by Dete Meserve
Sweat blooms along my hairline even though it’s a cool sixty-four degrees. I glance at Brad in the passenger seat. His body is muscle on muscle, and he has the look of a sword-wielding deity, even though his muscles were likely earned in an air-conditioned gym. He hasn’t said a single word this entire trip, and there’s no doubt he’s hyperfocused, scanning in front of and behind us, his hand gripping what looks like a high-powered rifle.
Still, I feel vulnerable. In danger.
I told Brad that I would drive. I need to, I had said. I want something to burn off the adrenaline that rips through my veins.
But as we leave the foothills and get a few miles into the narrow, winding Angeles Crest Highway through the mountains, I realize this is a mistake. Between the hairpin turns and chunks of rock and stone strewn in the roadway from the recent rains, my nerves are already shot.
Ben had said to tell no one, but in the space of less than an hour, I’ve already told three people. I think I’m doing the safe thing, but as I drive in the darkness, I have the shivery feeling that I’ve just put everyone around me in even greater danger.
Rachel and Zack have taken a taxi to the airport, and she has been texting every fifteen minutes to let me know that the trip is uneventful. Still, I can’t stop the anxious roiling in my chest. I can barely focus on the road ahead.
Ben is alive.
Somehow he survived the shooting, escaped from the car in Joshua Tree, and made it all the way to Buckhorn Campground.
It seems impossible.
An edge of fear thickens my voice. “Still no answer?”
Brad glances at my phone and shakes his head.
“Maybe he can’t answer,” I say. “Maybe he doesn’t have a way . . .”
On Brad’s lap is the cipher key I’ve written in case Ben writes back in the Julius Caesar cipher code instead of Klingon. Why hasn’t he replied? Would he really expect—assume—I’d drive high into the mountains at night without proof the texts were from him?
Even though that’s exactly what I’m doing.
Brad shifts in his seat, and out of the corner of my eye the rifle on his lap glints in the white light from the dashboard. He has brought enough ammunition and firearms to withstand a riot.
Did Ben think the code itself was enough proof?
I think back to the meteorite necklace he had left for me under the Christmas tree. In code he had written I’M SORRY and signed it with his nickname, BENJI. Why didn’t he sign his name this time?
As we reach the thirty-eight-mile marker, nausea burns at the back of my throat. Nerve pain shoots down my back as though my body is literally trying to sound an alarm.
We need to go back.
If it’s Ben who’s texting me, he would have responded by now. I know him. Even if he didn’t know how to answer the question in Klingon, he would’ve typed something in Klingon. Hlja’ meaning “yes,” or nuqjatlh meaning “what did you say.”
I wrench the steering wheel into a tight U-turn, and for a long moment, the headlights pierce the darkness over the canyon below. I hear my tires crunch on the graveled shoulder. Then I hit the accelerator and head back down the mountain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
My computer is gone. Not just the laptop, but every single external hard drive I own—all fourteen of them, each one labeled with their specific data contents. The thieves have also ripped the Blu-ray and DVR from the cabinet in the living room and snapped up the old laptop I kept in the kitchen.
One of the police officers dusting for fingerprints in the kitchen the next morning tells me it looks like teenagers are responsible. Even though I know he’s wrong, I can see why he’d think that. The robbers took Zack’s gaming keyboard and headphones along with his PlayStation and a dozen games. They got careless in the kitchen, leaving open cans of soda on the counter and spilling a jar of jellybeans.
Detective Dawson shakes his head as he snaps a photo of the jellybeans. “Nope, not kids. These thieves are pro. They tripped the alarm, took everything, and were out of here before police arrived fifteen minutes later.” He turned to fix a pair of steely brown eyes on me. “The texts were just a diversion to get you out of the house. What do you think they were looking for?”
“Maybe CIT research?” I say convincingly. But I know that whoever broke in wants the security-system DVR yet had no idea that it was safely hidden in Aaron’s office.
