Hidden

by Karen E. Olson

  ‘Where did you know him? I mean, where did you live?’

  ‘Miami,’ I say, but I am thinking of Paris. It didn’t start in Paris, it ended there, but when I am lying in bed late at night staring at the ceiling, that’s what is stuck in my head. We’d thought we’d gotten away. Until that night.

  ‘I’ve always thought you were from the South,’ Steve said, as though I have confirmed all his beliefs about me.

  I chuckle. ‘Miami isn’t “the South,”’ I say with air quotes. ‘It’s full of displaced northerners who think it’s paradise.’

  ‘It isn’t paradise?’ Steve is careful about asking me these questions. I know he wants to know everything, but he must tread lightly. It makes me want to tell him more.

  ‘I grew up there,’ I say, getting myself in deeper. I should stop. I tell myself that this is safe, that it isn’t the whole story, that if he tries to find out about Nicole Jones in Miami, he won’t have any luck.

  ‘Why don’t you ever talk about it?’ he asks, getting braver.

  I shrug and bite my lower lip. ‘It’s not paradise.’

  He gives a short nod, as though he understands. I have given him the impression that something bad happened to me there, and that’s not too far from the truth. However, he keeps going.

  ‘Your parents, are they alive?’

  I shake my head. This is not a lie.

  ‘No brothers or sisters?’

  ‘No.’ Again, not a lie. It feels better to tell the truth about something, a vindication in a way that my life isn’t all smoke and mirrors. I smile more broadly now. ‘You are my family, Steve. You and Veronica and Jeanine. I’ve never been happier in my life than I have been here. I like to pretend that I’ve always been here.’

  These truths buoy me. It makes him happy. He grins back, the worry gone, pleased that I have told him about a little bit of my past.

  ‘I feel that way about the island too, even after losing Dotty. But we had some good years here,’ he shares.

  ‘Do you want to get some food? I’m starving. Bethany’s? Clam chowder?’ I ask, although I am wound as tight as a rubber band. I don’t think I can eat anything, but I have to let Steve think everything’s OK, that I am the same as always.

  But he gets up, shaking his head. ‘I really just wanted to make sure you were OK,’ he explains, looking at his watch for the first time. ‘I’ve got a tour scheduled in about fifteen minutes. Couple who’re here for the first time.’

  Steve and I have always liked first-timers, to see the beauty of the island through their eyes. To be able to show them this little piece of what truly is paradise.

  I walk him to the door. ‘Tomorrow, then?’

  ‘How about dinner tonight?’

  I hesitate. He is going to show up here sooner or later, and I have to deal with him. Steve sees me struggling with myself over this, and he guesses right what’s going through my head.

  ‘Don’t worry about it. Lunch tomorrow.’ He gives me a small salute and a wide smile as he goes out the door. I watch him go down to his Explorer, waving his hand over his head at me, but he doesn’t turn around.

  I shut the door and go to the pantry, where I pull out the laptop. I do it without thinking and put it on the table, turning it on. I know I have no Internet access here, but I need to feel the keys beneath my fingers.

  When it is booted up, I have a thought. I go into the systems folder and find the Internet access. I don’t know why I haven’t done this before, because I see that there are wireless networks to choose from. All of them are locked, but a locked portal has never stopped me before.

  THIRTEEN

  I have no idea whose wireless I’m stealing, but it doesn’t matter. I have used a VPN, so even if he or she discovers someone poaching, they won’t have a clue where I am. It only took me ten minutes to get in. I am getting my legs back, so to speak.

  The first thing I do is a search, something simple that anyone can do. I scan the information I find. It has been so long now that I manage to find only a couple of news stories about what happened. My name is there, my real name, and how the FBI was looking for me, but there is nothing about Paris. It is as though Paris never happened.

  The username and password he gave me earlier are imprinted in my memory. I’d asked him to write them down, but I didn’t need him to. I didn’t want him to know that I would remember them as clearly as my own name. I go to the bank site and type them in, my heart pounding in my chest.

