How Long is Forever

A Novella By

H.J. Ted Gresham

In the distance clouds billowed, rose, darkened the sky with majestic towers of darkness.  Within the darkness flickered streaks of lightning that moved across the face of the clouds and disappeared within them like the emotions that moved within John’s heart and soul.  Flicker.  One.  Two. Three. Four. Five. Six seconds.  Thunder rattled the plate glass window.  The rain would be here soon, John thought.  And that would be good.

With slow, methodical motion John turned from the window.  His left hand held a glass, half full, Whisky and soda, the ice melted now so the drink looked diluted, weak, tasteless.  The drink was forgotten, as was the appendage which held it.  John walked across the room, nicely furnished with expensive modern couches and tables and lamps.  Suddenly he looked down at the glass in his hand almost surprised it was there.  He sat it down on a nearby table.  There it remained, alone, unwanted, no longer a part of anyone’s reality.  If it had had feelings, it would have felt the way John felt at this moment, on the edge of something he couldn’t fathom and didn’t want to think about.

There was nothing else to do.  He turned again.  The window was so inviting.  From where he stood, a room on the top floor of the Hilton Christi hotel, he could see all the way across the bay and make out the islands in the distance, islands that lined the Intra-coastal waterway and protected the mainland.  But that was on a clear day.  Today all he saw was the wall of clouds, dark, looming, but not threatening.  No, not threatening.  Nothing could be threatening any more.  In fact, he welcomed them.  He took a step to the side and pulled back the patio door and shuffled onto the small balcony beyond.

Wind made whirling sounds, swishing around the hotel and flapping the flags along the edges of the awning far below.  John watched the clouds.  They were closer now.  Flash. One. Two. Three. Boooommm…. It was odd that he could feel little of the strong winds that were pushing waves up to the surf brake and over them, then crashing them against the seawall, sending showers of salt water high into the air and onto the sidewalk and the street beyond.  It was odd.  But then, life was odd, wasn’t it?

The sky overhead was as blue as blue could be.  An afternoon sun sent warm, summer rays down to meet the crashing surf, creating novel little rainbows.  Out in the bay stood the storms.  It was beautiful.  There was nothing more beautiful in althea world.  Funny. Things could be beautiful, even now.  And John could notice they were beautiful and appreciate their beauty, even now.  Or maybe it made more sense now.  Now that this beauty was the only beauty he had to behold.

A sudden very bright flash and crashing of water in his face pulled John from the depths he had sunk to inside himself.  The thunder did not tarry but rose to a crescendo before the flash subsided.  Something cracked and boomed very near.  The lightning had struck somewhere on shore.  John stood a little longer while his shirt and slacks became first spotted then wet and his hair fell to the sides of his head in limp, wet, strands.  At last, he moved inside and pulled the glass door closed behind him.

* * *

“Which flight, sir?”  The tall, thin, dark-skinned skycap lifted John’s bags from the trunk of the cab.

John looked at the man blankly, then nodded and told him where to take his bags.  John followed.  Inside the terminal, John watched the man place his bags in the luggage chute for his airline and handed the man a ten-dollar bill for his minimal effort.  Then he handed the young, pretty, brown-haired attendant the envelope holding his ticket information.

“Thank you, sir,” she said smartly, smiled at him, then opened the envelope.  She shuffled papers, arranged them, stapled them, and handed the bundle back.  “Do you know where the gate is sir?”

“Sure,” John muttered.

“Very well, your flight will be here shortly.”

“Thanks.”  He stuffed the papers into his shirt pocket and walked away.

“Have a nice day, sir,” the young girl said to him.

John grunted a thanks but he didn’t think she heard him.  He pulled his pen from his shirt pocket, a key ring, pocketknife, assorted change and other things from his pants pockets and dumped them into the little red plastic basket next to the metal detector.  On the other side of the detector, he returned the items to his pockets, picked up his briefcase and walked towards the boarding area.  A bored-looking middle-aged guard watched him go.

At DFW, John retrieved his bags, located a cart, loaded it, and pushed it towards an exit.  He slipped behind the wheel of his late-model SUV after loading his luggage.  The parking attendant took his cash and the parking stub, made change and handed it back, without ever looking at John or halting his telephone conversation.  John drove out of the south entrance.  Traffic was light as he drove towards Dallas.

The bags sat where John dropped them in the foyer of his townhouse.  He moved on into the empty living room.  The room wasn’t devoid of furnishings.  It had plenty of furnishings, a couch and love seat separated by a glass-topped wooden table, the design matching the chairs.  A straight-backed chair stood along one wall, hand crafted and ornate, and centered between two large artificial tropical trees.  Along one wall was a large entertainment center.  To John’s right the wall merged with a countertop, which moved into the space and curved to the right, encircling a kitchen full of appliances, utensils, trinkets.  The room was only empty because there was nobody, no BODY, in the room.  John took a deep breath.  He held it, wondering if he just kept it in and never let it out if he would simply fall down and never wake up again.  Then he wished he’d wake up from this nightmare that he’d found himself in.  Maybe he would, he thought, exhaling at last.  Maybe she would….  He frowned.

Sometimes the only thing that keeps someone from simply falling down and staying there until they are found and their body surrounded with white tape and the picture of their torso finds its way into police files is habit.  Maybe not the best of motivators but habit works at a different level in our brains and keeps us in motion even when we don’t want motion.  Everyone is a creature of habit.  Richard walked to the refrigerator and opened it.  He stared inside.  He reached for a beer, closed the refrigerator door, twisted the top on the bottle.  He tossed the cap onto the counter where it clattered and came to rest.

With some difficulty John resisted the strong urge within him to take the bottle by the neck and smash it on something.  Then he could take the shards, he thought, and, but no, it would be stupid.  He sank into a brass dining chair next to a large glass-topped dining table.  He sat until the beer grew warm in his hands.  He never sipped it at all.

There wasn’t much light left when John stood, sat the full, warm, flat bottle of beer on the table, and walked through a hallway and into the bedroom.  This would be the hardest part, he knew.  He dreaded this the most.  There, in the corner, as innocent as a child’s toy, sat the object of his greatest hatred.  Again he felt the urge to smash, to break things, to scream and pound something with his fists.  He took a step towards the object.  But it was not the object’s fault.  Still, he so wanted to lift it from the tabletop, to rip the wires from it, to smash it against a wall until there was nothing left but bits of glass and plastic and pieces of electronic debris.  But he didn’t.  He only wanted to.

Habit took hold again.  He moved to the large bath.  Then he remembered his things were still in the bags.  He went back to the foyer, retrieved the suitcase with his toothbrush and all the other things he needed.  When he’d retrieved the things he’d needed from the large bag, he allowed himself to kick the bag.  It felt good so he kicked it again.  And again.  And again.  In his mind he knew he was in trouble now but he didn’t care.  He kicked the suitcase harder and harder, slamming it against the wall, then directing it out the bedroom door with another kick, across the living room with another kick and into the foyer with another kick and with a final kick sent it against the door of his townhouse with a crashing force.  He screamed, “God damn you!”

