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  She finally began to cry.

  03:30 PM

  In a gray van in the McDonald’s parking lot, George asked, “What the fuck happened? Will someone just tell me what the fuck happened?”

  Fred watched out the rear windows with a pair of binoculars. The last ambulance had pulled away. “Apparently, our Mr. Wilson wasn’t satisfied with threatening policemen.”

  Jane sat at the consoles lining one side of the van, typing on a computer keyboard and listening through a set of headphones. “Elroy identified the male as Charlie, and I’m picking up police traffic that confirms that. Attempted rape, apparently.”

  “What’s Charlie’s condition?” George asked.

  “According to Elroy, and the Medic’s radio, our girl did something fairly drastic. Severe lacerations, both femorals, crushed testicles—” George flinched. “—broken pelvis, severe internal hemorrhaging, pupils fixed and dilated…” Jane shrugged. “Can’t say I blame her. Remember I said missing out on Charlie was a waste? Forget it. Charlie’s the waste. Good riddance.”

  “Shall we dispense with the editorializing?” Fred Jackson said from the rear of the van, putting away his binoculars. He turned around to face the rest of the occupants. He addressed Jane, “Did Elroy sense anything about what happened?”

  “You can ask him yourself,” Jane said as the side door of the van slid aside and Elroy stepped in.

  “So?” Fred looked at the child. “What did you see out there?”

  “See eye, not much. Lots of cops. Lots of kids. Girl’s the same one I picked out of the yearbook, Allison Boyle. The guy bleeding all over the place was Charlie.”

  “See head,” George said, placing a finger on a white haired temple.

  Elroy gave him a humorless smile, flashing machine-like braces. “Both of them did something pretty head-powerful. She’s way beyond him though. Whole different level.”

  “What did she do?” Jane asked.

  Elroy shrugged. “Nothing I saw before.”

  That revelation was enough to silence the whole van for a few long moments. After a while, Barney, who’d been silent in the driver’s seat throughout the whole episode, asked, “What now, boss?”

  Fred sighed. “This complicates things.”

  “As if they weren’t complicated enough,” George said. “We should have gone for the mother as soon as we ID’d the girl. We could have pulled her out of school before—”

  Fred stared at George, “Doctor, your expertise is not in covert ops, and I am sick of your second-guessing. I’m security. You and Jane are the PhDs and the baby-sitters. Remember that.”

  “We should have talked to her mo—” George began, but before he finished getting the words out, Fred slammed him into the wall of the van.

  Fred leaned in, calm demeanor dissolved into an angry scowl and glaring eyes. “I will say this once, Doctor. I will not jeopardize the Institute by confronting a subject’s parent on the strength of a drive-by sighting and a yearbook photo. Snatching the wrong kid is much worse than losing the right one.”

  “But losing this one—” George managed to croak.

  “Is infinitely preferable to what I’ll have Barney do to you if you make one more contrary comment during this mission. Understand?”

  George nodded, slowly.

  He released George, and a visibly calmed Fred turned to Jane. “How’re the tails going?”

  Jane sighed. “They’ve followed both of them back to University Hospitals. Everyone feels that we’re going around in circles.”

  “Can’t be avoided,” Fred said, maneuvering to ride shotgun in the front of the van. “If anyone starts complaining too much, tell them what I told George.”

  “Great,” Jane said.

  “Mr. Jackson?” Elroy asked.

  “What is it Elroy?”

  “It’s Charlie,” Elroy said. “Don’t bother with him. He’s gone.”

  “He’s critical,” Jane said. “But if they lost him, I’d hear—”

  “Breathing,” Elroy said. “But gone.” Elroy pointed to his forehead.

  Jane watched him for a moment. Then she shivered and returned to facing the console.

  Fred shook his head. “We counted him a loss anyway. To the hospital.”

  Barney peeled rubber out of the parking lot to belatedly follow the ambulances.

  CLEVELAND, OH: Monday October 25, 1999

  06:45 PM

  Hours later, at the hospital, Allison finally stopped crying. She’d used all of it up.

