A couple of surfers have beaten the morning rush of individuals sneaking in some waves before heading to work. They lay flat on their boards, paddling off beyond the first line of breaking waves, wet suits like sealskin, their sun-kissed hair matted to their heads containing lizard brains and cravings for adrenaline stronger than anything sexual and why is life so easy for them? If I just figure this out—all of it—maybe that could be me. Stupid. Happy. Contented. A male jogger with headphones wedged into his ears crosses the street nearby, checks his Apple Watch, and quickens his pace, running toward nothing but the end of his life, one minute at a time, as we all are in our own way, bridging birth to death with days of mundanity, days of error, days of habit—the eventful times few and far in between, the elation deluded one way or another. Most of our days become forgettable.
Most—but not all.
And why, again, can’t that be me?
Cal’s newly bought used car pulls into the parking lot off Carmel Beach. It’s another Honda Civic because Cal’s consistency is matched only by his reliability. But as he gets out of the vehicle, the passenger door opens, and Cal has managed to surprise me.
In a bad way.
In a good way.
Joan approaches the tree I’m standing beside. She scans for anybody watching or in earshot, arms crossed because the breeze off the beach drops the temperature into the fifties, and in California, that evokes fears of hypothermia. She smiles briefly, just long enough to convey, I’m happy to see you but also scared because, mentally, you’re probably in a bad, bad place.
“There was no other way,” Cal says. He carries two coffees. Hands me one. “I couldn’t have gotten around Cynthia without her.”
I try to remember why I feel the way I do about them. Only a collage of office memories from the last year flip through my head. They’re good people. But I wouldn’t be able to tell you why. Maybe I need to do another Post-it check? Maybe my brain won’t last through this final mission of mine. That would be the last cruel twist in this saga. Falling short of cleaning up my mess because I finally got what I originally wanted.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m just really happy to see you both.”
I give them each a hug. It’s genuine.
I think.
“Very Ted Kaczynski of you,” Joan says, gesturing to my hoodie and aviator sunglasses.
“Who’s that?”
They both laugh nervously.
No idea why.
A car pulls up and parks. All three of us turn our heads and wait for undercover cops to spring out of the unmarked sedan. Seize me by the arms and legs. Hog-tie me before hauling me off for questioning. An older man gets out of the car—his posture so poor even gravity empathizes with him. Hunched forward, he hobbles toward a patisserie across the street—its buttery insides billowing out into the parking lot.
The old man reminds us that time is limited. That I’ve turned Cal, and in turn Joan, into my coconspirators. The banter turns serious. Joan asks three questions. How I’m coping with everything. Where I’m hiding out. If I saw the news about the raid on the warehouse. I give her three responses in return.
One: “Pretty overwhelmed.”
Two: “I’m staying with a friend I recently made.”
Three: “I saw it. Don’t know what to say.”
Cal shuffles in place. “I called the cops as soon as I read your letter.”
“I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”
Joan holds out a small, torn piece of paper with jagged edges. On it, in Joan’s cursive, so perfect it could pass for that on the Declaration of Independence, is Laura Poole’s number. “For you.”
“How?”
“Only a few people at the paper are allowed to view the files pertaining to your investigation, but the general counsel is always allowed,” she explains. “Terry had to include everything he knew as part of it, including his contact leading to Laura Poole. I called that contact and played miss-mean-lawyer. He folded.”
I stare back in amazement. At the generosity.
“Do you think the Subterraneans are still after you?” Joan asks.
“I know for a fact that some notable people got away. But I doubt they’re worrying about me right now. They’re probably hundreds of miles from us, trying to find a spot to regroup.”
“And the other thing?” Cal asks nervously.
“Yeah, it’s pretty real,” I say. “Pretty scary.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a serial killer. And one that I’ve pissed off to no end.” They stand with their mouths open, searching for the words to help make a friend feel better, but topics like “enraged killers” are not something covered in etiquette school. “Look, you’re going to see something else on the news. Guessing today or tomorrow. It will be bad—because it really is bad—and it will look even worse for me. But you’ll have to trust me that it’s not what it looks like and come tomorrow morning, one way or another, this will be over.”
“You’re going after him—for real this time, aren’t you?” Joan asks.
I nod. “It’s the only way this will end.”
They swallow what I’m telling them like cough syrup. We exchange moments together without anything to say or do but sip coffee, anxiously allowing for a minute or two to pass before I head back to the war zone and they continue their civilian lives.
“If I want to make everything right, I better get a move on it.”
“I’m going to see you again, right?” Cal asks.
“I’ll do my best.”
I wonder if that’s true. I realize it is.
Do I have trouble with the truth?
“Come here.” Cal leans in, and we give each other another hug. I repeat it with Joan.