John was panting now.  And sweating.  He did not feel better.  He stared at the black smudges on his white-painted door, higher up on the door than he would have thought he could have kicked the bag.  His eyes looked back along the trail he’d left, t-shirts, shirts, pants, strewn along where they had been flung from the bag with each kick.  He shrugged and returned to the bedroom, walking around or over the debris of his rage.  At least, he thought he had not destroyed the computer.

It was stupid to be angry with a computer. A computer was only a thing, an object, a tool and a toy.  He had to have it for work. Cat needed it, too.  She did need it.  But she spent more time on it than on work.  Too much time.  John walked to the machine and sat before it.  He turned it on.  A tiny light flickered, turned from red to green, and the screen lit.  The wallpaper was a picture of palm trees and beaches.  It was a photo.  He took the photo.  That man.  That monster, that son-of-a-bitch, that modern day version of Jack the ripper.  John panted and gritted his teeth and shook.  The rage inside him rose in a flood.  He struggled not to put his fists, or his head, through the screen.

After some minutes he regained a little control of his emotions and moved the mouse, right clicked and obliterated the wallpaper.  This would be more difficult than he could have imagined.  He had no choice but to sit at this machine.  His work was on this machine.  His contacts and his business and everything he had to have.  But HER stuff was here, too.  How could he get past that?  How could he?  He punched the off button and watched the screen turn black. What did his work matter, anyway? There was nothing to work for. Nobody to care about his work. Nobody to take to dinner, to buy gifts for, to hold.  He stood.  Habit.  Let habit do what it would do and DON’T THINK.

Throughout the night, the long, quiet, terrible night John made plans in his mind. The townhouse would go. The furniture would go. The computer would go. He’d hire someone to strip his things from the hard drive and put them on another. Then he’d wipe the drive and take the machine out somewhere and destroy it. He would destroy it the way it had destroyed his life. Nobody should have that machine. It cannot be allowed to live.

“Hello, sweetheart.”  Katrina stood at the door, smiling.  John always wondered how she knew when he was coming home. He thought maybe she had him spied on or something. But it was her uncanny intuition. He knew it. She sensed things. She kissed him.

“Hey, hon,” he said. He kissed her.

“How did it go?”

“Great,” John said. He walked through the living room, deposited his briefcase on the table beside the couch, walked to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer.  He took a long sip from the bottle after tossing the cap onto the counter.

“Hey,” Katrina said, “are you ever going to learn where to put those things?”

“No,” he said, smiling.

“Jerk,” she said, grinning at him.  She picked up the top and tossed it in a trash receptacle.  “So, tell me, what did they say?”

“They are going to buy it.”  His words were nonchalant, not betraying the import of what he’d said.  He sat onto a dining chair and took another sip.

“Really?”  Katrina’s voice squealed excitement.  “That’s wonderful.  I can’t believe it. Yes, yes, I can believe it. I knew they would. I knew it. It was too good for them not to. The best book ever, darling, best ever, I am so excited!”  She flung her arms around him and kissed him.

“Sure, you are,” he said, “about the royalty checks.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said, “you are the world’s best writer. I knew you would pull it off.”

“It was a hell of a chance,” John said, standing and tossing the empty beer bottle into the trash.

“But you did it.”

“You weren’t so sure.”

Katrina straightened and turned towards the kitchen.  “Well, no, I wasn’t.  But you know me. I hate risks. But then, you don’t. I’m so proud.”  She turned at him, beaming.

“Thanks, Cat,” he said, walking towards her. “Shall we celebrate?”

“Hm, hmmmm,” she said, kissing his forehead and cheeks and lips. “I have ideas.”  She took his hands in hers, walking backwards, drawing him towards the bedroom.

“Do you now,” he said, smiling.

The night was long and wonderful, full of lovemaking and soft talk and excitement.  They planned the next few days. John talked about his next book project. Exhausted sleep overtook them early in the morning and they slept until almost noon.

“Damn,” Katrina said, sitting up, “look what time it is.”

“Who cares,” John muttered.

“This is terrible,” Katrina said, swinging her feet and sitting on the edge of the bed.  “It’s decadent.  It’s evil.”

“Right.”  John rolled and curled himself around his wife. “So, let’s be decadent some more.”

“No, John,” she said, gently pulling his hands back from her waist.  “We have to get up. We have things to do.”

“Later.”

“Nope.”  She picked up a soft pink robe and slipped it on, buttoning it up.

“No, no, I was enjoying the view.”

“Sure, you were,” she said, “now get up, stud, let’s get busy.”

John sat on the edge of the bed.  “That’s all I am.  Just a stud. Just a kept man. Just someone to service your needs.”

“Of course,” she said, walking to him and pulling his head gently down until his nose entered the cleavage of her breasts.  She kissed the top of his head and moved away before he could grab her. “Like I am to you.” She laughed.

“Grrrr.”

“Come on, lion king, get it going.”

An hour later John and Katrina sat on the veranda of their favorite restaurant down the street from their townhouse.  John loved days like this.  Especially days like this.  He was happy.  He had a beautiful wife, a promising career, his gambles had paid off and he was soon to be the proud papa of his third book.  The third one was entirely different from the first two.  He’d written at first about technical things, nuts and bolts things, in a style that was straightforward and plain.  So he thought of it.  Katrina said he could bring a woman to cry over the way he wrote about hard drives and RAM.  It had been their little joke.  But this time he’d just jumped over the edge and written from his heart and soul.  He’d written a novel based on his life as a teen, a hard life it was, full of loss and change.  Katrina had supported him emotionally and in every way while he pounded out the story.  Her paralegal salary was sufficient for the six months it took him to finish the manuscript.  But now it was finished and he’d managed to get his original agent to handle it and his original publisher to publish it even though it was not their area of publishing.  It was all done, now, and he was excited.  He smiled at Katrina, looking up into a blue sky with a lost expression on her face.  He pulled a penny from his pocket and tossed it on the table.

Katrina looked at the coin, then at John.  She smiled.  “I was just thinking,” she looked up again, “how perfect life can be.”

“Me too,” John said.

The days that followed were nervous ones.  After several weeks the proofs arrived, John reviewed them, sent them back, then reviewed a second final set.  He worked on his next book, a down-to-earth technical work commissioned by the publisher.  He spent time traveling and interviewing and conducting research, financed by advances from his publisher.  Then one day John received a box.  When he saw the sender, “Graystone Publications,” he ran into the house with it.  Katrina sat at the computer where she spent most of her time at home.

