1

After the man leaves, I sit at the kitchen table and pull out a legal pad. Emma watches me write.

Priority one: Rachel.

I try her secure phone. Straight to voicemail. Her encrypted messaging app shows no activity since yesterday morning. I call her office.

"Rachel Martinez, please."

"She's not in today," the receptionist says. "Can I take a message?"

"When will she be back?"

"I'm not sure. She called in sick this morning."

I hang up. Rachel has never called in sick in eight years.

Emma sits across from me. "What's happening?"

I look at her across our kitchen table, surrounded by the comfortable debris of family life. No way to explain this without changing everything.

She's quiet for a moment. "Rachel?"

I nod.

"What do think they want you to do?"

"I don't know yet. I have seventy-two hours to figure it out."

Emma stands, starts clearing dinner plates we never ate. "The kids will be home soon."

"I need to pick them up early."

"Why?"

"Because I don't know who I'm dealing with or how far they'll go."

She stops moving. "You think they'd hurt the children?"

"I think intimidation just became personal threat. And I think we need to be ready to leave."

"Leave where?"

"Somewhere safe while I sort this out."

Emma sets the plates down carefully. "How long?"

"I don't know."

She looks around our kitchen, at the homework on the counter, at Jake's art project still drying by the window.

"What about my surgery schedule? The kids' school?"

"Emma, if Rachel is missing because she helped me, then our normal life ended. At least temporarily."

She sits back down, studies my face. Twenty years of marriage teaches you to read stress signals.

"What do you need me to do?"

"Pack bags for three days. Cash only. Tell the kids we're visiting your sister."

"My sister's in Seattle."

"I know."

She looks at me for a long moment. "How bad is this?"

I think about the man in our kitchen, about Rachel's absence, about seventy-two hours and whose side I'm really on.

"Bad enough that you are leaving tonight."

2

Emma's car disappears around the corner toward her sister's house. Kids think they're starting spring break early. Simple story, easier than the truth.

I sit in my study, pull out the game prototype one last time before packing it away.

If I were designing someone like me, what would be the pressure points?

Family. Obviously. But not just their safety - their normalcy. The suburban life, the predictable schedules, the illusion that we exist outside the chaos. Threaten that foundation and watch rationality collapse into panic.

Twenty years building expertise in reading people, solving problems, maintaining control. Then drop me into something incomprehensible.

Give me enough information to feel responsible for outcomes without enough context to make informed choices.

I move game pieces around the board absently.

Isolation. Separate me from my sources, my familiar operating environment. Make every contact potentially compromised. Force me to rely on new intelligence from unknown people with unclear motivations.

Time pressure. Seventy-two hours isn't enough to understand. Just enough to force reactive decisions instead of strategic thinking.

Information warfare. Feed me fragments that could mean anything. Let me construct my own paranoia from incomplete data. Much more effective than direct lies.

The kitchen visitor never told me what he wanted me to do. Just that I needed to stop. Stop what? Investigating? Helping the researchers? Asking questions? The ambiguity is intentional.

Rachel's disappearance could be coincidental. Could be designed to make me assume the worst. Could be punishment for helping me. I may never know which.

I pack the game pieces into their compartments. Every question leads to more questions.

How would I manipulate someone like me?

Make them feel responsible for protecting things they care about while keeping them uncertain about what those things actually are.

Use their analytical nature against them. Someone who needs to understand will keep working the problem even when the smart move is to walk away.

I close the game box, slip it into my travel bag.

The most effective manipulation would be making me think I was choosing my own path while actually following someone else's design.

The question isn't whether I'm being manipulated.

The question is whether I can figure out the game while I’m it.

3

The motel room smells like disinfectant and old cigarettes. Highway noise through thin walls. I sit on the edge of the bed, notebook open, trying to think through possibilities.

Scenario One: The Mad King

Everything I've observed is exactly what it appears to be. Impaired decision-maker with access to power, making chaotic choices driven by personal psychology rather than strategy.

In this scenario, I'm collateral damage. Wrong place, wrong questions, wrong time. Rachel disappeared because someone panicked about exposure, not because of coordinated planning.

Lear on the heath, raging at storms he doesn't understand.

Scenario Two: Crazy Like a Fox

The apparent chaos is performance. What looks like dysfunction is actually systematic institutional capture disguised as incompetence. Every erratic decision serves larger objectives I can't see.

