The Hunt

by Jennifer Sturman

  “That’s a pretty big if,” I said, and it was, but inwardly I was trying to figure out why Peter would want to play matchmaker in this particular situation.

  What kind of man cares enough about the woman who broke up with him-after fifteen years, no less-to set her up with someone else? Either Peter really was too good to be true, or he was so in denial about what a perfect couple he and Caro made that he’d gotten himself completely turned around mentally and was trying to sidestep the obvious by fixing her up with Alex. The poor guy had definitely been spending too much time with me: it was exactly the sort of convoluted combination of suppressing certain emotions while misdirecting others into self-defeating action for which I was famous among my friends.

  “Caro hasn’t really dated anyone since we-I mean, since she broke up with me. And she and Alex seem to have a lot in common,” Peter was saying. “They’ve known each other for a long time, but maybe it just hasn’t occurred to either of them to think of each other in a relationship sort of way. I thought that maybe if I gave them a little push, something might take.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said noncommittally. Of course, if I had even half of a functioning brain, I should have been urging him on. Surely Caro would be less of a threat if she was safely involved with someone else, regardless of whether that someone else was potentially a kidnapper? But even if Alex was innocent, and even if he and Caro did get together, I knew it would only be a temporary fix.

  One day, and probably sooner rather than later given the pace at which “adventures” seemed to pile up in my wake, Peter would remember how normal his life was with Caro and realize that was the sort of life he was meant to live.

  By the time we let ourselves in through the Forrests’ front door it was after one. I was hoping Peter’s parents would be asleep rather than awake and wondering why their son’s idiosyncratic fiancée was dragging him around the city with her colorful friends until all hours, but my hopes were only half-met. Susan was in bed but Charles was still up, reading in the den as jazz played in the background and Spot dozed at his feet. However, neither Charles nor Spot appeared even mildly curious as to where we’d been since dinner. Charles glanced up only briefly enough to wish us a good night before returning to his book. Spot glanced up equally briefly, thumped his tail once and went back to sleep.

  Upstairs, I handed Peter the pen with the memory stick we’d retrieved from the safe, and he booted up his laptop while I went into the bathroom to do my own bedtime routine. The bright light over the sink only emphasized my pallor and lack of muscle tone, reminding me that another reason it would be convenient for Alex Cutler to drive up in a Lamborghini tomorrow and confess was that I would then be able to skip the tennis game. I flexed my biceps in the mirror, but I saw nothing remotely resembling definition, so I finished brushing my teeth and returned to the bedroom.

  Peter was seated at the desk with his laptop open before him, typing as rapidly as was possible using only his index fingers and occasionally a pinkie. For reasons I’d never understood, he’d always resisted learning how to type. His old textbooks and childhood mementos still filled the shelves above the desk, including a framed picture of his high-school cross-country team along with their female counterparts. I’d glanced at it quickly before, but now I didn’t want to know which of the coltlike girls, each bathed in the sort of rosy, endorphin-fueled glow that only a ten-mile romp across rugged terrain can deliver, was Ashley.

  “Any luck?” I asked.

  “I’m getting there,” he said distractedly. “Give me a few more minutes.”

  “Okay,” I said, opening the closet door to put my jacket away. Then I recoiled in horror.

  I’d managed to forget completely about the afternoon’s shopping expedition, and I hadn’t thought to prepare myself for the sight before me now. The pink dress was hanging in the closet, clashing with my other clothes almost as badly as it clashed with my hair, and the matching pink shoes were lined up neatly on the floor underneath.

  Then I noticed something else. Maybe Susan had been confident I’d want to keep the dress forever, or maybe she’d already guessed at my plans for my new ensemble and wanted to nip them in the bud. Either way, she’d taken it upon herself to remove the tags. I stared at the dress, utterly foiled. What could I possibly do with it now? Auction it off on eBay? With my luck, Susan would bid on it for herself so we could have matching outfits.

  “Here we go,” said Peter, just in time to stop me from descending a loop further down the spiral of doom.