  Despite my instinct that they would belong here, they don’t. The site tells me that either one of them or both are wrong. I have no idea where they belong or what exactly he wants me to do with them. I hadn’t stuck around long enough to find out.

  By walking away, I have told him I won’t do what he wants, but being here, now, makes me want it. Not for him, not because I owe him or want to help him, but just to prove that I can still do it.

  I push away my frustration, go to the chat room and sign on. Even though I don’t know any of the names here, it feels more like home than Miami ever did.

  I long for Tracker, his wisdom and skills. He was better than me, even though he denied it. But without Tracker, I would know nothing.

  I follow some of the chats and discover that someone named Angel seems to be a leader. He is involved in several discussions, dispensing advice. It doesn’t take me long to know that Angel is the new Tracker here, someone I might make use of. I invite him to a private chat.

  Me: I’m new here.

  Angel: I noticed. What’s with the privacy?

  Me: I need some help. Thought maybe you could give me some tips. It’s been a long time for me.

  Angel: I’m not sure what I can help with.

  Me: I may need to get through a very secure portal and firewall. But like I said, it’s been a long time.

  Angel: I don’t know you.

  Me: I know that. But I used to know someone named Tracker. Do you know who he is?

  Several minutes go by, and I am afraid that I’ve scared Angel away. Before, I was a part of the community. When I needed help, I knew who to go to and how to ask. I am rusty at this, but time is not on my side if he is right about others being on my trail, so I have to be more aggressive. Dropping Tracker’s name, though, seems to have been a mistake. Angel is still quiet.

  My fingers hover over the keyboard, ready to let Angel off the hook, when he finally responds.

  Tracker doesn’t know anyone named BikerGirl27.

  My heart jumps into my throat, and I cannot breathe for a second. He has checked with Tracker. Tracker is still here somewhere.

  Tell him it’s Tiny. My fourteen-year-old self had thought it clever to replace the last letter of my name with another to create what my forty-year-old self now realizes is a stupid nickname. But Tracker will know it. He will vouch for me. And maybe, even, if I dare to hope, he will emerge and he and I can join forces again.

  I have no idea who Tracker is outside this world. I have always thought of Tracker as a man, but he could be a woman, too. There aren’t too many girl hackers, but they do exist, most with androgynous names to hide their gender. I had fantasized about meeting Tracker someday, but when I suggested it, in my naivete, he dissuaded me from pursuing any sort of physical contact.

  ‘You and I can never be associated together,’ he’d written me. ‘It will be one of the biggest regrets of my life, but it’s safer. For both of us.’

  My imagination regarding Tracker was vivid: he was young, like me, or he was older and married and had a family, or he was a criminal on the run, or he was some IT guy who was bored and wanted to see what he could do outside the perimeters of his job. Or none of the above.

  Angel is quiet again.

  The idea of Tracker has me nervous. Will he come into the chat? Will he be the same? Can I still trust him? The cognac has made me a little lightheaded, so I get up and fix myself a cheese sandwich and pour a glass of milk.

  Angel still has not returned.

  The sandwic
h tastes like cardboard, but I force myself to finish it, washing it down with the milk. I have not been this anxious in a long time, even when I knew he was on the island. This is a different type of anxious. I touch my hair and wonder if Tracker has gray streaks in his, too. If he has crow’s feet around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth.

  It’s possible that Tracker is younger than me. I was twenty when I first ‘met’ him online. It’s possible that I have at least five years or more on him; hackers get early starts.

  My brain is in overload, just thinking about it, when I see that I have a message. My hands begin to shake as I read.

  It is Angel. Tracker says to meet him tomorrow morning at seven EST. He then gives me a URL, a place where Tracker and I can meet privately, away from the chat.

  I know what’s going on. Tracker is going to try to find out if I am really who I say I am. I smile to myself, knowing he will be as thorough as he can be, but his search will turn up no more than my search just did.