  Her head was filled with fog. Nothing after Chuck’s collapse would settle into a coherent pattern. She remembered the doctors asking her questions. She remembered the lady volunteer from the rape crisis center giving her sweat pants and an oversized T-shirt after the police had bagged her clothes for evidence.

  She remembered looks from some of the uniformed cops, and a few orderlies, which felt nearly as demeaning as having Chuck touch her body.

  The cops seemed to avoid the questions they must have been wondering about. Allison almost wished that they would ask. Then she could tell someone that she didn’t know the answers.

  She sat in a room at the University Hospitals ER, slowly crumpling a pamphlet from the rape crisis volunteer. They were leaving her alone. For that, she was grateful. She hadn’t gotten a chance to shower, to eat, or do anything but sob through a too slowly diminishing hysteria.

  Chuck had tried to rape her.

  That rocked her at least as much as what had happened to Chuck. The simple fact that someone had beaten her and nearly raped her on the grounds of her own school building—

  She could never feel safe anywhere again. She could never pass a closed door without wondering if there was another Chuck there waiting for her. The police didn’t help. Some of them, the male ones anyway, looked at her like she was the criminal, as if she had done something wrong.

  She hugged herself and tried to see it from their point of view. Surely, from the condition of her face and clothing, Chuck’s intent was obvious. They’d even bagged the knife he’d threatened her with.

  He had a gun, for crying out loud.

  However, Chuck had nearly died while she’d only gotten a few cuts and a fat lip.

  If she couldn’t figure out what happened, how could she expect them to?

  Mom, she silently prayed, get here quick. I want to go home.

  Chuck still could die.

  The event kept playing through her head and she couldn’t get it to make any sense. She couldn’t remember how Chuck had been so grievously wounded. There had just been the noise, the gunshots, and Chuck on the ground, bleeding.

  Did he shoot himself?

  But he’d been hurt before he fired the gun.

  At least that was how she remembered it.

  The door opened, letting in Detective Teidleman. He was short, well-groomed, and wouldn’t have looked out of place teaching mathematics at Euclid Heights High. He was one of the nicer policemen, one who didn’t make her feel like a criminal. “Allison? Your mother is here.”

  For the first time since all this happened, she smiled. “Thank God.” She felt like crying again.

  “I want to apologize for taking this long to reach her.”

  Allison nodded. Trying to reach Mom at work was hitting a moving target. She was always moving all over the city. Suddenly, Allison felt an overwhelming wave of sympathy for her mother. How did Mom hear about this? A call on her pager? Voice mail? “Your daughter’s in the hospital.”

  She hadn’t even thought of how her mother might be hit by this— and that opened the floodgates again. She began weeping. She tried to control herself in front of the detective, but she couldn’t.

  Teidleman gave her his handkerchief.

  “I have a patrolman taking her around the back to avoid the press.”

  Press? Allison thought, and blew her nose. Then she realized she was using someone else’s handkerchief. She looked up to apologize, but instead of seeing Teidleman, she saw her mothe
r.

  “Oh my baby.” It looked as if Mom’d been crying almost as much as Allison had. They hugged each other for a long time.

  “Tell me he didn’t harm you,” Mom said, clutching her as if she might run away.

  “No, Mom. Just a bloody lip.”

  “Thank God,” Mom said, echoing Allison’s earlier words. “The police haven’t mistreated you?” she asked, loosening her grip so they could face each other.

  “No, Mom. They just did their job.”

  Mom looked her up and down, as if just realizing what Allison was wearing.

  “My clothes were evidence,” Allison said. “Bloody too.”

  “What happened?” asked her mother, a trembling note in her voice, as if she was afraid of the answer.

  Not fear, Allison thought, terror. Allison started crying again, more in frustration than anything else. “I don’t know. He was about to— and then he— there’s this sound and he’s on the ground and I don’t know what happened.”