  “You got it?”

  “Yep,” he said with satisfaction.

  Well, at least something had gone right this evening. I let the dress swing back in line with the other hangers and crossed over to the desk, carefully averting my gaze from the cross-country team photo and bending to look at the screen.

  In an open window was what appeared to be the text of an e-mail sent to Hilary. The date was from Friday, but the sender’s e-mail address was blank.

  “It was encrypted with a fairly common program you can download free off the Internet,” Peter told me. “You need a password to run the decryption function, so I tried Dylan’s zip code again, and it worked.”

  “You’re very talented,” I said.

  “You’re easily impressed,” he said, pulling me down onto his lap for a better view of the screen. “I still couldn’t figure out how to unblock the sender’s address, and I don’t know if this tells us much otherwise. But what do you think?”

  I read the text. It was short and simple, and it probably would have made perfect sense to Hilary. I found it a bit less enlightening.

  Monday night. Same time, same place. I’m promising you the story of the century. Take the precautions we discussed.

  P.S. This e-mail will self-encrypt when you close it.

  That was it. Or almost it.

  At the bottom of the e-mail the sender had included a quote. And I might not have had Luisa’s extensive grounding in political history, but I recognized it anyhow.

  Workers of the world unite.

  Perhaps I’d been a bit hasty in concluding that Hilary and my Marxist Santa Claus had nothing to do with each other.

  18

  It was only a few minutes after seven when I opened my eyes, but I was alone when I did, which didn’t surprise me. I’d never been the sort of person who leaped out of bed in the morning. In fact, I was more the sort of person who swatted blindly at the snooze button with one hand while the rest of me slept on, relishing the happy warmth and comfort under the covers. Peter, on the other hand, woke before the alarm had a chance to go off, literally bounding out of bed and into his day. Caro probably did, too, I thought, grumpy.

  I was feeling extra sluggish this morning, undoubtedly as a result of the combined effects of caffeine deprivation and whatever was the opposite of a runner’s high. I rolled over a few times, giving my body the opportunity to sink back into sleep, but nothing happened, so I slowly propelled myself into a sitting position and just as slowly into a standing one. Then I extended a foot in the direction of the bathroom.

  At which point I fell over.

  I lay on the floor like a defective Weeble, cursing Richard Simmons, Jane Fonda, and everybody else who could be blamed for making it seem as if fitness should be a goal for anyone but elite athletes. Peter had said yesterday’s run would be “fun,” but not only was it not fun, the muscles in my legs were now so tight they couldn’t do the flexing they needed to do to walk. I was descended from a long line of wise, if pale, people who fastidiously avoided breaking a sweat, along with eating any vegetable that didn’t come out of a can, and most of them had lived well past the average life expectancy. It seemed as if we could all benefit from emulating their habits. There might even be a best-selling lifestyle manual in it.

  I spent a few more minutes on the floor, fantasizing about my new life as a best-selling author of lifestyle manuals while trying to knead the stiffness from my calves. Then I dragged myself up into a standing po
sition again and attempted forward movement. The massage had helped a bit, and if I walked only on my toes, taking mincing baby steps, I was marginally mobile.

  The Forrests weren’t the kind of family that expected everyone to be fully dressed at all times, so I minced down the stairs in my robe and pajamas, which were actually an ancient pair of Peter’s pajamas I’d snagged from one of his dresser drawers. There was something cozy about their well-worn oversizedness, and I made a mental note to snag the remaining pairs to take back with me to New York. For all I knew, this trip would be my last chance to raid his adolescent wardrobe and I should make the most of it.

  Peter and his parents were sitting in the breakfast room, looking chipper and with plates of traditional breakfast-type food in front of them, just like in a television commercial. I hadn’t realized real people ever ate breakfasts like this on a weekday.

  “Is everything okay?” asked Peter after I’d safely lowered my body onto a chair. “We heard a crash. I was about to go up and check on you.”