“It is here!”  John ripped the tape from the package.  He opened the box and tossed aside foam packing material.  He pulled the book from the box and held it as he would a newborn child.  Growing Up Charlie, the title read.  John’s name was beneath the title and the cover-art was that of a young boy holding a fishing pole on the bank of a lake.

“It is beautiful,” Katrina sighed, “magnificent.”

The phone rang.  John picked it up.

“Hello?”

“John?”

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“Great.  This is Howard.  Howard Crossman, with Graystone.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m the marketing representative assigned to your book.  A very good piece of work, by the way.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure.  Well, the reason I called is to set up an appointment with you to go over marketing and so forth.  When might we do that?”

“Whenever.”

“Great, how about tomorrow, ten AM.  Will that work?”

“Sure.”

“Good, very good, we need to move quickly.  The book is heading out from the press now and I’ve already gotten a couple reviews.  We need to plan your schedule.”

“Schedule?”

“Sure.  Book signings and promotional schedule.”

“Oh.”  John’s voice faded.  He’d forgotten about that part of the contract.

“Right, see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll be there.”

“Great.  Just ask for my name, Howard Crossman, at the front desk.  You know where?”

“Of course.”

“Terrific.  I think we have a bestseller on our hands.  See you tomorrow.”

“Fine.”

John heard a click and hung up the phone.  He looked at Katrina who eyed him curiously.  He frowned.  “I forgot.”

“What?”

“Well,” he said, pulling the syllable out and filling the air with it.  He had an idea what Katrina might say.

“What?”  Her voice sounded troubled now.

“Let’s sit.”  He walked to the dining table.  Before he did so he detoured to the refrigerator and plucked out a beer, offered Katrina one, she declined, he twisted the top, tossed the cap on the counter and sat.

“I forgot to tell you.”

“What did you forget to tell me?”

“Oh, a little deal I made.  To get the book published with Graystone.”

“What kind of deal?”

“I agreed to take a hand in promoting the book.”

“Oh,” she said, surprise in her voice.  “I thought it was something drastic.”

“Well,” he said again, “it means I have to travel.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, book signings, interviews, junk like that.”

“Oh, John,” Katrina said.  She stood and walked to the patio door and looked out.  “You are telling me you will be gone more.”

“Um, yeah.”

“But you are gone all the time now.”

“I know.”  He stood and walked towards her.  He slipped his arms around her shoulders from behind and crossed them over her chest.  “I’m sorry, Cat, I was so excited by what Brent was saying, you know, they really liked my book.  But it was something they’d not tried before.  They said I had to play a big part in getting the book out there.  There was even talk about my being part of a new division at Graystone, if my book pays off for them.”

“It will pay off,” Katrina said, twisting in his arms and facing him.  “It will pay.”  She kissed him.  Then she pushed him back gently and turned to the window again.  When she sensed he was going to embrace her again she held up her hands to stop him.  “But what will it do to us?”

“Make us rich.”

“Money, money, John, I don’t mean money.”  She turned to look into his eyes.  “We haven’t used the bedroom for anything but sleeping in weeks.”  She took a step towards him, then sidestepped and walked into the kitchen.  From the refrigerator she took a soft drink and opened it, putting the bottle cap in the trash.  “Why is that so hard for you,” she said, aggravation in her voice as she tossed his beer cap into the trash.

“Has it been that long?”  He stepped towards her.  She held up a hand again.  She walked into the living room.

“It has.  But it’s not that.  It’s that since you’ve sold this book you’ve changed.  You’re,” she sought a word from the air, “cocky or something.”

“I am?”

“You are.”

“I didn’t realize,” he said, looking at her, “really?  I’m just so glad to be a published author.  A fiction writer.  Anybody with half a brain can write about the junk I usually write about but to inspire someone with fiction, now, that is different.”

“It is and I am proud of you and all that.”

“But?”

“But I need you to be you.  I need you to love me and notice me.”

“Notice you?”

“Yes, me, your wife!”

John was unable to find words to respond.  He was surprised at her anger.  He didn’t feel different.  He still loved her with the same love, the same feelings.  Nothing had clued him in that she might resent him or be angry with him.  “I’m confused.”

“You are a man, aren’t you?”

John thought it was a joke but her expression said it wasn’t.  “What does that mean?”

“Never mind,” she said.  “You wouldn’t understand.”  She walked through the hallway and into the bedroom.  John followed.  She sat at the computer.  “Go on, John, it’ll be OK.  I’ll be in there after while.”  She dismissed him.

Suddenly worried and feeling an uneasiness in his stomach, John walked back to the living room and sat on the couch.  He picked up the TV remote but decided he didn’t want to watch anything so he just sat trying to sort out what had just happened.

The weeks that followed were the busiest John had ever had.  Between research and work on his next book and promotional trips for his novel, John was home about one night a week.  Katrina seemed fine most of the time, if somewhat distant, and she spent all her time at the keyboard.  At last, he asked her what she did all the time and she laughed and said, “you’ll think I’m silly.”

“No, I won’t.”

“Well, I chat.”

“What?”  His puzzled look changed to one of understanding.  “Oh, chat, yeah, all the time?”

“A lot.”

“I looked at that chat stuff,” John said, “I could never follow all those weird names and conversation threads.  I thought it was stupid.”

“It’s not stupid!”  Katrina seemed more annoyed by his statement than she should have.  “Not stupid at all.  We’re just talking about things.”

“Things?”

“Yeah, things, you know, life.  Like you know about my life, you are gone all the time!”

This subject came up more and more often.  John skirted it.  “How do you follow all the conversations?”

“Not all chat is with a bunch of people.”

“No?”

“No.  Sometimes it’s one.  Or two.”

“One or two?”

“Sure.  Like Texasrose, I talk to her a lot.  She has a husband who travels, like you do.  She’s a housewife, though, you know.  Our lives are very similar except she has a child.  I want a child, John.”

Katrina’s words brought up another touchy subject.  John tried to sidestep that one too.  “I know, Cat, me too. When the time is right.”

“Dammit, John, does the whole world have to take a back seat to your high and mighty book?”

John blinked.  For a minute he didn’t even recognize his wife.  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Oh,” she said, scrunching her features, “just forget it.”  She rose from the dining table where they had been sitting, stacked empty dishes, took them to a counter, dropped them loudly and walked towards the bedroom.

“Where the hell are you going?”

“Wherever I want to.  Why don’t you go sign a book or something.”  She slammed the bedroom door.  John looked at the closed door wishing it would explain what was happening to his life.

Early March John’s book had made it into the top fifty sellers at the major on-line bookstores.  Brick and mortar stores were beginning to display it prominently and John was being called upon to make more promotional tours.  Graystone was negotiating with him to head up a fiction department and encouraging him to write a second fiction work.  His technical book had been reassigned and he had gladly handed over his research notes to others at the publishing company.  Still, he was on the road a great deal.  April first John found himself standing in O’Hare’s mezzanine holding a pay phone and dialing his home number.  He knew Katrina would not be happy.