  “Shh.” Mom pulled her close again and kissed her on the forehead. “It’s all right now. Mommy’s going to take you home.”

  “I hurt him.” Allison cried into her mother’s shoulder. “I nearly killed him and I don’t know what happened.”

  “Shh.”

  They remained quiet for a long time before Mom spoke again. “Allie, make me a promise.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t ever let yourself regret what you did.”

  Allison pulled away, and saw a frightening look on Mom’s face.

  “Never regret protecting yourself, Allie. Promise me.”

  Allison nodded.

  “Say it. Please.”

  “I promise, Mom.”

  “Always, always, protect yourself, Allie.”

  Allison could feel Mom’s hand shaking on her shoulder. Allison nodded and said, “I will, Mom. Promise.” I don’t even know if I did anything.

  Mom hugged her and said. “Thank you. Let’s go home.”

  As they left, Mom said, “You know I love you more than anything.”

  EUCLID HEIGHTS, OH: Monday October 25, 1999

  7:00 PM

  Allison had been left breathless by how quickly events could spin out of control, how a disaster, even if it didn’t bodily harm her, could rip the fabric of her life. Chuck had managed to find all the loose threads of her life and tug at them, until nothing was left.

  The police had kept saying “attempted rape.”

  It wasn’t “attempted.” Chuck had raped her the minute he pulled her through that door.

  Allison sat in numbed silence during the drive home. Nearly home, Mom said, “I’m so sorry about your father, Allie.”

  After what had happened, the comment came from out of nowhere. For a moment Allison couldn’t make sense of the words, as if Mom was suddenly speaking a foreign language. “What?” she asked, her voice hoarse from crying.

  When she turned, she could see tears on her Mother’s face too. “I took your father away from you—”

  We left Mom. We left.

  “I felt it was too dangerous. I had to try and bring you up in a normal house, with a normal life. Please don’t hate me for it.”

  “I don’t hate you Mom…” Allison sucked in a breath. “Is dad really dead?” She tensed for some sort of explosive reaction, but Mom seemed to be in shock as much as she was.

  “I’m sorry, Allie.”

  “Why did you say he was?”

  There was a long silence before Mom said, “You were too young. I had to give you an explanation you could understand.”

  The numbness leeched away and beneath it was an ugly feeling. “Too young?” The copper taste in the back of Allison’s throat was anger. “Am I too young to understand now?”

  Mom pulled into the driveway and screeched to a halt. “Please let me—”

  “No Mom,” Allison shook her head. Tears burned her eyes again. “I don’t get it. Was I too young last year? What were you waiting for, my eighteenth birthday?”

  Mom looked down at the steering wheel and shook her head. “Why I had to take you— I didn’t have any way to explain why we couldn’t see him again. Why we couldn’t have any contact—”

  “Jesus Christ, Mom! People break up every day!” Some part of Allison wanted to stop. But even though she never wanted to hurt her mother, that impulse was overwhelmed by her rage over her mom’s lies, her headaches, her failings at school, and most of all, Chuck. She wrenched the passenger door open and stepped out.

  “Allie—”

  “Half the kids at Heights have divorced parents. I bet I’m the only one who’s been told her father was dead because her Mom didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “It wasn’t like that, there was— is—a danger…”

  “What is it? Did he beat you, Mom? Rape you?” Mom sat there looking stunned. “I don’t think you can say I don’t understand that now.”

  Allison walked away from the car, fury burning within her, mixing with an even more painful brand of shame.

  Behind her she heard the car door slam and heard her mom call out. “No Allie. It wasn’t like that. I loved him.”

  “Yeah, right.” Allison spoke without turning around. She half-ran for the door. She wanted this conversation to end, right now. Please, God, let’s just stop it now.

  “Please stop. You don’t understand what—”

  “That’s what you’ve been telling me.” Allison stormed through the door. Once inside, the sobs started, burning her throat, and she ran for the stairs. She stumbled, tearing the knee of her sweat pants, but she didn’t let it slow her dash for her room. Her door slammed behind her before Mom had entered the house.

