Time and Trouble Read Online Free

hide in Arizona. Its sky was too open and wide, its landscape too rugged.
    Emma shook her head. In admiration, Billie hoped — if not for brains or technique, then for tenacity.
    “ I hired a detective. I could afford two hours of his time, max. But he had access to a reverse phone directory, and I got Cameron ’ s address. He was calling himself Jay Cameron. I visited every day care, preschool, and nursery school around his area. Said I was moving there and needed to find a place for my little boy.
    “ None of them had a Smith, a Jesse, a last-name Cameron. But one had a little boy with dyed black hair and his name was Mack — short, he told me he was supposed to say, for Mackenzie, last name, Dougal. ” She shrugged. “ So I took him home. ” She put her hands up and out, signifying that was the end of the tale, although for her, the story never stopped, and almost a year later, every time she picked her son up from day care, or found him safe at home with the sitter it felt like a fresh victory. Cameron had disappeared again before the police reached his apartment.
    Her euphoria was always short-lived, including now, followed by the bleak heaviness of what a burden the happy unending represented. Finding her son. Keeping her son. Finding a way to keep her son. This job.
    With that, Billie ’ s cards were on the table and she had nothing left to play.
    The chiseled face across from her had no expression.
    Game over.
    Billie tried to control disappointment so fierce she could taste it. Life would go on, she reminded herself, even if not as hoped for. She ’ d find something else. With less allure, maybe, no challenge except not falling asleep on the job, but she would not let herself be defeated.
    It nonetheless hurt.
    “ Pretty creative of you. ” Emma nodded agreement with her own words. “ But there are easier ways. Like finding out where the aunt ’ s social-security checks were being sent. Her social-security number — the place she ’ d retired from would have it on record. ”
    “ I didn ’ t know how to get it, though. ”
    “ You will. ” Emma ’ s voice was flat and matter-of-fact.
    It took a while for the words and their meaning to make it across the cluttered desk, then Billie, who had been trying hard to control all emotions, gave up the effort. “ Really? ” she said, sounding so incredulous that she was sure she ’ d queered the whole thing. “ I have the job? ”
    Emma raised her eyebrows. “ Long as you realize that it is not very dramatic most of the time. Doesn ’ t generally have a payoff like yours. Most of the time you ’ re stuck with the calling-every-Lutheran-Evangelical-church-in-the-country part, but it ’ s for a lawyer who ’ ll take the information and never tell you what he does with it. ”
    “ I understand. ”
    “ Good, ” Emma said. “ Except …”
    “ Yes? ”
    “ I think you say that to me, and you even mean it. You have a grip on reality. But somewhere in the back of your brain, a little voice is saying, ‘ Oh, but sometimes it must get involved and tricky like in the movies. ’”
    Billie looked down at her hands.
    “ Be honest. If we ’ re going to be in this together, we have to learn to be honest with one another. You ’ re thinking, ‘ Sometimes it must be your brain against another brain and it must get scary and set the adrenaline running till you can ’ t believe you ’ re involved in the whole thing. Sometimes. ’ Am I right? ”
    “ Well … yes. You are. ”
    Emma smiled. “ Damn right I am. And damn right it does. Sometimes. Just barely often enough. Just like in the movies. ”

Three
    Today I am Gwyneth, the girl thought. Or I can try to be.
    She put her backpack on the damp earth as a cushion, then leaned against the rough comfort of a rock face as she considered how to get out of her life. Five days from turning eighteen and she felt frayed and used.
    On the meadow in front of her, weekend lords and ladies replayed the Middle