“Hello?”

“Cat, hi darling, it’s….”

“John, where the hell are you?”

“Flight delay, storms.  And….”

“And what?”

“And, well, I’m flying on to Orlando from here.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry, Cat, but I’ll only be there for a few hours.”

“Take all the time you need.”

“What does that mean?”  John didn’t like how Katrina sounded.

“I mean, all the time you need.  I won’t be here when you get back.”

“What?”

“Yes.  I’m flying down to Corpus Christi for a few days.”

“What for?”

“Just for the hell of it, John, can’t I go somewhere too or do you have the market cornered on travel?”

“No, sure you can go places.  But what about our….”

“Anniversary?  That is tomorrow, John.”

“I know, sweetheart, I’ll be in by tomorrow night.”

“Take your time,” she said again.

“I love you,” John said.  He always said that when he didn’t know what else to say.

“Sure, me you too.”

“Well?”

“Well, take your time.  I have to go, John.”

“Where, where are you going?”

“I’m being paged.”

“What?”

“On the computer, somebody is ringing me.”

“What are you talking about?  Wait, hold on, now, just a minute.”

“I’m going John.  I’ll call you from Corpus.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, ‘love you, John, and happy April Fools.”  The phone clicked.

John held the receiver out and looked at it like it was an alien object.  For a long moment he considered rushing to the ticket counter and exchanging his Orlando flight for one to DFW but then the last thing she said to him rang into his thoughts.  April Fools.  Of course.  She was joking.  It wasn’t very funny, he thought, but then, she was given to silly jokes sometimes and she’d always loved to pull some April Fool’s something or other on him.  He smiled.

The ride from Orlando to DFW was bumpy and he felt slightly nauseous when the plane hit the ground.  Airsickness didn’t usually bother him but he knew the rough ride was not the reason for his stomach being upset.  He had not been able to get Katrina on the phone since their conversation the day before.  It was their anniversary today and he thought her joke was going a little too far.  He held the small gold-colored gift in his hand as he walked down the ramp.  He expected Katrina to be there waiting, to surprise him.  She wasn’t there.  Frowning and with a growing sense of worry he collected his bags, flagged a taxi and headed home.

John was sure she’d be there at the door, her never-failing intuition telling her he was home.  She didn’t open the door as he approached and the door was locked.  The knob and the dead bolt were secure.  He fumbled for keys.  The townhouse was quiet inside.  He dropped his bags in the foyer and walked to the center of the living room.  “Katrina?”

Nothing.

“Cat, where are you?”  He walked to the bedroom.  A note was taped to the computer monitor.  He walked to it.  Seeing the words on the page he sank onto the edge of the bed.  She had not been making a joke.

“I WILL CALL YOU SOON, JOHN, WHEN I CLEAR MY HEAD. LOVE, CAT.”

He had trouble believing she had actually gone.  A feeling of trepidation swept him up and carried him around the townhouse.  He looked to discover what she had taken and had left, something to give him an idea how long she had planned on staying.  All of her luggage was gone.  Many of her favorite outfits and several pairs of shoes were missing.  Her makeup kit was gone.  She had taken no keepsakes, though, and he was glad for that.  If she was not coming back, she would have taken those, he reasoned.  Reluctantly he collected his bags from the foyer, unpacked them, retrieved a beer and sat at the dining table staring out at the city lights beyond the patio.

The next morning John sat at the computer and turned it on.  He pulled up their accounting software and checked their expenses.  Then it occurred to him to check and see if Katrina had withdrawn any money.  He accessed his bank online and found a thousand dollars gone.  That frightened him.  He also saw withdrawals for airplane tickets and a hotel in Corpus Christi.  When he had dialed up the Net a little icon popped up down on the corner of his button bar.  Suddenly he jumped when the icon blinked, a small window opened and the computer chirped, “Uh oh.”  It took John a second to realize someone had paged his computer through one of those chat programs.  He fumbled with the mouse and pulled the little chat window up.

“TEXASROSE IS PAGING YOU,” a message said.  John clicked on the little box.  Another box appeared, two small windows.  A message in the top box popped up: “<texasrose Where are you?”

John clicked in the bottom window and typed, “who is this?”  When he clicked the “send” button, his words appeared in the top box: “<lonely-in-Dallas who is this?”  He was surprised at the username Katrina had obviously chosen.  There was a pause before he received an answer.

“<texasrose Katrina?”

“<lonely-in-Dallas this is Katrina’s husband.  She is not here.”

A longer pause ensued before there was a reply.  When it came it was rather biting and caustic.

“<texasrose You are a crazy man.  Why do you leave your wife alone all the time.  Don’t you know she loves you?  How could you do all that stuff and run off and leave her.  She is a wonderful woman.  She doesn’t deserve to be abused and treated the way you treat her.”

John stared at the screen in horror.  He wondered what Katrina had been saying about him.  He’d never been abusive and he loved his wife and this made no sense.  He typed a response: “<lonely-in-Dallas What are you talking about?  I love my wife.  Do you know where she is?”

John saw a little blinking icon at the bottom of the chat window for the first time that indicated the person on the other end was responding.  Then a message popped up beneath the one he’d sent in the top box.  “<texasrose Sure you do.  That’s why you travel all over the country selling your books and chasing skirts.  She is better off without you.  Now leave me alone.  I will block you.”

The screen swam before John’s face.  He was shocked at what the woman, if it was a woman, had written.  He typed a reply, again, “<lonely-in-Dallas I don’t understand what you are talking about.”  But when he clicked send it popped up in red in the top window followed by another message: “TEXASROSE IS OFFLINE.  YOUR MESSAGE WILL BE DELIVERED WHEN THEY RETURN.”

“What?”  John spoke aloud, “what the hell is going on?”  He clicked around on the screen until he managed to bring up the chat program screen.  Half a dozen usernames were listed, all beneath the word “offline.”  At the top was “texasrose.”  Beneath that name were several others, all odd hyphenated lower-case names.  “sunny-girl, Texas-witch, blueswoman.”  At the bottom was the most unusual.  “carpe-diem.”  It was Latin, John knew, a common phrase that he understood to mean “Seize the day.”  It was a phrase from an old movie Katrina had been fond of.  He found it interesting that someone would use the phrase for a username.

With some effort he figured out how to pull up the profiles of the users on Katrina’s list.  He looked up texasrose first and found out that, if the information was true, she was a middle-aged housewife living in San Antonio, mother of one child, nothing unusual about her at all.  He imagined some average-looking, lonely, bored woman spending her days keeping up with a child and sitting in front of a computer looking for the life she never had.  He felt sad.  He chose carpe-diem next to look up and what he found chilled him to the bone.

