I’d spent all morning profiling the target—the woman Abel wanted me to abduct. Abel had given me her name, Tracy Miles, and her address last night. The gold card had delivered the information just after Jenny and I had finished fooling around.
I’d been lying in bed, serene and dreamy, when I heard a ringing in my ears. A high-pitched hum, like tinnitus. A few seconds later, it got louder, and then, when it got louder still, I began to wonder if the sound was external, and not in my own head.
I sat up in bed and scanned the room for the source. I couldn’t pinpoint it, and just as I was about to ask Jenny if she heard it—which would have been a blunder, a terrible way to start my clandestine job—she asked me what was the matter.
Right then, I understood that she wasn’t hearing the ringing. So I reconsidered whether it was in my own head—but it was way too loud to be internal. I was confused for a couple of seconds, until my eyes fell on my pants.
That’s when I made the connection: it was the gold card that was humming. Wasn’t it? And wasn’t it possible that Abel had rigged it so only I could hear it?
Of course it was possible. For Christ’s sake, the guy was an alien.
I told Jenny that I’d forgotten to do something, then got out of bed and hurried over to my pants. I slipped them on and headed into the den.
When I pulled out the gold card, its smooth and lustrous surface was no longer a blank slate. It was now “embossed” with silver lettering, which spelled out a name and address, and a date and time, two days from now.
I had my work cut out for me. It was clear that I was to deliver Tracy Miles—the target—to Abel in two days. So I had to learn as much about her as I could, so I could find the least conspicuous way to abduct her.
As I processed this, the ringing in my ears stopped. Abel had given me my marching orders. A second later, the embossed silver lettering disappeared, too. The metallic gold card was a blank slate again.
I would have started to investigate Tracy right then, but that would’ve been too hard to explain to Jenny. So instead, I opted to go back to bed and get up bright and early.
In the morning, my first move was to sign up for a VPN, a Virtual Private Network. This was an Internet service that masked your computer’s IP address, so your online searches remained hidden. As a reporter, I’d had no need to cover my tracks, but with this job, secrecy was paramount.
I knew that a VPN wasn’t foolproof—if my computer was seized, my searches might still be recoverable. But I didn’t have time to come up with another solution, at least, not for this first assignment. The time left to deliver the target was already ticking down. Besides, with the money I’d be earning, there was an easy solution: trash this computer when I was done with this target and buy a new one. Still, I made a note to come up with a long-term solution to cover up my identity on the Internet.
My online sleuthing into Tracy Miles yielded plenty of information, unlike my last profiling attempt—my research into Thomas Caraway. The thought of Caraway prompted me to make another mental note: find out how Caraway was connected to Abel. Or were they one and the same person?
The search results on Tracy were just what I was used to finding as a reporter: her date of birth, her past and current employers, her home and cell phone numbers, her educational background, her credit scores. I also unearthed miscellaneous tidbits about her life by combing her social media posts and those of her friends and relatives, as well as other websites she was linked to. I knew what stores she frequented, what her political leanings were, what music she liked, et cetera.
By early afternoon, I’d gleaned as much about her as I could from the Internet. Though I didn’t know anything specific about the previous target, the woman Ben had abducted, I saw at least one connection between her and my target: they were both women in their thirties. Perhaps I was jumping to conclusions based on only two examples, but I was already wondering why the alien was interested in targeting that particular demographic.
I filed that question in the back of head, in the same place where I’d stuck my remorse over Ben’s death. Every time he came into my thoughts, pangs of guilt shot through me. I was complicit—no, responsible—for his death. But there was no time to dwell on it. Especially with the deadline for delivering Tracy looming over me.
My next step was to scout out her apartment building. And after that, I would scout her workplace. I also planned to follow her home from work and watch her evening routine. That would maximize my first day on the job. The tranquilizer pellets would be at my side during my vigil, just in case an opportunity to kidnap her presented itself. And I was already thinking it’d be easier to kidnap her in the Fairfax district, where she worked—because it was policed by the LAPD, and they were spread thin—rather than in Burbank, where she lived, which had its own police force.
But if I was already worried about the police, I was going about this all wrong. I had to make sure the possibility of attracting the attention of the police was next to nothing. That was what my new job called for, above all else.
Before I headed to Tracy’s workplace, I called my tutoring clients, the ones scheduled for tonight and tomorrow night, and told them I’d found a full-time job and that I’d no longer be tutoring. I’d call the rest of my clients later; they could wait until I completed this assignment.
Then I headed into the kitchen to make a late lunch. Jenny was at the table on her laptop.
“How’s it going?” she said.
“Good. Just plugging away.” I hoped she wouldn’t ask too many questions, and then I realized that this hope was going to be a permanent one: from now on, every time I’d talk to her, I’d hope she didn’t ask too many questions.
“I’m guessing you’re going to be working a lot of hours,” she said, sympathetically.
“That’s okay. I’m ready for it.” I grabbed some eggs from the fridge. “Do you want me to scramble some eggs for you too?”
