing in the future, they’re already doing now.”

“You said cabal. What’s that? Is that the people who are doing this to me?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

“Many call those in power the deep state, but I like to think of it more like a cabal, a secret group of wealthy and powerful people: CEOs, world leaders, intelligence directors, billionaire investors, Old-World money. These people get together and make decisions about the world, how to rule it, how to control it. This group isn’t nationalistic, their decisions aren’t based on race or religion, it’s all about power. True power. And I believe they’re getting close to the total control and power that Orwell couldn’t have even imagined.”

Adam paused a moment, pulling out a cigar from his shirt pocket and a lighter from his pants pocket. “You mind?” he asked.

“No,” I answered.

“The cabal needs a few things to ultimately control the population of the Earth,” Adam went on after inhaling a few puffs of his cigar. “They need to control the information, the food and drug supply, the guns and weapons, and the money or banking system. They’re very close with the information and money supply. As more and more speech is shut down on the internet, and more and more media is controlled by those in power, less and less of the truth ever gets out to the masses—the ‘useless eaters,’ as the elites like to call us. Tech companies are controlled by the cabal—it’s a dream come true for them. And as far as money is concerned, the closer we get to a cashless society, the more control the cabal will have. Imagine that you do something the elites don’t like. They just freeze your account. You can’t buy anything. You can’t put gas in your car to go to work. You can’t buy food or pay your electric bill. You would be out in the streets with no way to take care of yourself, except by begging for scraps.”

I had to admit that his dystopian view of the world was scary, but I wasn’t so willing to believe that we were as close as he said we were.

“It’s all about population control,” Stan said.

If Adam was annoyed that Stan was jumping into his little speech, he didn’t show it. He inhaled on his cigar again and then blew the smoke out away from us. “The cabal knows that the Earth’s resources aren’t going to last forever, maybe not even much longer. I think they’re planning something to wipe out huge sectors of the population. And those who survive whatever pandemic or disaster that’s coming, the cabal will have total control over once they control the money, the food, the information, and the guns.”

“They want to keep us divided,” Joel said.

I looked over at him—it was the first time he’d spoken. He had a deep voice with just the trace of an accent I couldn’t name.

“They control the information,” Joel went on, “and they want the masses at each other’s throats: black against white, Christians against Muslims, conservatives against liberals, nation against nation, old against young, rich against poor. And on and on. The more divided we are, the weaker we are, and they know it. They want people more and more dependent on the government. They want us conditioned to unending wars. They want us afraid of bogeymen: terrorists. They want us afraid to travel outside of our own country, afraid to meet other people and expose ourselves to other cultures. They want people of other nations and cultures to be the faceless monsters, animals to be exterminated before they flood into our country and take over, before they infect us with disease, before they take our jobs and cripple our economy, before they kill us with their bombs. They need the constant fighting, the constant division between us. They need us to hate.”

“Why do you think there have been so many advances in technology and weapons compared to healthcare, medicine, and alternative fuels?” Adam asked. “With tech, the cabal can control everything: the information, the money supply, all of your data stores somewhere to be used against you if need be.”

“But what are they wanting me to do?” I asked.

“So far, it seems like they want you to send those numbers via email.”

Stan pulled out a folded piece of paper. “I wrote down the numbers on the wall in the house across the street.” He unfolded the piece of paper and handed it to Adam, then looked at me. “And you got the notecards.”

I pulled the notecards I’d found inside my wife’s boot along with the bank receipts and gave them to Adam.

Adam studied the numbers.

“We think we’ve figured out one of the string of numbers,” Stan said, trying hard not to beam with pride. “This one. We think it’s a time and date. Four o’clock, April eleventh.”

Adam didn’t say anything, but he nodded in agreement.

“But we can’t figure out the other ones,” Stan said. “Maybe it’s some other kind of code.”

Adam didn’t say anything. He looked at Joel who got up from the passenger chair and came over to the table to have a look at the lines of numbers.

“A code?” I asked. “You mean like A equals 1, and B equals 2, and on and on?”

“Nothing that simple, I’m sure,” Adam said.

“It’s not computer code, is it?” I asked.

Stan looked at me like I was dumb.” No.”

“Some of the number lines are six digits,” Joel said. “Some seven numbers. Some eight and nine. This one is twelve numbers. This one fourteen.”

“I thought they might be account numbers at first,” I said. “But they don’t match the account Michelle was putting money into.”

“Passwords?” Stan offered.

“Or a code that turns into words,” Adam said. “Or passwords that release larger amounts of data.”

“Just like I said,” Stan said, smiling.

“Coordinates?” Joel suggested. “Some of them could be coordinates on a map, longitude and latitude.”

Adam nodded at Joel, who hurried back to his seat with his phone in his hand, already looking up the coordinates.

“There’s got to be something else we’re missing,” Adam said, shaking his head just a little and stubbing out his cigar into a metal ashtray. Then he froze and looked at me. “Didn’t you say that the company that rented Dr. Valentine’s office was the same company that owns the house across the street?”

“Yeah. D&C Logistics.”

Adam went to work on his computer.

“I looked them up,” Stan said. “It’s just a dummy website and email. Phone’s disconnected.”

Adam just nodded impatiently, his fingers flying across the keys.

“No luck on the coordinates,” Joel said. “Only one matches a set of coordinates, and it’s in the middle of the Indian Ocean.”

Adam stared at his computer screen; I could tell he was reading something.

“What is it?” I asked him.

Stan leaned forward with anticipation.

Adam turned his laptop toward me and Stan, showing us the screen. “It’s a list of other businesses this company owns.”

“How did you find that?” Stan whispered in awe.

Adam didn’t bother answering.

“Their businesses are all over the place,” Adam said. “But there are three around here. One was the rental office in Daytona Beach, where your psychiatrist had her office. One is the house they own—listed as a rental property—the house across the street from you. And this one. It’s a storage unit company.”

“Storage units,” I whispered, my skin crawling, my stomach sinking. I could feel acid trying to creep back up into my throat. “I’ve got a storage unit there, don’t I?”

Nobody answered me, but I could see it in their eyes that I was right.

“While I was . . . was under hypnosis, I took something there, didn’t I?”

“Maybe one of these series of numbers is the code to get into the storage facility,” Joel said. “Or one could be the code to a combination lock.”

“They’ll have a record of you owning a storage unit there,” Adam said. “And you can bet they’ve got a recording of you dropping something off there or picking something up. More evidence against you.”

“We need to get into that unit,” Stan said. “We need to see what’s in there.”

“I wouldn’t even know which unit is mine,” I said, my stomach still sinking. I had no intention of calling the storage company, and I definitely didn’t want to go there.

“You could call them,” Stan said. “Tell them you forgot which unit is yours. I bet people do that all the time.”

“Still need a code to get into the gate,” Joel said.

“He could wait in the parking lot and follow someone inside after they go through the gate.” Stan frowned. “He wouldn’t be able to get back out until someone else left.”

“I don’t need to go there,” I told them.

They all stared at me.

“I think I already know what’s in the storage unit.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

I locked eyes with Stan. “Remember the bags of fertilizer that were stolen from work a few weeks ago, the ammonium sulfate?”

Stan’s eyes widened with shock.

“You two work at a fertilizer company?” Adam asked.

“Not a fertilizer company,” I said. “We’re a pest control company, but we treat lawns and shrubs with nutrients and chemicals. A few weeks ago a spreader used for applying fertilizer and twelve bags of ammonium sulfate were taken, along with a few odds and ends: a few cans of organophosphates, a can of roach bait, a few other pest control things. But those other things don’t matter, not even the spreader. It’s the bags of ammonium sulfate that are important.”

“To make a bomb,” Stan said.

“We wondered how someone had stolen the stuff without someone seeing them,” I continued. “We thought someone had loaded the bags and extra spreader onto their truck and offloaded them somewhere on their route, but we couldn’t pin it on anyone.” I paused for just a moment. “Because it was me. I had to have come back one night under hypnosis and taken it. I’m one of only three people with a key to the offices and the loading bays, one of only three people who know the code to the security system.” I was starting to feel sick to my stomach again.

“Three weeks ago,” Stan said.

I nodded. I knew what he was saying—it was too much of a coincidence. “Michelle quit her job three weeks ago, but she never told me. Because she’s involved with this.” There, I’d finally said it out loud.

Adam and Joel exchanged glances.

“Michelle was the one programming me,” I whispered. I felt like the air had been knocked out of my lungs, like I’d been punched square in the chest and I couldn’t catch my breath. “She programmed me to go to my work and steal the bags of fertilizer. Then I stopped at the storage unit on the way home.”

“So they got him making a bomb?” Stan looked to Adam for the answer.

Adam shrugged again, exchanging another glance with Joel. I couldn’t be sure, but I think I was starting to pick up fear in their exchanged glances at each other, like they had stumbled onto something much bigger than they wanted to tackle.

“But a bomb for what?” Stan persisted.

“A terrorist attack,” Adam suggested. “There might be more than just bags of fertilizer in that unit. There might be other bomb-making supplies. There might be guns and other weapons.”

“And they want him to do it on April eleventh,” Stan whispered.

I could feel the puke wanting to come up.

“Could be a false flag attack,” Joel said.

“Something to push their agenda,” Adam added. “Something to make Americans afraid, something to convince Americans to hand over their guns, or get on board with the latest war.”

Joel stood up and looked at Adam. “I think it’s time you two left.”

Adam nodded. “Yeah, guys, I hate to cut this short, but we need to end this.”

“But what is he supposed to do?” Stan asked. He seemed unwilling to go, even though I was already standing up.

Adam shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“We can’t go to the police,” Stan said, his voice rising a little. “We can’t go to the government. Do we go to the newspapers?”

Adam just stared at Stan like he should already know the answer to that. “I doubt a story like that would ever get past any editor.”

“Come on, Stan,” I said. “We should go.”

“We need some help,” Stan said. “You guys said you could help.”

“I said we would try,” Adam said. His voice had a sudden edge to it.

“Come on, Stan,” I said again.

Finally, Stan grabbed his laptop and stood up.

I felt numb as I walked to the door of the RV, about to step out into a world I’d never known before, a world that was suddenly real now.

We got into my truck and I started it. I slipped the battery back into my phone and turned it on. I shifted into reverse and pulled out of the grassy area next to the RV, then drove back down the little street, following the signs that led back out of the RV park.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it as I drove. A patsy. I was the patsy. And Michelle was a part of it all—there was no denying that now. She’d been a part of this since the beginning. Was our whole life a lie? My whole life?

“You want me to drive, dude?” Stan asked.

I didn’t answer him as I pulled out of the RV park and onto the road. A terrible thought had just crossed my mind. “I met Michelle in college right after my parents died in a car crash.”

Stan seemed to sense where I was heading with my words. “You don’t know that the crash had anything to do with all of this.”

“But what if it did? What if this was set up when I was a teenager, set up from when I was a kid, whenever they got a hold of my DNA and knew I could be programmed? What if they killed my parents when I went to college to get me and Michelle together?”

Stan didn’t say anything. What could he say? I saw in his eyes that he believed what I was saying. And I suspected that he’d already thought of it before I had.

It was nearly night now as I drove down the road away from the RV park.

“I can’t believe those guys,” Stan said. “I thought they would help us.”

At first I’d been prepared not to believe the two men and their supposed affiliation with some government agency—one of the alphabet agencies, as Stan called them—but after spending almost an hour with them, I believed they knew what they were talking about. But I also believed that they felt they were in over their heads with this. Possibly things they’d heard rumors about, programs they’d only suspected had existed, were suddenly real to them and they didn’t know how to handle it. They didn’t know what to do.

I didn’t know what I was going to do. I just drove in a fog as the sun dipped down below the trees.

Just then my cell phone rang. I picked it up, glancing at a number I didn’t recognize, but it had a local area code. I thought about ignoring the call, waiting for it to go to voicemail, but for some reason I knew I had to answer it. At least it would be a distraction for a few seconds from the nightmare I’d found myself in.

But when I answered the phone, the world got a lot crazier.

“Hello?” I said into the phone.

“Zach.”

It was Michelle.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

I needed to pull my pickup truck over to the side of the road. My world was spinning, and it wasn’t safe for me to be driving at that moment. The next few seconds seemed to drag out for hours. I had my cell phone clutched in my hand, tight up against my ear. I needed to hold on to this phone, I couldn’t let it go, I couldn’t lose Michelle again.

I veered over to the side of the road too quickly, running up onto the grassy shoulder, the truck bumping along the uneven ground, my truck creaking.

From the passenger seat, I heard Stan asking what was wrong and why I was pulling over. The fear in his voice was unmistakable. He was probably still spooked from being in Adam and Joel’s RV. I was, too.

“What’s wrong?” Stan asked. “Who is that?”

A car that had been following me too closely swerved around me as I got off the road, racing away and probably happy that I was out of his way.

I came to a stop, slamming on the brakes a little too hard, both of us pitching forward into our seatbelts. But through all the rocking and bouncing, I hadn’t lost the cell phone next to my ear.

“Who is that?” Stan asked again, his voice practically a shriek now.

I ignored Stan. “Michelle?” I said into the phone.

In that moment I was back to Square One, back to believing that Michelle had been taken, that she hadn’t left me, that she wasn’t involved with all of this. In those few seconds that fantasy came back to me. I was ready to forgive her. I just wanted things to go back to the way they were. I just wanted my old life back.

“Zach,” Michelle said. The first time she’d said my name it had been a question, like she was making sure I was who she was calling. This time my name came out sharply, like a teacher scolding a student.

“Michelle,” I breathed into the phone again, the motor of my pickup rumbling, the air conditioner down low, the windows rolled up and muting the sound of the cars and trucks roaring past us on the road only a few feet away.

Questions poured out of me, my words practically running together. “Where are you? Where did you go? Someone said you left with a man. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“Zach,” That sharp command was back again. “Listen to me.”

I paused, my breath caught in my throat.

“You need to stop digging,” she said.

For a moment I didn’t understand what she was saying, the words not even making sense to me.

“Stop digging,” she said again. “Stop asking questions. Do you understand me?”

“Michelle . . .”

Click.

She’d hung up.

I stared at the phone like I couldn’t figure out what had happened. The phone went dark.

“That was Michelle?” Stan asked.

I didn’t answer; I just stared at the phone in my hand.

“Holy shit,” Stan whispered.

I checked the number Michelle had just called from and dialed it into my phone with trembling fingers. A second later I heard the now-familiar sound of a disconnected phone, a robotic female voice telling me the number I had just dialed was not in service. I tried the number three more times.

“What did she say?” Stan asked. He seemed hyper, ready to jump out of his seat.

Shaking my head and staring out the windshield, I laid the phone back down in the center console. “She told me to stop digging.”

For once Stan was speechless.

Stop digging—Michelle had said to stop digging. Stop asking questions.

A threat?

It sure had sounded like it. Michelle had left me, then she just called me and threatened me.

Suddenly all of the fantasies of Michelle not being involved with this were gone in an instant, the idea impossible now. I’d heard it in her voice, in her tone. She’d never loved me. I had been a job to her, something to program and watch over, waiting until I needed to be activated. I couldn’t help thinking about my parents again, an anger rising inside of me like a geyser. The car crash had always seemed suspicious to me. My dad had lost control of the car—that had always been the explanation for the accident. Witnesses said the car sped right off the road and into a tree, exploding instantly. They said my father never even slowed down, the brake lights never came on.

Since the fire had damaged my mom and dad’s bodies too badly, there hadn’t been much evidence from the autopsies. The doctor told me that most likely my dad had suffered a massive heart attack or stroke while driving, and my mother hadn’t been able to stop the car.

I had accepted the doctor’s explanations then, but I wasn’t so sure now. Everything seemed suspicious to me now, a plot to get me to Michelle.

Had the programming from Michelle and the cabal started as soon as she met me? Had she programmed me to go to work at Carlton’s Lawn and Pest Control? Programmed me to become a manager so I would have access to the fertilizer? I tried to remember why I had taken this job in the first place, and I couldn’t remember. I tried to think of why I had stayed there all these years. The money wasn’t the greatest, and I really kind of hated the job. But I had stayed.

“Zach,” Stan said,

I looked at him and saw the horror in his eyes.

“They know,” he whispered and glanced down at my cell phone in the console. “Your phone. They’ve probably been tracking you. You shouldn’t have put the battery back in.”

I wasn’t paying attention to Stan; I was concentrating on the road, whispering to myself, repeating Michelle’s words to me: Stop digging.

I wondered what digging Michelle was talking about. Talking to Kendra at her work? Harassing the waitress and manager at the restaurant where she’d left me? Going to Dr. Valentine’s office? No, she—they—would have expected me to do all of that. It was the other stuff, the computer searches, the cameras, bringing Stan and Alicia into this. Adam and Joel.

But it was even more than that—it was what we’d found out tonight about the storage unit and what was inside of it. It was the time and date we had figured out.

“We need to get out of here,” Stan said, looking behind him out the rear window of my pickup truck like he expected a car to pull up behind us at any second. “Cops might come. Wonder why you’re parked on the side of the road.”

Stan was right; I didn’t need to draw any attention to myself right now.

