The officer’s tablet pinged.
“You’re in luck,” the officer said brightly. “They’ve sent me a clip from the security footage.” All three crowded around the officer, staring at her tablet screen. She skipped quickly through the shots, stopping abruptly when Jimmy cried, “There!”
It was unmistakably Jenna, leaving the restaurant by herself. At first the security camera only had shots of the back of her head, but it was the same clothing, the same hair, the same way Jenna moved. She went straight to a taxi that was idling at the curb and opened the door. Just before she climbed in, she turned back toward the restaurant, her face directly toward the camera.
Lilah gasped. The officer froze the shot, and Jimmy stared at Jenna’s eyes. They were haunted. Like she had seen something horrific. Like she was terrified. Like she was desperate.
“Is that your wife?” the officer asked him, her tone sympathetic.
“Yes,” Jimmy croaked. What had happened to her in the few minutes after she had left them? She hadn’t looked like that when she left the table.
“It looks like she decided that she needed a break for some reason,” the officer said kindly, as she closed the security clip. “I’m sure you’ll see her very soon.”
“But did you see her face?” Jimmy protested. “She looked terrified!”
The officer was silent for just a heartbeat as she tapped another note onto her tablet. When she spoke again, her voice was tinged with pity.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Forrest, but your wife left the restaurant of her own free will. She’s a mentally sound adult. You’ll just have to wait for her to come home.”
●●●
Ten minutes later, Jimmy sat silently at the window, not even seeing the lights of Omphalos. Lilah was in the bathroom. Both of them had protested one last time to the officer that something had to be wrong with Jenna when she left. The officer had agreed, but she had pointed out that it didn’t mean that the Omphalos law enforcement needed to be involved.
“People leave all the time, and they always have their reasons,” she finally said. “We are not in the business of forcing people to do things against their will, even if their families wish otherwise.”
It was obvious the police were not going to be any help. Yet Jimmy couldn’t believe that Jenna had just gotten so overwhelmed that she’d walked out on him. Something had spooked her; something had convinced her that she needed to leave the restaurant without even coming back to the table. What?
He looked at his flipcom and the contact he had open on the screen. If there was the slightest chance that Jenna had just been so angry she’d decided to spend a few hours away cooling down, then he didn’t want to send this comm. However, she hadn’t looked angry in the security footage. She’d looked terrified.
He sent the high-priority comm.
When Lilah came out of the bathroom, her mouth was set and her shoulders were squared. She strode across the room and sat in the chair next to Jimmy.
“So what has been going on between you and Jenna lately, Jimmy? Is your marriage in trouble and you’ve both been keeping it a secret from me? Even if she was irritated enough at me to storm out, she never would have left you. Not the Jenna I knew,” Lilah stated grimly.
“No,” Jimmy answered honestly. “Everything was fine.” As soon as the words left his mouth he wondered. He had been perfectly happy in his marriage, but was it possible that Jenna wasn’t? Would she have hidden that from him?
The doubt lasted only for a second. Only the night before she had snuggled close to him and whispered more than once how much she loved him. They spent every free moment they could together. When she was unhappy with him—and it did happen, he wasn’t perfect—they were always able to talk it out.
Lilah eyed him skeptically. Clearly she had her doubts, but that was because she saw Jenna only occasionally. Jimmy knew that they had a strong marriage. It was one of the truths he could bet on.
His flipcom buzzed, and Jimmy looked at the screen. Taking a deep breath, he answered.
It was Jenna’s father.
“What’s happened?” he demanded without preamble. He was wearing his uniform; clearly Jimmy’s comm had reached him while he was on duty. “What is the emergency?”
“Jenna’s missing,” Jimmy explained, his voice dry.
There was complete silence on the other end of the comm. Then the admiral said gruffly, “Did you comm Marian as well?”
“No,” Jimmy said emphatically. “I didn’t want to alarm her yet. I thought it was better if you told her. If there was anything to tell.”
