The phone began to ring when Jay was three blocks from the police station. Unknown number. He stared at it without answering, let it go to voice mail, and continued walking. Almost immediately, the phone chimed with a different tone—not a voice mail, but a text message.
GO BACK HOME, JAY.
He stood dumbly on the sidewalk, looking from the phone’s screen to the empty streets around him. There was nobody in sight, no watchers. And yet…
The phone rang again. This time he answered.
“Jay, Jay, Jay.” Eli Pate sighed like a disappointed parent. “You’re not making wise choices. Certainly, you’re not thinking of Sabrina. What a risk you just took! Imagine what could happen to her. Imagine what you could have just provoked. Why, Jay, I might have been incited to do terrible, horrible things. Just think about it! Can you picture those things? My God, what you have invited into her life!”
Jay said, “Please, don’t.” His voice broke.
“Please? Well, okay, since you said please.” After a long pause, Pate spoke again, and the humor was gone from his voice. “Go home, Jay. I expected you to try once. I’d have been wrong about you if you hadn’t. But I’ll tell you this: I do not expect you to try again. Because now you know better. You’ll go home and think about the things that might have happened, and you’ll think about electricity in wires and wonder how on earth you could have made any decision other than to simply do as you’ve been asked. Go home. When you step inside, please wave to the camera.”
The camera. He had a camera. Where in the hell was the camera?
Eli Pate began to laugh. “Lord, you really believed that would work, didn’t you? A vacuum, Jay! That is brilliant.” His laugh, rich and carefree, boomed through the phone again. “Oh, that was beautiful. But I don’t have the time to waste letting you try again, I’m afraid. You’re going to need to understand that. Do you?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll believe you this time. But Jay? I can replace you. Can you replace her?”
The call disconnected.
Jay Baldwin lowered the phone, looked up the street toward the lights of the police station, and then turned and walked back to his dark house.