  Thank you, I write back to Angel, but I see he has already disappeared.

  I log out of the chat room, shut down the laptop. My whole body is shaking now, but I don’t know if it’s from the excitement of knowing Tracker is still out there or nervousness that I am getting back in the game. Because for the first time I am sure that I am. I wrap my arms around my chest and squeeze tight, forcing myself to calm down. I eye the glass with the remnants of my cognac from earlier and without a second thought find the bottle and pour myself another short one. Steve would be horrified, but I need to relax. Especially since I realize that he still hasn’t come around. It has been a long time since I left him alone at the Blue Dory Inn, since he went looking for me while I was at the Bluffs. This worries me.

  I cannot stay here and wait. I feel as though I will jump out of my skin. I put the laptop back in the pantry, under the potatoes, then find my paints and easel. I pick up the case with the paints, put my easel under my arm and lock up my little house, walking down the road and then to the beach. There is no one here today; the breeze is cool and the skies have clouded over.

  I unpack everything and set up, mixing some paint on a palette, sweeping the brush through it, eyeing the canvas. It is bright white, empty. I have painted the water and sky from this place before, but the colors are different today: gray with hints of purple, tiny whitecaps dancing on the water. I sweep the brush across the white background, the color bold and soft at the same time.

  I stay here for a long time, the painting taking shape, a mirror image of what I’m looking at. Veronica will love it, I think, and maybe she will hang it in a prominent place in the gallery.

  As I work, I spot the ferry coming toward the island, and with a few more brushstrokes it is there, on my canvas, just off to the left.

  I am calm again; the nervousness I felt earlier has dissipated with the normalness of what I am doing. I have pushed everything that’s happened out of my head, and for a short time I am Nicole, bike tour operator and artist with no past, only a present.

  When the painting is done, I glance at my watch and see I have been here for two and a half hours. I glance up at the road above me. A few cars have gone by; I have more heard them than seen them. Where I am, I am out of sight. Someone would only see me if he came down to the beach. This has not been by accident.

  I am delaying the inevitable. If he has been looking for me, he is probably even angrier by now because I have disappeared. I study the painting, see that I can add nothing more and know it’s time to go back. I pack up the paints and the easel and carry the painting carefully up the hill and to the road. I hear voices, and there is a family – mother, father and three children – laughing at the llamas.

  As I approach my house, I see that something is wrong.

  The door is open.

  FOURTEEN

  I stop, put down the easel and paints’ case and gently lay the painting next to them. Every instinct is to run, but I am frozen here, staring at my house. The windows are dark; I can’t see inside. But someone is there – or has been there.

  I should call the police. Call nine-one-one. But what would I tell them? Someone, possibly – probably – my lover, has broken into my house and is waiting for me. It would sound crazy, and I don’t want to bring any more attention to myself than he has already brought me.

  I think about his gun.

  I have no idea if he would hurt me. Physically, anyway. He never had before, but there are fifteen years between us since then and now, and I have changed, so who’s to say that he hasn’t, either? He is angry with me, for so many reasons, and I cannot guarantee my own safety with him anymore.

  I stand there for ten more minutes, watching. There is no movement inside my house – at least, none that I see. The door is gaping open, letting in the cool breeze. My feet feel as though they are stuck to the ground, but I finally take a step. And then another. And another. Until I am at my doorstep, the paints left behind in the grass.

  I peer around the door and see nothing but my mudroom. A fleece and sweater hang from the hooks, a pair of rain boots and heavy clogs are beneath the wooden bench. Everything as it was. I let out a breath, unaware that I had been holding it in. I move closer now. The door to the kitchen is ajar, and I push it gently so it opens further.

  The kitchen is a mess. Drawers are open, dishes and glasses broken on the floor. The refrigerator door is open, too, and milk and honey and coffee grounds make a sticky mess.

  Now I really cannot breathe.

  I force myself to swallow, take in a couple of deep breaths. I go inside, keeping the door open behind me, just in case.

