“This was the thing I was going to tell you a while ago,” Trevor said, “but I couldn’t think of a way to do it, but I’ve been thinking about it and decided the best thing to do is help Angie, no matter what.”

“Okay, Trevor. I’d be real grateful if you can move this story along and just tell me.”

“I know what I’ve done, some people might call inappropriate. But I wasn’t doing it for my own purposes alone. I think there’s a larger issue at stake here, a point to be made about how we’re all being monitored in one way or another, that Big Brother is watching our every move, and that we need to take a stand against this kind of dehumanization that threatens to rob us of our—”

“Trevor!”

“Okay. You know that day you found me at your place, and I had my computer with me, and I was looking for my dog?”

“The tracking thing,” I said. “Let me guess.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Right.”

“You’ve been tracking Angie’s whereabouts, with the same kind of gizmo you clipped onto your dog’s collar.”

“You don’t have to thank me now,” Trevor said. “When I ran into Angie the other day at Starbucks, I was helping her with her coat and I sort of slipped it into one of the inside pockets where I figured she’d never look.”

I glanced over at Angie, and at her coat, draped over the end of the couch.

“Hold on a second, Trevor,” I said. To Angie, I said, “Honey?”

“Yes, Dad?”

“Take a look in the inside pockets of your coat, see if you find anything in there.”

“Like what?”

“Sort of like a button or something.”

She pulled the coat over onto her lap, started rifling through the pockets, and came out with a small silver disc. “This?” she said.

I went back onto the phone. “We found it, Trevor.”

“What is this?” Angie asked.

“It’s a tracking thing,” I told her. “Trevor put it in your pocket, that’s how he’s been following you all over town, showing up where you least expected him.”

Even slightly out of it, Angie went red with anger. “Is that him on the phone? Give it to me. I want to talk to him.”

“Later, hon,” I said.

At the other end of the line, Trevor said, “She sounds a bit pissed.”

“Trevor, what can you see from where you are?”

“Huh? Uh, like I say, I’m just in the bushes, looking at the house. I’ve got Morpheus with me.”

“Where’s your car?”

“It’s about six blocks back. I didn’t want anyone to see it, so I walked down, but I’ve got my laptop with me.”