  “I-I just dropped something.” That something was myself, but there was no need for them to know that.

  “Rachel, dear, would you like a soda?” asked Susan, proud to have remembered my preferred morning beverage. She probably found mine such a strange choice that remembering it wasn’t much of a challenge.

  I wanted a soda so desperately I could chew off my own arm, but I managed to smile and shake my head. “I’ll just have some herbal tea again, thank you.”

  Not only did Peter’s family eat breakfast as if they were in a commercial, they made conversation in the morning as if they didn’t feel it was necessary to be fully caffeinated before diving into personal interactions. At least, Peter and Susan made conversation while Charles read the paper. Peter told her about our changed itinerary and the planned field trip to Silicon Valley, although he fibbed and said it was because he wanted to show me around Stanford.

  “And we’re going to meet up with Caro and Alex Cutler for tennis,” he added, neglecting to mention that Alex Cutler was most probably a criminal. He was still operating in innocent-until-proven-guilty mode on that front, which only validated my theory that he was exceptionally skilled at deluding himself about his personal relationships. “They both work near Palo Alto and said they could get away for a lunchtime game.”

  “That will be fun,” said Susan with enthusiasm, but experience was teaching me that anything a Forrest thought would be fun was likely to be painful and potentially dangerous. She turned to me. “Be careful, dear. Caro has a killer serve. And her backhand is deadly, too.”

  “Good to know,” I said, hoping even more intensely we would be able to unmask Alex Cutler as an evildoer before Caro could kill me with either her serve or her backhand. Neither seemed a particularly appealing way to die.

  “Is Alex a good player, Peter?” asked Susan.

  “I think so. I’ve never played with him before, but he said he plays a lot.” He took a sip of coffee. “I have to admit, I’m hoping it will be good for Alex and Caro to spend some more time together. Maybe they’ll hit it off.”

  “Hit it off? You mean romantically?” asked Susan.

  Peter nodded. “Sure.”

  “Hmm,” said Susan, taking a sip of her own coffee. “I don’t know if I see them together, honey. Do you see them together, Rachel?”

  Yet again, she’d caught me with my mouth full. All I could do was give a noncommittal murmur, though that’s all I would have produced even if my mouth had been empty.

  “I just don’t know if I see them together,” she repeated.

  “It can’t hurt to try, can it?” asked Peter.

  “Of course not,” she said, but she sounded doubtful.

  I thought I knew why she sounded that way, and it wasn’t because she suspected Alex of abducting my friend. How could she possibly see Caro with Alex when she still hoped Caro would end up with her own normal son?

  Peter and I managed to get ourselves washed and dressed and into a hybrid by half past eight. Fighting traffic across the city was almost as difficult as it had been to fight off Susan’s offers of juice, cereal, toast, English muffins, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, poached eggs and sausage, but it was less stressful because it wasn’t necessary to be polite to the traffic. Of course, Peter being Peter, he was polite anyway. Except he couldn’t stop humming.

  “What are you humming?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. Whatever my dad had on the stereo last night. I can’t get it out of my head.”

  We made a pathetic pair: I still had “Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat,” playing on in an endless mental loop and Peter was humming jazz. Caro probably loved jazz, I thought-all normal people did. To me it was the musical equivalent of Camilla Gergen’s voice but less pleasant. And neither Peter’s humming nor Rice-a-Roni were doing much for my mental state. My crankiness had not abated since yesterday; if anything, it was gathering force, and it didn’t help that to my various withdrawal and fitness-induced woes was added a fierce craving for pilaf.

  It took more than half an hour to get from Pacific Heights to the hotel, a drive that had taken less than fifteen minutes when we’d made it in the opposite direction at one that morning. Gustav and Ray were gone, replaced by the day-shift staff, but Luisa and Abigail were waiting for us.

  “Where’s Ben?” I asked as they slid into the backseat.

