The Ex Who Glowed in the Dark (Charley's Ghost)

by Berneathy, Sally

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  Well, at least his mysterious they didn’t have an identity like Romulans or the CIA. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. “You don’t who they are, but you think they took your brother, as in kidnapped?”

  He nodded.

  “Then we need to call the police. Right?”

  Dawson shook his head vehemently. “No! They said they’d kill him if I contacted the police!”

  Amanda rose slowly to her feet, trying to appear calm though her stress level was ratcheting rapidly upward. She gave Charley a desperate look. As a ghost, maybe he had special knowledge of the mysterious they who kidnapped boys she’d never heard of and threatened to kill them.

  Charley shrugged. “You want my opinion? I think Dawson’s lost it.”

  Amanda didn’t often agree with Charley, but she was starting to have some doubts about her assistant. He was not acting rationally. Did he really have a brother? Maybe she hadn’t heard about this brother Grant because he didn’t exist. Maybe Grant was an avatar in some computer game.

  She put her hands on his shoulders. “Dawson, you need to relax. If something’s happened to your brother, we’ll figure it out. It’s going to be all right. I promise.” And if there is no brother and you’re flipping out on me, we’ll figure that out too. Dawson was her friend. Friends didn’t let friends flip out alone.

  Dawson focused on her, blinked twice, and his lips twisted into a wry smile. “You think I’m crazy.”

  “No, of course not.” She dropped her gaze, unable to look at him and lie. “Well, maybe a little.”

  He turned in the desk chair and pulled out the wide middle drawer.

  “He’s got a gun!” Charley shouted, dropping to the floor. Heroic as always.

  Dawson pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to Amanda. “I printed the e-mail they sent me last night.”

  Amanda took the paper tentatively as if it might spin away from her or do something else bizarre.

  From: johndoe666@e-mail.com

  To: computerguy@e-mail.com

  You will receive directions as to when and where to bring your father’s source code for Project Verdant. If you fail to do exactly as we tell you, your brother will die. If you contact the police, your brother will die.

  Charley came to stand beside her and read the note. “Dawson’s playing some kind of a joke.”

  Amanda looked at the agony on Dawson’s face.

  It wasn’t a joke.

  He stood and rolled over another chair. “Sit down,” he said. “I need to tell you some things, like my name.”

  Amanda sank into the chair. “Your…name? You’re Dawson Page. Aren’t you? Of course you are. I checked your references when you came to work here. I made a photocopy of your driver’s license. It has your picture. It’s you.”

  Dawson sat beside her and clenched his hands in his lap. “Yeah, about that. It’s all a fake. Well, not completely. My real last name is Dawson.”

  Amanda opened her mouth to speak then closed it when she couldn’t think of anything to say. That morning the sun had risen in the east, she’d gone to court with her father and Charley’s ghost, and her life had seemed quite normal. Now she felt as if she’d fallen down the rabbit hole even though she hadn’t had any mushrooms. Not even any cheap champagne.

  “What is he trying to hide?” Charley, never at a loss for words, demanded. “Ask him what he’s trying to hide. People don’t change their names unless they’re trying to hide something. You get on my case because I’ve done a few little things like blackmail and adultery and all the time you’ve been harboring a mass murderer!”

  Little things like blackmail and adultery? Dawson a mass murderer? Maybe Charley had been nibbling on a magic mushroom.

  “I don’t understand. You’re a clean cut college kid studying computer science. Are you saying that’s not who you are?”

  “No—I mean, yes, that’s who I am. But my real name—” His gaze darted around the room, searching the corners, as if he expected to find someone lurking in the shadows. Romulan? CIA agent? White rabbit?

  Even if Dawson’s agony was real, Amanda couldn’t rule out the possibility that his delusion wasn’t.

  She leaned forward. “Your real name?”