“Tell me what happened.” The admiral’s tone was businesslike, yet Jimmy could hear just the faintest weariness. Now he had two missing daughters. Jimmy sketched out what had happened the best he could. “Omphalos police refuse to do anything to find her,” he finished, with a grimace. “Apparently since she’s an adult and it looks like she left because she wanted to, she’s not considered a missing person.”
There was silence for a long moment while the admiral processed Jimmy’s story.
“How long has she been gone?” he finally asked. Jimmy checked the time. “About three hours now.” It was getting late in Omphalos. If Jenna had truly gone off for some time to cool down, she would have come home by now.
“Did she have any money with her?”
“Some,” Jimmy answered, “though I doubt she was carrying enough to get a new hotel room. Enough for a taxi.”
“The taxi is our lead,” the admiral decided. “I’ll start there. The records should tell us where she went.” Jimmy refrained from pointing out that to pull taxi records would require warrants the admiral wasn’t likely to get. The admiral had contacts; if anyone was likely to get otherwise unavailable information, it would be him.
“In the meantime, get some sleep, Jimmy,” the admiral ordered. “There’s nothing more you can do tonight, and you are going to need all your strength over the next few days. Thrice-blasted curse,” he finished, mostly to himself.
Jimmy said goodbye and clicked off the flipcom, turning to look at Lilah. She shrugged. “He’s right. There’s not much you can do except sleep tonight, if you can. But I’d sleep with your flipcom. Just in case.”
7. Dead Ends
In the morning the first thing Jimmy did was grab his flipcom and stare at it with bleary eyes, willing it to deliver him a message from his wife. However, it was devoid of any new comms at all, including anything from Jenna’s father. He grimaced and chucked his flipcom on the bed, staring at the empty side where Jenna should have been lying, her body curled next to his and her face buried in her pillow.
He hadn’t slept well last night. It wasn’t really a surprise. The bed had felt enormous and empty without her. For a minute he’d considered ordering a melatonin shot from the hotel dispenser, but in the end he’d been afraid of sleeping through a comm.
Where was she? Was she all right? Where had she spent the night? Had she slept at all?
Lilah had gone back to her apartment last night. She had to get some sleep before heading in to work, but she’d promised to comm him immediately if she heard from Jenna. She also planned to ask her vast acquaintance at the QE to keep an eye out for Jenna. It was unlikely that the QE crowd would know anything, but Lilah had already started a feed labeled “Find Jenna!” and she was sending it to everyone. There would be a lot of eyes looking for her, and Jenna was strikingly beautiful. She stood out in a crowd.
After throwing on some clothes, he contacted the hotel desk and extended his reservation of the room. He thought with a pang about their trip to Seven Falls. They should have been heading out in just a few hours to get away from it all together, seeing one of the most amazing wonders on the whole planet. With a sigh he grabbed his flipcom and canceled their cabin reservation. It would have to wait.
After grabbing a quick breakfast sandwich from t
he hotel cafe, he decided to comm Kinsey, Jenna’s assistant. There was a slight chance Jenna had contacted her, even if she had left her flipcom behind. He couldn’t think of anything else to try.
“Hey, Mr. Forrest!” Kinsey greeted brightly. “What can I do for you this morning?”
“Have you heard from Jenna?” he asked hopefully.
“Not since the bid proposal yesterday morning,” Kinsey said. “She was going to contact me when she heard back, but we didn’t expect to have an answer for a couple of days.” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously, her hologram blurring for just a moment. “Weren’t you supposed to be going to Seven Falls today? What happened to the getaway trip?”
“My wife is missing,” Jimmy explained heavily. How many times had he repeated that phrase now? It tore at his gut each time. “She left our dinner unexpectedly last night, and she never returned.”
Kinsey gasped in horror. “Oh no!”
“I was hoping you’d heard from her.”
“No.” Kinsey bit her lip. “Have you contacted the police?”