“You be good to yourself,” Joan says.
“I’ll see you both on the other side.”
* * *
I wait for Cal’s car to pull out of the lot before I take Laura’s number from my pocket. My dad opens the passenger-side door and gets in.
“You should call her now,” my father says.
“Where were you?”
“Around.”
I dial the number Joan gave me. It rings four times, and someone picks up. No greeting. Just a few breaths into the phone. If I weren’t the one calling, I’d think I was back on the line with the killer.
“Hello?” I try to jump-start the conversation.
“This line has only ever rung a handful of times,” I hear Laura say. “Mainly from my mom. But by the end of our last conversation, I told her to never call back. Which leads us to this time.”
“This is Dash.”
“Amir,” my dad grunts.
“Who?” Laura is now irritated. More than usual.
“The shitty reporter you met a few weeks ago.”
“I told you he’d start killing again, you dumb idiot.”
“I need your help. For real this time. Not for a story either.”
“Then for what?”
“I have to find him.”
“Go bother the cops. Leave me alone.”
“I can’t. Look, he has something—someone. Someone that means a lot to me, and if I don’t find him soon, he’ll kill him. If I involve cops, he’ll probably kill him sooner.”
“Who does he have?”
“My dog.”
I expect her to burst out laughing. To mock me with a one-liner. She doesn’t. Instead, she gives me an address in Santa Cruz. Repeats it twice as I fumble for a pen.
“I’ll be in the vicinity,” she says. “Red tags should give it away.”
“The vicinity?”
She hangs up.
* * *
The drive to Santa Cruz burns more time off the countdown clock, forcing me to calculate how much Glitch has left.
“If the killer was in your apartment—say three hours before you got back there from the beach—that would leave maybe ten hours,” my dad says. “But it could be less if he was in there earlier. However, it’s doubtful he’d do any of it during daylight. Maybe he got inside around seven. That would leave eight hours.”
“Fine, let’s operate like we have eight hours to find him.”
“And how’s your mind holding up, son?”
“Foggy.”
“How much memory do you have left?”
“It’s shrinking fast. This morning, I thought I had a couple of years’ worth left. Now, maybe months.”
“And the farm—still remember?”
“Yes, but not how it ended. Are you ever going to tell me how you made it back here or what?”
“You will know when you’re ready.”
“Time is ticking, in case you weren’t aware.”
We turn off the freeway and into downtown Santa Cruz—narrow streets and an endless array of youth displaced from their well-to-do parents but not from the credit cards or money market accounts they were given. They wear hemp and beads, sandals, and ponchos. Jeans purchased from thrift stores even though they have enough money for Nordstrom.
“This must be it.” I turn the car into a massive strip mall—the stores conjoined one after the other. T.J. Maxx, Ross, Dollar Tree, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Best Buy, IKEA, and Target. “She’s in one of them, I guess.”
We search the stores starting with Target and Best Buy. Navigate slack-jawed shoppers staring at television screens or sizing up Merona T-shirts against their torsos. No sign of Laura in either one.
Twenty minutes wasted.
We walk past golf clubs, home exercise equipment, and Little League baseball gloves at Dick’s Sporting Goods. She’s not here either.
Fifteen more minutes down the drain.
The little trinkets and chaotic organization of cooking utensils at the Dollar Tree. Nope.
Ten minutes off the clock.
Ross is quieter. One person at the counter—an older woman with beige slacks perfect for bingo night. We follow the linoleum floor pathway, splitting racks of dress pants and beachwear until it rounds off at the store’s back corner. But there, with clothes adorned with red tags, is a logo for women’s jeans: Vicinity.
“Clever,” my dad says.
Laura stands behind a long metal hanger, her pixie cut against her neck.
“Was this necessary?” I ask.
“My phone is obviously monitored, moron. If you want my help so you can play vigilante, it’s best we don’t let them overhear us.” She takes off a pair of bug-eyed sunglasses. “In here.” She heads toward the dressing rooms and opens the door to the biggest stall and there we huddle in private conspiracy. “What’s your plan?”
“I don’t really have one. You’re the only person that’s survived—so I thought it made sense to start there.”
She sits down on the bench facing the dressing mirrors. Crosses and uncrosses and crosses her legs. “All you have is a wing and a prayer?”
“Can you give any details on your escape? Maybe there’s something there?”
“I told the police everything I could remember.”
“The report was so procedural. I need details.”
“And you think I enjoy talking about that experience?”
“Trust me, I know how much it sucks to revisit the past. But I’m begging you.”
“If I tell you about it, and somehow it leads you back to him, you have to promise me one thing—it’s the only reason I’m here right now.”
“What?”
“You kill him.”
“What do you mean?”
“You. Kill. Him.”