As I was about to shift into drive and pull back onto the road, Stan picked up my cell phone, about to take the battery back out, but the phone rang. I grabbed it out of his hand, expecting to see Michelle’s number on the screen again. It wasn’t her number—I didn’t know whose number it was.

“Hello?” I said, answering the phone.

“Zach?”

“Alicia?”

“Hi. Sorry, I got your number from Stan yesterday. I was trying to call him, but he’s not answering his phone.”

“He’s here with me. He doesn’t have his phone with him.” I didn’t want to go into a long and detailed reason why, and I felt the less I said on my phone the better. “You want to talk to him?”

“No,” she said, and I could practically hear the shudder in her voice. “Actually, I was trying to get a hold of you. I’m at your house.”

“My house? Why are you at my house?” I cringed at how rude that must have just sounded. “I mean—”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I called your home phone and tried to find Stan. I wanted to tell you what I found out about the pills.”

Not on the phone, I thought. I looked at Stan and saw the same expression on his face. He shook his head no.

“How about some ice cream?” I blurted out to Alicia before she could continue.

I checked the rearview and side mirrors before pulling back onto the road.

“Ice cream?” she asked.

“Or some coffee. I know a nice little place where all of us can go.”

“Okay,” she finally said. “Where?”

I gave her the directions and then hung up.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Alicia was there before we were, waiting in her car in the parking lot. The place wasn’t crowded, and we pulled up in the space right beside her. I had pulled the battery out of my phone and left it in the glove box. Stan left his phone and laptop in the truck, and I locked the doors after we got out. Stan had already written a few words on a small notepad we’d stopped at a dollar store to buy: LEAVE YOUR PHONE IN THE CAR.

I expected Alicia to question the note when Stan showed it to her, but she didn’t. She left her phone in the car and got out, pushing the button on her key fob to lock the doors. I could tell she was rattled by something. She told me on the phone she wanted to tell me something about the pills, and then I had remembered that she had taken a pill from both of my prescription bottles to get them tested by a chem major she knew. That had only been a few hours ago, but now it felt like it was days ago.

We went into the little diner and found the table farthest away from any other customers. I didn’t know if we would be any safer inside the building, especially after Adam told me about parabolic directional microphones, but this diner had to be better than my own house.

“What’s wrong?” Alicia asked after we sat down in a booth. She scooted all the way to the window. Stan sat down next to her. I sat across from them. “You guys look scared out of your wits.”

“We found some things out,” I told her.

“Yeah, me too.”

“Okay,” I said, keeping my voice low. “You go first.”

“Where did you get those prescriptions from?” she asked me.

“From Dr. Valentine.”

“I mean, which pharmacy filled them?”

“They came in the mail.”

“The mail?”

I shrugged. “Dr. Valentine would write out the prescriptions for me and then send them off. I’d get the prescriptions about a week later in the mail.”

“And you didn’t think that was unusual?”

“Not really. I figured that’s how things were done nowadays.”

“Do you know where the pills came from? What address? Do you still have the package they came in? Was there a packing slip with them or some kind of receipt?”

“I don’t know where they came from. Never really looked at the address. Out of state, I think, but I can’t remember where.”

“What about the package they came in?”

“I’m sure I threw it away. And that was at least a few weeks ago. Why?”

“I just wanted to see the name of the pharmacy the pills came from.”

“Is there something wrong with them?”

“No. I mean yes. They’re not the pills they’re supposed to be. Not what’s written on the label, at least.” She pulled out a piece of paper from her purse and unfolded it.

“What are they?”

She handed me the paper. I looked at it—some kind of computer printout that I didn’t understand with a bunch of long chemical names and percentages. “What does this mean?”

“Those pills are nothing but fillers.”

“Fillers?”

“Yeah, the fillers they put into pills: starch, sugars like lactose, calcium salts, binders.”

“Placebos?” Stan offered.

“Both of them?” I asked. “The anti-anxiety medication and the sleep-aids?”

Alicia nodded quickly.

“You mean the pills I’ve been taking for the last two years were never real.”

“Not the ones my friend tested.”

“Why would Dr. Valentine, or whoever she really is, prescribe me sugar pills?”

“Maybe she didn’t want to give you anything that would interfere with the mind control programming,” Stan said, then he looked up, his mouth clamping closed.

A waitress walked up to our table with her ticket book in her hand. “What’ll you have?” she asked.

We all ordered coffees to start with and the waitress left.

“What about you guys?” Alicia asked. “What did you find out?”

“We found a time and date,” Stan said. “It was in one of those strings of numbers.”

Alicia’s eyes widened in shock.

“April eleventh at four o’clock,” Stan said.

“And we think we know what I’m being programmed for,” I said.

“A Manchurian Candidate,” Stan added, but he didn’t seem so excited about it now. “Just like I thought.”

“We found out the company that owns the house across the street from mine also owns a storage unit business. I’m pretty sure I have a storage unit there.”

“But you don’t know for sure,” she said.

“I’m not going there to check,” I said and then explained as briefly as I could about the bags of fertilizer stolen from work.

We clammed up when the waitress came back with our coffees.

After she left again, I said, “It’s kind of obvious now what’s going on.”

“But why?” she asked. “Why would our government—”

“They call it a cabal,” I interrupted. “Like a deep state inside the government. Or outside of it; some powerful group of people that wants to rule the world.”

“Why would they want you to kill people?”

“To push their agendas,” Stan said, and then he cited the same reasons Adam and Joel had only an hour ago: “Gun control could be one reason. They need to get the guns out of the hands of the people. Or it could be to keep provoking fear of other religious and racial groups, to keep us divided, to keep the hatred going. Or to keep us used to the forever wars on terrorism. Or the wars on drugs. Maybe to eventually declare some kind of martial law, or a partial police state, to get the people begging for it.”

Alicia glanced at Stan, then me, then back at Stan again. “And you believe that? You think something like this has been done before?”

Stan nodded. “Yes. I think so. I think it’s been done plenty of times. All the way back to JFK.”

We were all quiet for a moment.

Alicia sipped her coffee. Her hands were shaking.

I felt instantly at fault. “Look, Alicia. I really appreciate everything you’ve done so far, all of your help, but I don’t expect you to keep going with this.”

She just stared at me.

“You can go home if you want to. I wouldn’t blame you at all.”

“I don’t think I can.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“What do you mean, you don’t think you can?”

“After my friend at school gave me this chemical analysis of your medication,” she said, her voice much lower now, “I went back to my apartment. I can’t say for sure, but I think someone had been inside before I got there.”

“Someone broke in?” I asked her.

She shook her head no. “No, I mean maybe. It didn’t look like it. I couldn’t point to one thing in particular that was out of place, but it just felt like someone had been there.”

I knew exactly what she was talking about. I’d felt the same thing when I had woken up in my own home.

“This is getting too dangerous,” I said. “You guys don’t have to keep doing this with me.” I looked at Stan this time. “I would definitely understand. I really do appreciate everything you’ve done so far, but I know this got a lot bigger than any of us probably ever imagined.”

Neither one said they were backing out. But neither one said they were staying, either.

“What are you going to do?” Alicia asked me after another sip of her coffee.

“I don’t know. Stan’s friends didn’t have any advice for me.”

Stan seemed to ignore my comment about his two ex-agency friends. Instead he looked at Alicia and said, “And we’ve been warned.”

“Warned?” She looked at me. “What does that mean?”

“Michelle called,” Stan blurted out before I had a chance to answer her question.

Her mouth dropped open in shock for just a second. “Michelle,” she whispered. “She called you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “From a cell number I’d never seen before.”

“What did she say?”

“She just told me to stop digging and to stop asking questions. Then she hung up. I called the number back, but it was disconnected.”

“So she was involved with this the whole time,” Alicia said.

“I told you,” Stan said.

“Yeah.” I spoke to Alicia, ignoring Stan. “I think she’s been involved from the very beginning, right after my parents died in a car crash. That’s when Michelle and I met, a few weeks after they died.”

I saw the look in Alicia’s eyes, the same conclusion that I had come to less than an hour ago, that my parents’ death had been no accident, that their death had set all of this up. They had been planning this for a long time.

“There’s got to be something we can do,” Alicia said. “Someone we can talk to, someone who can help.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t share Alicia’s positivity, especially after my meeting with Adam and Joel.

“This is still America,” she said as if I had argued with her. “We need to get all of the evidence we’ve got and store it somewhere.”

“I’ve got it somewhere safe,” Stan said. “It’s in the cloud. I’ve got the password.” He wrote it down on the notepad he’d just bought and slid it across the table to me.

“Good,” Alicia said. “But we need someone to help us. We’ll get a lawyer. We’ll find one tomorrow. Tell them everything. Show the evidence we have. They’ll know what we can do.”

“We’re gonna sue the government?” Stan muttered, snorting out sarcastic laughter.

I wasn’t even sure if you were allowed to sue the government, but I thought I’d heard of it happening before. I remembered something about people suing the FDA or something.

“We’ll look up some lawyers tonight,” Alicia said.

Stan looked at her—it was almost a glare. “You’re staying with him tonight?”

She looked shocked. “Someone has to. You aren’t?”

“After everything you’ve heard tonight?” Stan asked.

“And leaving him alone would be a good idea?”

I felt like telling them I was right there across the table from them.

“Someone needs to be there to monitor him when . . . when he wakes up in the middle of the night,” Alicia said.

“When I sleepwalk,” I corrected.

“Maybe I could set up a new series of commands to override the ones that have already been programmed.”

“You can do that?”

“I don’t know. I could try.”

We were all quiet for a moment.

“Maybe we should send an email to someone,” Alicia said. “Or mail a letter or a package with a video in it. Some kind of evidence in case something happens to one of us.”

A silence settled over us for just a moment, each of us considering the idea of something really happening to us.

“What about you?” Alicia asked Stan. “You’re not staying?”

“I gotta go to work tomorrow. I’ve already missed too many days. Steve’s already pissed at me. I can’t lose my job.”

My job was the furthest thing from my mind at that moment, and except for the bags of stolen fertilizer and cans of organophosphates, I hadn’t even thought about that place. That job, that part of my life, was back when things made sense, when Michelle was still my wife and I wasn’t some robot who could be turned into a monster anytime these shadowy people decided to activate me.

“I don’t think you should stay at your house either,” Alicia told me.

“She’s probably right,” Stan said. “This is getting serious.”

“Where, then?” I asked. “A motel?”

Stan shrugged. “I don’t know. Anywhere might be better than your own house.” He looked at Alicia.

She nodded. “Yeah. Just for tonight. Then we’ll talk to a lawyer in the morning.”

“Where are you staying?” Stan asked.

“We’ll find somewhere,” she said, giving him the cold shoulder.

I thought Stan was going to reconsider and stay in the motel room with us, but he didn’t. I knew he had some kind of feelings for Alicia, and he probably didn’t like the idea of me spending the night alone with her. I admit, even at that time, I was attracted to Alicia in a purely fundamental way, but, like my job, it was the last thing on my mind with everything else going on. I couldn’t believe Stan was letting petty jealousy get in the way.

“Okay,” I said. “That’s what we’ll do. We’ll go get a room for the night somewhere.”

“I know a place we can go,” Alicia said.

“I need to go back to your house,” Stan said, not hiding his unhappiness about us running off together to a motel room.

I looked at him.

“My truck is at your house,” he said. “Remember, you drove?”

“Okay,” I said, nodding, pulling out my wallet to pay for the coffees and to leave a tip. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

It was fully dark as I drove back to my house. Stan had been quiet for most of the drive—I could tell he was brewing about something.

“I’m not trying to move in on your girl,” I told him.

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

I was suddenly angry at Stan, but trying not to show it. My life could be in danger, and most likely was, and he was worried about me hooking up with Alicia, and worried about getting back to work tomorrow. I was concerned he might let it slip to Steve that I had stolen the fertilizer and chemicals.

Of course I would deny it. Stan’s story wouldn’t sound exactly sane. Steve, like everyone else there, knew about Stan’s crazy, paranoid stories.

But I didn’t say anything more about it.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Stan said again. “I’m not interested in her. Not anymore.”

I glanced at him as I drove past a streetlight, the orange light washing over him. I saw it then—he was scared.

“Stan . . .”

“Zach,” he snapped before I could finish. “This is some serious shit. I don’t know if you understand how serious this is.”

“We’re gonna get some help.”

He chuckled; it was a nasty, humorless sound. He shook his head slowly. “Man, you need to run.”

“Run?”

“Yeah. Run.”

“We’re going to get some help tomorrow,” I said again. “Talk to some lawyers. They’ll know what to do. We’ve got evidence of what’s been going on.”

He chuckled again, that same sinister laugh. “Yeah, I can see a lawyer listening to your story about sleepwalking and sending passwords to email addresses in the middle of the night.”

“We’ve got the video.”

“Nobody’s going to believe that shit,” he snapped. “Can’t you see that?”

I was stunned for a second as I drove.

“It could be faked,” he explained in a more reasonable tone. “They’ll say we faked it all. Made all of it up.”

I could see his point. I hadn’t thought about that.

“Man, they might come after me and Alicia.”

That sick feeling was back in my stomach again. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“I’m going to have to cooperate, if they do,” he said. It almost sounded like a threat, like he’d been covering for me while I did something illegal. But I’d done nothing wrong—this shit had been done to me. He knew that. Once again, that flash of anger sparked up inside of me.

“Look, man,” I said after I calmed myself down for a few seconds, “I know you’re scared.”

“Of course I’m scared,” he snapped.

I glanced at him again and saw the tears in his eyes, his face contorted in fear as he stared at me.

“These guys are powerful,” he said. “They don’t fuck around. We’re in some serious shit here. You don’t think they’ll erase the three of us and move on to the next Manchurian Candidate? It doesn’t matter how much money they’ve got invested in you. Money doesn’t mean anything to them. Money doesn’t mean anything anymore. It’s all a fucking illusion. We’re so close to being totally controlled, just like Adam and Joel said.”

I stayed quiet as I turned onto my street.

“Look,” Stan said. He seemed calmer now, like he’d needed to get that out of his system. “Before you go see any lawyers tomorrow, go back to the RV park and see Adam and Joel before they pack up their camper and take off. Go knock on their door. I don’t know if they’ll answer, but keep knocking until they do. Tell them you need to get new identities, new IDs, passports, social security cards, the works. They’ll know where you can go to get them.”

I still didn’t say anything as I drove around the bend toward my house, almost expecting to see the flashing lights of police cars, or dark SUVs with men in suits and pistols waiting for me. But there were no cars; the street was as empty and dark as it usually was, only the one lone streetlight illuminating part of my driveway and the road with a yellowish-orange glow.

“I want you to take my phone,” Stan said. “And my laptop. Both are clean, no link to me or you. Get rid of your phone. Don’t put the battery back in. Just find somewhere to toss it. Not around your house. Get Alicia to toss her phone, too. They can track you by your phones.”

I nodded so he could see that I understood. I pulled into my driveway, parking right next to Stan’s pickup truck. Alicia parked along the street at the end of my front yard. She didn’t get out, just waiting in her car with the engine running.

“I’m sorry I can’t stay,” Stan said as he got out of the truck.

“No, I know. I understand.” I got out of the truck and slammed the door shut. “We’ll find a way out of this.”

Stan didn’t look too hopeful about that. He took off across my front yard to Alicia’s car, then bent down to talk to her after she rolled down the window. He was probably giving her the same advice about her cell phone.

I went up to my front door and unlocked it. I stepped inside and turned on the front porch light, then the foyer light. I closed the door but didn’t lock it. I hurried back to my bedroom and grabbed a duffel bag from my closet, shoving changes of clothes, socks, and underwear inside. I grabbed some stuff from the bathroom. I still had the notecards and bank receipts I’d gotten out of Michelle’s boot in my truck. I wondered what else I should take.

For a moment I made myself stop and look around. What else was I missing? For some reason, I wasn’t sure when I would be able to return to my own house. And I felt like I needed to hurry, like something bad was racing toward my house and I only had minutes to get out.

I grabbed the video camera and charger from the top of my dresser and shoved that down into the duffel bag. I went through the house, making sure everything was turned off and unplugged. I left the front porch light on and I left my home, locking the door behind me.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

I followed Alicia to the beachside. She said she knew of a motel where we could stay.

I waited in my truck while she checked us in, paying with the cash I had given to her. She used a fake name and address, but she had to give them her auto information: the tag, the make and model. That information would be in the system, but maybe it would take a while for them to find it. We would be out of the motel by tomorrow morning.

We brought our bags up to the motel room—a courtyard room on the second floor with two double beds and a nice bathroom. The motel was a small place, squeezed in between two fifteen-story hotels lit up in the night, both chain hotels. More and more of these family-run motels were selling to the big companies, but there were still plenty of them around.

I realized that in my haste to leave my house I’d forgotten to take my toothbrush and toothpaste. I made a mental list of what I needed and walked across A1A to a 7-11. I bought the things I needed and a twelve-pack of beer. I hadn’t drunk alcohol in years, but I really needed a drink tonight. And I didn’t have to worry about the beer interacting with my medications because the meds had never been real.

Fifteen minutes later I was back in the motel room. Alicia was in the bathroom, taking a shower. I stuffed as many bottles of beers as I could into the small refrigerator in the “kitchen” area of the motel room, which consisted of the tiny fridge, a sink, a microwave oven, a coffee maker, and a toaster. There was a small shelf above the sink and a trashcan underneath it.