  “Do I look like Ben’s keeper?” snapped Luisa, quickly putting to rest any hopes that her mood had improved overnight. At least I could be confident she was keeping up her end of the dare. This was the only reason I refrained from remarking on Abigail’s clothes, which were different than what she’d been wearing the previous night but also looked suspiciously like an outfit I’d recently seen on Luisa.

  “Ben said he had a few things he wanted to follow up on here in the city,” supplied Abigail before embarking on a detailed discussion with Peter of which route to take. Apparently the 101 was more direct but the 280 more scenic.

  My brain was still working too slowly to wonder what, exactly, Ben was following up on or if it was related in any way to what he’d been doing while Luisa and Abigail had been dining à deux the previous evening. Nor did I pay attention to the route Peter ultimately decided upon, as I never paid attention to directions when I wasn’t driving. Whichever highway we ended up on was choked with cars in both directions, including an astonishing number of hybrids. I’d seen a handful of them in Manhattan, and even a few hybrid taxis, but here we were surrounded.

  As we meandered south in stop-and-go traffic, Peter and I filled in Luisa and Abigail on the text of the file he’d decrypted, showing them a printout of the e-mail, and together we discussed the ways in which the various dots might connect.

  “Let me make sure I understand,” said Luisa in a way that really suggested she was having difficulty understanding how she’d found herself involved in this whole mess in the first place. “To start with, there’s Marxist Santa, who’s trying to throw a wrench into the Igobe IPO by leading all of the investment bankers who might handle the IPO on a scavenger hunt.”

  “It’s not the most direct way to go about things, but I can’t figure out why else he’d be targeting the people he’s been targeting,” I said.

  “And we’re sure that Marxist Santa has inside access to Igobe?” asked Abigail.

  “How else would he know which bankers to target?” I said.

  “And then there’s the hacker, Petite Fleur, who also wants to bring Igobe down by compromising its technology,” said Peter.

  “So Petite Fleur is second. And then there’s the third person we know Hilary’s met with at least once, presumably about her Igobe article, and who also has a soft spot for Karl Marx,” Luisa said.

  “Which suggests that the third person from Hilary’s e-mail could be the same as the first person, Marxist Santa,” I concluded. “And maybe Marxist Santa knows what Petite Fleur is up to, and that’s what he’s promising Hilary will be the ‘story of the centur
y.’ Or maybe Marxist Santa and Petite Fleur are one and the same.”

  “Obviously,” said Luisa dryly. I had to admit, I was pretty confused myself.

  “Is it possible that this person-or persons-kidnapped Hilary?” asked Abigail.

  I thought about that. “I guess it’s not impossible, but Hilary’s on his side. Or their side.”

  “And which side is that?” asked Luisa.

  “The side that’s standing in the way of the people who would benefit from an Igobe IPO. Namely, Iggie and Alex Cutler,” I said, trying to sound less confused than I felt.

  “It would be good to know when and where ‘same time’ and ‘same place’ are supposed to be,” mused Abigail. “Did Hilary tell any of you where she’d been in the days leading up to the party?”

  She might have, I thought guiltily, but I’d been so wrapped up in proving my normality I hadn’t paid much attention.

  “I only remember her mentioning she’d been doing research,” said Luisa. “I don’t think she told me where, and I didn’t ask.”

  “Ben might know,” suggested Peter.

  Ben hadn’t seemed to know much of anything thus far, but maybe he’d come through on this. “We should call him. Do you know if he’s still at the hotel-” I started to ask.

  But then I had another idea, and it was nothing short of brilliant. “I think I may be a genius.”

  “Rachel, you are many things, but you are not a genius,” said Luisa.

  I chalked this up to nicotine withdrawal and let it go. “Hilary left a pile of receipts in her room. Maybe one of the receipts is from where she met the person from the e-mail.”

  “So we could put together where Hilary was and when she was there from the receipts?” asked Peter.

  “Exactly. Then we can meet up at the same time and same place with the person who sent the e-mail, and he might be able to help us locate Hilary. And maybe we can also find out if he is, in fact, Marxist Santa and what he thinks the story of the century is.”