Runner

Richard said, 'Hi. I was keeping this room as a surprise, but it occurred to me that now that the baby isn't all that far off, I should probably show it to you. I realized that maybe you wanted to come home, but you would be afraid we wouldn't have a nice place all ready for the baby, so you might wait. I didn't know a whole lot about the subject, but I went to a couple of nice baby stores and started asking what we were likely to need.' He stepped aside so she could see the furniture and supplies. Every piece was the most expensive, the best. She could see on the floor there were also a stroller and a car seat. He opened one of the drawers and lifted a stack of folded baby clothes, then held a couple of outfits up and made them dance for the camera. The clothes were perfect, and they seemed to be in a range of sizes. Since he didn't know if the baby was a boy or a girl, everything was in yellow, orange, green, or beige. She didn't wait for the rest of what he would say, just made the video go black and went on to the one he had posted yesterday.

This time he was in the bedroom again. He was looking a bit sad, but not so tired as he had in the earlier videos. It was daylight. She could see soft late-afternoon light coming in through the white curtains, and she missed the room. The master suite was placed on the northern side of the house so the light there was always a bit less sharp and unforgiving than it was on the south side. As she thought about the room she missed San Diego and the Pacific, and palm trees and the flowers that grew in the garden behind the house.

Richard said, 'Hi, Chris. I love you. I hope your day is good. It's five-thirty and I came home earlier than usual. I'm wondering whether you're thinking of me this afternoon. Today is the seventeenth of August, and when we're together again I'll ask you if you had a feeling today that was different. I'll tell you why. Today I was thinking about you all the time, wondering about what you like and don't like, and picking something out for you.' He looked into the camera, his face as close as it could be without distortion.

'I love you, Christine. I love you more than I really knew when I had you. I've thought about you most of the time. I realized that if this is what living without you is, I don't want it.' It occurred to Christine that he had come very close to repeating a song lyric. 'I want my life back,' he said. 'Christine, I want you to marry me.' He reached into his coat pocket and took out a small velvet box. He held it up toward the camera and opened it. The large solitaire diamond sparkled and flashed in the light from above the desk as he took out the ring, held it between his thumb and forefinger, and turned it around for her to see. It was spectacular.

In spite of her determination to remain unmoved, she couldn't help looking, trying to imagine what the ring would have looked like on her finger.

Richard said, 'I had it sized to fit your finger. Four and a half, right? I brought in the little peridot ring you left here in your jewelry box, because I knew that it fit you.'

Christine felt a sharp stab of regret. How could she have left that ring with him? It was a birthstone her father had given her before he went to jail. She felt sick. She had a strong urge to find a way to have it again. Her father would be hurt if he knew. She hit the X in the red box again, and sat with her eyes closed for a time, trying to reconcile her confusing feelings.

When she was calmer, she went back to the list of e-mails. She read a couple of little notes from friends who wondered why she hadn't answered their earlier e-mails, or had not answered her cell phone. She wrote a reply to her friend Rhonda. 'I'm out of town now, and I'm trying to spend some time alone sorting out my mess of a life. I dropped everything in San Diego, and decided it was time for me to start all over again in a new place. I've always valued your friendship more than you know. I just can't be there anymore. Please think of me as your good friend always. Love, Chris.' She sent a slightly altered version to her friend Emma.

Then she saw one from Alexis Donaldson. Alexis was her closest friend since junior high school. She was the one who stuck with her when she had acne and baby fat, then stayed her friend in high school when her father's legal trouble was in the newspaper, and who even kept inviting her to school events and parties after she had quit school and gone to work. The address was a new one. It looked as though Alexis must have gotten a new job and written to her from the office. Christine wrote her virtually the same cryptic e-mail as the others. She added, 'You've always been my very best friend.' On an impulse, Christine typed, 'If you need to reach me, you can call me.' And then she typed in her telephone number and clicked on Send.

21

It was morning. Richard Beale parked his black Porsche in his reserved space behind the building, walked into the office, turned on his computer, and went out to the lobby to get a cup of coffee while the computer ran through its antivirus and antispyware scans. As he walked past Marlene, the new receptionist, he nodded and smiled, and she said, 'Good morning, Mr. Beale,' and smiled back. He had to play Marlene a bit differently from the earlier ones because of what had happened with Christine.

He knew that his father was having him watched, but he wasn't sure how. Richard had searched his office several times for bugs and cameras, but had found nothing. He still hadn't eliminated the possibility that Marlene was working for his father. He glanced at the small forest of tropical plants in the glassed-in atrium behind her. There could be a camera in every tree, for all he knew, and a microphone in each drawer of her desk. He wasn't prepared to have a discussion with his father about getting involved with another receptionist, so he took his coffee, returned to his office, and shut the door.

He sat at the desk, turned to his computer and looked at the list of screen names, and clicked on the first one, which was in his name. There was nothing from Christine, and there was nothing from Demming, and anything else barely mattered. He was devoting his full time to finding Christine. Then he patiently changed his screen name to each of the ones he had invented. He had sent e-mails to Christine from each of them about twice a week.

Richard opened Emma Peterson's mailbox, and saw that it had received its first piece of mail. He opened the e-mail and took in a quick breath. Christine had written to Emma Peterson. He could hardly believe it. He read the long paragraph eagerly, and felt the disappointment settle on his stomach. She wasn't writing to her old friend to reveal anything about what she'd been doing or where she was. She was giving her friend the final kiss-off. When Richard found virtually the same message in the e-mail for Alexis Donaldson, he was in despair. He almost closed it before he realized that this message had something more. There was a telephone number. He plucked a pen from the cup on his desk to copy it on paper. He pulled a sheet of white paper from the printer tray.

Richard knew that there was no need to do this, because all he had to do was save the e-mail or print it, and the information would be preserved. But he had an almost superstitious fear that the electrical impulses that had brought the e-mail would be cut off unexpectedly and the precious number would disappear forever. When he had written it down, he felt a heart-thumping moment of excitement. It was as though he had closed his hand to capture and hold a wild bird.

He clicked on Print to make the capture more secure, and when he saw the page slide out into the tray he felt a calm settle over him. He had done it. He had all but found Christine. He wanted to call his father on the phone. He wanted to say, 'You old bastard, you self-righteous old sack of shit. You kept goading me and taunting me and saying you knew my girlfriend better than I did. Now I have her phone number, area code and all, and you've got nothing.'

He knew he wouldn't do that. Even having the phone number wasn't good enough. The old man would say, 'I was the one who had to tell you that the way to get to a twenty-year-old was the Internet.' He would say that to his last breath, in the face of any evidence Richard put in front of his face to prove he had been using e-mails since the very beginning. He had put the fake e-mails out as bait in the first few days, and then had added more bait nearly every day to lure her in. That was why it was called phishing. And now he had hooked her.

Richard stepped out of the office, across the hall to the door that led to the parking lot. He went out, leaned on his car, and dialed Demming.

'Yeah?'

'It's me. I did it.'

'Did what?'

'I set up some e-mail addresses that looked like they belonged to friends of hers. She just sent one of them her phone number.'

'You didn't call it, did you?'

'No,' he said. 'You're the only call I've made.'

'Then don't.'

'I thought you'd congratulate me.'