After making sure the door was locked again, including the safety latch, I turned on the TV, but kept the sound down low. I cranked the window-unit air-conditioner down to the lowest setting it would go to. I watched a little bit of the local news. A reporter on the beachside was talking about an upcoming music festival for the college kids in town on Spring Break.

“You want a beer?” I asked Alicia when she came out of the bathroom.

“Sure,” she said as she finished drying her hair. She wore a pair of shorts and an oversized T-shirt. “Actually, I think I could use something stronger right now, but a beer would be great.”

The first sip of the beer tasted terrible to me, but after I had sucked down half the bottle, the old familiar taste and buzz came back. I had fought so hard to quit drinking after meeting Michelle. I had been an occasional drinker my first year in college, but after my parents died I started drinking heavily and missing classes. The school forgave me for a while because of my parents’ death, but that was only going to last for so long.

And then Michelle had come along. I wanted to quit for her.

But had it been my idea to quit drinking, or had it been Michelle’s idea? Had it been another suggestion she had planted inside of me. Maybe the alcohol interfered with their program somehow.

If so, then good.

I opened another beer.

“I’m so sorry you’re involved with this,” I told Alicia after she sat down on the bed closer to the bathroom.

“I had my chance to turn away,” she said. “After our . . . our session, I knew you had been programmed somehow. I didn’t have to get your medications tested. I didn’t have to delve any deeper into this.”

I nodded, but I didn’t want her taking full responsibility for this. It still felt like we were in danger, but it also felt like we might be safe for the moment, tucked away in some forgotten family-run motel on the beach.

“How do you know Stan?” I asked.

She smiled. “A friend of a friend. I don’t really know him all that well. My friend said Stan’s into wild conspiracy theories.”

“Yes,” I said. “We hear all about them at work.”

“I had my doubts when Stan contacted me about you, but he made it sound so convincing. And then when he sent me the videos of you sleepwalking, I was intrigued. I’d only read of a few cases about this kind of level of mind-control hypnosis. It’s exceedingly rare.”

“Or maybe not,” I said. “Maybe there are more of us than people know about. Obviously, they don’t want any of this stuff to be public knowledge.”

“Yeah. I guess that could be possible.”

I imagined all of the other “robots” out there across the country, living what they thought were normal lives, living with people they thought loved and cared about them, not knowing that their wife or husband was really their handler, helping to program them and waiting until they were activated.

“Stan thinks I was programmed to be an assassin or a terrorist,” I said and sipped my beer, nearly finishing it. “And the two guys we went to see tonight, they thought so, too. That time and date, four o’clock on the eleventh, it must be the time I’m supposed to do something.”

Alicia didn’t say anything.

“I’m not going to do it now, but maybe they’ll get someone else. Maybe they already know I’ve been compromised and they’ve got another patsy on the way, another robot they’re reprogramming.”

She just sipped her bottle of beer, watching me.

I stared at Alicia, not looking away. “I can’t let it happen. I have to try to stop this somehow. I don’t know how, but I have to try.” I couldn’t stomach the thought of a bomb going off and killing people without trying to do something to stop it. I knew when it was going to happen, but I didn’t know where.

“I’d like to try something,” Alicia said as I got up to get my third beer. She still hadn’t even drunk half of her first one.

“What?” I asked after chugging some of the next beer down.

“I’d like to hypnotize you. Ask you some questions. Maybe we could figure out the triggers inside of you. Maybe you might remember some things while you’re under, details that could help us, details about exactly what you’re supposed to do.”

“You don’t have to do this,” I told her.

“I know.”

“I don’t want to involve you any deeper into this than you already are.”

She nodded. “Yes, but I already am involved. And I want to help, too. And I think the only way we’re going to get more information about what you’re supposed to do on the eleventh is to put you under hypnosis.”

I wanted to be excited by the idea, but I also felt overwhelmed, like a dark cloud was drifting down onto me, covering me and pressing down on me, making me helpless. I would be giving my control to Alicia, someone I barely knew.

“Only if you want to,” she said quickly, gauging my reaction. “It’s got to be something you want to do.” She paused for just a moment. “We could videotape it if you want to.”

“Okay,” I said. Maybe she was right. Maybe it would work and she would find something out that was hidden in my subconscious somewhere.

She got up and smiled at me. That gleam of excitement was back in her eyes again. “Go ahead and take a hot shower. Get comfortable, and then we’ll get started.”

I grabbed a change of clothes, a pair of jogging pants and a T-shirt and went to the bathroom, taking my bottle of beer with me.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

After the long, hot shower and the three beers, I was relaxed. The room was cool and the TV was off. I sat down in one of the two wooden and upholstered chairs in the dining and writing area between the two beds and the door that led outside. Alicia sat on the edge of the bed.

“Don’t make me cluck like a chicken,” I joked.

Alicia didn’t laugh.

“Wait,” I said. I got up and went to my duffel bag. I pulled out a cigarette lighter I’d bought at the 7-11. “Here,” I said as I handed it to Alicia. “Just in case you need it.”

She nodded and set the lighter on the dresser with the TV bolted to the top of it. “Uh, I brought something with me from home.” She got up and went to her duffel bag.

“What?”

She pulled out a Taser, showing it to me. “I bought it for self-defense. It’s the kind where the electrodes shoot out.”

A shiver sang through my body. God, I hoped to hell she wouldn’t have to use that thing on me.

“For absolute emergencies,” she said and set it down next to the cigarette lighter.

I wanted to tell her to please use the lighter before the Taser, but I didn’t. I sat back down in the chair, ready to begin our session.

Alicia began just like she had in my house earlier in the day (God, it felt like a week ago). “I want you to sit back and relax. You just had a hot shower and drank a few beers. You’re drowsy and totally relaxed now. You’re comfortable and you’re safe. Okay?”

I nodded.

“I want you to close your eyes and focus on your breathing.”

I did as she said, closing my eyes, feeling my lungs fill up with air and then slowly exhaling.

“You’re doing great. You’re safe and nothing is going to happen to you. Breathe in deeply and then breathe back out.”

I did. I could feel the tension easing out of my body.

“Yes, you are relaxing slowly, edging towards sleep, but you’re not going fully to sleep. You will hear my voice at all times. When I count down from ten you will become totally relaxed and safe. Okay?”

I nodded and muttered agreement.

“Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . you’re in that pool again, floating on the raft.”

I saw myself in my friend’s pool again. Nobody was home—I had the house to myself. I was floating on the inflatable raft, and this time I had a bottle of beer in the little cup holder to my right. My feet were in the water as I drifted along. The sky so blue above me, birds tweeting.

“Seven . . . six . . . five . . .”

The scene around me felt more real, and suddenly I was there in that pool, not in the motel room anymore. I didn’t even hear her count down to one.

*

It seemed like I’d only been out for a few seconds. I remembered floating in my friend’s pool, relaxed as Alicia counted down from ten.

And then she was counting up instead of counting down.

“You’re going to come fully awake when I snap my fingers. Eight . . . nine . . . ten.”

Snap.

My eyes opened, but I had the feeling that my eyes had already been opened, like a veil was lifted, my sight suddenly cleared, everything coming into focus with a jarring shift. For just a second I felt sick, like I’d been riding a roller coaster that had suddenly screeched to a halt.

Alicia stared at me with concern. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. I looked away, wanting to avert her gaze. She looked scared again, but there was something else in her eyes: she looked dejected, defeated. “It didn’t work, did it?”

She shook her head. “No. You can rewind the video if you want to.”

I got up from the chair. I needed to move. After being under someone else’s control so completely, I needed to prove to myself that I was in control. I picked up the camera and pressed the STOP button. I started the footage over again, backing up to where Alicia counted down to one and snapped her fingers.

As I watched the small screen on the video camera, Alicia went to the other bed and got under the covers. The air conditioner had cooled the room off quite a bit while I’d been under hypnosis, and now it was starting to get a little chilly.

I knew I should go and turn the A/C up, but I didn’t. I turned out all of the lights and sat down on the edge of the other bed and watched the screen on the camera. Even with the lights off and the blinds drawn, lights from outside in the courtyard invaded the room and made it easy enough to see in the dark.

I set up the four fluffy pillows on my bed, positioning them behind me so I could sit against them. The surf on the beach outside was a constant and somewhat soothing background noise.

“Do you remember when Michelle hypnotized you?” Alicia asked me on the video screen.

“Michelle never hypnotized me,” I answered.

I watched the little screen on the video camera, watching someone who wasn’t me. It was like watching an alien who had taken over my mind and body, doing its best to imitate me, but not getting every nuance down right, fooling most, but not me. That wasn’t me. That couldn’t be me.

“Are you supposed to do something right now?” Alicia asked me.

“Not that I know of,” I answered.

“Do you have orders to hurt someone?”

“No,” I snapped at her. “I wouldn’t hurt someone. Why would you ask me that?”

I looked antsy on the video, appalled, like I was about to storm out of the room, offended by Alicia’s questions.

“I’m sorry,” Alicia said quickly. “I just wanted to make sure you wouldn’t ever hurt anyone.”

“Well, I wouldn’t.”

“Where is Michelle, Zach?”

“She left me last Friday night. We went to a restaurant. She went to the bathroom, and then she never came to the table.”

“She left?”

“Yes. With a man. An old lady saw her leave.”

“Why do you think she left you?”

“I don’t know. I talked to her friend at work, Kendra, and she said Michelle was afraid of me.”

“Do you know why she was afraid of you?”

I scrunched my face a little like I was confused. “I don’t know. I started sleepwalking recently. Maybe that scared her.”

As I watched, I thought Alicia might ask why Michelle had called earlier tonight to warn me to stop digging, or that she might mention my meeting with Stan’s friends who lived in their RV. But she didn’t. She seemed nervous, like she didn’t want to push too far this early. Maybe she was afraid I would snap any second.

I started fidgeting in the chair, looking around like I wasn’t sure why I was in a motel room. “What are we doing here? Where’s Stan?”

“Zach, I think we’re done talking, okay?”

I just stared at her.

“Remember when you were floating in your friend’s pool? I want you to go back there.”

I was still just staring at her.

“Please close your eyes and try to relax,” Alicia said.

I was beginning to get nervous, afraid I was going to do or say something to her, but then I saw myself on the video screen close my eyes and relax.

“Breathe in deeply and let it out slowly,” Alicia said to me.

I did as she told me to.

She started counting up from one.

I closed the view on the camera, shutting it off. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the darkness of the room. I set the camera on the table between our two beds. I stretched out, listening to the hum of the air-conditioning unit and the distant roar of the surf. Somewhere a car horn blared. Two people walked by outside our door on the balcony, a man and a woman. Both of them were talking loud and sounded drunk, the woman laughing at something the man said.

Their banter and laughter made me think about the rest of the beers in the mini-fridge. I thought about drinking all of them. Getting drunk. But I needed to get up early. We had things to do.

“The suggestions and triggers are buried deep,” Alicia said from the other bed.

I looked over at her; she was just a slender lump under the covers. She looked so small.

“It would take a while to peel back those layers,” she added.

“But it can be done?”

“It would need to be done in a safe space. Trust would need to be built up.”

She hadn’t really answered my question, and I decided not to ask again.

I closed my eyes and fell asleep within minutes.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

A thumping noise woke me up. It was still dark in the motel room.

I sat up quickly and looked around. It was easy enough to see in the murky room with the lights from outside filtering in through the blinds over the windows.

The thump sounded again.

I looked at the door. It was ajar, opening just a bit and then closing again, thumping against the doorframe, catching on the safety latch.

I looked at the other bed. Alicia was gone.

Where did she go? Did she take off in the middle of the night and leave the door open? My skin crawled—something didn’t feel right.

“Alicia?” I called out as I got out of bed. I didn’t turn on any lights as I went around the foot of my bed, then in front of hers, and then to the bathroom door. The door was ajar, just like the motel room door. I knocked on the door even though it was slightly open. I called her name again.

No answer.

I knew she wasn’t in the bathroom, but I checked just to be sure.

She wasn’t in there. She was gone.

I slipped my sneakers on and ran outside onto the walkway, staring down at the courtyard below. I shuffled down the concrete steps and hurried through the path that meandered through the grass and shrubs. I got to the parking area and saw my pickup truck parked right next to Alicia’s Toyota.

Her car was still there.

Maybe she had gone for a walk on the beach, or she’d gone down to the pool area to stare at the ocean.

With the floodlights and landscape lighting, it was bright enough for me to make my way easily to the breezeway and then through it to the deck area. The pool and lounge chairs and a few concrete tables and benches with straw roofs over them were down below the deck. The pool lights were still on, along with landscaping spotlights. But I didn’t see anyone down there. I didn’t see Alicia. The ever-present wind from the ocean was blowing the palm fronds around, the waves crashing relentlessly against the beach.

I hurried down the steep set of concrete steps to the pool area, then to the metal gate that led down to the beach.

Thirty feet away I saw someone on the beach.

Alicia?

It had to be.

A few seconds later I was racing across the sand, getting closer to Alicia. She was doing something on the beach, not even noticing that I was coming. I heard the scraping sounds of the work she was doing, metal slicing against sand.

She was digging a hole in the beach, working hard at it, focused on her job.

“Alicia!”

She didn’t even turn my way—she kept at her work.

When I got to her, she had discarded the shovel and got down on her hands and knees, reaching down into the shallow hole she had dug, brushing sand away from the body buried there.

The body was Stan.

Stan’s eyes snapped open, crusted with sand. He opened his mouth and spoke: “Stop digging. Stop digging, Zach.”

My eyes popped open in the early-morning light. I sat up in bed, breathing hard. I looked over at Alicia’s bed. She was gone. Then I heard the same thumping noise I’d heard in my dream. I looked at the motel room door and it was opening.

Alicia stepped inside with a paper bag and two paper cups of coffee in a cardboard cup holder. She smiled at me, then froze. “You okay?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said.

“You just wake up?”

I nodded.

“Bad dream?” she asked as she set the coffees down and closed and locked the door.

“Yeah,” I mumbled as I got out of bed. I needed to pee, and I was still groggy. I stumbled off to the bathroom.

A few moments later I was back. I had splashed some water in my eyes and felt a little better.

Alicia handed me the other cup of coffee. “I thought you might need this. There’s a bagel and some cream cheese in the bag. Creamers and sugar, too. Got it all at the 7-11 across the street.”

“Thanks,” I said. “What time is it?”

“A little after seven.”

I set my cup of coffee down and took the lid off, adding one creamer and one packet of sugar, stirring it with one of the plastic spoons in the bag.

“What were you dreaming about?”

I just shook my head. “Just a nightmare. Did I talk in my sleep?”

“Not that I heard,” she said.

I looked at the video camera; it was right where I’d left it, on the small dresser between the two beds. I needed to charge it up. I wasn’t sure if it would film in the darkness of the room, but at least it would catch any audio. “Did I get up and . . .” I let my words die away.

“No. I don’t think so. I woke up a few times and you were sleeping.”

I sipped my coffee; it was helping to wake me up. “I wonder why I didn’t walk in my sleep last night.”

She shrugged. “Maybe the trigger was coming from somewhere in your house. It could have been a particular sound, like a chime or a bell, a sound planted in your subconscious over the years. Or maybe it came from your phone.”

The phone made sense to me. I was relieved I hadn’t gotten up in the middle of the night.

“Maybe the beer helped a little,” Alicia said. “Or maybe our session last night interrupted what had been planted in your mind. It’s hard to say. I’m trying to plant new triggers. Maybe they’re beginning to work.”

“I need to call Stan,” I said. I rushed over to the cell phone he had given me, checking it for any calls or text messages. There were none. I checked the contacts and found only a few names listed: Stan, his mother’s house, work.

The nightmare was still making my skin crawl. I’d never believed in premonitions or telepathy before, but of course I never would have believed a person could be hypnotized and programmed to do terrible things.

I dialed Stan’s cell number, listening to it ring.

I closed my eyes for a moment. I couldn’t help feeling that something bad had happened to Stan. I remembered how scared he’d been in my pickup truck, how he had warned me that he would cooperate if they came to question him. They already know everything, he had said.

The ringing led to voicemail. I left Stan a message to call me back.

It was almost seven o’clock. There was a chance Stan was still at the office loading up his truck. Instead of calling the office, I dialed Steve’s cell number, a number I knew by heart.

“Carlton’s Lawn and Pest Control Service,” Steve answered in his professional voice. “Steve Michaels speaking.” He probably didn’t recognize the number and maybe thought it was a customer calling to complain.

“Steve, it’s Zach.”

“Zach. You get a new phone?”

“Uh, no. I’m borrowing someone’s phone.”

“Look, Zach, I don’t mean to be a pain in the ass, but when are you coming back to work? I’ve got Dean on my ass, and I need some help around here.”

“I don’t know, Steve. Michelle still hasn’t been found.”

Steve sighed heavily into the phone. “Shit. Sorry. I should’ve asked.”

“Is Stan there? I need to talk to him. Did he already head out on his route?”