  He cleared his throat. “Kevin Dawson. My parents were Wesley and Carol Dawson. Maybe I shouldn’t have kept Dawson as part of my name or let Grant keep his real first name. But he was so little and scared. It was bad enough we lost our parents. We both just wanted to keep some part of our family, but maybe that’s how they found us.” He met Amanda’s gaze. “I’m not making any sense, am I?”

  That was the first sane thing he’d said since she’d walked in the door. She shook her head slowly. “No. Not really.”

  He exhaled a long sigh and straightened his shoulders. “My father left us several false identities to choose from. I probably should have chosen one of the others, like John Ferguson or Thomas Waller. It was just so hard to let go of my real name, of all connection to my life and my parents.”

  “You’re still not making any sense. Why don’t I get you a fresh Coke and you start from the beginning, like why your father left you several false identities.”

  “Be careful, Amanda,” Charley warned. “Fathers leave their sons a house or a gold watch or a life insurance policy. They don’t leave them false identities. Something’s not right.”

  Amanda went to the small refrigerator in the corner of the room and took out two Cokes. While she had her back turned to Dawson, she whispered to Charley, “Yeah, you know so much about fathers. You told me yours was an evil dead drug dealer when he’s very nice and very alive and coffee is his drug of choice.”

  “Amanda, you really need to learn to let go of the past. That’s probably why I’m stuck here, because you won’t forgive and forget. It may be a good thing you have something new to focus on. I’ve always known there was something sneaky about Dawson. You can tell a lot about a person by looking at their eyes. He has shifty eyes.”

  “Stuff it,” she whispered.

  Holding two Cokes, she went back to the desk. Dawson looked up as she approached, his blue-gray eyes wide and filled with pain. Yeah, you could tell a lot by looking at a person’s eyes. Dawson’s gaze was innocent while Charley’s…but that wasn’t fair. She’d once thought Charley’s gaze projected mischief and fun. She’d just missed the totally self-centered part of that mischief and fun.

  Dawson accepted the soft drink and gulped a large portion of it.

  Amanda’s cell phone rang. She took it out of her purse and looked at the name. Her mother. Maybe not the last person in the world she wanted to talk to right now, but pretty far down the list. Dawson was either having a meltdown or his brother had been kidnapped by some mysterious they. Jenny’s baby shower seemed even less important than it had before, and it already ranked alongside washing her car in a thunderstorm.

  She silenced the ringer and shoved it back into her purse. “Let’s start at the beginning,” she said to Dawson. “You told me your parents were both dead, killed in a car crash. Is that true?”

  Dawson nodded, the movement jerky. “Mom and Dad were murdered two years ago.”

  Cold fingers traced down Amanda’s spine. “Murdered? Not killed in a car accident?”

  “They died in a car crash, but it was no accident,” Dawson affirmed. “It was murder.”

  The cold fingers raced back up Amanda’s spine then clutched around her heart. “Murder?” she repeated.

  Charley placed himself between her and Dawson. “You see? He murdered his parents! I told you so! No telling how many other people he’s killed!” He balled his fist and threw a punch to and through Dawson's nose.

  Dawson shivered. Charley’s touch had that effect on people. “Did you turn the air conditioning down?”

  “No. It just seems cool in here because it’s so hot outside. Texas in July.” She brushed a hand through Charley, feeling a chill as she d
id so. “There’s an ugly draft right here.”

  Dawson reached a hand through Charley’s abdomen. “Yeah, there is,” he said. “A cold spot. I’ve never noticed that before.”

  “I can take a hint.” Charley stepped aside and hovered next to Dawson. “But I’ll be here to protect you when you need me.”

  The idea of Charley protecting her was such an absurd statement, Amanda had to fight the urge to laugh. Laughter was not appropriate in the face of murder, kidnapping and possible insanity. “Dawson, tell me about your parents.”

  “I might as well.” He sighed. “There's no reason to hide anything anymore. They’ve found us and they’ve got Grant. I’ve got to save him. I can’t let them hurt him. I’m his big brother. Since our parents died, he’s looked up to me and expected me to take care of him. I’ve always tried but now I don’t know what to do.” He leaned back, his expression bleak as if all hope was gone from the world. From his world.