“Yes. They can’t do anything, since she’s an adult and there’s no sign of any . . .” Jimmy’s voice trailed off. He couldn’t even face completing that thought. She was fine. She had to be fine.
“What can I do to help?” Kinsey asked briskly. He thought for a moment, wondering what Jenna would need taken care of for work.
“Does she have any projects due right away?” he asked. Kinsey swiveled to the side and pulled up a calendar on her terminal.
“The revisions for the Baker project are due next week. Plus she had condo adaptations she was working on for the East Riverwalk development. I don’t know how far along she is.”
Jimmy rubbed his jaw. It was prickly; he had forgotten to shave that morning.
“Can you handle the Baker revisions yourself?” he asked.
Kinsey’s face fell. “Well, maybe, only if I had Ms. Forrest check everything. I’m not confident enough to do it all on my own.”
Jimmy smothered his disappointment. “Well, then you might have to make excuses to the clients. I hate to do it, but I don’t know what else to do if Jenna doesn’t show up soon.”
“You really think she’s going to be gone a week?” Kinsey asked, her voice trembling.
“I’m sure she won’t,” Jimmy reassured, trying to believe it himself. The alternative was unthinkable.
●●●
He was standing out in front of the Hanging Gardens restaurant when he got the comm from his father-in-law. He’d taken a taxi on a whim, going back to the last place he knew Jenna had been. The restaurant was still closed this early, but the streets were busy, both with pedestrians and with transports. There was nothing that gave the slightest clue what could have happened to Jenna. Nothing sinister about the street. He stared blankly at the passing transports, wondering what had terrified her so much that she climbed into a taxi and left him without even saying goodbye.
At the sight of the admiral’s name on his flipcom, hope immediately flared brightly. He fumbled trying to answer it, nearly sending the flipcom tumbling to the pavement. Finally he held it out, and the hologram of Jenna’s father flared to life.
“Jimmy,” greeted the admiral brusquely.
“Good morning,” Jimmy said politely. Then more eagerly, “Did you find her?”
“No,” the admiral sighed deeply. “My contact got the same copy of the security footage that you saw last night. They found the taxi number off one of the shots. It was an automated taxi drone from the Zipline company. Zipline was willing to cooperate and pulled the service record for the drone, and the service record doesn’t show any stops at all anywhere near the restaurant you were at. It carried a series of fares in the west end district last night, according to the history, on the other side of the city from you.”
“That makes no sense!” Jimmy protested. “Did your contact make a mistake on the taxi number?”
“No, she went back and verified it. That was the taxi number painted on the side. Whether that means the service record had been altered or that it wasn’t really a Zipline taxi but a clever fake, I don’t know.” He sounded exhausted.
Jimmy paused for beat, not sure he wanted to ask his next question. Finally, he decided to plunge in. “Did you tell Marian?” he asked hesitantly.
“Yes,” his father-in-law said. “I think you will hear from her shortly. She’s already booked her flight. I think she’s still trying to decide whether she will stay in Omphalos and help look for Jenna or if she will go on to Tarentino Bay and stay with the grandchildren.”
Oh by all the moons of Visalia, he’d forgotten about the kids. He needed to comm Mrs. Smitz. What was he going to tell the kids? He couldn’t tell them their mother was missing, but he knew that they would go a little crazy if he told them they couldn’t talk to her.
“Jimmy.” The admiral’s voice was grave. “I need to know if you are involved in anything underhanded. I can’t help find my daughter if I don’t know what I’m facing. I believe you when you say she didn’t leave voluntarily, and I’ll agree that on the face of it Jenna would never act that way, but on the vid . . .” He cleared his throat. “There was no one forcing her. She chose to get into the taxi. It does appear that for whatever reason, she decided to walk away without leaving anyone a way to find her.”
Jimmy’s breath caught. Was his own father-in-law suggesting that Jenna would have a reason to leave him? That he was making her life so miserable for one reason or another that she would just walk out of everyone’s lives without a word? Even her own children? How could he believe that? Then he realized that the admiral wanted to believe him. He just needed the reassurance.