“Stan? He didn’t show up. Hasn’t been here for the last few days. He’s going to need a doctor’s note now. We’re getting really backed up here. I’m going to have to ask the Daytona office to send a few guys down here to help.”

“Stan’s not there?” I asked, ignoring all of the other bitching Steve was doing.

“No,” he snapped. “I just said that. He didn’t call in or show up.”

“I gotta go, Steve.”

“Zach, I need to know when you’re coming back.”

“I don’t know. Probably in a few days,” I lied to get him off my back, and then I hung up.

Alicia watched me, obviously listening to my conversation.

I called Stan’s cell number again. Still no answer. I dialed his mom’s number, where he lived. I hated calling her house this early, but I needed to know why Stan hadn’t gone to work. Stan’s mom didn’t answer the phone, so I left a message that I was looking for Stan and needed to talk to him as soon as possible.

“He’s not there,” Alicia said. It wasn’t a question.

“No.”

“Where do you think he is?”

“I don’t know.” A picture of Alicia digging Stan’s body up from the beach flashed through my mind. “Maybe he ran.”

“Ran?”

“He told me last night in my truck that I should run.”

“Run where?”

“He didn’t say. He said I should go back to Adam and Joel’s RV, the two guys we talked to yesterday. He said they would be able to help me get a new identity, new paperwork.”

“Zach,” she said, her tone of voice suggesting I wasn’t being very reasonable. “We should try the lawyers first.”

“Stan said they’re not going to listen to us.”

“We’ve got evidence.”

“He said the video evidence could be faked. He said it could look like the whole thing was faked.”

“Faked? Who would fake something like that? And why?”

“I don’t know. To make the government look bad. To get on the news. Get famous. Write a book. Maybe a paranoid individual. A mentally ill person.”

I didn’t wait for Alicia’s answer. I grabbed a pair of jeans and a T-shirt out of my duffel bag and went to the bathroom to change. I brushed my teeth and shaved, wet my hair and combed it down. I put on deodorant and cologne. I hardly recognized myself anymore in the mirror. I felt like I was looking at a character from a book or a movie.

“I still think we need to get some help,” Alicia said. “If not lawyers, then maybe someone in the government. A representative or a senator.”

“I’m not asking you to go with me,” I told her as I put my sneakers on. “You’ve got a life. You haven’t done anything wrong. It’s me they want.”

She just stared at me like I had just slapped her. “If they know everything about this, which it seems like they might, then they know I know everything.”

I thought about how Stan had said the same thing in my pickup last night—he’d also said that he would cooperate if he had to. Was that where he was right now? Had he panicked and turned himself in? Or had he spilled the beans to his mother and she had demanded that he turn himself in?

“I’m going with you,” Alicia said, already putting her shoes on and getting her own bag together.

I just looked at her.

“I’m already in pretty deep,” she said as if arguing with me before I said anything.

Sighing, I looked away. I didn’t want her to go with me, but at the same time I was glad she was coming along.

“I’ll look up some lawyers’ numbers on your phone while you drive.” She threw me her keys. “We’ll take my car.”

CHAPTER FORTY

The first place I wanted to stop was the bank. If we had to run, we would need some cash.

I got to the parking lot a little before eight o’clock. I parked and waited.

“I’m going to get some money out of Michelle’s account,” I said, even though it was probably fairly obvious why we were at the bank.

“You think the account’s still active?”

“I guess. They still want me to do whatever I’m programmed to do, so they want a trail of evidence, and I’m sure the money in this bank is part of that trail.”

“How much are you taking out?”

“As much as they’ll let me.”

“So you’re thinking about running?”

“I think we should go talk to Adam and Joel.” I remembered how the two men had suddenly clammed up and told us to leave their RV. They seemed reluctant to help yesterday, so I wasn’t sure why I thought they might change their minds and help me today. But I had nowhere else to turn. I had promised Alicia on the drive to the bank that I would talk to any lawyers she wanted to after we talked to Adam and Joel.

If they would answer the door, that was. Assuming they were still there.

She already had several attorneys’ phone numbers written down on the notepad Stan bought last night at a dollar store. She also had the phone numbers of two state representatives and two senators written down.

When it was time, I went into the bank alone, leaving the car keys with Alicia. I told her to drive away calmly if anything happened. There was the chance Alicia might take off anyway, and if she did, I couldn’t blame her. I know she wanted to help, but if things got too scary, then she had every right to bolt.

There wasn’t a line inside the bank this early in the morning, and I walked right up to a smiling teller who greeted me and asked how she could help. It wasn’t the same teller I had talked to a few days ago, and I was glad about that. I had my account number and driver’s license ready.

“I’d like to withdraw some money from my account,” I told the teller.

“Just fill out a withdrawal slip,” she said, sliding a piece of paper toward me.

I filled out my name and account number on the slip. I had about a thousand dollars left from the money I’d taken out a few days ago, and I wasn’t sure how much more I would need. I’d heard somewhere before that a bank couldn’t give someone more than ten thousand dollars in cash without the IRS or other government bodies becoming involved, so I settled on the amount of $9,650.00, writing it down on the slip and sliding it back to her.

The teller frowned. “I could write you a cashier’s check,” she said.

“I’d like it in cash please.” I could feel my armpits beginning to sweat, my face flushing with heat, the panic-attack pressure pushing down on my chest.

“That’s a lot of money for cash,” the teller said in a low voice, her smile slipping.

“It’s my money,” I said. “You’re telling me I can’t take cash out of my own bank account?” I was trying to act offended, turning my fear into anger. I’d dealt with plenty of pissed off customers so I tried to draw on that experience. “Maybe I should just close my account and transfer my funds to a different bank.”

“Oh no, sir. I just need to talk to my manager. They have to okay any cash amounts over three thousand dollars.”

“Okay,” I breathed out, trying to pretend that this was a huge inconvenience for me, but afraid I wasn’t pulling off the act too well.

“If you would just have a seat over there in that office,” the teller said, pointing me toward a corner office with mostly glass walls and a glass door. There was a desk in there with two plush chairs in front of it. But no one was in there.

I nodded at the teller and walked across the carpeted lobby to the office. I sat down in one of the chairs as nervous energy coursed through my body.

It seemed like an hour had dragged by, but I knew it had probably only been a few minutes. Finally, an older woman dressed in a gray business suit and skirt combo entered the office.

“Hello, Mr. Hughes,” she sang out as she offered a hand in greeting.

I gave her hand a quick shake, afraid my palm was sweaty.

“I understand you want to take out some cash,” the manager said as she seated herself behind her desk.

“Yes.”

She glanced down at a paper she’d brought in with her, and then she clicked her keyboard, bringing her computer screen to life. To me, it seemed like she was fidgeting, doing small things to draw out the time. But maybe I was just being paranoid.

“The teller said I’m taking out too much cash,” I said, pretending I’d never heard about the ten-thousand-dollar rule. I wasn’t even sure if it was true; I’d probably heard it from Stan.

“Well, there can be a limit to how much cash we have on hand. Sometimes it can take a few days to get the funds together. Usually, when dealing with large amounts of cash, the customer puts in a request ahead of time so we can have it ready for them.”

“You’re telling me you don’t have nine thousand dollars at your bank?” I figured even a lot of fast-food restaurants probably had that much cash on hand in their safes. I pictured armored trucks driving around with bags of cash in the back—just like in the heist movies. The cash in those trucks had to be going and coming from somewhere, like banks.

“I just need to check,” she said as she studied her computer.

I sat back, folding my arms, hoping I was signaling to her that I was willing to wait for her.

“You’ll have to fill out a form,” she said after finally looking away from the computer. She didn’t say they didn’t have the money on hand, but I had to assume that they did. She slid a paper across the desk to me.

I picked up the paper, looking at it. There was the usual stuff to be filled out at the top: my name, my address, my account number, my social security number, my driver’s license number. But below those was a question to be answered. I looked at the manager. “My reason for taking out the money?” I asked her.

“For a large amount of cash,” she corrected with a sickly sweet smile.

“So I have to tell you why I’m taking out my own money?”

“Mr. Hughes, I don’t make the rules. Our government does.”

I just frowned at her.

“These rules are for all of our safety, to fight against drugs and illegal activity, where cash is often used.”

I thought about all the times Stan had said that crypto was the currency of choice these days for cartels and major drug traffickers, but I decided not to challenge her on it.

“I can’t believe this,” I said, trying to think of an excuse why I would need nine thousand dollars in cash. “I wanted to buy a classic car and the guy only wants cash.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t deal with that particular person,” the manager said with the smile still plastered on her face.

“And other things,” I said. “I wanted to buy some other things.”

She just waited for me to fill out the paper.

I filled the paper out, listing several reasons why I might need the cash. I slid the paper back to her. “I’m thinking of transferring my money to another bank. I don’t know if I want to do business with a bank that has trouble scraping nine thousand dollars together.”

She sighed and didn’t look affected by my threat. “Let me check our funds for you.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Twenty minutes later the manager came back with a thick envelope filled with bills. “We had to use mostly one-hundred-dollar bills. I hope you understand.”

“Of course.” I felt that sense of paranoia rising in me again. The manager was taking a long time to count out the money for me.

“Thank you,” I said when she was done. I grabbed the envelope and stood up.

“Is there anything else we can do for you today, Mr. Hughes?”

“No, thanks.”

“Please don’t forget to take our survey online.”

I was pretty sure she wouldn’t want me taking their survey at that moment.

Alicia was still waiting in the passenger seat of her car when I walked across the parking lot—she hadn’t left me. I got in the driver’s seat, started the car, and we drove away. I felt some of the tension draining out of me as I drove.

I called Stan two more times on the way to the RV park and got no answer. I left another message for him to call me.

Alicia was ready to call one of the lawyers on her list, and one of the representatives, but I asked her to wait until after we tried Stan’s friends at the RV park. I wondered what I was going to do if neither one of them answered the door. Leave them a note? What if they were gone? It seemed like they’d gotten pretty spooked last night when they found out about the storage unit.

As we got closer to the RV park, I saw smoke drifting up into the sky from deep into the park. My stomach clenched—I knew this wasn’t going to be good.

“That’s their RV, isn’t it?” Alicia said.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

I didn’t answer Alicia because I knew it was true, I knew the smoke was coming from Adam and Joel’s RV.

I pulled into the park and drove down the main road. As I got deeper into the park, there was more traffic, including a lot of the residents on foot and on bicycles. I parked behind another car, but gave myself enough room to turn around if I needed to. I shut the car off and got out. “I need to know,” I told her.

“I’m going with you,” Alicia said.

We walked about a block down to where the side street began, where a large group of people had collected. Little by little, we made our way through the crowd. And then I saw the fire trucks and police cars down the street, blue and red lights flashing. Black smoke drifting up from the destroyed RV.

“I hope everyone’s okay,” I said to an elderly man next to me. He wore a U.S. Army ball cap with several hat pins attached to it.

“Heard there’s two bodies inside,” the man said.

“God,” Alicia breathed out.

“That’s terrible,” I added. I didn’t have to fake being devastated because I was.

The old man looked at me closely for the first time like he was wondering who the hell I was and what I was doing there. I guessed that most of these people in the park knew each other.

We drifted back through the crowd and then walked back to Alicia’s car. We got in and drove away.

“And you’re sure that was their RV?” Alicia said.

“Yeah. Two bodies inside, that guy said.”

“They killed them,” she said. It didn’t seem to be a question.

I drove out of the entrance to the park and onto the road. A minute later I turned on the radio, scanning the stations, listening for news about the fire. I didn’t know where I was driving to, just away from the fire, away from the violence and murder that had happened there.

The cell phone rang a moment later. I grabbed it, not even looking at the number, figuring it was Stan finally calling me back.

“Zach,” a woman’s voice said.

I knew the voice, but for a second I couldn’t put a name to it.

“It’s Carol. Stan’s mother.”

“Oh. Carol. I’m sorry I called so early this morning. I was looking for—”

“Stan’s in the hospital.”

My world seemed to stop. “What happened?”

“Stan was attacked. Beaten up pretty bad.” She seemed to be on the verge of tears, but she was trying to hold it together.

“Oh God,” I whispered. I could feel Alicia staring at me. “What happened?”

“We don’t know a lot at this moment,” Carol said.

“When did this happen?”

“We’re not sure. Sometime between last night and early this morning. Police found him on the side of the road. His truck was gone. They think it might have been a robbery. Someone who lived nearby called the police when they saw him lying on the side of the road.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

Carol finally broke down crying. “I don’t know. He’s hurt pretty bad.” She sniffled and seemed to stop crying for a moment. “I came back home to get a few things for him. I saw that you’d called, so I called you back.”

“Thank you. What hospital is he in?”

She told me the hospital and the room number.

“I’d like to come by and see him,” I told her. “Would that be okay?”

“I think he’d like that.”

“So he’s conscious?”

“In and out. They’ve got him on some medication. Some painkillers, I’m sure. He just got out of surgery about an hour ago.”

“Did he say anything about what happened? About who did this?”

Carol started crying again, consumed with grief for a moment. She tried to talk, but I couldn’t make out the words.

I drove along, speeding up, already planning my route to the hospital. I felt strange, my head light, swimming through this world that couldn’t be true.

“Carol?” I asked, trying to sound gentle, but I could hear the impatience in my voice.

“He can’t talk,” Carol managed to say through her tears. She sniffled again, catching her breath like she was hyperventilating.

I glanced at Alicia—she was staring right back at me.

“He can’t talk,” Carol said again. “They cut out his tongue.”

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

For just a second the world seemed to swim out of focus, the edges of my vision blacking out. I thought I was going to have to pull my truck over. Then everything swam back into focus, a sudden clarity, like high-definition video. The hairs on my skin felt like they were all standing on end, my balls shriveling.

“God, Carol,” I managed to say. “I’m so sorry. I’m coming to the hospital. I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”

“Thank you,” she breathed out through her tears, her voice shuddering. “Have you heard anything about your wife?”

It took me a second to register what she was talking about—Michelle.

“Stanley told me your wife was missing.”

“Yes,” I said, and it sounded like I’d barked out the word to her. “Yes, she left. She’s missing. But no, I haven’t found anything out about her disappearance.” I wondered how much Stan had told her about Michelle, about the strange things that had been happening. I wondered how much Carol knew, how much danger she might be in and not even know it. “But the police are working on it,” I added.

“I have to go, Zach. I need to get back to Stanley. Just keep him in your prayers.”

“Of course. I’m so sorry this happened.”

Carol hung up.

“What happened?” Alicia asked.

I figured she’d heard enough of the conversation to assume it had been something bad.

“Stan’s in the hospital. He was attacked.”

She nodded impatiently like she’d already figured out that much.

“He was attacked sometime between last night and early this morning. His truck was stolen. He was beaten up pretty badly. They cut his tongue out.”

The air seemed to be sucked out of Alicia’s lungs, and she made a strange sighing sound as she said my name: “Zach.”

Her voice said it all. We were involved in something far more dangerous than we had even imagined, and it was escalating quickly, going way too fast for me. I just wanted things to slow down. I knew it probably wasn’t a good idea to go to the hospital, but I had to see Stan. I’d gotten him into this, so I had to be there for him.

*

Alicia and I stuffed the money from the bank into our pockets. I shoved some of it down into my socks, and she put about half of it into her purse. We got out of her car and hurried to the hospital entrance, taking the elevator up to the third floor. After asking a nurse at the nurse’s station, we found Stan’s room. Even though the nurse didn’t seem alarmed that we were there, or nervous in any way, I still approached Stan’s room cautiously, afraid the police might already be there, or were still there. But when we entered the room only Carol was with Stan, sitting on a chair pulled up close to his bedside.

Stan looked terrible. His body looked crumpled under the bedsheet, that sheet surely hiding horrors. One arm, his left one, was bandaged all along his wrist and forearm, his fingers like fat purple sausages sticking out of the gauze, his wrist fat and bloated, broken or damaged in some way. His face was worse, black and blue and puffy, one eye swollen shut. There were red marks around his neck like he’d been strangled.

His one open eye focused on me as I entered the room.

“Stan,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

He moved his mouth, but didn’t open it, almost like it was sewn shut somehow from the inside. He swallowed forcefully and winced, like just that act was agony. He grunted lowly, like he was trying to talk, his open eye rotating wildly.

Carol drew a sharp intake of breath, her hands to her mouth. She reached out to touch him, but then drew her hand back, like she wasn’t sure which part of his body she could touch and not deliver pain. Her eyes were rimmed in red and filled with tears.

“Don’t try to talk,” I told Stan. I could feel tears brimming in my own eyes.

Stan’s right hand, which wasn’t nearly as damaged as his left one, clutched at the bedsheets, his forearm muscles knotting, scratches and cuts all over his skin, along with yellowish and purple bruising.

“It’s okay, baby,” Carol whispered, deciding to pat his shoulder lightly.

Stan’s breaths were quicker, like he was excited . . . or scared. His good eye darted around, his body trembling. The machines he was hooked up to were beeping faster. I was sure a nurse was going to rush into the room at any second and tell us to leave because we were disturbing the patient too much.

“Just rest,” I told Stan. “Just try to rest.”

Stan grunted again and shook his head no. He looked frustrated, his eyebrows crinkling together, his mouth drawn down into a frown, his lips never parting. He lifted his right hand up, the one less mangled, and gestured in the air like he was writing with a pen.