  The glass crunches beneath my sneakers as I go into the living room, where the cushions have been slashed and their white cotton innards tossed around the room. My books have been tossed on the floor, pages ripped out and scattered.

  The destruction is so extreme that it feels almost unreal.

  The bedroom is next. The closet door and dresser drawers are open. My clothes have been cut up and left in a pile on my bed, the goose feathers from the pillows making a halo around them. I go to the closet and see the empty hangers, bare like skeletons. I glance at the floor of the closet. My shoes and sneakers are in a messy pile, but they are unscathed. I drop down and slide my hand along the wood floor underneath them. If I didn’t know what I was feeling, I wouldn’t know about the compartment. I lift up the top and peer underneath. A sense of relief rushes through me momentarily, until I drop the secret door, getting up and turning back to the scene on the bed.

  I cannot take it all in. But I have one more room.

  My jars are shattered in the bathtub, the stones everywhere, covered with body lotion and shampoo.

  I sink down on the toilet seat and put my head in my hands, waiting for the tears as my shoulders heave. But what I thought was sadness is actually anger. It bubbles up inside my chest until I feel as though I am going to explode. It would have been better if he’d shot me with that gun. If he’d just come in during the night and shot me while I slept.

  This, well, this is worse than anything I could’ve imagined.

  As I sit, I realize I’d forgotten something. I jump up and go to the pantry, which is in as much disarray. I know without moving anything what is missing.

  The laptop.

  He has taken it away, not knowing what my decision was. Not knowing that I had changed my mind after I left him in the shower.

  He didn’t even give me the chance to tell him. He just came here and destroyed my house, dismantled the life that I’d created here.

  Or maybe that was the point all along.

  But more logically, I know what has happened here. He thinks I have money stashed away. He thinks I still have it, from back then – money that is owed him, money that he feels I stole from him.

  His frenzy to find it is clear in the destruction.

  It slowly dawns on me, too, that there is something else missing. Something I didn’t see outside.

  My bike.
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  I am disgusted with myself that I thought of the laptop before my bike. What does that say about me? I am suddenly grateful that the laptop is gone, that it’s been taken away so I have an excuse to stay away, that I have an excuse to keep from helping him again.

  But my bike. I cannot live without that bike. It is my livelihood. He knows this. And even though I can easily buy a new bike, it is symbolic of what he has tried to do here.

  I am a little surprised that he thought of that.

  I stumble back outside and circle the little house, but the bike truly is gone.

  I pull the door shut behind me and lock it, the keys nestled in my pocket. I start the walk down the hill, down the road toward the llama farm. As I pass them, they snort at me, and I make a face at them and resist the urge the scream. It is not their fault. I keep walking. Soon I am at the Town Dock. A ferry has just come in, and people are streaming off it with their bags and their bikes and their cars.

  ‘Nicole!’

  I hear my name, and I turn instinctively. Steve is waving at me as he leans casually against his SUV, his smile warm.

  In an instant, I am crying. The tears stream down my face, and I drop to the ground, hugging my arms around my knees.

  ‘Nicole.’ His whisper is urgent in my ear, and I feel his hands under my arms, lifting me up. ‘Nicole, what happened?’

  Steve’s expression is full of worry. I have to tell him it’s nothing, that he should go back to his SUV and find a paying customer and leave me here on the ground. But I can’t. I cannot stop crying.

  He lifts me up as easily as I lifted that laptop and carries me to his Explorer, gently placing me in the passenger seat, closing the door. As I wait for him to come around to the driver’s side, I stare vacantly toward the National Hotel, the shops that abut it. People are on the sidewalk – not as many as during the season, but enough, because the ferry has just come in.

  One catches my eye. A tall man, salt-and-pepper hair, all angles to his face, overdressed in an overcoat and black trousers. I stiffen. It can’t be. But then I realize it can. And even though it has been a long time, there is no forgetting that face.