Painless

Chapter Twelve

“So, there was no Jack?” Benji asked me as we drove toward our hotel for the night.

            “Glenn had no connection to anyone named Jack on that site,” I corrected. “But he had recently started talking with someone named Sonny. The kid didn’t have a picture attached to his profile, but it said he was 11 and according to his e-mails to Glenn, he had a sister with CIPA.”

            “Well, if that’s true, if he does have a sister with CIPA, that would narrow it down,” Benji said, excitement creeping into his voice. “We could practically end the search now”

            “Why’s that?” Agent Carson asked from the driver’s seat. I’d been so focused on the visit with Glenn’s sister that I’d almost forgotten he was even still around. When I heard his voice, my face twitched.

            “We’re kind of an exclusive club,” I answered. “When you’re a freak of nature, you tend to know all the other freaks of nature. It’s this whole freaky thing.”

            Agent Carson raised an eye without turning his attention away from the road. But I saw it, and instantly realized how it had sounded.

“Not like that, perve,” I said, turning away from him before he could see that I was slightly embarrassed.

“Like what?” Benji asked confused.

“Yeah, Bliss,” Agent Carson deadpanned. “Like what?”

He was playing with me now, trying to make me as uncomfortable as possible. Possibly to assert his power or maybe even just to piss me off. And it was working. I needed to get control over the situation again, and quick.

“Nothing,” I grumbled. “My point is that we should know this girl.”

Benji finally piped up. “She’s right. We all do kind of know each other. If this kid has a sister with CIPA, we already know her.”

            Agent Carson shrugged in concession and then went back to looking out the window at the river we were driving along.

            “So, where does this leave us?” Benji asked.

            I studied the instructions on the car’s GPS, and watched as we took a right at an upcoming intersection. The sky was starting to get that beautiful pink/orange glow that only comes when dusk is about to follow. The air was warm and quiet as we drove down the street toward our hotel. Part of me wished I could just stop and enjoy it all. The silence, the calm, the beauty. But I knew all of it would be gone soon.

            “Well, I think we need to contact all the girls we know from CC and find out if any of them have a brother named Sonny or Jack,” I said, as we pulled into the parking lot of a swanky hotel with a fountain out front. Not bad. “And if we can’t find anyone, then I think we can safely assume that these people who contacted Joanie and Glenn aren’t who they say they are. I’m also gonna send the material that Devin found to my parents for analysis.”