I came up behind him, this young man in a long black jacket, and peered over his shoulder. There was a map on the screen, which, at a glance, looked like our neighborhood. There was a small, pulsing dot moving across it.

“Lost Morpheus again?” I asked.

Startled, Trevor Wylie whirled around, reaching up with his right arm and easing shut the lid of his laptop at the same time.

“Mr. Walker,” he said, taking off his sunglasses so he could see me more clearly.

“How are you, Trevor?” I said, moving around in front of him.

“Good, I’m good,” he said. “Whatcha doing around here?”

“Just picking up some things for dinner. How about you?”

He motioned to the paper cup next to his computer. “Having a coffee, doing a bit of surfing, homework.”

Across the street I noticed Trevor’s black Chevy, sitting low in the back as though the rear springs were going. It was a hulking piece of Detroit machinery amidst smaller, newer, mostly imported cars. Black jacket, black car, the wandering black Annihilator. The forces of darkness were aligned against me.

“That really is an amazing program you’ve got there,” I said, resting my bags on the top of the table. “If I ever get a dog, I guess I’ll have to get something like that.”

“Sure.”

“What’s your homework?”

“Just stuff. Nothing particularly interesting.” He looked around, thinking maybe, by the time he looked back, I’d be gone. But I was still there. “How’s Angie?” he asked.

“She’s good, Trevor.”

“I think she might have something wrong with her cell phone,” he said. “Sometimes, I try to call her, it doesn’t go through.”

“You know how cells are. What were you calling her about? I could pass on a message.”

“College stuff. I was thinking I might try Mackenzie, I think they have a computer science program there, and that would be right up my alley, you know? And if my classes were around the same time as Angie’s, we could share rides. I could drive one week, she could drive the next, that kind of thing. But I’ll talk to her about it myself. You don’t have to worry about it.”

“The thing is,” I said, “I do worry.”

“What?”

“I worry. I’m kind of a worrier, Trevor. Ask anyone who knows me. I’m a bit over the top at times. Especially where members of my family are concerned. Like Angie. I worry about her. All fathers worry about their daughters.”

“Yeah, I guess they would.” Trevor slipped his shades back on. “There’s a lot of freaky people out there.”

“That’s right,” I said. “So I try to keep as close an eye on her as I can, you know? To make sure she’s okay. Because if something ever happened to her, I don’t know what I’d do.”