Nick squinted at the monitor over the shoulder of his nephew’s computer geek friend, Billy.  He hated asking kids how shit worked.  Worse, after he bungled it and nearly wiped out the weeks’ worth of digital breadcrumbs, he’d been forced to bring the kid back in AGAIN.

He hated the smell of the cheese puffs the kid always seemed to be inhaling.  And most hated of all was the dead dull business of sifting through every stop the little import car had made over the course of a week.  He ran his hands down his face… these little GPS tracking boxes were ingenious, but getting the data out of them had been one headache after another.

“ … If it won’t download, you have to unplug the box and plug it back in again.”

Damn… the kid’s talking again.  Why can I not focus on what he’s saying?  To Billy, he nodded.

“Ok, I got that part.  But as long as I got you here, show me again how to load the data in?” Nick said, feeling suddenly tired, knowing his night was only just beginning.

“Then when you download the log data, you feed it into your route mapping software, here. This should put together a full view of the trip data.  So, you never said, who is it we’re following?” the kid asked, his lips an orange mess and grinning with the thrill of whatever geek types feel thrilled about when it’s their turn to flex muscle.

Nick gave him a sour look.  “That’s classified, kid.  As for the rest of this, I think I got it from here now.”  He held out a one hundred dollar bill.

When the kid reached for it, Nick momentarily twitched it out of his reach.  

“Remember the deal! Answer the phone if I call, in case I need you.” He gave the kid a stern look.

“Sure, Mr. Callari. I’m a professional.”  The obvious pride on the kids face was nearly comical. Yet, Nick managed to stuff down the impending outburst of laughter.

Holy shit, give the kid a Benjamin and suddenly he’s a black ops spy.  Maybe I should call him ‘Billy the Kid’.

He very nearly did laugh out loud, but managed to turn it into a grimace instead.  “Yeah, sure you are.  Thanks for coming over on short notice.  Now split, I got stuff to do.”  

With Billy gone, Nick grabbed a beer out of the bullet proof antique GE fridge in the corner of his office. He saluted the front of the fridge, one of his prized possessions that used to belong to his old man, before popping the top off.

He sat before the glow of the monitor, playing with the mouse as he rolled forward the car’s trip data.  Many of the addresses he’d already looked up before.  He was getting pretty familiar with Janice’s regular stops. Not at any of the buildings was there any sign of Heather. He watched her car’s ghost pull into her office.  Then one shit hole building after another.  Then downtown to court.  Gas station.  A convenience store on North 91st st.  The week ran by.  He noticed how she often stopped in around the corner from a bar he now knew she frequented. He wrote down a few addresses he didn’t either know by heart or from prior weeks.

This girl goes everywhere! It’s like the whole city is her route.

Just as he saw that he was getting to the end of the log, he emptied his second beer, chucked the rest of his cold French fries which had now reverted to their true form as a potato version of cardboard. With a stretch and a yawn, he prepared to call it a night.

Hell, one more week of this crap.  I guess my instincts are all wrong. I’ll just never find her.

He got up, scratching himself and wondering if he should even bother to run down the few new stops he’d seen, when sudden movement in the map program caught his attention.  The city was slowly scrolling and sliding down the screen, and as he watched with head tilted, little patches of green began displacing the endless grid of streets on the top part of the screen.  He picked up his cell and dialed.

“Billy,” he said when the phone finally connected.

“Mr. Callari?…” the sleepy sound of the kid’s voice sounded across the airwaves.

Shit… school night.  “I know it’s late.  But, what do I do if the data just starts to go haywire? This can’t be right.  The tracks are going right off the map.”

“Well… maybe it’s not wrong.  Maybe it’s right.”

“How can I tell?”

“Try this… hover your mouse over one of the dots.  What’s it say?”

“Coordinates, a bunch of numbers with a comma between them.  Then… it looks like a date.  Sunday, so two days ago.  And 58.”

“Speed maybe?” the kid asked, still sleepy sounding.

Nick moved his mouse back down the tracks on the screen, jumping from dot to dot.  It followed a major highway north.  

“55… 59… 61…  Yeah, looks like it’s speed.”

“Well, if the data was trashed, it’d probably be a lot of nonsense. It’s following a line and the times are ok?”

Son..of…a… “Yeah.  It sure does look like it.”

“Then the only think I can think is, the data’s good.”

“I guess it is.”  Nick sat back down heavily, watching the car speed north at 10 x playback speed.  On the screen, green had largely displaced grey.  Janice had headed way far out of the city that Sunday at noon, traveling 5 miles over the speed limit.