How did anyone know about it?
I mentioned it to Shane, of course, but he had no reason to want access to it. And then there were Zack’s friends, who knew we were recording all activity at the house. Still, it didn’t seem likely that his friends would cook up an elaborate scheme to lure us out of the house with fake texts in code just so they could get to whatever might be on the DVR.
Which left Ben’s partners. Richard Jenkins. I remember how he glared at the security camera after he threatened Ben. Had the cameras captured something more that incriminated him?
Then there was the very real possibility that someone completely unknown to me—the intruders who’ve been coming onto the property at various times since the night before Ben disappeared—could be responsible.
But what I really want to know is what police found at Buckhorn Campground. At least a dozen officers had descended on it at dawn, scouring every square foot for any sign that Ben was there. Or had been.
But as the hours tick by and lunchtime nears with no sign of Ben, I know he never was at Buckhorn Campground. Most likely whoever was behind the texts wasn’t there, either, but instead waited nearby for me to leave the house so that they could break in to steal the security-system DVR.
I think through all the clips we’ve recovered. What is on that DVR that someone doesn’t want anyone to find out?
Through the kitchen window, I watch Detective Dawson talking on the phone as he stands in the middle of the garden by the lilac tree. Overnight, it seems, it has exploded in pure white blooms. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but the way his jaw is clenched I suspect it isn’t good news. He must feel me watching him because he looks up and meets my gaze. He shakes his head.
Ben is not there.
It’s not a surprise, but it’s a shock to my body. I feel the room spin for a second, and my hands tingle with anxiety.
Ben is not alive.
The detective steps in the back door, places his phone back in the holster on his belt. “This time of year there aren’t many people coming or going up there except a few regulars. No sign of Ben, and no one saw anything or anyone unusual.”
“I understand.” My voice is pitched too high.
His tone is suddenly sharp, surprising me. “It’s a good thing he wasn’t there because let me tell you, you just about got yourself into a huge mess. Ben is an official murder suspect, and helping him evade law enforcement is a felony.”
“I wasn’t . . . I just thought . . .”
My voice trails off. I’m not sure what I thought. Or if I was even thinking at all when I headed up into the mountains to find Ben. It seems as though I acted upon the vapors of hope, not reason.
The human brain is a marvel, its one hundred billion neurons forming an estimated five hundred trillion synapses yet powered by less than twenty watts. But we know more about the workings of the cosmos than we do about how our brain makes decisions. Right now I am proof of that.
I’d wanted so much for Ben to be alive—to be on the other end of those texts—that even in the face of overwhelming evidence that proved he wasn’t, I still risked my life to search for him.
“Look,” he says, his voice softening, “I know this is rough for you. I’ve told the FBI it was an honest mistake. And I think they’ve accepted that.”
Something about the way he says it doesn’t ring true. The FBI has accepted that I made an honest mistake? With shocking clarity I realize why.
“You’re certain Ben is dead. That’s the reason you’re letting me off the hook, isn’t it?”
He draws a big breath, exhales slow
ly. “We haven’t reached any conclusions yet.”
My voice shakes. “He may be a murder suspect, but none of you actually think he’s still alive. You think someone made sure of it.”
“It does appear that way . . . but we don’t have concrete evidence yet. We’re continuing to investigate Rebecca’s father, Gary Stanton. He just made the investigation more difficult by leaving the country.”
“Leaving the country?”
“That’s what he does once he feels the heat of our investigations. Takes off for Italy or Spain. Sometimes Argentina.”
“This is a long way of saying that you don’t expect to find Ben alive.”
He presses his lips together and looks at the ground. When he glances back up at me, his expression is grim. “It’s an ongoing investigation, Sarah. We can’t—”
“You’re sure he’s dead,” I say softly. “Just say it.”
He’s silent for a long moment, and the only sound is the steady hum of the dishwasher. When he finally speaks, his voice is strained, full of regret. “I don’t think we’re ever going to find him alive.”
