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An algae plant the size of Algeria could eliminate all CO2 emissions from air travel, while also producing enough carbon fiber for a productive electric car plant. Is there hope for the future, or is it too late?

Two miles south of Pescadero, Ivy turns left and up into the hills. She stops at a deli and reemerges a few minutes later with coffee and a bag of groceries. As we wind into the mountains, I struggle to keep a safe distance and still maintain an eye. If she noticed me on the beach, she doesn’t seem to notice me now. Fortunately, my beat-up Jeep fits right in.

She turns right toward La Honda. In the early seventies, with the arrival of the Merry Pranksters, La Honda earned a reputation as a weird, wild, and occasionally wonderful place. Eventually, the ideals of free love and chemically expanded minds gave way to disenchantment and a far more sinister drug culture. Today, many of the old, run-down cabins have been reclaimed by the forest, inhabited by bikers, or turned into meth labs.

A mile up the winding, narrow road, Ivy pulls into an unpaved driveway beside a tiny cabin. There are no other cars out front. I note the fading address on the leaning metal mailbox. Ivy grabs her duffle and gets out. There’s no way to stop or turn around without drawing attention to myself, so I drive past, glancing in the rearview mirror to see if she notices me. She looks up, her gaze lingering on my Jeep until I round the next curve.

I drive down to an abandoned trailhead, park, and pull a notebook out of my bag. After jotting down her license plate and address from memory, I call in to the New York comm center. The rotor from my old squad answers the phone. I ask after the kids, we talk about the Mets, but then I hear a commotion on the other end, so I get to the point.

“I need some info on an address.” I worry that my current status is too tenuous for such a request, but he doesn’t miss a beat.

“Sure, ready to copy.”

I give him the address of Ivy’s cabin.

“We don’t have CLETS access here, so I’ll have to connect to SF and email you the info.”

“Thanks,” I say, feeling grateful, for the umpteenth time in my career, for a helpful voice on the other end of the line. The organization is a family—albeit dysfunctional—and once you belong, well, you belong. For better or worse.

More than once, Fred accused me of prioritizing my FBI family over our own. He even joked, not always kindly, that George was my real husband. I denied it, but there were times when I’d find myself out in the middle of the night working a case and realize I hadn’t had a real conversation with Fred in weeks, that all of my most meaningful interactions had, indeed, been with George. Invariably, I tried to dial it back, spend more time at home, but the job always pulled me back in.

I drive back up the hill and find a spot where I can watch Ivy’s house from a safe distance. An hour passes and nothing happens. I settle into the familiar groove of boredom, listening to a podcast on my phone, watching. My phone pings with an email. The address comes back to Ivy as of six months ago, give or take. The car is registered to the brother with an address in Campbell, California. He has two decade-old DUIs, a nasty domestic dispute, and one D&D, but he cleaned up his act after starting the job at the VC. Ivy’s DMV is the surprise. It’s from a few years ago, and she doesn’t look so great. The girl in the photo in no way resembles the warrior from the beach.

Finally, at 11:05, Ivy emerges from the front door in shorts and a T-shirt, spends a few minutes stretching, then takes off. As soon as she crests the hill, I get out of the Jeep and move quickly toward the house, determined to get inside. It’s risky. I have no search warrant, and who knows how long she’ll be gone. But what choice do I have? Although the chances of Caroline being in the house are small, I have to check.

At the abandoned cabin next door, I slip down the driveway and into the woods behind the houses. I watch for movement inside Ivy’s place. Seeing nothing, I sneak out from behind the tree line and up the stairs leading to her back deck. A lounge chair with a bright-red cushion sits next to a portable Coleman grill. The door is locked, but the shade is open. The cabin is no more than six hundred square feet, and I can see nearly all of it, but the bathroom door is closed.

The place is tidy, spartan, a twin-size bed against the wall, a pine table and small dresser, two wooden chairs, and bookcase. There are no pictures on the walls, nothing on the counters, no dishes in the sink. The kitchenette contains a coffee maker and an old toaster. If not for the shiny silver laptop on the table and the Steve Prefontaine biography on the bed, it would look like a monastic room at one of those Buddhist retreats near Big Sur.

No sign of Caroline. Still, I need to get inside.

The tools in my wallet are enough to pop the aging lock. I open the door, pause on the doorstep for several seconds. I’ve done some things in my career that I needed to do to get to the truth, things that might not look great on paper. Until this moment, breaking and entering wasn’t one of them. I step inside.

I cross to the bathroom, hand on my gun, and open the door. Empty. I pull the door closed, go to the table, and open the laptop. It’s on sleep mode, and it boots up in seconds. No password protection.

I do a quick search of Ivy’s files. I open up Word and scroll through the file names, but nothing stands out. I open the iPhoto tab, but Ivy doesn’t take many pictures. There are just a few dozen a year dating back to 2014, including shots from the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, a picture of her in front of Amoeba Records, a coyote at Crystal Springs. Nothing of note. I try to access Facebook, Instagram, and Gmail, but find no automatic logins.

I run my palms under the mattress, behind the few books on the shelf. I rifle through the dresser and under the bathroom sink, careful to leave everything exactly as I found it. Nothing. Outside, I step off the porch and retrace my steps back to the Jeep. I put the car in neutral, rolling down the road, the smell of pine and tar rising up through the open windows. As soon as I’m far enough away for the neighbors not to hear, I turn the key in the ignition.