In this scenario, I'm either a useful tool or an obstacle to be removed. My psychological profiling skills are valued precisely because they help predict how people respond to apparent madness.

Hamlet's antic disposition. "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't."

Scenario Three: The Handlers Rule

Individual psychology is irrelevant. Corporate interests, foreign actors, institutional powers that benefit from apparent dysfunction while maintaining actual control.

In this scenario, I'm being recruited to assess the puppet or the audience, not the puppet masters. My focus on individual behavior keeps me distracted from systemic corruption.

Macbeth convinced he's choosing his own actions while the weird sisters orchestrate his destruction.

Scenario Four: Total Uncontrolled Chaos

No one is in charge. Multiple actors with conflicting interests, institutional breakdown creating opportunities for everyone and safety for no one. Foreign influence, corporate capture, political opportunism, personal enrichment all happening simultaneously without coordination.

In this scenario, I'm caught in the crossfire. Everyone wants something from me because everyone needs intelligence about what everyone else is doing.

The last act of Hamlet. Bodies everywhere, no clear victors.

I close the notebook. Look out the window at the interstate, cars moving past in both directions. Normal people going to normal places while I sit in a motel room contemplating whether I'm dealing with theater or madness or both.

The Greeks had a word for this. Hubris. The belief that you can understand forces larger than yourself.

Maybe the real manipulation is making me think I can figure this out at all.

4

I drive to her apartment building against every instinct I've developed in twenty years. But the key is still in my wallet where it's been for eight years, and some things matter more than professional caution.

The lobby smells like cleaning products and old carpet. Mrs. Chen at the front desk waves like she always does when I visit Rachel for business meetings. Normal Tuesday afternoon, normal building, everything wrong.

Third floor, apartment 3B. I knock first. Wait. Knock again.

The key still works.

Inside, everything is exactly as Rachel left it. Coffee cup in the sink, half-finished crossword on the counter, reading glasses folded beside her laptop. But the mail slot by the door is overflowing, and there's a brown package outside her door that's been there long enough to collect dust.

I walk through her small apartment, looking for signs I don't want to find. Her suitcases are in the closet. Toothbrush in the bathroom. Bed made with hospital corners the way she's done it since the Army.

The laptop is closed but warm. I open it without thinking.

Password protected, of course. But I remember her telling me about her cat from childhood over dinner years ago. Mr. Whiskers1995. The desktop opens.

Her last email was sent yesterday morning to her office: "Won't be in today. Family emergency."

But Rachel's parents died ten years ago. She has no siblings.

I'm scrolling through her recent emails when I hear footsteps in the hallway. Not unusual, except they stop outside her door.

I close the laptop, move to the window. Third floor overlooking the parking lot. Two men standing by a dark sedan that wasn't there when I arrived. One of them is looking up at Rachel's window.

The footsteps move away from the door.

I take the back stairs down to the building's rear exit, but there's another car there. Different men, same careful attention to the building's exits.

Rachel kept a spare key to the building's maintenance room taped under the stairwell handrail. Old habit from when she lived in places where you needed multiple escape routes.

I find it, slip into the maintenance room, wait fifteen minutes. When I look out the small window, the cars are gone.

But walking to my car, I notice the white van parked across the street. Driver reading a newspaper, engine running. When I pull out of the parking lot, the van follows at exactly the right distance.

Professional surveillance. Patient, methodical, obvious once you know to look for it.

Rachel didn't call in sick. She didn't have a family emergency.

Someone wanted me to find her apartment empty, wanted me to use that key, wanted me to realize she was gone.

The van stays three cars back as I drive toward the highway. I could lose them, but that would tell them I know they're there.

Instead I drive to a shopping mall, park, walk around for an hour buying things I don't need. The van waits in the parking lot.

When I finally head home, they follow me there too.

By the time I pack a bag and leave for the first motel, I understand that running was always part of their plan.

They wanted me scared. They wanted me isolated.

They wanted me exactly where I am.

5

Second motel. Cheaper than the first, farther from anywhere that matters. I sit on the bed with my phone, staring at Rachel's contact information.

When the pressure started, she was the first person I called.

Eight years of professional relationship. Clean financial intelligence, reliable sources, no questions asked. But somewhere between corporate consulting and government contracts, I stopped being careful.

I told myself I was protecting Emma and the kids by keeping them in the dark about my work. But I knew exactly what I was doing when I called Rachel.

She answered on the second ring, same as always. "When don't you need a favor?"