“Hi, I’m Ben,” he shouted over haunting electronic music I recognized as one of Depeche Mode’s latest hits.
“Sarah,” I shouted back from a dark corner of the club. While everyone else has dressed for the party, I was still wearing what I’d worn to work that day: dark pants and a blazer.
It was after midnight and the air was thick with heat and possibility. Colored lights pulsated around the dance floor and the party. Anything could and was happening.
Ben was dressed for the event, wearing a blue henley, which emphasized his muscled shoulders, and dark jeans. “What brings someone like you to a place like this, Sarah?”
I smiled at the cliché line. “I know the owner.”
His lips twitched into an adorable, lazy grin. “You know the owner? What’s he like?”
“Handsome. Smart. Sweet. Nothing like you at all.”
He stepped forward, his hands grazing my hips. “I can be smart. Sweet. Anything you want.”
“Anything I want?”
“Anything.” As he leaned in to kiss me, I breathed in the scent of him. Old Spice. He gently pressed me against the wall behind me and I felt the length of him against me.
Two leggy brunettes in tight dresses brushed past, laughing as they headed to the packed dance floor. They stared at us, clearly confused about why the club owner was hitting on a girl who clearly hadn’t dressed for the party.
They had no idea I was his wife of six months. That this superhot club, set up in a warehouse in a hip but gritty part of downtown LA, was Ben’s first venture into running a restaurant/club.
“Let’s get out of here,” Ben whispered in my ear.
We’d done this before, pretending we were strangers at a party or a formal event at Caltech, where I was finishing my PhD. Sometimes our eyes would meet across the room and we’d slowly approach each other, acting as though we were meeting for the first time. Other times, he’d try to flirt with me and I’d pretend to resist his charms. Almost always, we ended up leaving the party early, rushing home, loving each other until we were breathless.
My sister is bringing me a fresh quinoa salad she prepared using herbs she picked from the garden and organic quinoa and vegetables she bought at the gourmet food store a few blocks away. I’m suspicious of the grainy salad at first, but find it sweeter and juicier than it looks.
She and Zack had made it all the way to the airport before I texted them to return, explaining that the whole thing was a hoax. And when I shared with them that there was no sign Ben had been in Buckhorn Campground, Zack sat by my side for nearly an hour, completely distraught, his face bloated from crying. Rachel hadn’t said much, keeping her thoughts to herself.
“Quinoa is best when it’s grown above twelve thousand feet,” she says as if she’s fascinated with the subject, but I know she’s stalling. She’s tensing her shoulders, a sure sign she wants to say something but is holding back.
“Your avocado tree needed some pruning . . . so I took care of that.” Her voice is breathy, strained. “I gave it more water, too.”
“Thank you . . .”
There’s an awkward silence in the room as she watches me eat. I see her chest rise and fall rapidly as she sits across from me at the dining table. Whatever she wants to tell me is clearly troubling her.
“Can I tell you something?” Her voice is heavy with emotion. “The FBI has really strong evidence against Ben. It’s all over the news. They’ve found his fingerprints at the scene. The murder weapon was found in your backyard. He had a photo of her somewhere in this house. And an eyewitness saw him leaving her apartment the morning of the murder. He had a motive.”
I put my fork down and rein in my anger. “Why are you telling me what I already know?”
“Because I think you’re in denial.” She says it with authority, as though she’s analyzed all my thoughts and feelings and reached a startling conclusion.
“What I don’t know is what happened to Ben after that. And neither do you. They haven’t found Ben’s body.”
“And they won’t. Gary Stanton will make sure they don’t.”
“We don’t know with certainty that Gary killed Ben.”
She turns her back to me and looks out the window. “You were like this when we were kids. Hoping Dad was going to come back. Every week you were sure it would happen. He’d write something funny in a birthday card and that was your proof. Or Mom would be in a good mood and you were sure that meant Dad was coming home. Remember that?”