“That’s a pretty serious promise.”
“This is a pretty serious game.” She leans back and reaches into her handbag. Pulls out a pack of cigarettes.
“I aim to stop him.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“You think I’m a killer?”
Her eyes comb the textures of my soul like it’s braille. Her brows pinch. Confused, she lights her cigarette and puffs on it. “No, I suppose not.”
“Walk me through what you experienced. Tell me what it’s like. What you saw. And I promise—I will do right by you.”
“I’ll tell you.” She leans back. Mumbles something under her breath. Positions her cigarette in front of her face—the storytelling pose. “You wake up, and he has you, and you are his little toy, and he makes sure you know that. He makes sure of it so often it starts to melt your ability to think straight.” She squirms a bit in her seat. Stares up at the ceiling. “He moves you through—wherever it is, his compound or something. It’s a maze, really. But it’s not outdoors. It’s a house—a fucking big one, but it’s probably all underground—no windows for sure. And you’re stuck there, forced to play his game. There’s no choice. He makes you move through the place. One room after another. One trap after another. He gives you a map in a way. At first, he shows you the sequence of rooms you need to follow to get out. But it’s not that easy. He mixes them up and makes sure to confuse you as much as possible. It’s all shown on a series of screens. Feels like you’re looking into a tarantula’s eyes. And one by one, you see the rooms and the patterns. This room. Then that room. Another room. And another. Past this dead thing. Past this soon-to-be-dead thing. Past this person, this other human being, who’s just like you, who maybe got to play the same game, who probably already failed, but you don’t have time to contemplate any of that or how you fit into their story. You just can’t.” She starts to struggle for the first time. Her arm shakes under the weight of the cigarette.
“You can’t smoke in here,” someone says on the other side of the door, probably the old woman working the front.
“Fine,” Laura says, voice cracking. She twists the cigarette into the bench. We hear the woman walk away, and Laura takes a deep breath. In a flash, I see her resolve. Nothing can stop her now. She clasps her eyes shut, opening them on a long exhale. “So, something happens. I just go numb. I’m not weighing the pros and cons of falling into another trap. I’m not trying to do anything other than survive. I only think about the route. I just kept playing it again and again in my head. Room by room.” A rising swell of tears invades her eyes, mounting over her irises but never breaking down her face. “I do it. I walk past and around whatever is in each room. Whoever. I tell myself, ‘They’re not people, Laura. They’re obstacles.’ Because if I even make the mistake once of thinking it’s another human being, I’ll never make it out myself. So I keep going even though I fully expect that stupid wolf mask to pop out at any second, for him to end the game and my life, but it never happens. It goes on. One room after the next. Again. And again. And again.” She shakes her head. “I get to the last room, and there’s all this smoke—so thick, all I could see were shadows moving around me. An outline. It seems indistinct at first but then it becomes clear. It’s him. And that’s it. That’s the last thing I remember.” Her hands glide down the top of her thighs to her knees. “Next thing I know, I’m out on the beach, totally naked. Fucker. But I’m free. I’ll never know why he let me go.” She sits in silence. Her head falls into her lap. I watch the hard-boiled, quick-witted woman who never intends on showing weakness to me or any other person on the planet finally crack. She reaches around her knees, bringing them into her chest.
“Do something,” my dad tells me.
I sit down next to her and rub her back. She recoils and waves me off with her hands. After a minute, her tears slow from a sprint to a crawl. She looks up at me, mascara marking her face like a jaguar’s coat.
“A random face will pop into my mind every now and again.” She sucks snot back up into her sinuses. “The face will just linger, and I’ll stare off into space. Days go by. And finally, it dawns on me. It was one of them.” I grab a fuzzy sweater off a nearby rack. Take it back to Laura. Use it to wipe off her face. Her tears, her snot, her spittle.
“I’m very sorry this happened to you.”
She nods back in a way to tell me, yeah, yeah. I have one more stupid question. One more obvious follow-up. As soon as I ask it, I feel like one of those dumb cops who talked to me in the hospital.
“You remember anything about the rooms? Furniture? Wallpaper?”
“No,” she says sharply. She’s taken the sweater from my hand. Dabs her cheek with the sleeve. “Not very helpful, huh?”
“Are you going to be alright?”
She tells me she’ll be fine. I head toward the door.
“Wait. There is one thing,” she says. “There were these stupid ornaments. He had them all on fire. Like infinity symbols or something.”
“Infinity symbols?”
“Yeah. On fire.”
And then it hits me.
“Any chance he had electronics in these rooms?”
“For sure. He was talking to me over a PA system the whole time.”
“You know what that means and where we need to go,” my dad says.
We hurry to the van.
And start the journey back to the data center.
The Next Chapter Begins in 3, 2, 1 . . .