Five

I take the bus to the lot where I park my car. I only drive it when I go to visit Lizzy. I try to go to see her at least a few times a month, but I don’t get to see her as much as I’d like.

The drive to the facility takes nearly two hours. I’d keep her closer, but then again, it’s a risk.

I park in the visitor lot and head to the front desk to sign in.

“We haven’t seen you in a while, Quinn,” the nurse at the front desk says. They know me by my alias here as well.

“Work, you know?” I say with an easy smile. She smiles back, a dimple in her left cheek. She’s cute and young, wearing scrubs with cartoon characters on them, her short brown hair brushed back in a ponytail. She won’t last long here. This place will chew her up and spit her out like a piece of gum that loses its flavor too quickly.

“How is she doing today?” I ask as she leads me down the hall.

“We’re having a good day,” the nurse chirps, her smile a little too forced. “You picked a good time to come, she’s just had her lunch. It was chocolate pudding day.” That makes me smile. Lizzy loves chocolate.

The nurse, whose name is Jaime, opens the door of Lizzy’s room and announces that she has a visitor.

I walk in and she turns around, her face angry at first, as if we’re disturbing her. She sits on the bed with the television on some loud cartoon. But as soon as she sees my face, she’s up off the bed and throwing herself at me.

“Brother!” she says in my ear as she hugs me.

“Sister,” I say as I hug her back as Jaime backs out of the room and shuts the door.

Lizzy lets go of me, but takes my hand and drags me toward her bed. I sit down next to her and she grins up at me.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to come,” I say as she burrows into my chest and I put my arm around her.

“It’s okay. I knew you would come. You always come.” She sighs and I stroke her hair.

“So, what have you been up to? Getting into all kinds of trouble?” She giggles and shakes her head.

“Noooo.” She starts talking about the play she and the other residents are putting on and asks me to help her learn her lines.

“I have to practice a lot,” she says, her wide eyes serious. Even though we’re siblings, we look almost nothing alike. She’s six years my junior, but in a lot of ways, I feel as if I’m her parent.

Lizzy is blonde and small and has the biggest blue eyes I’ve ever seen. When you look into them, what shines back is pure innocence. She’s one of the only people in the world who knows me. The real me.

Lizzy gets the script for the play and proceeds to deliver her lines with dramatic flair. She’s definitely a natural, and I can’t help but laugh as she walks about the room, reciting every word to perfection.

“You don’t need to practice, Lizzy Bizzy. You’re perfect,” I say when we’re done and she takes a bow. I clap for her and she jumps back on the bed.

“Really?” she asks.

“Really,” I say, kissing her forehead.

I hang out with Lizzy for a few hours. She tells me she has a boyfriend, but won’t give me his name. I tease her and tickle her feet and it’s just like it should be. When my mother died, I wanted to take Lizzy to live with me. But I was already deep in my work and couldn’t put her in danger. I should keep her somewhere farther away, but that’s not an option. This is one of the best facilities on the east coast and she loves it here. She has friends and gets exercise and her room is cheerful and full of her art. It’s the best solution that I can manage.

“I miss Momma,” she says as we watch one of her favorite movies.

“I know, Lizzy. I miss her too.” I give her a hug and hold her close.

“Why did Momma die?” she whispers the last word. I know she’s scared of it.

I could tell her it was because of some bad men, but I don’t. I tell her I don’t know.

“Are you sad, Brother?” she says, reaching up and pretending to wipe tears from my eyes. I’ve only cried in front of her once, but she did this then too.

“No, I’m never sad when I’m with you,” I say, smiling and wrinkling my nose. She crosses her eyes at me and then her mind switches to something else.

Eventually she falls asleep, and my phone goes off with an incoming call from Cash. I extricate myself from Lizzy’s arms and head to the bathroom to take the call.

“What have you got?” I ask.

“Why are you whispering?” he says, not answering my question.

“It doesn’t matter. Have you been able to track the phone?” I say in a low voice. I don’t want him to know where I am. I don’t talk about Lizzy to anyone. Not even Cash.

“Fuck me, but no. I’m just going to destroy the fucking thing and hope it doesn’t happen again. We might need to switch to using carrier pigeons for messages. I guess the moral of the story is that we have to be vigilant. Always.” That was bad news. I didn’t like knowing that there was something Cash couldn’t crack. He was completely self-taught, but had a network of other hacker buddies.

“Do you think it’s something you could maybe outsource?” This was a last resort.

“I could. Are you sure you want to do that?” That was a trigger you couldn’t un-pull.

“No. Let’s just hope this is a one-time thing but if it happens again we’ll try that. Listen, I’m in the middle of something so I have to go.” Having one of the nurses walk in right now wouldn’t be the best scenario.

“Sure, sure. Okay, I just wanted to give you heads up. Let me know if anything else happens.” I say I will and hang up. Lizzy is still asleep when I leave the bathroom, so I sit in the recliner next to her bed and wait. I don’t want to leave while she’s asleep. The movie she has on is loud and bright, so I turn it down and change the channel to something quieter.

I go through the events of the previous night, looking for anything I might have missed. Lizzy stirs in her sleep and mutters something.

Perhaps I’m taking on too much with Beaumont. But it’s too late to back out now. The first picture I saw of Saige flits through my mind. I’ve got to do some more research on her. That surveillance Cash set up will come in handy.

Tonight I’ll learn her habits and mold myself into exactly what she wants. Another costume.

But for right now, I’m content to be with Lizzy.

“So she goes to this bar a lot. It’s called Bruce’s. She also has a few friends she sees and then there’s the usual. Coffee shops, bookstore, that sort of thing. Nothing out of the ordinary,” Cash says later that night when I ask him to compile the data he’s gotten from Saige’s phone.

“What about outside the city?”

“Just the beach a few times. Pretty boring. Shouldn’t be much of a challenge.”

“And her friends?”

“I’ll send you their information as well. Most are in her echelon, except for one or two. She’s quite popular it seems.” That figures.

“Thanks, Cash.” I have some work ahead of me tonight. We hang up and I go to my computer to see what Cash added in regard to Saige’s friends. They are all daughters of her father’s friends, with the exception of Lauren “Lo” Hobbes. It’s unclear how the two of them met, but Saige visits her apartment, which wasn’t far from mine, quite frequently. I might want to put a trace on Lo’s phone as well.

She likes to frequent the bar on the weekend, which will be my first chance to make contact.

I go to bed early and Leo comes to snuggle against my chest. Inevitably my thoughts turn to my family. I usually feel a sense of guilt after I leave Lizzy and today is no exception. I’m the only one she has to care for her since I cut ties with all of my family years ago. Partly to keep them safe and partly because I didn’t need them in my life. My father’s family was more resistant, but over time they stopped trying to contact me. And since I live under an alias, my real name is nearly impossible to find anyway.