“Well, as long as copies of those pictures are being traded back and forth along the pedophile networks, either through the mails or zapped through the Internet as GIFs and JPEGs, as long as I know that a single picture of me is circulating, it will never be over. Sure, easy to say ‘get over it’ or ‘get past it’ or ‘let it go’… but how can I do that when I know that even as we speak some slimy pervert could be ogling images of me doing… those things? How can I leave the events in the past when the pictures remain in the present?”

Jack could only nod. She was right. Those images were an ongoing violation that would continue even after she was dead.

“He still has power over me, damn him!” she said, her voice rising. “How do I break that? How?”

That was a problem Jack had no idea how to fix.

“Speaking of him,” Jack said, hoping to steer the subject back to the purpose of their trip, “why do you think he left the technology to you? Could he have been trying to”… how did he say this?… “make it up to you in some way?”

A soft bark of a laugh, then: “Not a chance. That would require remorse. Ronald Clayton didn’t know the meaning of the word. No, leaving me the house and the clue to the technology was as self-serving as everything else he did in his life. He knew that Thomas would bury it, and he didn’t want that. So he put it in my hands, absolutely certain that I wouldn’t go along with Thomas.” She slammed her fist on the dashboard. “You see? He’s still doing it. Still using me, damn him! Damn him!”

3.

3.

“What’s wrong?” Alicia said. “Why are we stopping?”

They’d cruised north on the thruway with no problems, and no sign—at least so far as she could tell—of anyone following them. Most of the trip since they’d left the city had passed in silence.

My doing, she thought. She’d awakened this morning feeling tired and drained, and didn’t feel much better now. She didn’t feel like talking anymore, and she was pretty sure that was okay by Jack.

So now they’d just paid the toll at the New Paltz exit, and Jack was pulling over to one of the phones in the plaza past the toll booths.

“Want to get my bearings,” he said. “And I want to make sure no one’s on our tail.”

Alicia sat in the car while Jack faked a phone call and scratched hurried notes on a small spiral pad as he watched the cars pulling away from the toll booths. Not much traffic this time of day on a Thursday in December.