The user information for carpe-diem indicated it was the username of a man named Bill, no last name, single, living in Corpus Christi.  John blinked at that.  “No,” he said out loud, “she wouldn’t.  She couldn’t.”  He read on.  Information for the man was scant but there was a phone number.  He picked up the phone beside the computer and dialed.  The number had been disconnected.  He was more worried now.

The other usernames were not interesting at all.  John continued to look through the chat program until he found a folder named “History.”  In the history folder he discovered conversation after conversation Katrina had had with this carpe-diem Bill.  There were too many to sit at the computer and read so he printed them all out, using up more than twenty sheets of paper.  He took them to the living room and sat on the couch.

The first few messages had been innocent enough, getting acquainted types of notes.  Right away John realized that Katrina was much more upset with his being gone than she’d let on.  At least that’s the way the messages read.  Slowly, and methodically, John thought, carpe-diem pulled information from Katrina.  After a few messages there appeared some sexual innuendos in Bill’s writing.  Katrina had responded by talking about her frustration that John was always gone.  The notes became more explicit.  Then there were gaps, which John figured out meant some of the messages had been deleted.  He wondered what could have been said that would have caused Katrina to delete them.

The last few notes revealed that Katrina had been talking to this man on the phone.  Cryptic messages appeared, “call me, honey,” or similar ones, from Bill.  The last few mentioned Katrina’s trip to Corpus Christi.  When John finished the last two messages he moaned aloud, “oh, my God, what have you done?”

He blamed himself for Katrina’s leaving.  Her words had tried and convicted him of neglect.  She had told this stranger, this Bill, of her heartache and loneliness and she had said nothing to John.  Nothing at all.  Why?  Why would she do this, leave him for some name on a computer screen?

Determined to find out everything he could, John returned to the computer.  He conducted word searches and found letters Katrina had written and mailed to an address in Corpus Christi.  He printed them.  He also found a picture.  The man in the photo was average-looking, maybe handsome to some women.  He didn’t look anything like John and wasn’t the type John would have thought Katrina would have been attracted to.  John printed the photo.  Then he rose, collected his printouts and went to his car.

“Look, please, I need to talk to someone, about my wife,” John said frantically.

“There’s nothing we can do.  Women run off every day.  We can’t chase every neglected wife in the world.”

“My wife was not neglected!”  John almost shouted.  He looked into the haggard face of a police sergeant who sat behind a battered desk.  “I’m sorry, no, she wasn’t neglected.”

The sergeant glanced at the stack of printouts he’d looked through.  “Yeah, right, whatever.  Still, she’s no missing person until, you know, but like I said, even then, all we can do is notify the Corpus PD.”  He leaned back and pulled in a breath of air, coughed, then picked up the papers on his desk.  He held them out to John.  “Look, mister, we see this stuff all the time.  This Internet thing is just a variation on an old theme.  Women get lonely, they used to go to bars.  Now they are on the Internet.  Damn bad thing if you ask me, this cyber-sex world.  But still,” he leaned back again as John took the papers, “still, you know, they usually come back.  They get sorry for what they did, the guy turns out to be a dud, whatever.  She’ll most likely turn up soon and beg forgiveness.”

“And what if she doesn’t?”

“Then, we’ll see.”

John understood he’d been dismissed and he also figured he was not going to get any help at all so he rose.  “She sure as hell better turn up, or….”

“Or nothing, there’s nothing we can or could have done, should she not turn up.”

“Bull,” John shot at the man.  But he was getting nowhere so he started to leave.  He turned back to the officer.  “Listen, what if I get an investigator?”

“Your money.”

“Can you, I mean, I don’t know the first thing about this.”

“Phone book is full of PI types.”

“Look, officer,” John approached the table again, “it doesn’t matter what you think about me.  I am an ass, and worse, for leaving Katrina so much.  I had no clue.  Anyway, help me out here, will ya?  I need someone I can trust and depend on.  You should know….”

“Yeah, yeah,” the sergeant muttered, moving forward and opening his desk drawer.  He pulled out a card.  “Here, call this guy.  He does me favors from time to time.”

“Thanks,” John said, taking the card.  The officer waved his hand and turned to a folder on his desk.  John left.  From the lobby of the police station, he called the name on the card “Knightside Investigations, Richard Knight, senior investigator.”  The card was cheaply printed on tear-apart stock apparently on a PC printer.

“Yeah,” a voice said, “Knightside here.”

“This is John Fuller,” John said.  “I need to talk to you.”

Richard made arrangements to talk to the investigator.  They met an hour later in a small café near the police station.  He showed the man everything he’d pulled from the computer.  Richard Knight was trying hard to be the typical private investigator and John would have felt like he was an actor in a cheap movie were he not so frightened about Katrina’s being in Corpus Christi with some stranger.  Knight grilled him intensely and in spite of his theatrics seemed to know his business.  He asked for a picture of Katrina.  Richard pulled a photo from his wallet and handed it to the man.

“Wow,” Knight said, looking at the picture, “you go off all the time from that?”

John frowned.  “Can you find her?”

“I don’t have any idea.  I probably can, if she wants to be found.  I will do my best.”

“What do you mean, if she wants to be found?”

“Well, people are pretty good at disappearing if they really want to.  But I’ll try, Mr. Fuller, I’ll try.”  He leaned towards John, “now about my fee.”

John asked and the man told him what it would cost and John sucked in a breath.  It would cost a small fortune.  But he never hesitated.  The man asked for an advance, in cash.  He followed John down the street to an ATM where John withdrew the maximum he could and handed it to the investigator who wrote out a receipt on a piece of paper he pulled from his pocket.  “I’ll find her, Fuller, if she’s there to find.”

“Find her.  Bring her home.”

“The bringing home part will be up to her.”

“Just find her,” John demanded.

They shook hands.  “I’ll be in touch,” Knight said.  He strolled down the street.  John watched him go then walked back to his car and went home.  There were no messages on the machine.  He dialed the computer up and attempted to contact the other people on the chat program but none responded though they were all showing online.  He got a cryptic message when he tried to contact texasrose that told him he had been blocked.  When he checked his account after his withdrawal he discovered another thousand had been pulled out by Katrina in Corpus Christi.  He contacted the bank and was told they could do nothing to stop her because the account was a joint one.  The said the account could not be closed without her signature.  John went to the bank, opened another account and transferred the balance from the joint account.  He figured that maybe Katrina would call if she could not get any money.  He went back home and dug up her credit card bills.  He called each one and reported them stolen.  Maybe if she was broke, she’d call.