  “They,” Amanda repeated. “They would be johndoe666@e-mail.com?”

  Dawson clutched his Coke can so tightly the sides dented in. “I don’t know who that is and I don't know what Project Verdant is. I tried to trace the e-mail, but they’ve bounced it all over the world. When you came in, I was looking at the metadata, but these guys obviously know their way around computers.”

  That narrowed the field to a few billion people. “Okay, let’s get back to your parents. Tell me why you think their deaths were murder and not an accident.”

  “The police said so. I guess I need to tell you the whole story.”

  “Yes,” Amanda agreed, “you do. The whole story would be a good place to start.”

  “My dad was a professor at a university in Kansas. He taught economics, but his passion was computers. He had me coding while I was still in grade school.” Dawson’s lips tilted upward in a small sad smile at the memory.

  “Coding?” Amanda repeated. “Like in The DaVinci Code?” Instead of clearing things up, Dawson sounded goofier with every word.

  “Writing source code for computer programs. You write it in English, then you compile it to machine language and—”

  Amanda held up a hand. She could tell Dawson was going off into a language that might as well be machine code for all it meant to her. He did that a lot, assumed she understood everything he said. “Got it. You were writing computer programs at an early age. Go on.”

  “Mom worked at a bank. She taught college before Grant and I came along, but she liked the short hours at the bank so she could spend more time with us.”

  “They sound like wonderful people. I’m sorry you lost them so young.”

  Charley snorted. “I can’t believe you’re really falling for this garbage.”

  Amanda made a note to remind Charley that she’d been naïve enough to fall for his garbage and marry him.

  “My parents were wonderful,” Dawson agreed. His eyes became moist, but he wiped them with the back of his hand and continued. “Looking back, I think they got a little quiet and secretive in the last few months, but I didn’t really notice at the time. I was only eighteen. I’d just graduated from high school and was excited about going on to college. I was a selfish kid, completely involved in my own life.”

  He sounded as if he thought eighteen was very young and very long ago, but if his parents died two years before, he could only be twenty now. Three years younger than the identification he’d given her when he applied for the job as her assistant. Then or now, one time or the other, he’d deceived her. She’d have sworn he was always honest, incapable of deceit. Second time she’d got that wrong about somebody, and the first one still haunted her. Literally.

  “One evening Mom and Dad went to a play. Grant and I were supposed to go too. We had season tickets for all of us, and usually we went together. But that night Grant wanted to stay home and play some online game with his buddies. I made fun of him for wanting to play a little kid game.” Dawson bit his lip. “I didn’t mean it. I was just being a rude big brother. But I told Mom and Dad I’d stay home with him. It was a musical, and I didn’t really want to go either. So they went without us, and on the way home, their car ran off the road and crashed. There wasn’t a lot left of the car, but the police found evidence of a bomb.”

  Amanda’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, Dawson! I’m so sorry!” She still wasn’t sure about the false identities and the kidnapped brother, but she heard the sincerity and sadness in his voice when he spoke of his parents’ deaths.

  Charley harrumphed but said nothing.

  “The police came to the door and told us. They offered to send over a counselor, but Grant and I didn’t want a stranger in the house. Grant kept saying it wasn’t true, they’d made a mistake. He was nine then, just a little kid. He ran into their room and started throwing things around, looking everywhere, like he was going to find them in the closet or under the bed. I tried to calm him, but then he opened Dad’s briefcase, and there was an envelope addressed to Mom that said, To be opened in the event of my death.” He paused and swallowed. “I opened it and found a key to a safe deposit box along with a letter telling her what to do if anything happened to him. In that letter he said he was talking to the authorities, but he wasn’t sure he trusted the guy. He said the safe deposit box contained cash and new identities for Mom, Grant and me in case something happened. I guess he hadn’t counted on Mom being killed too.”