“Thanks, Billy.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Ca..”   With a click, Nick absently disconnected the line, his now undivided attention on the screen. He kicked back and lit a cigarette, suddenly not so tired anymore as he watched the car leave the highway, and almost appear to float in an area where there was not even a road anymore.  

When the car appeared to just sit there in nowhere land surrounded by a healthy margin of green for a good long time, he stopped the playback, wrote down several road names and the map coordinates on the screen.

On the mapping webpage he called up the shortcut the kid had set up for him the prior week. He punched in the numbers he’d seen on the GPS program, and the satellite picture began to load.  Square after square of forest, forest, and more forest loaded onto the screen.  Finally, he could make out a light brown line, and a few squares that were not natural.  And as he zoomed in, he found a fairly large looking ranch at the end of a forest trail with a good sized yard.  There was no fence around the yard, but the photo was over a year old.  A white bordered green rectangle behind the ranch could only be a badly neglected in-the-ground pool.  Satisfied, Nick pushed back from his desk.

I guess it’s time to fuel up the car. He thought, and began making plans in his head for tomorrow. He wished that he had something that was 4-wheel drive, but then figured that if Janice’s car could get there, then so could his.

Oliver lay with Heather in the morning. For the first time, she slept with him in his own bed. No longer relegated exclusively to the apartments below, he granted her permission to come up for the day, and planned to do so on days when he had no work meetings or research scheduled.  To allow Heather unrestricted access to the house, however, would surely lead to a type and an intensity of distraction that would make doing business all but impossible.  

For today, though, he decided to give himself a well deserved day off.  The covers formed a tousled irregular shape over her body, bits of leg and arm and butt peeking out from under crisp white sheets.  The only thing she was wearing was her collar.  He grinned as he gently brushed the hair away from her sleeping face.

So angelic in sleep.  My angel, he thought as her cheek twitched and she rolled over onto her side, facing him. One of her eyes fluttered open just a bit, and her face broke into a sleepy yawn-grin.

“Hi…” she breathed, then shimmied over to snuggle up against his chest, breathing in his scent deeply as she draped one arm over his waist.

He held her to him and kissed the top of her head. She interposed one of her legs between his and after delivering a wet kiss to his breastbone, proceeded to drift off again.

He was content to lay there for a little while, toying with her hair and running his hands down her back slowly, caressing her gently so as not to wake her up. Feeling her breath evenly, in… out…

She shifted again, pressing against him and rolling almost on top of him. He looked down to find two sweet eyes gazing up at him from under her hair, a shy smile on her lips, as she ground herself up closer to him.  

“Good morning, baby,” he whispered to her.

“Good morning, daddy,” she whispered back, and her breath caught as his hand caressed her back again.

“Hmmmm… is my good girl maybe a little horny this morning?” he asked, teasing.

“Mmm hmmm…” she replied, grinning but looking so shy.

“And how are you doing with that, princess?”

“Quite well,” she giggled under her breath, wiggling up against him.

He reached down to find her outer lips were already wet in anticipation.

“Oh… you are doing pretty well.  I think, we can do better, don’t you?”

“Oo.. Oohh… yes, sir,” she whispered as she felt him rub up against her briefly.

“I have an idea for a little game,” he said with a playful expression as he rubbed around her backside.

“Ok.” She batted her eyes at him. From under his bedside table, he produced several lengths of cotton cord.

“Wrists, please.” He instructed, and she offered them to him.  He bound a rope to each of her wrists as she watched and bit her lip.

“Now, grab your ankles.”  She got a big grin as she complied, pulling her knees towards her chest as she grasped on.  Her eyes were all innocence as he began to wind the ropes around and around her wrist and ankle in looping circles, then cinched by passing the rope in a circle between them, pulling the rope in at the center and forming a strong bond that would not easily be undone. He knotted it off out of her reach, and then he did the other wrist to ankle.  With the second set of ropes, he began at her knee, looping between her knee and her elbow, which had the effect of pulling the girl’s knees up nearly to her chest.  After several turns around he likewise cinched the knot and moved on to do her other leg.

Heather stretched out experimentally, finding herself folded in half and suddenly aware of how the tie exposed her and pulled her butt up in a position for deep penetration.  

Oh I hope he’s going to take full advantage of me! She moaned in nervous expectancy.  She thought that this was the extent of it, but then he pulled two more ropes from under the table.  Carefully he threaded around and tied off to the thick winding of ropes that welded her ankles to her wrists.  Pulling the ropes each in turn over the side of the bed and down, he soon had her legs and arms pulled down to the covers, spreading her widely open.  With a few more adjustments of tension to even things up, she could only grasp her ankles, making little circles with her toes. She waited, watching him, as he pumped a chilly dribble of lube onto her sex from his bottle on the nightstand.