“You want something to write on?” I asked him.

He grunted again, a long grunt like he was saying: Finally. He nodded vehemently, still breathing heavily out of his nostrils, snorting like a horse after a run. He looked excited, but also groggy, like he was doing his best to stay awake.

“Here,” Alicia said to me. She’d taken the notepad Stan had bought yesterday out of her purse, tearing out the page she’d written down contact information for lawyers and representatives, folding that page up and shoving it down into her purse. She found a pen and handed it and the notepad to me.

I gave the pen to Stan, slipping it into his shaking fingers. I held the notepad for him with both of my hands so he could write on the pad.

Carol was watching me, and I could tell that she didn’t think this was a good idea, like it was too taxing on Stan at this moment. But I could also see that she was intrigued, wanting to know what her son wanted to say so badly.

Stan scrawled on the paper, pushing down hard on the pad as I held it, his one eye focused on his task, his head lifted up a little.

I pulled the notepad away when he was done, his arm dropping back down to his bed with the pen still clutched in his fingers, his good eye closing. Just the simple act of writing two words on the notepad seemed to have exhausted him, but I had a feeling the painkillers and other medicines were also exhausting him.

I looked at the pad. Two words were written there: Stop Digging.

The words hit me like a hammer in the middle of my chest.

“What’s that mean?” Carol asked.

I hadn’t even seen her get up from her chair. She leaned over her son’s body and stared at the words he had scrawled on the paper. The words were shaky, almost like a child had written them, but they were easily legible from across the bed.

Michelle’s voice echoed in my mind, her call to my cell phone last night warning me to stop digging.

“Stop digging?” Carol asked. “What’s that mean?”

“I don’t know,” I lied.

She glared at me from the other side of the bed. “Stan was at your house the last few nights.” It sounded like an accusation. “He’d been spending a lot of time with you.”

I didn’t say anything—I couldn’t lie about that.

“What were you two doing?” Her eyes flicked to Alicia like she might find an answer from her.

But Alicia was quiet, and I still hadn’t answered Carol’s question.

“What were you two doing?” Carol asked again. “Something that led to this?” She pointed down at what her son was now.

I still didn’t have an answer for her. I knew she wasn’t going to let this go—she wanted someone to blame for what had happened to her son, someone to punish, and she had latched on to me. But I couldn’t tell her anything. Only a few people knew anything about what had been happening to me, and now two of them were dead and one was maimed.

“He said he’d gone over to your house because you were upset about your wife leaving you,” Carol said. “A shoulder to lean on, and all that.”

I watched Carol. I’d known her for years. I’d been to her house so many times to play video games in the living room with Stan. She’d always been so nice and gentle, always offering iced tea or lemonade, snacks ready for us on the counter in the kitchen. Now she had turned into a fierce mama bear defending her cub.

Stan grunted, grabbing both of our attention. He still had the pen in his hand, gripping it tight, raising it up in the air. He made a gesture with it—he had more to say.

I held the notepad for him so he could write, his one eye focused, his head lifted up again, trembling with effort as I held the notepad with both hands like an assistant holding a board to be broken by a martial arts master.

Stan was done writing a few seconds later—he’d only written one short word, just three capital letters: RUN.

“Run from what?” Carol screeched. She looked at Stan for just a second like he might answer her question, but his eye was focused on me.

Carol looked back at me with horror in her eyes. “What did you do?”

I could imagine what was going through Carol’s mind, thoughts of drug dealers or cartels, the two of us mixed up with some very bad characters who liked to make examples out of people. And she didn’t know how close she was to the truth; we were involved with some terrible people, a cartel, a cabal, only these people were much more powerful than drug lords.

“I’m sorry,” I told Carol. I couldn’t tell her anything. I couldn’t involve her in this, too. I could see that Stan wasn’t going to put her in danger, that maybe he hadn’t told her much about what had been happening. She needed to remain innocent of this.

I looked at Stan. “I have to go.”

He nodded. He understood. He closed his one eye, still breathing heavily through his nostrils.

“What did you do?” Carol screeched at me.

I hoped Stan would at least tell his mother that this wasn’t my fault, but in a way I felt like it was, like I had dragged Stan and others into this too far. I hadn’t even told Stan about Adam and Joel, and that maybe he was lucky to still be alive. But I was sure he didn’t feel very lucky right now.

Alicia was already heading for the door. I was right behind her.

“I’m calling the police!” Carol yelled. “You know something about this. You know who did this!”

I was sure Carol was going to run after me, grab me, slap me, hit me. And I knew I would not fight back.

A nurse met us at the door. She looked alarmed. “Is everything okay?”

Stan grunted again, the loudest so far, like he was screaming through his closed mouth, his vocal chords straining. The sound stopped Carol, turned her around and brought her back to his bedside.

The nurse shot past us, seeming to forget about us for a moment.

We needed to go. Stan was helping us, causing a distraction so we could get out of there. Even after all he’d gone through, he was still helping us.

A moment later we were hurrying down the hall, not running, but walking so fast it was nearly a jog. I felt that once we were on the elevators, we would be safe. My mind was whirling as I thought of Stan, my skin crawling as I imagined what he had gone through, his body expertly tortured, fear embedded into every fiber of his being, a certainty of suffering in his future. My stomach twisted and turned at the thought of the shadowy cabal out there, intermingled with us, a part of our reality, familiar faces who could be their agents.

I felt Alicia come to a stop beside me in the hall. The elevators were down at the end. I froze beside her, and then I saw what had paralyzed her—two men in dark suits and ties and sunglasses were waiting by the elevator doors.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Were the two men in dark suits guarding the elevator doors cops? Were they detectives? FBI? Some other alphabet agency, as the late Adam and Joel had called them? Or worse . . . assassins. The same men who had tortured and maimed Stan.

For just a split second we stared at the two men. And there was no doubt their eyes behind the dark lenses of their glasses were watching us. We were the prey frozen in the woods, waiting the milliseconds to see if our predators had spotted us, waiting to see if we needed to bolt, and which way to run.

The two men didn’t yell at us to freeze or surrender. They didn’t draw weapons or badges; they just started running right at us.

“This way,” Alicia hissed at me.

She was off and running. I was right behind her. She bolted past the nurse’s station, the two nurses there watching us with eyes of shock. We were down another hallway a moment later, then down another one.

I wanted to look behind me, but I didn’t want to break the rhythm of my running to do so. I had hoped we’d had enough distance between us to begin with, but I could imagine them right on our heels, only a few feet away, arms out and ready to grab us.

Alicia was at a door, pulling it open. I just had time to see a sign above it that read: Stairs.

We shuffled down the steps as fast as we could, our footfalls on the concrete steps echoing all around us, sounding so loud. I still didn’t want to look back or even up at the stairs above us. I tried to listen to the echoes, trying to tell if there were two more sets of footsteps shuffling down toward us, hard shoes clacking on the concrete. But I couldn’t tell.

Time seemed to stretch out, but it also seemed like we were on the ground floor within seconds. Alicia pushed the door open, glancing back at me with wild eyes. “Follow me,” she said.

I did. I followed her down more corridors, more hallways. It wasn’t the lobby, but the back part of the hospital. And soon she pushed open a door that led outside, the sunlight blasting us, brighter and more real than the fluorescent lights of the halls had been.

The heat hit us like a blast from a furnace, but it didn’t slow us down. Alicia seemed to know exactly where she was going. We hugged the side of the massive building, running past hedges and border plants, the beds freshly mulched. Around the next corner, I saw part of the parking lot.

Alicia wasn’t slowing down. She ran through the maze of cars and trucks, out toward the edge of them. I could tell we were going around the building, out to the far end of the rear parking lot.

“Where are we going?” I asked, almost out of breath. “Isn’t your car that way?”

She just glanced back at me, and I saw the answer in her eyes. I wasn’t thinking straight. The men in the dark suits, the agents of the cabal, they would be at her car. They would be waiting for us to return. At least we had the most important stuff on us; I had the packet of money I’d gotten from the bank stuffed down into my pants pocket, another envelope stuffed down into my sock, along with the bank receipts and notecards, holding onto that evidence like it would be of any use someday. Alicia had her keys, the small video camera I’d bought a few days ago, along with the charger, and packs of the money in her purse. Anything else left in her car was going to be taken by them.

We ran across the street and into some neighborhoods. My lungs were heaving and my legs were already beginning to burn, but I kept up with Alicia. She seemed to know where she was going—at least I hoped she did.

After another block, she turned down a side street which led to some businesses. We ducked in behind a strip plaza, hurrying over to a dumpster filled with broken-down cardboard boxes and hid behind it, both of us catching our breath.

Run. That’s what Stan had told me to do, us to do. Had he meant right then? Had the men in the dark suits been in to see him in his room while his mother had been at home packing a bag for him, while she’d been on the phone with me? I wondered what they had said to him, what future tortures they had promised. I wondered if they had meant for him to die after they had beaten him up last night, like he’d been left for dead after his truck had been stolen. Maybe they figured he would die, but then someone had found him. Maybe he was a loose end right now, but still of some use, something to draw me and Alicia to him.

And it had worked. We’d been here at the hospital to see him. How close had we been to being apprehended by some arm of the cabal, some dirty cops who flashed badges and snapped handcuffs on us, marching us to their black SUVs, taking us to some warehouse for interrogation, then to a field where our graves were already dug, or an incinerator to get rid of our bodies?

I was trembling. I couldn’t stop shaking.

Run. That’s what Stan had told us to do, and that’s what we had done. Now we were behind a strip of stores, hiding next to a dumpster while an army of people searched for us. We were lost. We were as good as dead.

I looked at Alicia. She was scared. I figured the adrenaline of fleeing was waning now and the reality of our situation was weighing on her. We had nowhere to go. Even if we turned ourselves in, nobody would believe us. And we would be eventually turned over to the authorities. But we wouldn’t be safe there. Accidents were going to happen to us, or perhaps suicide.

“Alicia,” I said. I shook my head. I was trembling like I was freezing. I couldn’t stop shaking. I wanted to stop shaking, but I couldn’t control it—adrenaline and other hormones running crazy through my body. My mind felt like it was on fire, like my senses were buzzing with a warning. It felt like the SUVs were going to roar down this back alley at any moment, men jumping out to take us away.

“We need to get out of here,” Alicia said.

“You don’t have to keep going with this,” I told her, still panting from our run.

“What the hell else am I supposed to do?”

I felt like she’d just slapped me. I was about to say something, but I clamped my mouth shut. What could I say? What use was it wasting time apologizing for her being here? It was far too late for that. Maybe I could apologize later, if we lived that long.

Alicia had caught her breath quicker than I had. She looked up and down the back of the stores, just block walls with metal doors set into them. There were other dumpsters farther down. On the other side of the alley were different kinds of fencing that marked the ends of backyards: wooden fences, some old and rotting, others new and painted, some chain-link fencing. A dog was barking behind one of the wooden fences.

“I’ve got an idea,” Alicia said. “Let me use your cell phone for a minute.”

I dug the phone out of my pocket and handed it to her.

She looked something up, then took out the pad of paper and pen from her purse and wrote a phone number down.

“Let’s go around to the front,” she said after she was done.

I just nodded and followed her around to the side of the building and then around to the front. We passed a few shops, and I saw that Alicia was heading toward a laundromat on the end. We went inside. Alicia looked around and then spotted an older woman folding some clothes on one of the plastic tables shoved up against the far wall.

“Excuse me,” Alicia said. “I’m sorry. We lost our phone and we need to call an Uber driver to pick us up. Do you think we could use your phone?”

The woman looked a little startled at first, but then her features softened.

“I’m really sorry,” Alicia said, smiling. “We just need to get home. Someone stole our phone.”

“People nowadays,” the woman grumbled. She took her cell phone out of her purse and handed it to Alicia.

Alicia had memorized the phone number she’d written down and then she called for an Uber driver, telling them the address of the laundromat.

“Thank you so much,” I told the older woman. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“It’s no problem,” she said. “I barely use the damn thing. My daughter got it for me and makes me carry it around.”

“She sounds like she cares about you,” I said.

The woman smiled and nodded. “Yeah.”

Alicia handed the phone back to the woman, thanking her, and then she looked at me. “The driver will be here in ten minutes. He’s driving a white Honda.”

“Okay.”

We walked back to the glass doors and waited on the plastic chairs near them. I watched the street outside as we sat there, watching for black SUVs driving by. I saw a few in the traffic, but I couldn’t be sure if it was them or not.

Alicia used a five-dollar-bill that the older woman wouldn’t take from us for letting us use her phone to buy two drinks from a vending machine. We sucked them down as we waited. A TV was mounted up on a wooden platform in the corner, and it didn’t look too safe. The sound wasn’t up very loud, but I could tell it was some kind of daytime TV show. But then there was breaking news and my heart stopped for just a moment as I stared at my face and then Alicia’s face on the screen. Then a split screen with both of our faces and a description of us underneath. A newsfeed was scrolling across the bottom of the screen.

I nudged Alicia and nodded at the TV.

She inhaled harshly and then seemed to be holding her breath for just a moment.

As she watched the news alert on the TV, I looked around, making sure the few other people in the laundromat weren’t paying attention to the newsflash. It didn’t seem like they were.

A few minutes later a white Honda pulled up into the parking lot. We popped up from our seats and hurried outside.

I was wary as I approached the car, wondering if there was a way the cabal had intercepted Alicia’s phone call. I knew I was being paranoid—they couldn’t be that good, could they? Still, I was tense, ready to bolt if I saw other vehicles pulling in or a man in a dark suit and sunglasses getting out of the Honda.

“Kendrick?” Alicia asked, leaning down to the passenger window as it rolled down.

I saw a young man behind the wheel. He smiled and nodded at us. “Alicia?” he said.

“Yes.” She glanced back at me.

We both got into the back seat.

Alicia gave Kendrick an address on beachside. He punched some information into his smart phone, and then we were off, pulling out into traffic.

I saw a black SUV speed right past us; I was sure it was one of their vehicles. I turned and watched the vehicle pull into the plaza where we’d just been, the truck driving past the shops slowly.

It had been that close. We needed to put some distance between us and them.

I looked at Alicia. I wanted to ask her where we were going. It wasn’t the motel where we’d stayed, where my truck was still parked. I knew we couldn’t go back there. But I didn’t want to talk in front of Kendrick.

He drove in silence, constantly glancing down at his cell phone in his lap. Then he looked at us in the rearview mirror like he was studying us. I saw his eyes widen just a bit as he locked eyes with me in the mirror, then he looked away quickly.

I realized what he was looking at on his phone—a news alert about us.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

I knew we were moments away from Kendrick the Uber driver calling 911 and letting them know that fugitives from the law had just hitched a ride in his car.

We needed to get out of there.

I looked at Alicia, locking eyes with her. I could tell that she’d seen the same thing I had.

“Kendrick,” I said.

He looked up and met my eyes in the rearview mirror, startled for just a second.

“We’ve changed our minds about going to the beachside.”

“Oh. Okay.”

I was already digging my wallet out of my pants pocket as I looked around. We’d only driven a few miles, not as much distance from our pursuers as I wanted, but we needed to get out. I was sure Kendrick was in the middle of either sending a text or an email to the police. I spotted a car for sale along the side of the road, an older Ford Taurus with weathered paint and a big cardboard sign inside the windshield with a price of nine hundred dollars.

“Right up here,” I told Kendrick. “We need to get off up there.”

“Right there?” he asked, pointing at the corner where a small side street met the road we were on.

“Yes. That’s perfect. You can just pull over right there.”

“How much for the ride?” Alicia asked.

“Oh, uh, there’s a minimum of fifteen dollars.” He almost seemed to be apologizing.

I pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and a ten. I handed both to him. I knew it probably wasn’t a good idea to leave too big a tip—it made people remember you—but I already knew that Kendrick had already recognized us, so it didn’t matter.

“I don’t need any change,” I told him as he took the money. He was parked on the side of the road now.

“Thanks for the ride,” I told him.

He nodded, still nervous, like he expected one of us to pull a gun on him.

We got out and walked away from his car.

“He saw us on the news,” Alicia said. “Didn’t he? On his phone.”

I shrugged. “Probably. Maybe he checks it in case somebody on the run gets into his car.” Somebody like us, I thought. “Let’s keep walking down this street until he goes away.”

Alicia nodded. “Did you have a reason for stopping here, or did you just want to get out of his car as quickly as possible?”

I looked back at Kendrick’s car as we walked away. He was parked there for a moment, no doubt sending his text or email to the police, but then he drove away.

“Yeah,” I said, finally answering Alicia’s question. I stopped walking. “We need a car. I just saw one we could get.” I looked up the street at the car for sale.

“We can’t buy a car,” she said. “That’s going to leave a paper trail.”

“I know. We’re not going to exactly be buying it.”

We hurried back up to the main road and then a few houses down where I’d seen the Ford Taurus parked in the front yard. I practically ran up to the front door, praying that the owner of the car was home.

A moment later an older man answered the door, opening it up wide. He was tall and heavy, his hair and thick mustache silver. He had dazzlingly blue eyes set deep in his wrinkled face. He wore an old stained T-shirt and pants that were held up by red suspenders. “Help you?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. I’m interested in the car you have for sale.”