But her voice was cautious. She'd already heard something.

I gave her the shopping list anyway. Made it sound routine. Watched her agree to help because that's what we did for each other.

Twenty-four hours later, she was gone.

They knew about the key before I used it. Probably knew about us before I remembered it mattered.

My phone buzzes. Text from Emma: “Kids asking when Dad's work trip ends. Staying strong here.”

I stare at the message. She knows exactly what kind of "work trip" keeps a family away from home with no return date. She's keeping the children calm while understanding that our kitchen table conversation changed everything.

Emma making coffee this morning in her sister's house, maintaining routines for Sophie and Jake while knowing they can't go home until someone decides to let them.

I turn off the phone, lie down on the bed with its thin pillows and highway noise. Close my eyes and try not to think about Rachel checking her email one last time, typing "family emergency" on someone else's instructions.

Try not to think about Emma making coffee this morning in a kitchen she believes is safe.

6

The rain starts while I'm walking back from the vending machine. Heavy drops on the motel parking lot, puddles forming around my feet. Something about the sound makes me stop.

Seven years ago. Standing outside the Hotel Europa, water running off the awnings onto cobblestones that looked like they'd been there since the empire.

I was supposed to meet someone. An executive. Standard corporate consulting work.

But when I got to the hotel bar, he was already leaving. Walking away fast, phone pressed to his ear, face pale. He saw me, shook his head once, kept moving.

I ordered coffee, waited an hour. He never came back.

The rain gets heavier. I stand in the motel parking lot, letting it soak through my jacket, trying to remember details that feel important but don't connect to anything.

Back in my room, I pull out my laptop. If I can't remember, maybe I can research. Hotel records, business registrations, company personnel from seven years ago.

But my internet connection keeps dropping. The wifi password doesn't work. When I call the front desk, they say there's a problem with the service provider.

I drive to a coffee shop with public wifi. Same problem. Connection drops every few minutes, just long enough to be unusable. Different coffee shop, same issue.

By the third location, I understand. They're not blocking my access. They're letting me try, watching what I search for, making sure I can't find what I'm looking for.

I sit in my car outside the coffee shop, rain streaking the windshows, trying to piece together fragments that refuse to form a picture.

The executive who walked away. The client who paid in cryptocurrency. The meeting that didn't happen but somehow mattered.

My phone stays silent. No unknown numbers. No familiar voices.

But I can feel them watching, waiting to see what I'll remember.

The rain keeps falling. I should drive back to the motel, accept that some things can't be researched.

Instead I sit here understanding that Prague wasn't random.

And neither is this.

7

I drive out of the coffee shop parking lot and take the first right, then another right, then another. The white van stays exactly three cars back.

Left turn into a residential neighborhood. The van follows. Right turn through a strip mall parking lot. Still there. I loop through a gas station, around a bank, back onto the main road.

They're not trying to hide anymore.

I take the highway on-ramp, accelerate to eighty. The van keeps pace. Exit two miles later, circle back through surface streets. They follow every turn like we're connected by invisible wire.

After an hour of this, I pull into a McDonald's parking lot and sit there with the engine running. The van parks across the street. Driver gets out, stretches, goes inside to buy coffee.

Normal guy. Jeans and a windbreaker. Could be anyone.

I drive to a different McDonald's five miles away. Different van, different driver. Same careful distance.

I pull out my phone, scroll through contacts. Marcus hasn't answered in three days. My State Department contact goes straight to voicemail. The regulatory expert I contacted last week - disconnected number.

I sit in the McDonald's parking lot, watching normal people live normal lives. Parents with kids, teenagers working their first jobs, elderly couples sharing coffee.

I start the engine, pull back onto the road. The new van follows at the same distance.

I drive in circles because that's all that's left. Because every road leads back to the same place.

Twenty years of being very good at my job.

Karma is a bitch.

8

The phone rings at 3 AM. Unknown number, but the ringtone is different. Three short bursts, pause, repeat.

Marcus.

"Don't say my name," he says immediately. "Are you listening?"

Rain starts hitting the motel window. The same sound that's been following me for days.

"Yes."

"You fucked someone who wants to punish you."

Traffic sounds in the background, voices echoing off concrete. Airport terminal, maybe. Somewhere people disappear into crowds.

"That's all I know," he continues. "That's all you need to know."

Static on the line. A train announcement, garbled.

"Stay useful. Stay alive."

"Marcus—"

The line goes dead.

