Maybe it was something about Letitia’s story about looking after Lawrence when they were young, but more and more, I was appreciating that the only sure thing that protected us from the bad things out there were the people closest to us.

I wrote my story, let Nancy know it had been filed and updated with a call to Trimble, and left the building. The Virtue started for me just like that. Good ol’ Otto. He knew what he was doing. I decided to stop on the way home for some groceries. Maybe, just maybe, there’d be a chance for me, Angie, and Paul to have a meal together.

The cross street at the bottom of Crandall is a busy thoroughfare lined with shops, cafés, restaurants, and a small theater that shows second-run stuff. It was a nice day, and the cafés had moved some tables and chairs out onto the sidewalks. I found a spot by the curb and went in Angelo’s Fruit Market and bought the makings of a salad, then went next door, to the fresh pasta place, for some linguine and a tomato-Alfredo sauce, and as I was coming back out I glanced in the direction of the café two doors down, where there were half a dozen tables out front, and thought I recognized the person sitting with his back to me, fiddling with a laptop computer.

I came up behind him, this young man in a long black jacket, and peered over his shoulder. There was a map on the screen, which, at a glance, looked like our neighborhood. There was a small, pulsing dot moving across it.

“Lost Morpheus again?” I asked.

Startled, Trevor Wylie whirled around, reaching up with his right arm and easing shut the lid of his laptop at the same time.

“Mr. Walker,” he said, taking off his sunglasses so he could see me more clearly.

“How are you, Trevor?” I said, moving around in front of him.

“Good, I’m good,” he said. “Whatcha doing around here?”

“Just picking up some things for dinner. How about you?”

He motioned to the paper cup next to his computer. “Having a coffee, doing a bit of surfing, homework.”

Across the street I noticed Trevor’s black Chevy, sitting low in the back as though the rear springs were going. It was a hulking piece of Detroit machinery amidst smaller, newer, mostly imported cars. Black jacket, black car, the wandering black Annihilator. The forces of darkness were aligned against me.

“That really is an amazing program you’ve got there,” I said, resting my bags on the top of the table. “If I ever get a dog, I guess I’ll have to get something like that.”

“Sure.”

“What’s your homework?”

“Just stuff. Nothing particularly interesting.” He looked around, thinking maybe, by the time he looked back, I’d be gone. But I was still there. “How’s Angie?” he asked.

“She’s good, Trevor.”

“I think she might have something wrong with her cell phone,” he said. “Sometimes, I try to call her, it doesn’t go through.”

“You know how cells are. What were you calling her about? I could pass on a message.”

“College stuff. I was thinking I might try Mackenzie, I think they have a computer science program there, and that would be right up my alley, you know? And if my classes were around the same time as Angie’s, we could share rides. I could drive one week, she could drive the next, that kind of thing. But I’ll talk to her about it myself. You don’t have to worry about it.”

“The thing is,” I said, “I do worry.”

“What?”

“I worry. I’m kind of a worrier, Trevor. Ask anyone who knows me. I’m a bit over the top at times. Especially where members of my family are concerned. Like Angie. I worry about her. All fathers worry about their daughters.”

“Yeah, I guess they would.” Trevor slipped his shades back on. “There’s a lot of freaky people out there.”

“That’s right,” I said. “So I try to keep as close an eye on her as I can, you know? To make sure she’s okay. Because if something ever happened to her, I don’t know what I’d do.”

Trevor nodded in agreement. “I can understand that. Totally.”

“I hope you do,” I said.

We didn’t speak for a moment. Trevor broke the silence. “So, you’ve written some SF.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve done a few sci-fi novels.”

“I like sci-fi. But as much as I like the scientific aspect of it, I find there’s something mystical about it, too. There are forces other than those of nature at play. I don’t think science rules everything in the universe.”

“Maybe not,” I said.

“And I believe, sometimes for reasons that we can’t possibly understand, that certain things are meant to happen.”

“Okay.”

“And that there are people out there that we’re destined to meet up with. That everyone has, from the moment they’re born, a certain other person that they’re supposed to hook up with for them to fulfill their destiny.”

“I don’t know much about that,” I said. “It’s not the sort of thing I’ve written about. But it’s one point of view.”

Trevor smiled knowingly, nodded slowly. “It certainly is.”

I tilted my head in the direction of the black Chevy. “That’s your car, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t see a lot of those around,” I said. “They haven’t made that model for quite a few years, have they?”

“I don’t suppose so.”

“And yet, with so few of them around, I saw one at the mall last night, at Midtown? Same color as yours, parked right by the doors.”

Trevor swallowed. “Huh.”

“And then, I was heading out of town, toward Oakwood? And I saw another one, just like it, same color, everything.”

This time, Trevor didn’t even have a “huh” to offer.

“Isn’t that a coincidence,” I said. “That I’d see two cars exactly the same, in different places, in the same evening.”

I couldn’t see his eyes behind the sunglasses. Couldn’t tell whether he was looking away.

“Trevor, take your glasses off for a sec.” He sat rigidly, made no move to do what I’d asked. “Trevor, just for a second.”

Slowly, making a ritual of it, he removed the glasses. I eyed him intently.

“I would never want anyone, ever, to hurt my daughter, or scare her, or cause her any trouble.”

“Of course not,” he said, not looking away.

“I just wanted to make myself clear about that.”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“So we understand each other,” I said.

“We do,” Trevor said. I nodded my farewell to him, and moved on.

“And don’t buy my son booze anymore,” I added.

“Whatever you say.”

I turned and walked away.

I had two surprises shortly after that.

The first: As I walked by Trevor’s Chevy on the way back to my car, there, asleep in the backseat, was Morpheus.

The second: After I got back in the Virtue, I turned onto Crandall. Looking up the street, I noticed the back end of a big black Annihilator SUV. Trolling past my house, slowly, then picking up speed as it headed north.

23

“CAN WE WATCH TV WHILE WE EAT?” Paul asked, standing next to me in the kitchen.

I was putting linguine on three plates, and had put the salad in a glass bowl with a couple of tongs.

“I don’t know,” I said. “You know how your mother feels about having the TV on during dinner.”

“Yeah, but Mom’s not here. And The Simpsons is on.”

This did raise an interesting question. Did we have to play by Sarah’s rules if Sarah wasn’t home? Especially when The Simpsons was on?

While I made up my mind, I said to Paul, “Call your sister, tell her dinner is ready.”

Without moving an inch away from me, Paul shouted, loud enough to make the wineglasses on the kitchen shelf ring, “Angie! Dinner!”

“Thanks,” I said.

She’d gotten home the same time as I had, headed straight up to her room and closed the door. I’d barely had a chance to ask whether she was dining with us, and she’d had only enough time to grunt “Yes.”