“Oh!” she moaned as he spread it around a little and pressed firmly onto her nub with his thumb, her heat quickly warming the lube to body temperature.

She closed her eyes, waiting… waiting for him to drive her crazy… waiting.  

Finally, she opened one eye, then both, finding him still pressing firmly into her and nothing more.  Her puzzled expression was a counterpoint to the dancing humor in his eyes.

“I wonder, how long will it take for you to get yourself off?” he asked teasingly, looking briefly at the alarm clock on his nightstand. Then he rubbed her once, twice with his thumb, and stopped. Heather got the idea right away.  She began gyrating her hips around, rubbing herself up against his thumb.  It was slow going at first, and when she was able to position it right she was rewarded by wonderful sensations that made her moan in pleasure.

She worked at it, going around and around and around his thumb, then as she got better, right over it, as she flicked herself on him again and again.  She began to shudder and when one leg spasmed with a pre-orgasmic shudder, she lost her position.  With a frustrated groan, she once again positioned her clit up against him for best effect.  

“Oh, baby. You’re rubbing yourself on me.”

“*gasp* Mmmm hmmm.”  Her eyes shut tight.

“You’re making yourself cum, getting closer and closer.”

“Ohhh… oh yeah…yeah, yeah, yeah… ”

“Tell me when you get close, baby.”

“Oh… oooh… oh... ok… yeah… I’m… I’m getting close now!”  

He shifted his thumb slightly to one side. She moaned in frustration as she felt herself slip away from him.  “Pay attention baby.  You’re going to have to keep your eyes open.  I want to see your eyes when you cum!” he said, making her shiver all over.

“Yes, sir!”   She got her rhythm back, and he moved his thumb just a little.  She struggled to keep up with him, rotating her hips.  Every time she got just a little closer, and forgot to keep her eyes open, he moved his thumb again.

“Chase it, baby.  It’s your orgasm.  Go get it!”

“Yes Sir!  Ohhhh…. Ungggg” He could feel she was right on the edge, so he moved his thumb up, away from her but just within reach.

Heather whinnied as she felt the sensations drop off, her orgasm riding off without her again.  With a huge strain, she put herself in contact and flexed her hips for all she was worth, bearing down and willing herself to cum before he moved again.

Oliver noted that she was starting to tire.

“I feel bad, making you do all the work. Would you like some help, baby?”

“Yes.. ohhhh. Yes sir!  Yes Sir!” she gasped as she chased his thumb all around the middle of the bed. Every time she pressed up against him now he shifted and moved as she whined. He started stroking her inner thighs with his free hand, ramping up the tension in her.

“Are you ready to cum?” he asked as he held his thumb steady now.

She homed in on him and rubbed herself frantically against him, afraid to lose him now.

“Yes… ohhh… Daddy… I want to cum!” She could hardly take it anymore but her body obeyed him.

“No.  Don’t cum yet…. Wait…. Keep rubbing! But do…not… cum!” as he stroked up her inner thighs with a slow, feather light touch in counterpoint with her hips bucking.

“Ohhh! Ohhh!  UHHmmmm!” she gasped loudly, in time with her weakened and fading efforts. He could see in her legs the tremors of exhaustion and her fight to keep from cumming.

“Wait… keep rubbing… harder!”  And he pressed hard into her, and she cried out her lust for him.

“As you keep stroking and stroking and stroking yourself… are you ready baby?” he asked, knowing she was.

“YES!” she moaned.

“Come for me now!” he said to her, urgently, soft and low.  Her body released at his command, blossoming, flaring… He joined her motion, rubbing over her and over her and over her while she persisted in bucking up to meet him. She came powerfully, her legs locking up with the tension of her release.  She screamed out with each of his caresses over her engorged pussy lips, slipping and sliding over her. Finally too exhausted to move, she let him finish her off as he bore down on her and squeezed every last scream out of her body.

Nick followed his GPS navigator as it brought him to the turn-off from the highway. He followed the service road for a mile, then two. His eyes constantly scanned through the treeline off to the right, then back to the GPS to make sure he hadn’t gone past some hidden forest trail.

With dismay, he saw the dot of his destination slip by to the side as the road turned away from it.  

Do I keep going? Or turn back?

He decided to press on, and the dot receded further back until it disappeared from his screen.  He stopped in the middle of the road.  No cars behind him, nothing in front.  He teetered with indecision.  Finally, he cut the wheel hard over and turned around, heading back.