He was about to go crazy when he got a call the next morning from Knight, who was in Corpus Christi.  He reported that the address Andrea had written to had been a flop house and no one knew anybody that matched the picture of Bill.  “I’m sorry to tell you this, Fuller, things don’t look good.  I’m sorry, really.  Maybe I should talk to Corpus PD.”

John’s heart leaped into his throat.  “Maybe so, Knight.  You should know, she took more money out of our account yesterday.  I emptied the account and opened another.  I also called and cancelled her cards.”

“That was good thinking, Fuller, very good thinking.  You could be a PI, maybe.”

“I don’t think so,” John said.  “Look, I’m coming down there.”

“Not such a good idea, she might call you.”

“I’ll get my phone forwarded.”

“She might show up and need you.”

“I can’t take this sitting and waiting.  I can’t write, or think, or sleep.”

“No, yeah, I understand, Fuller, but sit tight.  At least for a day or so.  Let me check a few other things out.”

“Well,” John said reluctantly, “OK, I will.  You call me, with anything, you hear?  Anything at all.”

John paced the floor.  Suddenly he realized how alone Katrina had felt.  They had lived in their own little world.  They didn’t socialize much and hadn’t needed friends because they’d had each other.  But John had betrayed their friendship.  He was all excited about his book and notoriety and travel and Katrina had stayed behind, lonely and hurt.  It never even occurred to him to take her along.  She enjoyed her career.  She was an intelligent woman and was good at what she did.

“Then how the hell could you be sucked into this,” John yelled aloud, looking at Katrina’s picture on the mantel above the fireplace.  He sank onto the couch, folded his hands in his lap, bent and wept.

Some time in the night he had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion.  The phone rang and brought him abruptly awake.  He lay on the couch.  His head throbbed and his neck felt like it had been twisted off.  He rushed for the phone.

“Katrina!”

“No, is this John Fuller?”

John stood stiffly, “yes.”

“This is detective lieutenant Don O’Neil, Corpus Christi police department.”

“Oh, God,” John muttered, thinking the worst.  He felt himself falling and diverted to a dining chair.

“Please, Mr. Fuller, we have nothing bad to report, just that your investigator is here, Mr. Knight, and we see that he has a case that needs to be looked into.  I wanted to give you a call and touch base since we will be taking this case.  If you wish to keep Knight on the case it is your prerogative but we will do what we can to find your wife.”

Relief swept John like a rush.  “Thank you, officer, I believe I will keep Mr. Knight, also, but I’m sure he will cooperate with you.”

“I’m certain he will,” the officer said, an iciness in his voice told John the policeman didn’t like the idea of an investigator working the same case they were.

“Would you have Knight call me?”

“I will tell him, “The officer said.  “We will call you if anything comes up.  I understand Knight has told you to stay at home and by the phone.  I suggest the same.”

“For now,” John said, “I will for now.”

“I’ll call you,” O’Neil said.  He hung up.  Within a minute the phone rang again.

“I thought I better bring the police in on this deal,” the investigator said before John could say anything.  “I found,” he paused, “irregularities in this case that warranted their involvement.”

“What do you mean, ‘irregularities?’”

“Nothing serious.  Just a couple of things that didn’t add up.  The picture you gave me of the suspect turned out to be that of a person who worked near the flop house where your wife sent her letters.”

“Suspect?”  The word sent a chill along John’s spine.

“Just a term, Fuller, don’t worry.  Anyway, I figure this guy, Bill, just shot this picture as this other guy, the one in the picture, was walking down a street or something.”

“So, we don’t know what he looks like.”

“I’m afraid not.  The police have ways of getting a sketch, you know, maybe the flop house manager can help.  Maybe not.  I can tell you that nobody I can find ever saw your wife after she left the airport.”

Knight’s statement shocked John.  “What about the hotel?”

“She never checked in.”

“Oh God,” John said.

“It doesn’t mean anything, Fuller, she could have skipped the hotel to keep you off her trail.”

“This makes no sense, none at all,” he said.  “I don’t get it.  Why would she, I mean…”

“Fuller, keep a hold of yourself.  I’ve been through these things before.  You keep yourself together.”

“How do they usually turn out?”

“All kinds of ways, Fuller, never two the same.  Just keep still, stay home, answer the phone.”

“I don’t know if I can keep doing that,” John said.

“You gotta.”

“I’ll try.”

“Later.”  The phone clicked.

For the rest of the day John continued to pace.  He tried his own sleuthing on the Internet but could not find anything to do with Bill or carpe-diem.  He did manage to discover how many chat programs there are, how many people spend their days and nights chatting, how much fraud and danger there was in it.  He used the Internet extensively with his job, including email but had never had time to chat or become involved in any online community.  At the end of the day he had a much greater understanding of how many lonely and frustrated people there were and how the Internet had provided an outlet for them.  And had created a danger for them.  And had fostered an entire underground society.  And, worst of all, had led to clandestine sexual encounters of all kinds to proliferate, not to mention the cyber version of sex which appalled and even disgusted him.  He’d even found a few explicit examples in Katrina’s history file, not only with carpe-diem but also with others.  He wondered if some of them were women posing as men.  Who would know?  It was a strange and terrifying world he discovered.  He wondered what the wizards who created the net thought of their invention now.

He slept fitfully in the queen size bed.  He’d spent countless nights on motel beds alone but this one was supposed to have Katrina in it.  He would waken, reach for her, find the space empty, then feel that punch in his stomach again.  By dawn he’d decided he was going to Corpus Christi.  He dressed, packed his bags, called his travel agent and arranged for the flight.  By ten AM he was boarding DFW.  An hour and a half later he stepped into the terminal and turned his cell phone on.  Immediately it beeped that he had a voice mail.

“This is Lieutenant O’Neil, Mr. Fuller, please give us a call as soon as possible.”

John rushed to find a cab and instructed the driver to take him to the police station downtown.  He could not shake a feeling of foreboding after hanging up from getting the message.  The cab driver dropped his bags on the sidewalk.  John turned to pay him and then had a different idea.  “Tell you what,” John said, handing the man a couple of twenties, “you stay put.  Keep my bags.  I’ll have to go to the motel soon.”

“Fine,” the cab driver said.  He picked the bags up and stuffed them back into the opened trunk.  “I’ll be here.”

John sought out O’Neil.  His stomach knotted more when he found O’Neil’s office beyond a sign that read, “HOMICIDE.”  He rushed past a flustered receptionist and into a room where he saw Knight standing.  Once in the room John saw there was a tall, graying, muscular man standing behind a large desk and two uniformed officers seated before it.  The name plate on the desk read: Lt. DONALD O’NEIL, COMMANDER.

“What are you doing here,” Knight blurted.

“What do you think?”  John looked from him to the man behind the desk.

“John Fuller, I presume,” O’Neil said.  He extended his hand.

“Yes,” John said, shaking it.  He nodded at the two uniformed officers.

