“So, is he dangerous, this guy?” I said, sipping some more coffee. I was trying to be casual about it, working to keep the panic out of my voice.

“He’s fine,” Angie said.

“I mean, I don’t think he’s going to shoot up the school or anything,” Paul said, thinking that I’d find that reassuring. “But he really is a computer genius. I think he spends his spare time inventing viruses. You know when the Hong Kong stock market or something crashed? I think he did that. And the MyDoom virus? I’m betting that was him. His dad’s some software king, makes bazillions of dollars, but now that Trevor’s living on his own, I’m guessing this is his way to get back at his old man, to cripple the Internet or something.”

“Where do you get this information?” I asked.

Paul shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Sarah hung up. “I have to stay late again tonight. I’ve got to run the meeting again. Bailey’s still gone.” Bailey was her boss, the city editor. “I was hoping to get tonight off, since they’ve got me going to this retreat later in the week.”

“Retreat?” I said.

“Maybe I should write everything down for you,” Sarah said. “You know, department heads, other management types from circulation and advertising, we all get together off-site and brainstorm about how to make the paper better and how we can all work as a team, improve employee relations, make everyone feel part of the process, and we draft some list of goals, then come back to the paper and forget it ever happened.”

“Does that mean I can’t get the car?” Angie said. “I have to have a car.”

We only had the one, an aging Toyota Camry. Before we moved back into the city, from Oakwood, we had a second car. Out in the suburbs, where there were no subways or decent bus lines, you couldn’t survive with just one vehicle. But our Honda Civic came to a grisly end one night (Sarah and I very nearly did as well, but that’s a long story, and I’ve already told it), and we opted not to replace it once we’d sold our house and returned to our old neighborhood.

We bought a house a few doors down from our former one, on Crandall, a couple of blocks from the subway and connecting streetcars, and we’d been managing with one car for some time now. Paul’s high school was within walking distance, but in the last few weeks Angie had started college, in town, and, as she’d just reminded us, a few of her classes were in the evening. That meant a walk of several blocks in the dark to catch the subway home, and Sarah was almost as paranoid as I on this issue. We wanted Angie walking alone at night as little as possible.