  The bedroom seemed much too small. She threw open the closet door, grabbing the shoebox she’d shoved there so hastily last Friday.

  The shoebox fell to the floor, and she clutched the one-hundred-and-two pages of Restless Nights.

  Randolph, Melissa, her perfect fictional couple.

  Tears streaming down her face, she methodically began to tear every single page into pieces. Mom pounded on the door. Allison told her to go away, leave her alone. Eventually, Mom did, and Allison’s shaking hands continued dissecting the pages.

  By the time she got to the end, the box was filled with confetti and her throat was raw from silent sobbing. When the last page had been shredded, she curled up on the bed and tried to sleep.

  10:00 PM

  The clock read ten when the phone woke her up. She didn’t answer it. The phone had been a nightmare. The school had called to inform Mom that Allison had been suspended, “pending further investigation.” Police had called to schedule an interview. Some reporter, somewhere, had gotten their number—

  She’d barely gotten two hours of dreamless slumber.

  The phone stopped ringing as her Mom answered it.

  “Allie,” came Mom’s voice at the door. “Do you want to talk to Macy?”

  Allison sat up and picked up the phone. “I got it. Hello?”

  “Allie? Oh— ah—” The hesitation was totally unlike Macy. Hearing Macy’s voice made Allison silently forgive her for waking her up. Macy paused, and finally said, “Damn it, can I do anything?”

  Allison smiled sadly. “Thank you.”

  “For what? Christ I’m sorry— I didn’t know— I saw the cops but I didn’t think—”

  “Shh, it’s all right.”

  “No it ain’t. My best friend is— and not a hundred feet from me— it wasn’t until—”

  “Shh.”

  Macy took a deep breath. “Saw the cops out front. Someone says some guy got hit in the balls. That’s all. Thought I lost you while I was rubbernecking. My sorry ass didn’t know you were—” Macy cried into the phone. “Not till I hear Chuck’s name on the news, man! I should’ve been there!”

  “You’re forgiven, Macy. You didn’t know, you couldn’t have known.”

  “If I was there—”

  “If you were there, Chuck would�
�ve waited until you weren’t there anymore. You weren’t going to stop him.”

  Macy snuffed and Allison could picture her nodding into the phone. “Oh man. You stopped him didn’t you—” Macy sucked in a breath. “Look, I’m sorry. You don’t want to talk about this, do you?”

  “I’m not sure what happened, Macy. I don’t even know what hit him.”

  Macy paused for a long moment. “Girl, on the news…”

  “What’s on the news?” Allison sat up straighter.

  Allison listened to Macy breathe.

  “Macy, I was there. Tell me what they’re saying on the news.”

  “They had Geraldi on the tube saying his balls were shredded.”

  Allison gulped. “Geraldi said that?”

  “I don’t wanna be saying this— can I—”

  “What else, Macy?”

  “Doctors were talking about hemorrhages and internal injuries and a broken pelvis and I should have been there damn it!”

  She realized that she was putting Macy through the wringer and felt awful for it.

  “It’s my fault,” Allison said. “I should have told somebody about Chuck, before this. You tried to get me to. I should have listened to you.”

  She heard Macy blow her nose. “Damn straight. But God, don’t feel sorry for Chuck. He went over the deep end. He pulled a gun on a cop.”

  “He what?”

  “Yeah, on the news. After you put him in the hospital the first tim— Oh shit, I’m doing it again. I’m sorry. Me and my mouth—”

  “It’s all right, calm down.”

  “Yeah, calm’s good.”

  After a pause, listening to Macy breathe, Allison asked, “Are you all right now?”

  “Girl, what sense is it you asking me?” Macy caught her breath. “I’m unloading on you at the worst time—”

  “What’re friends for?”

  “Can I start this over?”

  Allison shook her head and said, “Okay. Hello?”

  “Allie, can I do anything for you?”

  “No, I’m doing ok for now.”

  “I could come over—”