“Fine, so, it is maybe a good idea you are here,” O’Neil said, “We have information that will be difficult.”  He swept his eyes to the two uniformed officers.  “These are officers Breeze and Journey.  Gentlemen, John Fuller, the victim’s husband.”

John nodded at the men and then realized what O’Neil had said.  “What do you mean victim?”

“Perhaps you should sit, Mr. Fuller.”

“I will stand.”

“Fine.”  O’Neil drew in a breath.  He looked reluctant to speak.  “We have discovered a car we believe belonged to the suspect.”

“Bill,” John interrupted.

“Right, though of course that’s not his name.  You should sit down, sir,” O’Neil was insistent.

“I am fine,” John said.

“If you insist.  Officer Breeze here found the vehicle.  We are sure it is the right vehicle.  It was identified by people in the motel where this Bill character stayed.  We believe he lured your wife here and may have picked her up at the airport.  It is certain she didn’t take a cab or the airport limo.  He did not take her back to the motel.  He had vacated before then.  The manager opened the room for us and it had not been occupied for some time.  We got a good sketch of the perp.”  O’Neil opened a file and handed John a copy of a sketch.  John’s eyes grew wide.  The man looked old.

“Are you sure?”

“Quiet.  But that is all we have.  No prints.  We viewed the security tapes at the ATM machines where money was withdrawn with your wife’s cards.”  O’Neil pulled another photo, a caption from a camera.  Centered in the caption was someone wearing a clown mask.

“Can people do this?  Just walk up in a kid’s mask and take money?”

“There is no live surveillance at ATMs.  In this case the perp came from around a corner wearing the coat you see and the mask, then disappeared the same way in a very big hurry.  We doubt even the hair color is correct.  Probably a wig.  Probably wearing high heals or risers, or is squatting.  It’s virtually impossible to get an ID from that.”

John sensed the officer was hesitating.  “What is it you haven’t told me.”

“Please, Mr. Fuller, sit.”

“The hell with sitting, what is it?”

“We found a car, the car belonging to the perpetrator.  Officer Breeze here followed a lead he made down on the island.  Someone found a wallet.  Your wife’s wallet.  The cards were in it.  It looks like they may have been discarded when you cancelled them.”

“And?”  John could not breathe.  He considered sitting but could not move.

“Down the beach, there’s almost a hundred miles of beach down there, officer Breeze found a four-wheel-drive car, one of those old AMC things.  It was abandoned.  Possibly a boat had been pushed out by the markings on the sand but it’s extremely hard to tell.  It is illegal to launch boats from the Gulf side of the island but there looked like….”

“What did you find?”

“We found blood, Mr. Fuller.  Quite a lot of it.  No body.  Just blood, in the back of the car.  We are checking still but we have confirmed that it is the same type as your wife.  We also found some women’s clothing, torn, and we found this.”  O’Neil pulled out a drawer, extracted a large envelope, reached into the envelope and removed a small cellophane zip-lock bag.  He handed the bag to John.  John took it with shaking hands.

The bag held an earring.  It was a silver, moon-shaped earring for a pierced ear.  On it was a small, dark speck, which John understood was blood.  It was Katrina’s earring, one of the set he’d bought her for Christmas this past year.  He felt his knees weaken as the room spun before him.  The harsh fluorescent light shown directly into his eyes and was the last thing he remembered before everything went black.

Six hours later John discovered himself sitting in a motel room lounge chair, staring out at an approaching storm across Corpus Christi bay.  He tried to fill in the time but had no memory of it.  There was a knock on his door.  He rose to answer it.  His head hurt.  Knight stepped through the doorway, extending a hand with a drink.

“Here’s the drink you asked for,” Knight said.

“I asked for?”

“Yes,” Knight said, shoving the tumbler into John’s hand.  He waved his fingers in front of John’s face.  “Welcome back.”

“Huh?”  John stared at the drink in his hand.  He lifted it.  He smelled alcohol.  He sipped.

“You took a tumble.  O’Neil tried to get you to sit.  You should have listened.”

With sudden clarity John remembered.  His knees weakened again.  He sought the chair he had been sitting in.  “She is dead.”  The words sucked him empty.  He wondered why he didn’t just collapse like a spent balloon.

“We do not know that.”

“But, come on, the blood, everything.”  John sat the drink on the table and buried his face in his hands.

“No, we don’t know anything for sure.”  Knight settled into an identical chair, which was next to John.  “Listen, Fuller, it doesn’t look good.  Not good at all.  But it is not hopeless.  All we know now is that she was probably injured.  We know the guy skipped, to where who knows.  She is probably still alive and he has her.”

“But you don’t know.  And,” John could not bring himself to even imagine what might be happening to Katrina if she was still alive.  But she had to be alive.  She could not be dead.

“Nobody knows, Fuller.  We will look.  We will keep looking.  The best thing is for you to go home.  Take care of business.  Life goes on.”

“Not for me it doesn’t, Knight, not if she’s gone.”

“I can understand how you feel,” Knight said.

“How?  How can you?  How could you?”  John rose.  He felt like taking a swing at Knight.  Instead he walked to the plate glass window and looked across the bay.  Clouds on the far horizon were swallowing the islands in the distance.

“I do understand,” Knight said, standing, “I lost my wife.  We have no chance, I mean choice, but to go on.  Besides, we don’t know anything for sure.  Not yet.  You still have hope.”

John understood Knight to mean that there was no hope for himself.  But John could not feel sympathy.  He was growing numb and was feeling nothing at all.  Absentmindedly he walked to the table, picked up the drink, sipped it, and returned to the window.

“Stay here a day or so, rest, let us do our job,” Knight was saying, “and don’t do anything stupid.  I’ll check back after while.”

“Keep looking, Knight, you keep looking.”

“We will, for as long as….”

Richard cut him off, “for forever, Knight, you keep looking for forever.”

John heard the door open and close.  He looked out at the majestic thunderheads.  There was a flash.  One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  Five.  Six.  Seven.  Thunder rolled from the bay, over the seawall and slammed into the plate glass window, rattling the patio door next to it.

Three weeks after John had returned to the townhouse, he loaded the computer into his SUV and drove out of the city.  He searched for a deserted place far into the countryside.  There he stopped and pulled the components, one by one, from the back of the vehicle and tossed them in a ditch.  Then methodically he pounded them with a huge sledgehammer he’d bought on his way out of town.  He pounded and pounded until it would be difficult to tell what the machine had been.  He stopped pounding only when he no longer had the strength to lift the hammer.  Then he fell onto the pieces as if in the ashes of his life and wept until darkness covered him.  Late in the night he rose, cut and bleeding, from the pile of debris.  He left the hammer and got back into his car and drove home.