“I already ate.”
I pulled a skillet from under the stove.
“When is your first day at the office?” she asked.
I had prepared for that question by doing some research on ADM this morning. Luckily, it turned out that they did have offices in LA. Still, I couldn’t pretend to head off to that office every day.
“The way it’s set up,” I said, “I don’t have to go in very often.” I turned the stove burner on. “I’ll be working remotely, from home, so you might get sick of seeing me around the house.”
“I think I can live with that.”
I buttered the pan. “I hope I can. I’m used to having an office, even if it was just a spot in a newsroom.”
“We can turn the den into your office.”
“I don’t want to take over the den.”
“Don’t worry about it. Jake and Hannah stick to their rooms most of the time. And we can move the TV into the living room. Not that any of us really watch it anymore.”
“Okay. Let me think about it.” I cracked three eggs into a bowl, grabbed a fork, and started scrambling. Then I laid out more of my cover story, the part that would explain my long absences from the house, at odd hours, which would start with this afternoon and evening’s surveillance.
“I’m still going to be out of the house a good bit though,” I said. “I have to do intensive field interviews for the reports.”
She turned from her laptop. “You never told me what those reports are supposed to be about.”
“I’m investigating companies that ADM wants to acquire. Basically, they assign a company to me, and I have to sum up everything I find out about it, according to this set of guidelines they gave me.”
She didn’t respond, and I didn’t look at her. I poured my eggs into the skillet and continued to scramble them.
“That’s interesting,” she said, sounding contemplative, as if she wasn’t totally buying it, which was evidenced by her next question. “I thought the job was all about commodities.”
“It is, but my di
vision deals with buying small companies that play different roles in commodities trading. Companies that do analytics about trading, or design software for trading, or run platforms for trading. There a lot of angles that I never knew about.”
“Oh, now I’m getting a better picture.” She turned back to her computer.
Good, I thought. Because that was about as far as my cover story went. I needed to bring this conversation to an end.
“I’m the guy who’ll be investigating a company’s management, other personnel, history, connections to other companies, et cetera,” I said. “Not so much their finances. That’s up to another department.” I scooped the eggs from the skillet onto a plate. “After lunch, I’m going to run over to the Van Nuys courthouse and dig up some business filings for the report I’m working on.”
“You’re hitting the ground running, huh?” she said.
“Yeah, I’m running toward those bonuses.”
She laughed, and that was my cue to make a clean getaway.
In the den, I ate my scrambled eggs while I scrolled through the police blotter websites. I was checking to see if Ben’s disappearance had been reported. First, I went through the blotters available to the public, but they didn’t have anything listed. Then I checked the private blotters, which I knew how to access from my years at the Times. They didn’t have anything either.
I was tempted to act on one of my mental notes from earlier—to research the connection between Caraway and Abel—but I decided to hold off on that. There’d be plenty of time after I completed the assignment. Besides, I already suspected that they were one and the same person. That would explain why the house appeared not to have changed hands for over a century. And it would also explain why Tom Caraway, aka Abel, had barely left a trace in the historical record.
I brought my empty plate back into the kitchen, ready to venture out and scout Tracy Miles, my first target. Jenny was no longer in the kitchen, and I couldn’t help but feel relief. Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies.
*
I headed to Tracy’s home turf in Burbank, which wasn’t too far from my home turf, Valley Village. I wondered if Abel had picked Tracy as my first target for that very reason: she was a good “starter” assignment.
Tracy’s two-story apartment building sat at the corner of Pass Avenue and Heffron Drive. It was designed in a Southwestern style, painted pastel pink, and it looked fairly new. That, along with its ornate balconies and manicured grounds, told me the place was too nice to be a rental property. It was probably condos. But would it make a difference to my plan whether the target was a renter or an owner?
I had no idea, but I was sure that as I became better at my job—if I survived long enough to become better at my job—I’d get to know if it made a difference.
I drove around the block a couple of times to get a closer look at the building. It had a gated underground parking garage and a large central courtyard. Each individual condo had an entrance along that central courtyard.
That layout told me that breaking into Tracy’s unit wasn’t in the cards. Each unit had a view of the goings-on in the courtyard, so a neighbor could easily spot me. Not that breaking and entering was the best course of action anyway—I doubted I could pull it off.
I pulled into a strip mall that was conveniently located across Pass Avenue, and parked in a space from which I could watch Tracy’s building. Then I grabbed a coffee from the Starbucks in the mall and got back in my car. As I sipped the coffee and stared at Tracy’s building, I pretended to be absorbed in a cell phone conversation, like any other mall patron.
By the time I’d finished my coffee, I’d had an insight. An insight that inspired the inkling of a plan. I’d realized that observing Ben—the man I didn’t want to think about—had been my only training for the job. And Ben had abducted his targets in public. He must have concluded that this was an acceptable method—maybe even the best method—for completing an assignment.
Of course, I couldn’t be sure that this was his standard operating procedure. There was the possibility that what I’d witnessed was specific to that one target, but it was also possible that after much trial and error, Ben had concluded that abducting targets right under everyone’s nose was the best approach.