His face brightened just a bit, and he nodded. “Okay.”

“Yeah, the price seems reasonable. I was wondering if we could take a look at it.” I was nervous and talking too fast. I was trying to slow myself down, trying to act natural, but I felt like a clock was ticking inside my brain, ticking down the seconds until the SUVs came pulling up and screeching to a halt alongside the road.

And I had to be careful. This man might have been inside watching TV, catching the breaking news about the two desperate criminals on the run, the ones who were probable suspects in the murder of two men in an RV park.

“Okay,” the man said. “Hold on a sec, let me just go get the keys.”

He closed the door, and it seemed like it took him an hour to come back.

Alicia and I walked over to the car. I peered in through the windows, studying the inside, trying to act like someone who wanted to buy this car. The interior was a little torn up, but not too bad. The car was dark blue, but the paint was fading from years under the Florida sun. The tires looked okay and there was a big dent in the rear quarter panel.

“We need to test drive this car,” I told Alicia. “You need to go with me. Just us. We’ll give him half of the money to hold so he isn’t suspicious.”

She nodded, but didn’t look so sure this was going to work.

I didn’t know what else to do. We could keep going on foot, or try to get on a city bus. But sooner or later someone was going to spot us. I felt bad for what we were about to do. I wanted to leave more than just half of the money for the car, but I was afraid he would get too suspicious if I handed him more money. I made a mental note of his address, swearing to myself that I would send him the rest of the money in the mail tomorrow.

Finally, the older man came out of his house, shuffling slowly down the walkway that divided his small front yard.

“Uh, is there anything wrong with the car?” I asked.

“Not really,” he said. “It’s an older car, but it runs just fine.”

“The air-conditioner works?” I asked. I didn’t really care if the A/C worked or not, I was just trying to ask the normal things a potential buyer would ask.

“Yes, the air works just fine.” He pushed a button on the key fob and the door locks popped up. “It’s got over a hundred and eighty thousand miles on it, but we’ve kept the oil changed every five thousand miles. It’s got a new radiator and water pump in it—just put that in a year ago.”

“Mind if I sit down inside?” I asked, struggling to slow my speech down. I glanced around at the street.

“No, not at all. Go ahead and sit down inside.”

I looked at Alicia. We both got inside the car.

The man handed the keys to me through the open door. I stuck the ignition key in and started the car. It cranked right up, the motor purring. I shut the door. It was roasting inside the car and I rolled the windows down and then turned the air conditioner on; it blew hot air at first, but it was beginning to cool off in seconds.

We only had a few more minutes before they showed up—I was sure of that, and I was doing my best not to panic.

I tried the radio. I popped the hood and got out, looking over the engine like I had any idea of what I was studying. “Everything looks good to me.”

“Yes, it was a dependable car for us.”

“You take cash?”

“Oh yes. Of course.” He smiled. “Cash is king, as they say.”

“I’d like to test drive it first,” I told him. “Would that be okay?”

The first signs of wariness crept into his expression. “Sure,” he said.

I walked back to the driver’s side and sat down.

“Both of you?” he asked.

I looked at him.

“I’m going to have to keep your girlfriend here with me as collateral,” he said. “Make sure you don’t run off with my car.”

Shit!

I stared at him, my mind racing as I tried to figure out a way to get out of there. Alicia was already in the car with me. I thought for a second about shifting into drive and stomping my foot down on the gas pedal, tearing out of his yard with his hand still clutching the open door, perhaps dragging the poor old man across his front yard.

I had my wallet in my hand, pulling out three of the one-hundred-dollar bills. “I . . . I could leave some money with you . . .”

The man broke into a braying laughter, his wrinkles deeper, his skin red. “I’m just pulling your leg, son. You should have seen your face just now.”

I smiled, but it felt like a strange thing on my face right then.

“Your girlfriend as collateral,” he said, shaking his head. “That was a good one all right.”

“I’m just going to drive it around the block a few times,” I said, the money still in my hand. “We’ll be back in five minutes. We’re not going to take your car.”

“It’s not exactly a Rolls Royce,” the man said.

I thrust the three bills at him. “Look, sir. I really want to buy this car. I just need to drive it for a few minutes first. Take this as a sign of my intent.”

“I trust you,” he said.

I still had my hand stretched out toward him, the bills crumpled in my fingers too tightly. I kept my hand out like I was frozen, not sure what to do.

“Zach,” Alicia said, a wooden smile on her face. “He doesn’t want the money yet.” She looked past me at the older man. “Sorry. We’ll be right back.”

The older man backed away so I could shut the driver’s door.

“Go ahead and take her for a spin. Do some burnouts and take it off-road if you want to.” He laughed again.

I shifted into drive and pulled out to the edge of the yard, out to the street. I saw a black SUV a few blocks away, heading toward us.

“You see it?” Alicia said.

“Yeah,” I told her. “We gotta go.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

I pulled out onto the street and punched the gas. The car picked up speed pretty quickly, the air-conditioner already cooling the car down just a little even though my skin was still burning with fear. I kept my hands on the steering wheel, not daring to turn around and look behind me. I stared at the rearview mirror as I drove faster. I saw the black SUV getting to the old man’s house, then passing it, turning onto the small road where Kendrick the Uber driver had dropped us off.

“Did they see us?” Alicia asked. She looked too scared to turn around.

“I don’t know. They turned down that side road.”

I wanted to turn down a side road, too. I wanted to get off of this street, but I made myself keep driving. It would take a few minutes before those guys realized we weren’t down that side street. And then it would take maybe fifteen or twenty minutes before the old man realized we weren’t coming back with his Ford Taurus and called the police. We had maybe an hour before the cops put out an APB on this car.

“That address you gave the Uber driver,” I said to Alicia, “where was that?”

She shrugged. “Something I looked up on your phone. Somewhere on the beachside. I figured he would get us over there, drop us off, and then we would find another way to a motel. Take a bus or walk.”

I nodded.

“So you suspected the Uber driver recognized us,” I told her.

“I could tell he was nervous.”

I nodded in agreement.

“We should change our clothes,” Alicia said. “Our hair, too.”

I drove for two more blocks. “We’ll stop up there. Get a change of clothes for each of us, a bag to put everything in, and a few other things.”

She nodded, not answering. She looked dazed, like she was just hanging on for the ride. She finally turned around and looked out through the rear window.

“See them?” I asked.

“No,” she said, turning back around.

I pulled into the thrift store parking lot, feeling a thrift store would be safer than a regular store, somewhere we could pay in cash and probably not be remembered. We split up once we were inside. I found a pair of brightly colored shorts, two T-shirts, one advertising Daytona—the world’s most famous beach; clothes that might make me look like a tourist. I also found a pack of brand-new socks, a Florida Marlins baseball cap, and a pair of sunglasses. Alicia was still looking through the clothes, so I went to the tool section, finding a few screwdrivers and a pair of pliers—I would need those to get another license plate off of another car to switch with ours.

I found a decent-looking duffel bag to put everything in.

Fifteen minutes later we were at the cash register where an ancient-looking volunteer rang up our items for us. I paid for the items and we hurried out to the car.

After twenty more minutes of driving, I pulled in behind a small business and parked next to an old car that looked like it had been parked there for a long time. Alicia was the lookout while I switched the tags, putting the Taurus’s tag on the old car and putting that tag on our Ford. Then we were off again.

“I’ve committed more felonies in the last hour than I have in my whole life,” I said as I drove.

Alicia just looked at me.

“You have a motel in mind?” I asked her.

“Maybe we shouldn’t go to the beachside. We should find a motel on Ridgewood, some seedy place where they won’t ask a lot of questions. A place that takes cash.”

We stopped and picked up some burgers and fries at a fast-food restaurant and took the food with us. We stopped at a dollar store and bought a cooler, some drinks, a throw-away cell phone, some bathroom supplies. Alicia also bought scissors and hair dye for her and a pair of electric clippers for me—something to change the way we looked just a little.

It was almost afternoon when we found a motel that looked run-down enough for our situation. The Indian man who ran it took Alicia’s fake info and cash, and fifteen minutes later we had our stuff in the room and the door locked.

An hour and a half later I had shaved my hair down to a quarter inch with the clippers and taken a shower, changing my clothes, balling up the other ones to throw away. I gave the bathroom to Alicia so she could take a shower.

While she was in the shower, I turned the TV on, scanning the news channels for any reports about us or a stolen car. I didn’t see any reports about the stolen car and no more news alerts about us.

For the moment I felt somewhat safe, but I couldn’t relax all the way—it felt like a massive invisible force was pushing down on me, crowding in from every direction. No matter where I ran or what I did, I was never going to be able to get away from them. They would always find me.

Find us.

It hit me again that it wasn’t just me anymore—now it was Alicia who had been pulled into this. The rational side of me knew it wasn’t my fault; I had no way of knowing what was going to happen. But it still felt like my fault, and I wanted to apologize to Alicia. But I didn’t know how.

I flipped through the TV channels, trying to let my mind wander a little. I needed a break from the stress. It might seem impossible to avoid thinking about life-threatening circumstances, but I had almost succeeded in the task when Alicia came out of the bathroom. Her hair was shorter and blond. She was dressed in the beachwear we had bought at the thrift store.

“How do I look?” she asked.

She looked younger. Different. Radiant. Beautiful. The words almost slipped out, but I bit them back. “You . . . you look great.”

I felt like my nearly shaved head made me look older and her stylish short haircut made her look younger.

After I got up and grabbed a beer from the mini-fridge, I looked at Alicia. “I’m so sorry. Your life is ruined now.”

“It’s not your fault.”

I was about to argue that point with her.

“It’s my fault,” she continued. “I had a chance to walk away in the beginning. As soon as I suspected you were programmed, I could have run away as fast as possible.”

“That’s not your fault. You study this stuff. You were curious.”

“Yes, I admit that. But I also knew something bad was going on.” She paused for just a moment. “Besides, it might have been too late by then already. Maybe as soon as Stan told me about you it was already too late. Maybe by then I was already connected to this.”

I stayed silent. And she was quiet for a moment, an awkward silence blanketing us.

“It’s too late to play the blame game,” Alicia said. “Right now we need to figure out a way to stop this.” She looked away for a moment and then looked back at me. “We need to try again.”

Going under hypnosis was the last thing I wanted to do, but I knew she was right. The only hope we had of finding out exactly what I had been programmed to do was to learn more details that were buried in my mind somewhere. But those memories and instructions seemed to be buried so deep in my mind, and I was afraid we’d never find them in time.

After finishing my bottle of beer, I sat down in one of the wooden chairs, this one not as sturdy or well-made as the last motel we’d stayed in. Alicia sat on the bed.

I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath, trying to drown out the noise outside on Ridgewood Avenue. Little by little the sounds from outside faded away, and I was once again floating in my friend’s backyard pool. And once again, it was the peaceful place that Alicia had instructed me to build in my mind. But as I drifted deeper into the fantasy world I had created, a sense of doom began to weigh down on me as the fog moved in. Bits of what I’d thought was snow at first was falling down all around me, but now I knew it was ash from some unseen destruction. The mist swirled all around me like thunderstorm clouds, and I knew it was the same mist I’d seen in the backyard across the street from my house. I saw a glow among the mist in the sky, like clouds were parting, and then the eagle I’d seen before perched on the fence emerged, soaring on the gusts of wind as a golden shaft of light shined down on it.

“The eagle,” I whispered, not sure if I was saying the word out loud in front of Alicia or only in my mind. “It means something.”

As the world darkened around me, I felt cold. The birds had stopped chirping and the only sounds were the whistling wind and the occasional screech from the eagle—a chilling and lonely sound.

The pool water began to churn, little waves rocking my inflatable raft back and forth. I gripped the sides, trying to hold on. I sat up straighter, realizing that the pool was so much larger now, part of it running off toward the foggy horizon, like I was at the edge of an ocean. Panic seized me as I stared at the unending water.

But my panic intensified when I sensed someone . . . or something . . . right behind me where the shore was. Or maybe it was in the water, or above it, hovering there. I hadn’t turned around to see what was behind me yet, too paralyzed with fear.

“Zach . . .”

I thought it was Michelle’s voice for a moment.

“Zach . . .”

But then I realized that it was Alicia’s voice.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

My eyes popped open. I was in the motel room, sitting in the wooden chair. I didn’t think I had sat there very long, but my muscles felt stiff and my back ached. It was darker in the room, like the sun was setting and bringing the night with it. Maybe the deepening shadows of the room had manifested themselves as the dark clouds and waters in my vision.

Alicia wasn’t sitting on the edge of the bed anymore, she was standing now.

“Did I say anything?” I asked. “Did you find anything out?” I searched her eyes for some kind of positive sign.

She shook her head. “Sorry. I think we should take a break for a while.”

I agreed. I needed to stand up and move around. I wanted another beer. I grabbed one from the fridge, expecting Alicia to forbid it, but she didn’t. I opened it and drank half of it down in a few swallows.

Alicia still hadn’t sat down. She looked nervous and antsy. “What if we can’t do this?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. All we can do is keep trying.”

“I’m not an expert at this,” she practically snapped at me. “I mean, I know the basics, and I’ve done a lot of research on this, but you need someone who’s an expert at this kind of thing.”

“Like who?”

She didn’t have an answer for me.

“We can’t seek anyone else out.”

She nodded in agreement, knowing exactly what I was talking about. We couldn’t pull anyone else into this nightmare, risk anyone else’s life.

“All we can do is try,” I said again. “We know it’s supposed to happen tomorrow at four o’clock. We just need to know exactly where, and we need to know exactly how and where the bomb is going to go off.”

Alicia walked over to the nightstand between the two beds and picked up her small notebook that Stan had bought. She opened it, staring at the numbers. She shook her head in frustration. “The answers are in these numbers somewhere. We just aren’t seeing it.”

“We’ll try again a little later,” I said. “We’ll take a break for an hour and then we’ll try again.”

*

Alicia tried once more to get something out of my subconscious . . . anything. But there was nothing.

After she brought me out of hypnosis, she suggested that we get some sleep. “Maybe you’ll see something in your dreams,” she said.

“Maybe,” I answered, trying to sound positive.

I drank two more beers while I watched TV with the sound turned down low. I was exhausted, but too wired to sleep. Alicia nodded off in the other bed almost immediately. She had left the notepad and pen on the nightstand between the beds next to the old alarm clock and telephone. She had instructed me to write my dreams down as soon as I woke up, even if the dreams seemed mundane or didn’t seem to make any sense. There could be something buried in the random images in my dreams, a clue hidden there.

Even though I watched TV, trying to get sleepy, my mind kept slipping back to the planned terror attack for tomorrow. But the more I tried to concentrate on it, the more I tried to find something in my memories, the more elusive it became. I was just frustrating myself. Maybe Alicia was right—I should try to get my mind off of it, let my subconscious take over. But I felt like I was running out of time, and the thought of sleeping while this cabal planned a terror attack made me feel guilty. People were going to get hurt and killed. Maybe a lot of them. I knew the pressure I was putting on myself was too much, too heavy, like the mist in my visions that pushed down on me, but I couldn’t help it.

Finally, I turned the TV off and lay down in bed. The lights were out but there was still enough light from the street seeping in around the edges of the blinds and flimsy curtains hanging over the window beside the door that looked out onto the parking lot.

I didn’t think I was going to be able to sleep, but then I drifted off without realizing it.

The dream began at the same familiar starting point. Michelle stood in the middle of the street, just beyond the splash of light from the streetlamp. Her back was to me. She was staring at the house across the street. And then she ran toward it.

I chased her, calling out to her, begging her to stop. I knew where we were going, where she was leading me to. I wanted to stop, but the dream carried me along helplessly, like I was adrift in a rough sea, trapped on a float on the dark, churning water.

Moments later I rushed through the opened back gate, then through the darkness of the back yard to the beacon of light shining out through the open back door.

I was in the storage room a few seconds later. I saw the graffiti on the walls—my graffiti, the racial slurs, the strings of numbers, the random words, the ramblings of a lunatic. That’s what the cabal wanted the world to think of me.

“Zach . . .”

Michelle was inside the home, calling to me.

I remembered what I’d seen the last time Michelle had been inside this house. I remembered her in the doorway, her body bloated, her skin gray and dotted with black bruises, the rope tied so tightly around her neck, digging into her mottled flesh, her feet sheathed in the black boots where I’d found the bank receipts and notecards with the numbers on them, the toes of her boots hanging a few inches above the cracked linoleum floor. I remembered her staring at me with eyes that bulged from her face, threatening to pop.

But she wasn’t there in the doorway.

“Zach . . .”

I went inside the house.

She wasn’t there.

I searched through the dilapidated house, rushing past more of my graffiti, my crude drawings, my words and numbers painted frantically.

“Zach . . .” Michelle whispered from somewhere in the darkness.

I couldn’t find her. My search through the house became more and more panicked. The house, much like my friend’s pool I had been floating in, seemed to grow so much larger than it should have been. Rooms opened up to more rooms, and halls led to more halls. I could tell I was traveling deeper and deeper into the house, entering rooms I’d already been in before. There were no windows, and it felt like I was somewhere deep underground, or lost in a funhouse maze from hell.