The next morning, he turned on the new computer he hated to have but could not work without.  This one had no chat programs.  It also had a DSL connection, not a dial up.  He opened his email program and scanned the messages.  Two were from his publisher, three were some kind of promotions, one had no header.  He clicked on it since he didn’t recognize the peculiar email address: saltydog@quickmail.com.  When he read the message, his heart stopped beating: “John, I am alive, help me please, pleas….”  He stared at the screen.  It was from Katrina.  It had to be.  He leaped to his feet and rushed for the phone.

“This doesn’t mean much,” Knight said.  “It could be a prank or something.”

“No, it’s no prank, who would do such a horrible thing?”

“That guy, wanting to extort you.”

John had not considered that possibility.  “Well then, if it is, maybe we can get the son-of-a-bitch.”

“Maybe.  Print the mail.”

John handed Knight a copy.  “I did.”

“I’ll contact Corpus PD, since they still have the case, technically.  I’ll call you.”

“You better.”

Nothing could have kept John from walking around the townhouse, pacing, wringing his hands, picking up the phone and putting it down.  An hour passed.  Two.  Then four.  Late in the evening the phone rang.  John panted.  He was afraid to answer it.  It kept ringing.  He picked it up.

“JOHN!”  Katrina’s voice sounded loud in his ear.  He could not believe it was her.  It was impossible.  “Cat?”

“It’s me, John, me, oh God, it’s me,” John heard as she burst into tears.  Then another voice came on the line.

“This is O’Neil, Fuller.  We found her.  She was injured, badly, but she will be ok.  We got the guy.”

“But, how, what….”

Katrina’s voice came on the line again, “come get me John, I’m in Corpus still, come get me!”

“I will, I will!”

This trip to Corpus Christi was as full of anticipation and excitement as the last one was full of fear.  When John reached the door of the airplane on his way out, he heard Katrina’s voice, demanding that people move.  She burst up the gangway with a security guard behind her.  Her arm was in a sling.  She raced to him and they embraced, spinning in the narrow space and bumping into passengers.  “I love you, God, I love you, I love you,” she was saying, over and over.

“I love you, I’m so sorry, sorry, Cat!”  They both wept.

At the end of the gangway John found Knight and O’Neil.  He was surprised to see Knight there.  There was someone else holding a wheelchair.

“You should get in this, Mrs. Fuller,” O’Neil said.

Katrina held John with her good arm, kissed him, and then sank into the chair.  John only then noticed her leg was in a brace. He wondered how she had run up the gangway.  He looked at her unable to speak.

“We’ve reserved a room for you,” Knight said, motioning for them to follow him out of the terminal.  As they walked towards a police car Knight explained what had happened.

“It was a simple matter to trace the email,” Knight began.  “One thing is that it’s very hard to be sneaky with email.  It was very smart of your wife to send the mail.  Anyway, I have some connections and I managed to get information on the owner of that email account.  It was all cryptic, like the carpe-diem account, but I was able to figure out that the owner probably lived in Corpus or surrounding area.  I caught the first flight down here and the very efficient Corpus police department put all the pieces together.  The guy’s name is really Bill.  William, that is.  William Graham.  He lives out in the country, in a farmhouse.  He’s a computer nerd, and not old at all.  The sketch threw us off because he’s also good at disguise.  Considers himself some kind of black sorcerer or something.  He’s mainly just an extortionist and thief.

“We figured out he’s milked maybe tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of bucks from people on the net.  He’s used several flop houses and rentals in town to operate from on these scams.  Katrina was the first one he lured down here.  He wasn’t sure what to do with her after her cards were cut off.  She fought him and he hit her and banged her up some and then was going to get rid of her but changed his mind.  He dumped the car, sans plates, on the island and took a small boat down the coast, from what we can gather.  The car was from one of his schemes so it was not linked to him.  Your wife was never on the beach.  He locked her up in his farmhouse.”

“It was awful, John, horrible.  He nailed me into a barn for two weeks.  I finally talked him into letting me into his house but he kept me locked.  Last night I broke out and tried to send that email but he caught me and hit me,” she winced, “he broke my arm with a chair.”

“It is really good we got to him when we did,” O’Neil said.  “I doubt he would have kept her around.  I don’t know why he did, unless he just didn’t have the stomach to kill her.”  O’Neil opened the door to the police car, “we’ll take you downtown.  The doctor wants to keep an eye on Ms. Fuller but she doesn’t need to be hospitalized.  She has a nasty sprain, the broken arm, a few cuts and bruises and the gash that has mostly healed but is the source of the blood in the car.”

John helped Katrina get into the car and then got in on the other side.  O’Neil stood at the opened door beside John.  “You and your wife are very, very lucky, you know.”

“I know,” John said, looking to her and back to the officer.  “I know.”

At the hotel, John heard a knock at the door.  He rose and walked to it.  “Yes?”

“Room service,” came the answer through the door.

John looked at Katrina who was stretched out on the hotel bed looking battered but beautiful.

“We didn’t order room service.”

“Compliments of a Mr. Knight.”

John shrugged and opened the door.  A young man wearing what looked to be chef’s clothing, fluffy had and all, pushed a cart into the room.  “Compliments of Mr. Knight,” the young man said, pulling back covers from the dishes and revealing a feast of fresh seafood.

“This might go good with that,” a voice said beyond the door.  Knight stepped into the room holding an ice bucket with a bottle of something protruding above the rim.

“Knight,” John said.

The investigator held up a hand after sitting the ice bucket down.  “Look, it’s a weird, wild and wooly world we live in.  I can’t even imagine how many bad endings I came up with when you presented your case.  People disappear literally into cyberspace all over the country.  Hell, the world.  I can’t say how happy I am to retrieve one.”

“Thank you,” John said.  Katrina echoed his thanks.

“I’ll go, leave you two,” Knight said.  At the door, he turned.  “I know it’s not my business, but I have to say it anyway.  We all chase rainbows sometimes.  You with your book and fame, Katrina, there, someone to fill the emptiness she thought she had.  When it comes down to it, though, it’s who we have, who we love, in this real world that matters.  It matters one hell of a lot.  My wife and I, well, anyway, so you just be glad you have each other.  Just be glad.  Be glad forever wasn’t as long as it could have been.”  He left quickly.  The chef left too, expressing his congratulations for whatever the occasion was.  John pushed the door closed and looked at the food.

“What did he mean about ‘forever,’ John?”  Katrina sat on the edge of the bed.

“I told him to keep looking for you.  For forever.”

“Well, forever is not over, John.  We will be together.  Forever.  Promise me, forever, OK?  I love you, John.”

He walked to the bed, kissed her deeply and said, “I love you too.  For forever.”

“Good, she smiled, wiping her eyes.”

“Well,” he shrugged, “let’s eat.”  Katrina reached for a crutch while he pulled the bottle from the ice bucket.