Chapter 3

How long had he been following her? Grace tried to remember whether she had seen a man in a cowboy hat anywhere else, and an image floated into her mind: One of a man in a cowboy hat shouting at a fat man to share his food.

If he had followed her through the transit system, he was good. Shaking him wouldn’t be easy.

“Are you all right?” the security guard asked.

“Yeah, I just need…” Grace took a deep breath and searched for a plausible lie, “a bathroom.”

“There’s one in back for employees only,” the guard said. “Go on, I’ll fix it for you.” He sub-vocalized something into his portable and waved her on.

The man in the cowboy hat turned to peek in at her just as she began heading for the back of the store. No one stopped her as she headed through a set of double doors marked “employees only.” One man gave her a sideways glance and a half smile, which told her the security guard had delivered his message.

A short hallway led to a back door. Grace spared a quick glance for a door marked “restroom,” but did not pause in her rush towards the back door. She flung it open and looked both ways into a dark alley, but she did not see a single cowboy hat in the small crowd of people pawing hopefully through the garbage cans out there.

Grace pushed the door open as hard as she could, causing it to bang loudly enough to startle several nearby vagrants. Then she rushed back down the hall and towards the front of the store.

If the man had a partner, this would never work.

The security guard gave her a startled look as she raced by his station and out the front door. She didn’t see the cowboy hat anywhere, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t following her. The nearest rail station was a block away, and she reached it in record time, chose a train at random and pushed herself on board.

She got off at the next stop and chose another random train, all the while memorizing faces and keeping an eye out for a cowboy hat or another face that seemed to be trying to keep up with her haphazard path.

Finally, after half an hour of train hopping, she chose one that would take her home. She was as sure as she could be that no one had followed her, which was to say not sure at all.

The sidewalks near Grace’s apartment in Shawnee were not as crowded with pedestrians as the ones downtown. She usually liked it out here, in the relative peace and quiet, but today she thought she would feel more comfortable with a crowd pressing in around her, keeping her more anonymous.

Most of the people on the sidewalks in this area lived there. Grace recognized many of them. She knew all of those who lived outside her own building by face and name, though she never spoke to them. She handed out nutri-bars once a day, and for that they did not try to break into her apartment. It was a mutually beneficial relationship.

They began to circle her as she approached with her grocery bag. First came an ageless woman with two teenage sons, then a young girl just shy of puberty. Grace thought she lived on her own, but had never asked. There wasn’t anything she could do for her or any of the rest except hand out the food. There were twenty in all who counted on her daily charity. She gave a bar to each of them, steadfastly avoiding their eyes, and then cut a path through to her building.

Up three flights of stairs to her apartment, Grace did not meet any of her neighbors in the hallways. She could hear her next-door neighbors fighting through the wall when she reached her own door, but that was perfectly in order. Grace punched in an electronic code to open the door. Then she was in–home and office, space was too precious to separate the two.

A red light on the vidphone blinked at her from the wall. “Play messages,” she said.

“Two new messages,” intoned a mechanical, almost feminine voice. “Message one, 8:45 a.m.”

“Grace, this is your mom. If you’re there, pick up. Pick up. All right, I guess you’re not there. I just wanted you to know I have a new great-great-great-great-great…How many greats did I just say? Anyway, I have a five-times great grandson. Charity’s excited and disappointed all at the same time. They won’t let her see him yet, or me, for that matter. They said we could come over sometime next month after he was sleeping better. Next month! Can you believe it? Give Charity a call sometime. And me, too. I—” a long beep ended the message before Grace’s mom had a chance to finish. Her mom had been leaving lots of messages lately, which probably meant she was between boyfriends.

“Message two, 9:02 a.m.”

“This is Becca Reynolds. I got married again last week and I need you…”

“Delete,” Grace said before listening to the rest of Becca’s message. The woman was one of Grace’s regular clients, but she never paid her on time and actually, she still owed for the last job. Tracking down a missing husband who had been trying to get away from the controlling bitch.

The apartment wasn’t much, but it was a giant step up from the one-room place Sam had remembered. This one had a bedroom large enough for a twin bed and wardrobe, a bathroom with a mostly working shower, and a kitchenette with a zapper, small refrigerator/freezer, and small stove/oven. There were even a few cabinets to put dry food and dishes.

The nicest thing about the apartment was the living room. The large space was neatly divided into a living section and an office section by a convertible sofa. A small holoset hung from the wall, though its 3-D feature was currently broken.

It would be a nice place if Grace spent any money on new furnishings, but she never took chances with her money. Her business left her with few guarantees, including next month’s rent.

Grace sat at her desk and activated her console by saying its name, “Sam.”

“What can I do for you today?” the high, almost birdlike voice, not at all reminiscent of the real Sam, intoned.

She paused, her mind going back to that morning, when she had seen the real Sam for the first time in so long. Put it in the past where it belongs; where it’s been for sixty years. It wasn’t like she was in love with him anymore. She wasn’t even sure she believed in love. Didn’t love, by definition, last forever? Neither her mother nor her sister had ever managed to make a relationship last for more than a few years.

“Begin net search. Name: Jordan Lacklin. Date of birth: December 10, 1968. Last known address... hang on...” Grace retrieved the information from her portable. “1212 Printer Street; Overland Park, Kansas. Save results to my password and voice print.”

“Working,” intoned the voice trapped in the console.

Grace took the opportunity to get herself a late lunch while the console worked. Actually–she sub-vocalized, “Time”–it would be more of an early dinner. She shoved the nutri-bars she had purchased into the cupboards and pulled out the wonderful looking steak.

She put it on a zapper plate, but somehow that didn’t look right to her. “Sam,” Grace called. “How do you cook a steak?”

“Working,” Sam said. “Found two million matching results.”

“Never mind,” Grace said. “I’ll just put it in the oven for a while.”

While she waited, Grace unpacked her bag. She spent a long time studying the audio diary she had been given, wondering if she should listen to it now–wondering what it would tell her about the man who had started it all. After a long, lingering look, she decided to save it for later. She put it in a safe hidden under a floorboard in her bedroom.

A loud bang from next door almost made Grace go for her disruptor, but the subsequent high-pitched screech told her it was just her neighbors, still fighting. They seemed to be going for an all-time record if they were still at it. And she didn’t like the sound of that bang–had they upped the stakes? Usually it was just the yelling.

A mouth-watering smell from the kitchen prompted Grace to check the steak. It was brown, so she decided it was done. She turned off the oven and put the steak on a plate.

Another bang, farther away than the earlier noise, rang through the apartment. It sounded like it was coming from the stairwell.

This time, Grace did pull out her disruptor.

“Sam,” Grace said. “Pause search. Save results and shut down.”

“Good bye!” the computer chirped.

There were footsteps in the hallway. Wild scenes ran through Grace’s mind. It was The Establishment. They’d figured out what she was up to and had come to kill her–or torture her for more information. But then, why would they need her for information when there was obviously a snitch in Matt’s circle of confidantes? No, they would just kill her. Maybe it would be quick.

Loud pounding on the door. Grace’s fingers tightened on the disruptor, which felt slick in her sweaty palm.

“Open up! Police!”

Grace’s heart tried to pound out of her chest. Why would the police come for her? They had been leaving one another alone for a long time now. As she stood there, indecisive, she remembered the last thing her old captain had said to her when she left the force: “If we ever cross paths again, I will have to kill you.”