And then I came to some kind of back door. I pushed it open. I was outside, in the back yard. The same gray mist hung over everything, shrouding something in the yard . . . something big.

Michelle?

No.

It wasn’t Michelle. It wasn’t a person. It was something else. Something much larger.

A snort came from the mist, then a pawing at the earth, thundering footsteps approaching from the wall of swirling fog and the ash drifting down like gray snow. It was an animal of some kind, something large and heavy.

At first I thought it was a bull materializing out of the fog, but then I saw the curved horns. It was a ram, its coat black and shiny in the night, its eyes barely discernable among the blackness, but I could tell the animal was staring at me.

With a rush of breath I woke up. It felt like a scream was trapped in my throat.

Alicia stood at the end of the beds. She was already dressed, and I could tell she’d been awake for a while.

“Bad dream?” she asked.

I didn’t answer right away because I couldn’t really call it a nightmare, more like a weird dream.

“You should write it down.”

I did, blinking rapidly so I could see the paper and my words through my sleep-blurred vision.

“Is that coffee I smell?” I asked as I scribbled words on the page.

“I drove down to a McDonald’s and got us some coffee and breakfast.”

I was alarmed that I hadn’t woken up when she’d left and returned—I must have really been tired. And I was also alarmed that she’d driven the car we’d stolen, even if it was only a few blocks. But I didn’t say anything; we’d be driving it again soon enough.

“Cream and sugar?” she asked.

“Please. Both.”

She brought the coffee to me as I continued writing. I took a sip.

A few minutes later I had finished jotting down my dream. I remembered the first part easily enough, because it was like the beginning of most of my dreams over the last week or so. But the rest of the dream was fading already, and it didn’t take too many words to describe what had happened once I was inside the house, moving from room to room as the house seemed to grow so huge. I described how I’d felt trapped and panicked. And then I was outside and saw the black ram. But the beast hadn’t charged me; it had just stared at me, snorting and scuffing one hoof on the grass.

Alicia sat down on the other bed. I handed her my notes.

“This doesn’t mean anything to you?” she asked after reading them.

“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell what’s from my imagination and what has been planted.”

She nodded in agreement.

I looked at the alarm clock, sitting up a little straighter. “It’s nine o’clock already?”

She nodded.

The seconds were ticking by faster and faster.

“We should try another session,” Alicia said.

*

A few minutes later I had eaten a breakfast sandwich and finished my coffee. I sat down in the uncomfortable wooden chair and did my best to relax.

Alicia spoke, helping me sink down into the world I had created, and within minutes I felt like I was floating on top of the water in my friend’s swimming pool And just like before, the feeling of peace and relaxation was driven away as the mist rolled in, the ash falling all around me, the wind picking up.

The eagle was there again, swooping down from the mist and ash, a golden light filtering through and shining on it. Beyond the edge of the pool a creature stirred in the mist. The ram came forward.

The ram and the eagle—two animals.

But what did they mean? They had to mean something.

The water was getting choppy again, the wind shrieking. The eagle soared on the wind, in and out of the mist, like it was blasting holes in it, screeching.

The ram hadn’t come closer to me. It stood still except for when it pawed at the ground, snorting like it was ready to charge at me.

And then I was back in the motel room again, the shift so sudden I felt like I had skidded to a stop. My eyes popped open. I sat rigid in the chair.

“What time is it?” I muttered. My mouth was dry and my body was stiff and sore. I felt like I’d been sitting there for hours.

Alicia bolted over to her bed, shoving her clothes and the few possessions she had down into the duffel bag.

Everything seemed to be moving so quickly. I struggled to stand up.

“We gotta go,” she said.

“What time is it?” I asked again. I looked at the alarm clock on the nightstand between the beds. “One o’clock? It’s one o’clock?”

“I kept you under longer than usual.”

“What?” I still felt like I’d been run over by a truck.

“But it worked.”

“What worked? What did I say?”

“You know where it’s taking place.”

“Where?”

“Come on. We don’t have a lot of time. I’ll explain on the way.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Alicia drove because she knew exactly where we were going—The Ocean Wave Resort. I remembered seeing something on the news about some kind of music festival or outdoor concert going on there. It clicked in my mind as soon as Alicia told us where we were going. I swore I’d seen glimpses of the place in my dreams, or at least the ocean nearby, but I couldn’t be entirely certain. I wasn’t sure how Alicia had pulled the information out of me. She said she’d kept pressing and pressing while I was under hypnosis until the name of the hotel just seemed to come to me. I asked about the video, but she’d forgotten to record the session.

It was almost two o’clock when we got to the hotel. The pool area beyond it was packed with partiers. A local band was playing. Parking was impossible so Alicia drove a few blocks away and parked down a side street. We would walk back to the hotel. It was better than driving the stolen car up and down A1A; eventually a cop was going to pull us over and run the license plate.

The world around me felt surreal, like I was trapped in one of my visions as I slipped into hypnosis. It was easy and tempting to believe that none of this was real and that it was all part of a big dream. We were about to try to stop a programmed terrorist—it couldn’t be real.

But it was.

I stopped Alicia before we began walking to the hotel. “You don’t have to go with me. You don’t have to do this. It’s too dangerous. I can just go.”

“I’m going with you,” she said. It didn’t look like she was willing to negotiate about it.

I wanted to tell her to get back in the car and leave; I wanted to command her to do it. But I knew she wasn’t going to listen to me. I wanted to explain that we might not be able to find the bomb in time, or even if we did, I might not be able to diffuse it. I wanted to tell her about the danger we were in, that we could be facing our deaths in the next few hours.

But she knew that already—I could see it in her eyes.

We had discussed calling the police anonymously as we’d driven to the beachside, telling them that there was a bomb threat at the hotel. But would they take it seriously? And even if they did, would the bomb go off while they were investigating? And the worst part was that the cabal would get away with it; they would just go on to the next target. No, we needed not only to stop it, but we needed proof. We promised ourselves that if we couldn’t find the bomb by three-thirty, then we would call the police and the hotel to warn them.

That didn’t give us much time, but we had to try. That’s what we had agreed to do.

It took a few minutes of brisk walking to get to the festival going on around the hotels next to each other. We passed people on the streets and sidewalks, many of them college kids dressed in swimwear and summer shorts, sleeveless shirts. We saw sunburned faces and shoulders, sunglasses and flip flops, Many were already drunk, laughing and stumbling. I’m sure Alicia and I fit in with the crowd because of the way we were dressed, but I didn’t feel like I fit in.

For the next thirty minutes we drifted in and out of the hotel lobbies and pool areas, trying to find something that triggered my buried memories. The music thrummed in the background among the cheers and noise. Nobody stopped us or talked to us, and I tried to keep an eye out for any sign of the cabal. Of course they wouldn’t be dressed in dark suits and sunglasses, but maybe they would still stand out from the college kids.

Time seemed to be passing by quickly. I swore I could hear the seconds ticking away in my mind.

“You don’t see anything that’s familiar to you?” Alicia asked when we were back on the street, heading north past the hotel.

I knew she was trying to sound patient with me, but I could hear the stress in her voice, the panic in her eyes.

I looked around, trying desperately to spot something, to recognize anything from my dreams and visions. I shook my head no.

It felt like we were running around in circles, moving from one place to the next, and then back to that same place. The bomb could be anywhere. But the bomb would have to be pretty big if they were going to use the bags of fertilizer I had stolen from work. I wondered if they would try to hide it in a lawn truck, but a truck like that would be too obvious.

But it might be in a vehicle. And then I remembered something I’d seen a few minutes earlier.

“Come on,” I told Alicia.

“What? Did you think of something?”

“Maybe.”

We went back down to the other side of the hotel, the south side. There were cars and trucks parked up and down the street, and many other vehicles were parked in the three-story parking garage across the street. But the bomb wouldn’t be in the parking garage—there wouldn’t be enough people there, not enough loss of life, not enough terror. No, it had to be around the hotel somewhere.

The bomb could be in one of the cars and trucks parked along A1A, but none of the vehicles seemed to be big enough to house all the bags of fertilizer. It would need to be a truck or van, like a rental truck maybe.

Alicia was right beside me as I entered an alleyway between the two hotels where deliveries were dropped off.

Parked at the other end was a box truck, backed in so that the front of it was facing us.

We ran down the alley, the walls of the hotel hiding us from the street. I stopped when we were right beside the truck. I stared at the name on the side of it: Golden Eagle Food Delivery.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

We had to hurry. There could be people watching us, or even snipers tracking us with their scopes. But then again, maybe not. Maybe the cabal was banking on me not remembering the clues in my dreams and visions; maybe they were banking that the instructions for this terror plot were buried too deep in my mind for me to recover; maybe they were banking that Alicia, a mere student, wouldn’t know how to tap into my subconscious. Or maybe they were banking that we would run, that what had happened to Stan, Adam, and Joel had scared us too badly. And maybe they were banking that they would eventually find us, banking that we couldn’t hide from them forever.

I felt jittery as I hurried around to the back of the delivery truck, my skin crawling. I swore I could feel a red dot on my skin from a laser scope on a rifle.

There was a combination lock on the doorhandle of the sliding door.

“I don’t . . .” I began.

“You know the code,” Alicia said. “You’ve written it down before in one of those series of numbers. Just let it come to you.”

I saw the lines of numbers I’d written whipping by in my mind, but none of them made any sense to me. It seemed like an endless combination of numbers.

“I can’t . . . can’t . . .” Panic welled inside of me.

Alicia’s voice was calm, her touch gentle as she laid a hand on my shoulder. “Just reach out and touch the lock. Don’t think about it.”

I did what she said. It felt like my hands weren’t my own, like I was watching a video of someone else doing this. I watched as my fingers seemed to move on their own, the numbers just seeming to come to me, swimming out of the ash and fog in my mind. Then the lock was open. Deep down inside I knew what the combination was, just like I’m sure I knew the combination to the storage unit—maybe it was the same combination, maybe even the same lock with my fingerprints all over it.

After rolling up the metal door, I saw the bags of fertilizer packed down into some kind of wooden box that took up the entire back of the van with some kind of metal contraption and wires connected to it. There was a digital display counting the seconds down—less than twenty minutes now.

“You can do this,” Alicia said from behind me.

I didn’t turn around and look at her, didn’t even respond. I took a deep breath and let my hands go to work, trusting my subconscious. I knew that I had rigged part of this up, that I had been trained to do so. I could almost see the memories of myself setting the wires and blasting caps in place inside the storage unit, getting it ready to be transported by this truck. But I hadn’t loaded it up into this truck.

What if I couldn’t remember all of it? What if I could only remember part of it?

I couldn’t think about that right now. I saw myself floating in my friend’s pool, the sky clear and blue above me, not the gray fog of ash drifting down everywhere. The water was calm and cool, not the churning waters from the aftermath of a cataclysm. I wasn’t all the way there in my vision, but halfway there, relaxed enough to still see that my hands seemed to be working on their own, disconnecting wires and caps, punching in a code on the computer display.

The numbers stopped counting down, the display went blank.

I pulled the wires out and balled them up in one hand, stuffing them down into the pockets of my shorts. I let out a long breath and looked at Alicia.

She smiled with relief.

We’d done it, but the danger wasn’t completely over. There was another part of the terror plot—I was sure of it, but I didn’t know exactly what it was.

“There’s something else,” I told Alicia.

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

“Another bomb?”

“No, I don’t think so. But there’s something else I was supposed to do.” It was nagging at me, pulling at me. It seemed to be there somewhere in the fog of my mind, almost materializing like the ram in my visions had.

“Come on,” Alicia said. “We need to go.”

As soon as I slid the rolling door of the delivery truck down, closing it, I heard a man shouting at us from a doorway to the hotel. The party was still going on somewhere beyond those walls, on the pool decks, the music loud from where we stood.

“What are you two doing?” the man asked. He was dressed in some kind of uniform, maybe security.

I fumbled with the padlock on the doorhandle, snapping it back in place. I was sure a gunshot was going to sound at any moment, but I probably wouldn’t even hear it—I would just feel the impact of a bullet and then the world would go black for me.

“Hey!” the man called at us again.

We ran. We were back out on the sidewalk in seconds, blending in with the crowd, trying to hurry, but trying not to be too conspicuous.

“This isn’t over,” I told Alicia as we walked.

She nodded. “We’ll find it.”

Again, I saw the clock in my mind, counting down the seconds until doomsday. We were running out of time.

We hurried down the sidewalk, but I didn’t see anything that was triggering my memories. I crossed the street.

“Where are you going?” Alicia asked, hurrying to keep up with me.

A car had to practically screech to a halt as we ran to the other side of the street. It was just a hunch, but we’d been up and down that sidewalk in front of the hotels several times now. It had to be somewhere else, somewhere less obvious.

The parking garage? It seemed to be calling to me, so I headed for it.

“In there?” Alicia asked.

“I don’t know,” I muttered. “I don’t think so. But maybe somewhere near it.”

We went past the parking garage, down to the next block, heading towards Grand Avenue. Businesses gave way to houses and apartment buildings.

Then I froze.

Alicia stopped right beside me. “What is it?”

“I think that’s it,” I told her.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

It looked like an abandoned house: two stories, wood siding, peeling paint, cracked and dark windows, an attached carport.

“The house?” Alicia said.

“Yeah. There’s something in there. Something under that carport.”

She didn’t bother asking questions. We hurried across the front lawn of the home and under the carport. The area was large enough to fit two vehicles inside of it, but there was only one vehicle parked there—a black pickup truck with a cap on the back. The truck was older with big tires. A Dodge Ram.

A black ram.

Like the black ram I’d seen in my visions and dreams.

It could have just been a coincidence, but I could feel that it was right, like I’d seen this vehicle somewhere before.

“That’s it?” Alicia said. “The truck?”

“The things I saw in my dreams, the things from my subconscious. The clues. One of them was a golden eagle, like the name on that delivery truck. Another one was a black ram coming out of the mist.”

Her eyes lit up. She remembered now.

I peeked in through the truck’s window, then gently tested the doorhandle. Locked. The topper on back was solid with only a window in the back. I went around to the back and cupped my hands to the sides of my face, peering in through the tinted window. In the back there were canvas bags with a few long metal barrels poking out.

“What is it?” Alicia asked from the side of the truck. “What’s in there?”

“Looks like weapons,” I told her. “Rifles. Guns.”

I wasn’t sure what to do. Should I break the glass and take the weapons? Load them into our Ford Taurus and get away as fast as we could?

“Zach,” Alicia hissed from closer to the front of the truck.

I hurried from behind the truck to the side where she stood.

A man approached us, walking swiftly and purposely. He wore camouflage shorts that came down to his knees, white socks, black combat boots, and a yellow T-shirt with some kind of writing on it. He had an American flag bandana on his head and a pair of aviator sunglasses over his eyes.

It was him, the other patsy.

We stood near the driver’s door of the truck as the man walked toward the carport.

“Stop,” I told the man, startling him.

He stopped right at the front of the truck, only a few feet away from us. It was like he hadn’t even seen us until I spoke. He stared at me. Even with the dark sunglasses, I could tell he was confused. Plans had been laid out a certain way in his mind and we were suddenly disturbing those plans.

“You can’t do this,” I told him.

The man didn’t say anything, his body was still tense.

Was that what I was supposed to be, a monster, a puppet carrying along the cabal’s orders?

“Listen to me,” Alicia said.

The man turned his attention to Alicia. He frowned and started reaching under his shirt at the waistband of his shorts.

Alicia had her Taser in her hand—she aimed it at the man, the electrodes shooting out at him, sticking to his shirt, electrocuting him.

The man’s sunglasses fell off as he fell down to the ground, convulsing for a moment.

Alicia kept the Taser in her hand, ready to give another jolt if she needed to.

The man sat up and looked around like he was confused. He looked down at himself like he didn’t recognize himself, like he didn’t understand why he was wearing camouflage and combat boots. “What am I doing here?” he asked, his voice cracking. “Who are you?”

“You’ve been programmed,” I told him. “Hypnotized.”

“No,” he said, trying to smile like this was all some big joke, but his smile was a quivering thing on his lips.

“I was one, too,” I told him before he could argue. “They programmed me. Did it over a series of years, preparing me for this moment. But Alicia pulled me out of it. She helped me. She can help you too. We can all go to the police together.”

The man looked unsure about that, unsure about everything.

“What’s your name?” I asked. “I’m Zach Hughes. And this is Alicia.”

“Randy,” he said. “I don’t . . . I don’t know about . . .”

“You have the keys to this truck,” I said. It wasn’t a question. “You have the keys, but you don’t remember ever seeing this truck before.”

Randy’s right hand went to his front pants pocket. He could feel the bulge of the keys there.

“You have a gun in the waistband of your pants,” Alicia said.

Randy’s other hand went to his side, and then he flinched.

“There are weapons in this truck,” I told Randy. “A lot of them. Assault rifles and handguns. They programmed you to use these weapons to shoot and kill as many people at the festival in the hotels on the beachside a few blocks away.”

Randy shook his head. “No. That’s not true.”

“After the bomb goes off,” I said. “You’ve already set up a bomb in a delivery truck.” I wasn’t sure if Randy had actually set the bomb or somebody else had, not even sure if that information had been planted into him during his brief programming.