The dot reappeared.  It got closer, tantalizing on his display, and he moved slow, looking at every detail of the road embankment.  A pickup approached him from behind and honked at him before passing him with gusto. Nick resisted an urge to flip the driver off, knowing that way up here probably everyone was armed with at least a rifle.  

“Shit-kickers!” he muttered under his breath, when suddenly he spotted it.  From this angle, he could see the break in the underbrush, and a reflector mounted halfway up a tree as a marker.

“This might be it. Now what? Just drive on up?”   

He shook his head.  That’s not the right play.

He started looking for a place to stash his car off the other side of the road, and settled for a nice spot behind some dense scrub brush.  He detached the GPS from its bracket and marked his current position. Making sure no-one was around, he walked across the road and into the woods, keeping to the right of the trail and occasionally checking the dot, keeping it in front of him.

“Her name was Chanchari Gupta,” he said as they lay in bed side by side, her body wrapped around him. “She was a foreign student from India. I was a foreign student from America. She had come from a family of some means, and her intelligence was so striking that her father was easily persuaded to let her come to England. So there we were.  Two child geniuses, with all of Oxford University to play with.”   

Heather lay there, stroking his face, the side that could feel her. “And you loved her?”

“Yes.  After a time.  She came off as cold… aloof, at first.  I did the American thing to her.  I gave her a nickname.  I started calling her ‘Chani’, because I liked the sound of it.  She bristled at it.  At first.  She claimed that it was not her name, and even refused to answer to it at all.  And, really, I couldn’t have blamed her.  I was teasing her I think, but even then maybe the seeds of love were planted.

“We were working together on a big research project. So many new ventures were popping up at Oxford in those days.  It was like the wild west, in jolly ole’ England.  New technology on surface bonding, biochemistry, you name it.  Anyway… we’d been arguing for over an hour over some technical point on one of the formulas.  My ratios were wrong, and when I finally realized that she was right, I conceded the point and apologized.  Forgetting myself, I called her ‘Chani’ just out of habit.  She looked at me, and I thought she was going to reproach me for calling her that again, but… instead, that time, she smiled at me, and said, ‘Come, let’s go find a drink at The Lamb and Flag, and we can celebrate the occasion of you being wrong’, to which I said ‘As long as you don’t expect to eat there, the food’s… well, you better be up for those drinks’.”  Oliver grinned at the memory, his eyes alight with the past.

“I was never more shocked.  You could have bet me money that she wouldn’t know which end of a flagon to drink from.  Well, for a small princess from India, she matched me for a few rounds.  More than I’d have given her credit for up front.”  

“Did you two date then?  Did you fall in love?” Heather was entranced, the thought of being so far from home, off at college, and romance, appealed to her greatly.

“We did enjoy one another’s company, for two years. Ours, our mates at the lab.  But, she would always casually redirect my advances.  I loved her dearly, and I came to believe that she did me as well, but it was no good.  Her family would never see their way to it, she explained, and she could never go against her family.  She was promised to another.  I like to think that if she could have been free with her heart, that she might have given it to me.  In the end, I think that she did.”

“In the end?  What happened?” She thought a second.  “Oh… the same accident?”

“Yes.  She lived for two days.  Her lungs were just too badly damaged. They had her on a ventilator, unable to speak.  But her eyes told me what she needed to say.  I sat with her in the hospital as much as I could.  I dodged the nurses, even security, to get in to see her.  One nurse… Nurse Johansson,  I remember her name even now… She took pity on me. She helped me to see Chani the day she died. .  I held Chani’s hand, and she shed a tear, gripping my hand back.  I told her everything.  Everything I had tried to say before.  Her only response was to keep holding my hand, the slightest nod and when she closed her eyes, her tear told me everything she could not say.  I sat with her for two more hours, while she drifted away and came back to me again. Nurses came and went with increasing urgency but I was unmovable.  Then came the moment, the last time she closed her eyes. She just never opened them again.  Even now, I wonder, when was the exact moment? It just slipped right by me.

“In the end they carted me away.  I was, after all, not in the best of shape.  But I was beyond caring. She was gone, and wherever I went or whatever they took me to next, they could never bring me any further away from my Chani, nor any closer to her, ever again.  They could have operated on me with no anesthesia at that point, and I doubt I’d have took any notice.”

When Oliver turned to look at Heather again, she was crying quietly.  She looked up at him. “Oh, honey.  I’m so sorry, for you, and for Chani.”  She reached out and touched his darkened mask.  

He squeezed her hand.  “I still believe in happy endings,” he said, and smiled at her.

A mile away, Nick thought he could see the glimmer of light reflected off of water. As he broke through some underbrush, he could just make out the roofline of the ranch in the distance.