“I haven’t done anything to hurt Jenna or our family,” he promised. “Everything was fine. Well, as fine as it could be when she was obsessing constantly about Andie. She was worrying into a shadow of herself. But it didn’t seem to be changing how she felt about me and the kids. She wasn’t depressed, not that I could tell.” He swallowed thickly. Had Jenna been depressed? Had she just hidden it from him? A horrible thought occurred to him. If for some reason Jenna had given in to despair completely, and she wanted to end her life, it would be like her to do it somewhere away from her friends and family so she wouldn’t traumatize anyone.
He was just starting to panic when he realized that even if Jenna had decided to commit suicide, she wouldn’t have gone so far as to hack into a taxi’s programming and enter a fake travel history. His pulse slowed again, though not enough. It wasn’t exactly reassuring to hope that Jenna had been snared by some grand conspiracy either.
“What about your brother?” the admiral asked, his voice businesslike again. “Is he working on something sensitive? Or is this possibly related to the gate again?”
Jimmy thought for a moment. “He’s not working on anything life shattering at the moment. Tinkering mostly. As for the gate, we haven’t had anyone bother us about it in a long time. I had a flurry of offers to buy his gate design a few years back when it became public knowledge what Quintan was doing to transport people between the Quintan Edge and Marah. But when I explained that Quintan-Forrest Enterprises owned all the rights to the gate and we weren’t part of Quintan-Forrest, people lost interest.”
Their conversation died off. Jimmy frantically tried to gather his scattered thoughts. There had to be a way to find her. She couldn’t be lying in a hospital somewhere, or they would have scanned her marriage chip and notified him. He could check their bank account and see if she’d accessed it, though. Otherwise she was going to run out of her emergency cash very quickly.
“Well, Jimmy, don’t give up hope,” the admiral said gruffly. “We’ll find her. I’m going to check with a few more of my contacts and see what I can find out about fake taxis in the city. Let me know as soon as you hear from her.”
Jimmy said goodbye and switched off his flipcom,
realizing that he was still standing in the middle of the busy sidewalk in front of a closed restaurant. There was nothing to find here. But a fake taxi—that implied some measure of forethought. However it had happened, it couldn’t have been just a spur of a moment thing.
He had just pulled out his flipcom to comm another taxi when he received a message from Marian, his mother-in-law. It was short and to the point: I’m arriving in Omphalos tonight. Please meet me at the shuttleport. My itinerary is attached.
Glancing through her itinerary, he learned that she had decided to go on to Tarentino Bay. She would arrive shortly before midnight and turn around and leave on the early shuttle to Tarentino the next morning. That surprised Jimmy. He knew she’d probably assumed that someone would need to stay with the kids if he was here looking for Jenna, but they were already staying with Mrs. Smitz. It’s not as if they’d left them in Jax’s care or something. Mrs. Smitz wasn’t even expecting them to come home for another three days. Normally, he got along great with his mother-in-law, but in this situation, he wasn’t sure he wanted her anywhere near the kids. It might be better if the kids didn’t find out their mother was missing at all, and he didn’t see how that would be possible if their grandmother showed up on the doorstep. She would most likely be a nervous wreck, and she might even start bringing up that stupid curse in front of the kids. They would be terrified.
No need to make an awful situation even worse.
But knowing Marian, there was nothing he could do about it now. When she was determined to do something, she did it.
For a moment he debated heading to the Zipline taxi office personally to see if he could find out more information about the taxi that Jenna had gotten into (surely they were worried about someone messing with the programming of their taxis or putting fake copies of their taxis on the street and stealing their business), but in the end he decided that he wasn’t likely to get any more information than the admiral already had through his contacts. Was there somewhere else he could search for Jenna, though? Did she have other friends in Omphalos, maybe from her university days? Her uncle, Mark, was living and working at the Armada Academy. Would she have gone to him? But if she had, surely Mark would have contacted his brother by now.
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