“No,” he said again, his voice losing strength, now almost a whisper.

“Golden Eagle Food Delivery,” I said.

The words seemed to ring a bell with Randy.

“A black ram,” I said, gesturing at the pickup right beside me.

He stared at the big black truck. “I . . . I would never shoot people. Hurt people.”

“I know,” Alicia said. “But some people can be hypnotized to do things they would normally never do. I just brought you out of hypnosis. I can help you. We can help you. But we need you to help us first.”

Randy seemed to relax just a little as he waited for Alicia to continue.

“We can all help each other,” Alicia went on in her soft, soothing voice. She was getting to Randy better than I was. “The people doing this, they’re very bad people. We need to get away from here right now. They’re setting all of us up to look like killers. We can explain everything. We can show you proof that we’ve got. But first you need to trust us.”

Randy still looked a little uncertain.

“You can keep your gun,” Alicia said. “And the keys to this truck.”

Randy looked horrified by the idea of that.

“We’re not cops,” Alicia said quickly. “But we can go to the cops together.”

I knew we couldn’t go to the cops, but Alicia was saying anything to get Randy to trust us. Once we explained what was going on, proved to him what was going on, let him watch the videos of my hypnotic sessions, even let Alicia put him under, then he would see. I wasn’t sure who we could go to with our proof, but we would find someone to listen to our story, find some politicians who weren’t corrupt, or maybe a journalist brave enough to tell this story, or maybe find help in another country. And with Randy’s testimony, it would only make our story that much more believable.

“Randy, please,” Alicia said. “We need your help.”

Randy seemed to come to a decision. He got back up to his feet, pulling the electrodes off of his shirt and letting them fall to the ground. He nodded at us, still six feet away and just beyond the front of the truck, nearly silhouetted in the opening of the carport. And then the side of his head exploded as a bullet tunneled through. He dropped to the ground, already dead.

CHAPTER FIFTY

I hadn’t even heard the gunshot, but Randy was definitely dead. His eyes were glassy; the sunglasses he’d been holding in one hand had fallen from his limp fingers and skittered away. His mouth hung open. There seemed to be the ghost of an expression on his face, one of surprise.

“Don’t move.”

It was Michelle’s voice.

I looked at Randy again. He had a gun in the waistband of his shorts and the keys to the Dodge Ram in his front pants pocket. Could I get to them in time?

Michelle hurried up to the opening of the carport, aiming a gun with a suppressor at us.

“Michelle,” I whispered.

It was a shock to see her. For the last few days my whole life had been about finding her, and here she was.

“You can’t stop what’s going to happen,” Michelle said. “Even if you stop this here today, it will just happen somewhere else, with someone else. The plan will continue.”

“What plan?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“For my country, Zach. For the world. Like I said, you wouldn’t understand.”

“So you kill us now? Is that it?”

“And a local cop gets to be the hero,” Michelle finished for me. “Then agencies sweep in. You three were suspects in a white supremacist ring, and we caught you before you could achieve your goals. We win either way.”

“You never loved me,” I said. “This whole thing was planned right from the beginning.”

“What I felt is not important,” she answered. “The plan and the mission are what’s important.”

Rage boiled inside of me suddenly. “My parents. They were murdered, weren’t they?”

Michelle didn’t bother answering me.

“You guys . . . you knew I was . . . was able to be programmed, and you killed my parents. Then you approached me with your bullshit story about losing your own parents. Everything’s been a lie. Nothing’s fucking true.” I felt tears stinging my eyes.

I wanted answers from Michelle, but I also wanted to stall as long as possible. Maybe there was a chance I could get to the gun Randy had on him. Alicia’s Taser was already spent, and no good now.

“Yes, everything’s a lie,” Michelle said. “How do you know what to believe anymore?” Her eyes shifted to Alicia. “How do you even know what she’s been telling you is true?”

I looked at Alicia.

She looked horrified. “That’s not true.”

“You think it’s a coincidence that Alicia just happened to be a friend of Stan’s?” Michelle said. “You think it’s strange that she was able to tap into your subconscious so easily, to help you find the clues?”

I glanced at Alicia again, wondering how she’d gotten the address to the beachside hotel from me this morning. Had she known it all along?

“Don’t listen to her, Zach,” Alicia said. “She’s just trying to get you to hate me so she can win you back over. She wants me gone so she can reprogram you, so this terror act can continue.”

I wanted to believe Alicia, but I felt a strange pull toward Michelle. Just seeing her, just hearing her voice again, the memories of us surfaced. I’d only known Alicia for a few days, but I’d known Michelle for years.

But if Alicia was telling the truth, then why didn’t Michelle just kill her right now?

“She can’t kill me just yet,” Alicia said as if she’d read my mind. “She can’t let that traumatize you or she won’t be able to put you back under. There must be others on their way here.”

“Who can you trust, Zach?” Michelle asked with a sinister smile, a crooked thing I’d never seen on her face before.

I didn’t answer her . . . couldn’t answer her.

“Shit,” Michelle said, sighing as she said the word, her gun aimed back at Alicia. “I guess it’s over, then.” She seemed about as remorseful as if a TV show had just ended. “You got me. You’re a clever girl. I guess we go back to Plan B—you two were killed in the act of trying to retrieve your weapons out of this truck.”

Michelle was going to kill us. I knew it then. And then they were going to frame all three of us. We were going to be remembered as white supremacist monsters.

Why not go for Randy’s gun? I knew I didn’t have a chance in hell of reaching it in time before Michelle shot both of us, but I had to try.

“You’re scum,” I told Michelle, surprised at how strong and even my voice was. “You’re not doing the world any good. You’re just trying to control it, to enslave it.”

“Doesn’t matter. You’ll never see it. Say goodnight, Zach.”

I heard the sound of the gun spitting out two bullets.

I flinched, expecting to feel the thud of the bullets, expecting to slip down into blackness. But I didn’t feel anything. Maybe I was stunned.

Alicia was still standing, her expression one of horror and shock.

Michelle’s gun hand dropped down to her side, the gun slipping out of her relaxing fingers. There were two bright red dots on her forehead. Her eyes stared back at me, but they saw nothing anymore. For just a split second she stood there as if by pure will, and then she crumpled down to the ground.

She was dead. Someone had shot her.

I was frozen for just a moment. I looked at Alicia, and then I was on the ground, grabbing the gun out of the waistband of Randy’s shorts.

“Zach, Alicia,” a man’s voice said from behind the Dodge Ram.

I spun around on the ground, on my back, aiming the gun at the man as he stepped out from behind the pickup truck, a silencer attached to the end of his pistol, the weapon down by his side now, not aimed at us.

I recognized the voice before I even saw him. I couldn’t remember from where I’d heard his voice, but I knew I’d heard it before. And then when I saw him, I knew who it was.

“Come on,” he said. “We need to go right now.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

“You’re not dead,” I said. I was still lying on the ground in front of Randy’s dead body, in a half-sitting position, my gun still aimed at the man nearly hidden in the shadows of the carport at the rear of the Dodge Ram. “How can that be?”

Joel stared at me. His face was as expressionless as it had been when I’d seen him in the RV with Adam.

“Alicia’s right,” Joel said. “There are more of them coming. Adam’s on his way with a car. We need to go now.”

Just then a black car sped down the street and stopped at the end of the driveway. It was a newer car, one I couldn’t distinguish from any other newer cars these days.

Joel moved toward me cautiously, his gun still down by his side.

Alicia had moved closer to me, and Joel moved around her, out from under the carport that hid us from the neighbors. He was tense as he moved, as he headed for the car waiting in the street. “We need to go now. We don’t have much time.”

Sirens blared in the background somewhere. They sounded like they were getting closer.

“You still can’t trust the police,” Joel said. “There are men on the cabal’s payroll. You won’t be safe with the police. I can promise you that.”

I looked at Alicia as I got to my feet. She looked as unsure as I felt.

Joel was between us and the waiting car, standing in the middle of the driveway. He sighed like he had come to a regrettable decision. “We can’t make you go with us. It’s your choice. You can bring that gun with you if it makes you feel better.”

It would make me feel a little better. But then again, it didn’t. I wasn’t even sure how to use it, but I knew I must have been programmed to use one, maybe even this gun I held in my hand right now.

The sirens were louder. Closer.

“Last chance,” Joel said.

I looked at Alicia again. It was only a second or two, but it felt like so much more time than that. In that brief moment, it was like we had communicated telepathically, both agreeing with each other silently, weighing our limited options. What else were we going to do? Trust the authorities? Try to run?

“We can help you!” Adam shouted from the driver’s seat. “Get in!” His fiery expression was the antithesis of Joel’s stoic expression.

We made our decision. We got in the car.

I thought about the Ford Taurus, our bags in it, our fingerprints all over everything. But I didn’t bother mentioning it to Adam and Joel, and they didn’t seem worried about it. Alicia had her purse with the video camera in it; I had some of the cash on me, the bank receipts and notecards with the strings of numbers on them. We had all we needed.

Adam drove down the side streets, heading toward the Intracoastal Waterway, then north toward the Ormond Beach Bridge. But then he drove past it, driving along Riverside Drive, and then we were back out on A1A eventually, heading up to Flagler Beach.

“They’ll be watching the bridges,” Joel said, explaining our strange route.

“You changed the way you looked,” Adam said, glancing back at us in the back seat. “That was smart.”

I didn’t thank him for his compliment. I still had the pistol in my right hand. Alicia grabbed my other hand with hers, holding it. I looked at her. I knew she was afraid I might still believe some of the things Michelle had said, but I didn’t. And I wanted her to know that right then. I think she did.

“The bodies in your RV,” I said, turning my attention back to Adam and Joel.

“Sacrifices had to be made,” Adam said.

You killed two people, I almost said, but didn’t.

“The media and much of the police department will always think it was us in that RV, but the cabal knows the truth. But they’ll cover it up like they cover everything else up. You don’t know how deep this goes, how high, how far. You can’t even imagine.”

But I could imagine—I’d seen it.

Seeing Adam and Joel made me think of Stan, my heart jumping in my chest. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about him. “We need to get Stan. If they know about you two, then he could be in danger.”

“He’s dead,” Joel said flatly without turning around to look at me. “Complications from his injuries; that’s the official diagnosis.”

“Oh God,” I whispered.

Alicia squeezed my hand even tighter.

“His mother killed herself in grief,” Joel continued.

“Tying up loose ends,” I muttered. “So what now? They’ll always be looking for us.”

“Yes,” Adam said. “That’s true. But you’ve got some evidence. You’ve got your story to tell.”

“No one will believe us,” Alicia said. Her voice sounded weak. She looked shocked and defeated. I hated seeing her that way.

“It’s true, but more and more people are starting to spread the word, the truth. We’ll show you how. We’ll put you in contact with someone else. You won’t hear from us anymore after today.”

“Where are we going?” Alicia asked.

“To a safe house of sorts. A house rented under a fake name associated with a fake corporation. Nothing’s traceable. You’ll be safe there for a few days. We’ll leave instructions with you on how to leave and when to leave.”

“My family,” Alicia said, her voice cracking. “My friends. School.”

“I’m sorry,” Adam said. “But all of that’s over for you now. If you go back, they’ll find you.”

He didn’t have to say the rest; he didn’t have to say that she would end up like Stan, or maybe more like his mother, a victim of suicide, overwhelmed by guilt.

“I’m sorry,” Adam said again, and he sounded like he meant it.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

The safe house turned out to be a three-bedroom home on the Intracoastal Waterway in northern Flagler County. The house was tucked back down a long driveway and hidden by jungle-like foliage. It was a three-story home built on stilts. The first floor was mostly storage and a parking area for a car that looked a lot like the one Adam had driven.

Adam and Joel came inside and showed us around, spending a few minutes there with us. They had packages for us: new IDs with fake names, passports to go with them, new jewelry, a folder with our backgrounds—our cover stories. They also gave us each a handgun with plenty of ammo, and they took back the gun I’d gotten off of Randy. Both of our new guns were registered to our new names.

There were clothes in the dressers and closets for us and two suitcases to pack them in. There were photos of me and Alicia together in my wallet and her purse; we were Photoshopped into pictures together: at work, on vacation, a wedding photo.

The car was registered in my name. There was another folder with maps, the routes recommended to us already drawn out with written directions. Our destination would be a small town in Montana near a state college. Alicia could open up her practice there—she already had a degree in psychology from the University of Wyoming according to the new documents we had.

We each had a new laptop and cell phones. We had credit cards and a bank card. We had a checking account with three thousand dollars in it, and a savings account with thirty thousand in it. We had retirement accounts with considerably more. I asked Adam how they’d done this, and he said moving money around and creating fake accounts was easy—it was nothing but blips on computer screens nowadays.

“So we go up to Montana and hide?” I asked Adam after they were done showing us around the safe house.

“For now,” he said. “But soon this man will contact you via email.” He handed me a business card. “He’ll tell you what to do from there. He’ll tell you how you can fight back. If you want to, that is. It will be up to you. It will always be up to you.”

I accepted the card from Adam and slipped it into my new wallet.

“You had this ready for us,” I said as I looked around. “How did you know we’d survive? How did you know we’d go to the beachside, to the hotel? How did you know we’d try to stop the terrorist attack?”

“We didn’t. But we hoped you would. We had some of our people there. We had figured out parts of it, but not all of it. You had the missing pieces. By the time Michelle got to you . . .” He let his words trail off for a moment. “We didn’t think we’d get to you in time to help you. It was really close.”

A chill ran along my skin. I remembered stalling Michelle when she had the gun aimed at me. Maybe those few seconds had saved our lives.

“But we could have run,” I said, persisting. “I mean, we could have decided not to try to stop the bomb.”

“And if you had chosen that path, we wouldn’t have helped you,” Joel said in his expressionless tone.

I just nodded, understanding.

“We believed in you,” Adam said. “We believed you two would make the right choice. And there are many people alive now because of it.” He gestured around at the house we stood in. “We got the place ready in the hopes that it would all work out. We’re optimists at heart.”

I just nodded again.

“Thank you,” Alicia said.

“We need to go,” Joel told Adam.

They were about to leave, but Adam stopped. He stared at us. “I just want you to know that not everyone in the government is bad. There are some bad ones, like the cabal, but there are some of us who are good. Just remember that.”

I nodded.

Adam and Joel left. And they were right, we would never see them again.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

After Adam and Joel left, Alicia and I locked the doors and checked all the windows. There was an alarm system in the house, a silent system that only notified our cell phones if there was an intrusion—a silent signal for us to get out. But Adam and Joel assured us that we wouldn’t need the alarm system, that we would be safe at this house for the next few days.

The refrigerator and cabinets in the kitchen were stocked with a few weeks’ worth of groceries. We ate, we drank, and we watched the news. We watched the breaking story about a ring of white nationalists’ plot to terrorize a beach party that had been foiled by local police. There were interviews with police and with terrified college students who had barely escaped death. There was one suspect dead and two others still at large. They showed photos of us with our names on the bottom of the screen. There was footage of the outside of our homes with police set up on watch.

We sat there, numb.

I apologized to Alicia again for bringing her into this. She cried a little over the next few days as we stayed in the house. Her dad had left when she was a child and her mom had died a few years ago from cancer. She had no brothers or sisters. But she had aunts and uncles. She had cousins. She had two grandparents still alive. She had friends at college, friends she’d grown up with. She was sad, but she was also realistic. She was adamant that she didn’t blame me, that I was as much a victim as she was, that I had lost as much as she had, that my name had been sullied as much as hers had.

After three days we sat on the couch together after dinner. We had practiced calling each other by our new names, reading our histories over and over again, studying them until we knew them by heart. Quizzing each other about them and then making up some of the fake times we’d had after a few glasses of wine.

“Remember when we were in Hawaii and you slipped and hit your head?” she asked.

“No,” I answered.

We both burst into laughter.

And then tears.

Alicia seemed resigned to our fates, the sadness and shock wearing off a little each day. Of all the things she’d lost, she wanted her name cleared more than anything. And in the coming months, the coming years, maybe we would finally get that chance.

“We fight,” she said the fourth night we were there, drinking more wine, both of us buzzed. The news was on in the background, the sound turned down. “When the time comes we fight, and we tell the world the truth.”

“Yes,” I said.

She grabbed me and kissed me. And then I held her.

We would fight. I promised myself we would do everything we could do to expose them and the things they had done, the things they were still doing, and the things they would eventually do. We would fight . . . we would expose them.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

Thank you so much for reading my book! I hope you enjoyed it. Being an author is a dream come true for me, and it only happens because of readers like you. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Mark Lukens has been writing since the second grade when his teacher called his parents in for a conference because the ghost story he’d written concerned her a little.

Since then he’s had several stories published and four screenplays optioned by producers in Hollywood. He’s the author of several bestselling books including: The Ancient Enemy series, Devil’s Island, Sightings, The Exorcist’s Apprentice, The Dark Days Series, Followed, and many others. He’s proud to be a member of the Horror Writers Association.

He grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida. But after many travels and adventures, he settled down near Tampa, Florida with his wonderful wife and son . . .and a stray cat they adopted.

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He can be reached vial email at marklukensbooks@yahoo.com and mark@marklukensbooks.com

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