She tapped out a response on her phone: “Who?”
Her finger hovered over the “Send” button. To send or not to send. She knew she was making a mistake by playing his game, and yet the darkness of his messages felt ominous.
She needs you. You have ten minutes to save her.
No.
Frankie deleted the reply without sending it. She deleted the original message. No more games; it was time to go home. With a sigh of relief, she removed her wallet from her purse and peeled off cash to pay for her dinner and wine. She left the money on the table. She looked for Virgil in the crowd to wave good-bye, but she didn’t see him.
Outside, on Post Street, the night air was cool. Trees shivered in the planter boxes. High buildings dwarfed her on all sides. She checked the street, but she felt safe among the garish throngs of Saturday-night partiers. Her condo on O’Farrell was only five blocks away.
She heard the chime of her phone again. Ping. He wasn’t giving up.
Frankie hesitated. No matter how much she wanted to pull away, she found herself going deeper into this man’s game. She had no choice. She opened the message: Five minutes.
This time, there was something more to the e-mail. She saw an attachment file—a JPEG picture. He’d sent her a photograph.
Do not respond.
Never open attachments.
But she did. She clicked on the image, wondering if she’d made a mistake that would give him access to her whole electronic life, but it felt as if he knew everything about her already. Where she was. What she was doing.
Frankie stared at the photo on the small screen of her phone. It had been taken from above, like a still image captured from a ceiling-mounted webcam. The photo showed the inside of a busy cocktail lounge. People crowded shoulder to shoulder in the semidarkness. The bar glowed with red and green lights reflecting on dozens of liquor bottles stocked on mirrored shelves. She squinted and saw something else, too—three vintage pinball machines from the ’80s. She knew where this place was.
It was a bar two blocks away. She and Jason had been there many times. Loud pop music. Drinks. Dancing.
Frankie checked the time. It was five minutes to midnight. Five minutes.
She didn’t understand why this photograph was supposed to mean anything to her, but then she remembered: She needs you. With a pinch of her fingers, she enlarged the image and scrolled from face to face. No one was looking at the camera. No one knew they were being photographed. She didn’t see anyone she recognized. The faces were all strangers, except— Frankie felt the breath leave her chest.
She zoomed in on one face until the image began to lose its focus. And she realized that she knew this woman. Her name was Christie Parke. She was thirty-seven years old. She lived in Millbrae and worked as a loan officer at a branch of Wells Fargo downtown. Five years ago, while volunteering at a homeless shelter, she’d been stuck with a dirty needle and diagnosed with AIDS. The lab result turned out to be a false positive. She was fine. But the experience had left her with a deadly fear of needles.
It was a fear that Frankie had helped her erase.
Christie was one of her patients.
Frankie stared at the steep Mason Street hill that led up toward the bar. She started running.
16
Christie watched as her date, whose name was Noah, pushed the pinball flippers, firing a silver ball straight up the super-jackpot ramp and making the eyes of the Terminator’s skull glow red.
“Fire at will,” said the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger from the game’s display.
After a quick fist pump, Noah used a rotating gun to shoot a new ball into play. He juggled three balls up and down the machine, and Christie couldn’t keep track of the action. Arrows lit up. Bumpers flashed and exploded. The machine rocked as Noah slammed it with his hips.
“Awesome,” Arnold said.
“Awesome,” Noah imitated in a deep voice. He glanced at Christie, whose boredom must have shown on her face. Thirty-something men playing teenage games didn’t thrill her, especially on a first date. With obvious reluctance, Noah took his hands off the flippers, and one by one, the silver balls rolled into the belly of the machine. He gave her an embarrassed smile.
“Sorry,” he told her. “I used to play this game when I was a kid. I just wanted to see if I still had the knack.”
“I guess you do,” Christie said coolly, sipping her cranberry martini.
There was a line to take Noah’s spot at the pinball machine. They were all men who weren’t getting laid tonight, Christie figured. That included Noah. She’d decided that soon after she met him for dinner. He was nice enough, but he acted like a kid, and she wasn’t interested in kids.
“I’m going to get another beer,” Noah told her. “You want anything?”
“No, I’m good.”
He jostled his way through the crowd, leaving her alone. She saw other guys give her the eye, wondering whether to come in for a landing. A few smiled, and she smiled back, but not enough for an invitation.
Christie liked being in demand. After her divorce last November, she’d lost twenty pounds, and she looked good in her shorty skirts again. Dating was a hassle in her thirties, but for now, she enjoyed being single. She’d hooked up a couple of times, and it was strange to be the one to say, “I’ll call you,” when she knew she never would. She was happy to head to work the next morning with a satisfied smile on her face. No walk of shame, just the coffee cup of freedom.
Christie liked the vibe of the Bush Street bar, despite the juvenile pinball machines. It felt like a throwback to the ’90s. Most of the people were her own age, not the usual millennials. A jukebox played Aerosmith at a shattering volume. The drunk Gen Xers danced fast, as if they were still young, but she knew they’d wake up, roll out of bed, and groan at the ache in their knees.
It was warm near the bar’s fireplace, and she felt heat on the back of her legs. Perfume, cologne, and hair gels clouded the air. The effect was dizzying, but she couldn’t really blame the bar. She’d felt off all day. She’d awakened with an odd sense of disorientation, as if she didn’t even belong in her own apartment. Since then, she’d been up and down in huge swings. One minute, she would be euphoric, and the next she’d feel a formless anxiety grip her stomach.
Her brain kept trying to remember something, but nothing was there.
Noah came back, holding a bottle of amber IPA. He wore a black sport coat over a red T-shirt and blue jeans and sneakers, which was how thirty-six-year-olds tried to shave a decade off their age. He was a few donuts shy of being overweight. He had messy red hair and a goatee, as if he’d spotted a photograph of Ed Sheeran in People and decided that was the way to meet girls. Christie could have told him that the Redbeard pirate look only worked for Ed Sheeran because he was Ed Sheeran.
They’d been set up on a blind date by one of her colleagues at the bank. She should have been firmer in saying no.
“You having fun?” Noah asked.
“Sure,” she replied without enthusiasm. He didn’t seem to notice, so she checked her watch to make her point. She wasn’t looking to prolong the evening. It was almost midnight, and her date was already a pumpkin.
“You know, I thought you were going to blow me off,” he said.
“Oh?”
“I texted you like four times yesterday, but you didn’t answer.”
“Sorry. I slept the whole day. I guess I wasn’t feeling well.”
“Was it a cold or something? I take a crap load of vitamin C every day, and I never get colds.”
“No, I don’t know what it was,” Christie said. “Maybe some kind of twenty-four-hour bug. I crashed out and lost the whole day.”
“Are you feeling better now?”
“A little, but I don’t want to make it a late night.”