Inside, I scanned the label, assuming it was something for my sister, but the package was for me. Far odder was the return address, which was the town house itself. Since I wasn’t in the habit of sending myself mail, and since I’m eternally suspicious, I noted the postmark, Cross City, Florida, and went to my computer. A minute later I’d learned that Cross City was a town west of Gainesville, with fewer than two thousand residents. Most likely nobody I knew lived there, and certainly nobody who knew Wendy’s address. I’d found information on where to eat and go to church, but not much else.

By now I was almost sure who the package was from. I picked it up once more and lifted it to my ear. Bombs today aren’t the Wile E. Coyote variety with dynamite wired to a ticking alarm clock, but cartoon habits die hard. The package was silent, and I was left with two options. Since I didn’t want to plunge the box into a bathtub filled with water, I unwrapped it carefully and pulled out a burner phone.

I breathed my sister’s name. “Wendy.”

A note was attached to the box in unfamiliar handwriting. I read it out loud. “‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you.’”

Was Wendy back in Florida? The handwriting wasn’t hers. Wendy’s handwriting is neat and precise, like pared-down calligraphy. This was perfectly readable, but the letters were sprawling and uneven. Wendy’s worst scrawl was more accomplished than this.

Had she enlisted a friend to mail the package? And what about the note?

I went back to the computer, and this time I searched for local businesses in Cross City and found one called Risk-Free Remailer.

“Gotcha.”

Remailing services exist to keep secrets. After ditching her cell phone, Wendy had probably purchased a prepaid phone, a burner, something she could do almost anywhere. If she paid for the phone with cash, no record of the purchase would be linked to her, since no identification would have been needed.

But overachiever that she was, my sister hadn’t bought just one, she’d bought two. Whether it was necessary or not, she’d been trying to think like law enforcement. If the authorities got around to checking my cell phone, so they could look for calls from my sister, they might find repeated calls from a cloaked number I couldn’t explain. Now, instead, those calls would be on the burner in my hand, the burner no one would know about, the one Wendy had probably expressed to the remailing service to be sent to me.

My sister was thinking like a criminal.

I set the burner down, unhappy to own it, but glad that at least she planned to communicate. Of course the note was clearly a joke. Because how could I call her? I didn’t have her number and probably never would.

Contacting Risk-Free Remailer was certain to be a dead end, but I tried anyway. When I hung up a few minutes later, my hunch had been confirmed. Risk-Free meant exactly that. A remailing service provided everything a client needed to keep identity and location secret, handwritten letters, trips to a variety of post offices for different postmarks, delayed mailing and much more. Paperwork that had to do with any transaction was shredded immediately. Even if Risk-Free had wanted to help me—which, of course, they hadn’t—they no longer had records.