My throat aches but I don’t let her know how much her words hurt me. “I was wrong about Dad coming back. But I’m not twelve anymore. I’m a scientist, for Chrissake. I live in a world of concrete data and evidence. Do you really think in the face of all this proof I’m sitting in denial about what happened to Ben?”
“Actually, I do.” Her voice has an edge to it. “Because there’s something you need to remember, Sarah. Even if he is alive, he wouldn’t be coming back to any life the two of you had before. He’s a murder suspect.”
I sigh and push my chair away from the table. “Do you think I don’t know that? Is this your way of saying ‘I told you so’ about Ben?”
Her face reddens. She smooths a wrinkle on the tablecloth. “I never thought he was right for you. His family founded one of the biggest department stores in Chicago. While our parents were . . . schoolteachers in Missouri. He wanted different things than you did. You always had your head in the stars, and he was talking about restaurants and co-ventures with movie stars.”
“Twenty-three-year-old Ben was like that . . . but that’s not the kind of husband or father he became.”
She opens her mouth to say something, then closes it. She tilts her head. “C’mon, Sarah. You stopped talking about him the last year or so. You’d tell me about the latest exoplanet discovery, the Kuiper belt, or whatever. Or what Zack did in school. But you didn’t talk about Ben.”
“That happens sometimes when you’ve been married a long time. You’d know that if you and Carl stuck it out for longer than three years.”
Her eyes water. Carl was abusive and a cheater. It’s hardly a fair comparison. I know I’ve hurt her, even though I didn’t mean to. “That was a low blow,” she says, almost under her breath.
“Sorry,” I say, and reach out to touch her arm.
She grips my hand and looks me straight in the eye. “You’ve got to accept what’s happened to Ben.”
My voice breaks. “What makes you think I haven’t?”
“Look how easily you were lured into believing those coded texts were from Ben. You drove halfway up the mountain hoping they were from him.”
I let go of her hand and push the plate away. My voice shoots to the ceiling. “So what do you think I should be doing? Planning his funeral? Cleaning out his closet? What?”
She shakes her head. “I think you’ve got to accept that Ben is . . . not alive,�
�� she says, avoiding the word “dead.” “And begin making plans.”
Aaron is reeling. His face has turned bright crimson as though he’s been in the hot sun all day, even though we are sitting in the air-conditioned cool of his office.
I’m telling him about the coded texts and the break-in. How all of my computer equipment—every single hard drive—had been stolen. He sits across from me, and as my story unfolds, I can see he is thinking, wondering if anyone knows he’s been holding the security DVR all this time. Evaluating if he is at risk. Curious what’s on the DVR that someone wants so badly they conned me into leaving my house, then broke in to steal it.
He tells me about the new utility he’s run, which recovered nearly three hours of camera footage, then our conversation inevitably wanders to the space telescope proposal.
If science is the way the universe works, then math, and in particular scientific computer programming, is the language we scientists speak. That’s because the human eye is a great tool, but it can’t possibly process millions of images, searching for interesting objects in the stars. Instead, Aaron and I teach computers to grind through huge volumes of pixels, then we use our human brains to interpret the results. The biggest discoveries today are the result of exquisite, finely tuned computer programs.
Was this the root of my attraction to Aaron? His ability to speak my “language” and my admiration for his programming talents? And perhaps part of my fascination with him was that when we combined our efforts—his computer programming and my analysis—we gained remarkable new insights about our universe.
We’d made the greatest discoveries of our lives together. A few years ago it was a series of Earth-like planets orbiting a dwarf star only forty light-years away. This year it’s the Trojan asteroid hidden in Earth’s orbit unseen by humans ever before. Perhaps in a few years it would be discoveries made with the new space telescope.
But even as we linger to talk about the space telescope’s mercury-cadmium-telluride detectors that will be capable of operating in the supercold environment of space, I know that whatever heat sparked between us is over. It has to be.