I sit in the dark room, rain drumming against glass. The heating unit clicks on, cycles off. Normal sounds in an abnormal world.

Down the hall, someone's television plays late-night infomercials. A man's voice promising solutions to problems that have easy answers.

I close my eyes, listen to the rain.

9

I sit in the dark after Marcus hangs up, rain drumming against the window.

Marcus doesn't know either.

Twenty years of working together, and I've never heard him sound that upset.

The heating unit cycles off. Down the hall, television voices sell solutions to problems with easy answers.

If Marcus doesn't understand, then this runs deeper than Switzerland. Deeper than corporate consulting. Deeper than anything either of us has ever touched before.

I think about hotel lobbies and walking away. About coffee cups and crossword puzzles. About twenty pills in a daily box and someone who remembers everything.

The rain keeps falling. Water running off gutters, pooling in potholes.

Twenty years of reading people.

Someone had read me back.

10

The rain stops sometime before dawn. I haven't slept.

I sit by the window watching the parking lot fill with early commuters. Normal people driving to normal jobs where they choose their assignments, their clients, their methods.

My phone buzzes. Text from Emma: “Kids had nightmares. Missing home.”

The cleaning lady knocks on doors down the hall. Checkout time approaching. I should pack, drive somewhere, pretend I still have choices about where to go and what to do next.

Instead I sit here understanding what Marcus couldn't say directly over an airport payphone.

I'm not a consultant anymore. I'm an asset.

My phone rings. Unknown number.

I don't answer.

It rings again. Same number.

On the third call, I pick up.

"Are you ready to listen?" The voice from the final conversation. Familiar now in the way that nightmares become familiar.

"I'm listening."

"Good. Pack your things. Drive home. Wait for instructions."

"What instructions?"

"You'll know when you receive them."

The line goes dead.

I pack the few things I brought to this place. Notebook with broken pencils. Game pieces that predicted their own obsolescence. Clothes that smell like fear and disinfectant.

I get in my car, start the engine, join the flow of traffic heading toward homes and families and lives that make sense.

But I'm not going home.

I'm reporting for duty.

11

I pay cash at the front desk. Third motel in forty-eight hours, each one progressively cheaper. This one has water stains on the ceiling and curtains that don't quite close.

My phone died six hours ago. I haven't charged it.

The room smells like something else. Fear, maybe. Other people who stayed here running from things they couldn't name.

I sit on the bed with my notebook, try to write down what I know. The pen doesn't work. Try another. Same thing. Finally find a pencil in my jacket pocket, lead broken.

Outside, trucks rumble past on the highway. Eighteen-wheelers heading somewhere with purpose while I sit in a box measuring twelve by fourteen feet, trying to remember why I thought any of this would make sense.

Coffee cups. Museum café. Marcus smoking. Emma's face when the man stood up from our kitchen table. Rachel's voicemail. A photograph of people I don't know in places I can't remember.

All of it feels like something that happened to someone else. Or something I dreamed and can't quite shake.

I keep thinking about chess pieces. How they move in predictable patterns until someone picks up the board and walks away. The game continues somewhere else while the pieces sit abandoned, not understanding they're no longer playing.

Emma and the kids are safe in Seattle. I tell myself this every few minutes like a prayer. They think they're on vacation. Sophie practicing piano on her aunt's keyboard. Jake complaining about homework. Normal problems in a normal place.

But safe from what? I still don't know.

The notebook pages are blank except for fragments. Half-sentences that trail off. Questions without contexts. Names without faces.

---

The call comes at hour seventy-one.

"Your family is still safe," the voice says. Familiar but I can't place it.

"What do you want?"

"To remind you of something you forgot." A pause. "What you cost me."

The line goes quiet but he's still there. Breathing.

"Prague," he says finally. "You remember only fragments. I remember everything."

My mouth goes dry.

"What do you want me to do?"

"You'll receive instructions." Background noise, traffic, voices. "When I need something done."

"How long—"

"Until I don't."

Static on the line. When it clears, I'm listening to dial tone.

I sit on the motel bed, staring at the phone. Rain and fragments and someone walked away.

The voice was familiar because I'd heard it before. Not recently. Not clearly. But somewhere in the spaces between memory and forgetting.

Outside, cars pass on the interstate. Normal people going to normal places.

I should pack. Drive home. Pretend this was a nightmare.

Instead I sit here knowing I'm still dreaming it.