  Dawson took a tissue from the box on the desk and blotted his eyes. Amanda found her own suspiciously moist.

  “In his letter Dad gave instructions that we should pack what we could get in the car, put my bicycle on the rack, drive north and abandon the car in Nebraska. I was then to take the bicycle and ride to a used car lot. With one of the new identities, I was to buy another car for cash. We were to take that car and head south to Texas. If we ever felt threatened, we were to pick up and move again using another identity. Grant and I were freaked out that our parents were dead, and we didn’t know what to do. So we did what he said. We ran.”

  “I don’t understand,” Amanda said slowly, trying to take in the strange tale. “What was your father talking to the authorities about? Who are you running from?” The mysterious they again?

  Dawson pulled off his glasses and shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s the problem. I assume Mom knew, but she’s dead too. Now these people want some code that Dad wrote for Project Verdant, and I don’t have it. I took all our laptops when we ran, Dad’s, mine and Grant’s. I know about computers. I’ve been through all of them, and I can’t find anything about Project Verdant. There's a lot of code that Dad wrote, but it's all small stuff for his economics classes. I can’t give them what I don’t have. How am I going to get my brother back?”

  Amanda shivered. If Dawson was telling the truth, if he was sane and sober, the situation was bad. If he wasn’t, well, that could be worse. Either way, they were in trouble.

  Chapter Three

  Dawson picked up the laptop and stood. “I’m sorry. I can’t work today. I need to go home and—” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Search through the computers again. Do something.”

  Though he stood only a couple of feet away, Dawson seemed to be a million miles away, all alone and scared. Amanda thought of her own recent trip to the courthouse with her father by her side. She could have done it without him, but it had meant a lot to have him with her. Later in the day she would be meeting her birth mother for a celebration. Then there was also the mother who’d raised her and wanted to see her, albeit to talk about baby shower invitations. Her family might be a little offbeat, but they were there for her. Dawson was trying to face his problem alone.

  “Of course you can’t work today. Neither can I. We’re not busy. We’ll close the place and I’ll go with you to your apartment to help you look for Grant.” Or look for his sanity. Whichever had been lost.

  Dawson shook his head. “I appreciate that, but there’s nothing you can do. My brother’s gone. They came in and took him in the middle
of the night and didn’t leave any trace evidence.”

  “Trace evidence?” Charley repeated. “He’s been watching too many crime shows. Do not go with him to his apartment. He’ll get you in there and lop off your head.”

  “I’m sure you know more about trace evidence than I do,” Amanda said, speaking to Dawson while glaring at Charley, “but let’s go look again anyway. We’ll start at the last place you saw your brother. Where and when was that?” If he said he’d last seen his brother during a computer game, she wouldn’t count on finding any unknown DNA in his apartment.

  “Last night. He finished his homework, went into his bedroom and closed the door, and that’s the last time I saw him. I didn’t even check on him. I just left him in there, and they took him.” Dawson headed for the door, his movements mechanical like those of a robot.

  This man should not be allowed to ride the motorcycle that was his only mode of transportation. That settled it. She absolutely had to go with him, help him somehow.

  “We should take the truck,” she said, referring to the battered pick-up they used to transport bikes and parts. “I’ll drive.”

  Dawson looked back, his expression vague. “Okay.”

  He hated to ride in that truck with its disorderly ripped seats, missing radio knobs and other imperfections. It completely offended his OCD sense of order. The fact that he didn’t argue about riding in the truck or leaving his bike at the shop said a lot about how upset he was.

  “I’m going too. You shouldn’t be alone with him.” Charley made it sound as if he had a choice of whether or not to go along when the reality was that he couldn’t get more than a few hundred feet away from her. They were bound by some invisible tether which neither seemed able to break. When she’d filed for divorce while he was still alive, he’d told her he was never going to let her go. It appeared for once he hadn’t lied. “I’ll ride in the back of the truck,” he said. “You might want to think about riding back there too just in case Dawson loses it and attacks you with a thumb drive or a CD or something.”