Regardless of whether I was right or wrong, this line of reasoning informed my plan.
I realized that Tracy probably headed over to this strip mall on foot whenever she needed to pick up something she could find in one of the mall’s stores. Contrary to popular belief, anytime Angelenos had the opportunity to avoid driving, they took advantage of it. And there was a lot Tracy could take advantage of in this mall: a Vons grocery store, a bank, a dry cleaner, three casual restaurants, an upscale restaurant, a nail salon, a flower shop, a frozen yogurt shop, and of course—what strip mall would be complete without it?—a Starbucks.
I looked over the layout of the mall and formed a plan similar to what I envisioned Ben’s plan would have been. But my plan had two major differences. First, there would be no fake doctor bit—I wasn’t prepared to pull that off. And second, for what I had in mind, I’d need to get very close to Tracy, without her noticing me, before tranquilizing her. There’d be no hanging back and tranquilizing her from the safety of my car, like Ben had done that night when I followed him.
I scanned Pass Avenue, identifying the path Tracy would likely take to walk from her building to the mall. Then I studied the mall’s layout again, imagining the path she would take from north to south as she made her way past each store. Of course, I couldn’t possibly know what her ultimate destination would be. She could duck into any store at any time. That was the wild card.
Still, shaky though it was, I had a plan.
I decided I could move on to Tracy’s place of employment. I took Cahuenga out of the Valley and into Hollywood. As I headed down La Brea into the Fairfax District, I again weighed the risk of getting away with the abduction in Burbank versus LA proper. Even though I’d originally thought LA would be better, my Burbank plan was growing on me—probably because of the time crunch.
I turned west on Wilshire Boulevard, and seven blocks later I pulled into a metered parking space just down the street from Tracy’s office building. It offered a view of the building’s underground parking garage. From my online investigation, I knew what kind of car Tracy drove, so my intention was to follow her home from work. Maybe she’d stop off somewhere that would present me with the opportunity to abduct her with minimum risk.
I watched professional men and women walking along the broad sidewalks of Wilshire, heading in and out of office buildings. Lawyers, managers, analysts, all chatting and going about their normal business, just as I had when I’d been a reporter. But my business had changed. I was now in the lone wolf business. A true lone wolf—for how many other people carried out alien abductions?
Suddenly that lone wolf cliché led me to a decision. I needed to take my own counsel.
I would kidnap Tracy in the Valley, and that was that.
I’d do it either tonight or tomorrow night.
And everything I would do from this moment on, until I delivered her to Abel, would be taking me closer to that end.
Which meant that sitting here watching Tracy’s workplace, waiting to follow her home, was a waste of time. And I couldn’t afford to waste time. I didn’t have to wonder what would happen if I missed my deadline. There was no doubt I’d lose the job. And “lose the job” was a euphemism for being liquefied.
I pulled out of my parking space and headed back to the Valley. The only decision left for today was whether to go home for a few hours before heading back to Burbank, or head over there now.
JENNY
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Shortly after Eddie had left for the courthouse, I’d received an email back from Mimi Quincy, the production designer. She said that she was more than happy to interview me. Not only that, she was delighted that someone with my experience was applying for the position.
Not as delighted as I am, I thought.
Mimi asked if I could meet her at Disney at four this afternoon. I wrote back yes, and then looked up Mimi’s credits so I’d be prepared for the interview.
Mimi had worked her way up the food chain fairly quickly—from set dresser to prop master to art director to production designer. And she’d gone from small productions to large ones fairly quickly too. Just by looking at the progression of her career and the quality of shows she’d worked on, I knew this could be a great gig. If I landed it. And judging from Mimi’s email, I might just land it this afternoon.
I leaned back in my chair and took a moment to enjoy the feeling of getting back on the horse. The cancer was still part of my life, but soon it wasn’t going to be all of my life.
Of course, I knew that Eddie would still be an obstacle. The key thing was not to get too angry with him and to let him say his piece. I didn’t want to get into a major argument with him, one that would interfere with his new job. My pilot gig would be temporary, while his job was critical to the long-term stability of our family, especially if—God forbid—I only had a couple of years to live. I wanted to make sure he got off to a good start in his new career.
And in the end, I knew his opposition to the job wasn’t going to stop me from taking it. He’d know that, too. I would do what was best for me, and in the end, that would also be what was best for both of us.
I spent an hour reading about the pilot so I’d know as much about it as possible for the interview. There was no script floating around online, but I was able to learn a lot about the show from articles in the trades. When I finished with that, I moved on to getting dressed for the interview. With any Hollywood job interview, you had to look as young as possible, regardless of your age. So I changed into a good pair of jeans and a nice blouse, and took my time putting on my makeup. My problem wasn’t looking younger than my age—that I could pull off. My problem was looking full of vim and vigor. I was still pale and a bit gaunt from my treatments, and no one wants to hire an employee who looks ill.
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