Note: Lucky chapter 13.

Poor Elizabeth!

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Two Years Prior

The darkness was suffocating, overwhelming, oppressive. I couldn't see my body. I couldn't see my surroundings. Couldn't breath. The icy blackness around me was liquid, and it was flooding my lungs, crushing them like I was trapped at the bottom of a deep, black pool. My heart pounded so fast I thought it'd burst right out of my chest. I was making all sorts of incoherent noises; choked sobs and shaky gasps and pathetic whimpers, like some dog that had been chained up to be beaten. Like an animal being led to the slaughterhouse.

Like someone stripped of their clothing and left to die in a cargo container.

I'm gonna die, I thought. Oh my god, I'm gonna die. Oh god, I'm gonna die I'm gonna die I'm gonnadieI'mgonnadieI'mgonnadie—

I was paralyzed by shock. My body trembled, shivered. The metal around me was cold, very cold against my bare skin, but I couldn't move. Frenzied thoughts rushed through my mind, a dozen per second:

She can't do this. It's illegal—

Don't panic, don't panic, you can figure this out—

You're not allowed to leave someone to die in a cargo container. That kind of thing only happens on TV—

I'm such an idiot, how did I miss how weird she's been acting lately?

Just calm down, calm down, like Mama always said, you gotta think—

Would the police even look for me—?

If you'd figured out the algorithm already, you wouldn't be here—

How far away from New York am I—?

I'm gonna die I'm gonna die—

Closing my eyes—not that it made much difference—I tried to calm myself. Focused on not flipping out and not having a total mental breakdown. It worked, kinda.

Come on, Elizabeth, I thought. You gotta try to escape. Maybe she didn't fasten the cuffs very well. Maybe the bar is loose. You're not gonna find out by just sitting here.

I took a deep breath and squirmed around until my feet were under me. I used the cuffs to help pull myself up, wincing at the pressure around my wrists from the handcuffs. My legs shook like gelatin when I stood. I had to lean against the metal wall to steady myself. The floor was solid ice against the soles of my feet.

Both of my wrists were manacled to a metal bar about waist height. I traced my unsteady fingers along the contour of the handcuffs, then the freezing metal bar. I soon found that the bar ran from one side of the container to the other and it felt like it was welded to the very walls. The handcuffs slid along the bar, allowing me about six feet of horizontal movement and a few inches back and forth, but there was no break in the bar. It was solid.

I yanked on the bar, putting as much of my body weight into the movement as possible. I pounded on it. Cursed at it. It didn't so much as shudder. I tried pulling on the handcuffs, gently at first, then more violently. Aside from sending a sharp bolt of pain up my arms and making my wrists sting like hell, it didn't do anything. My bondage was simple, but horribly effective.

My quivering legs went out from under me and I crashed to the floor, landing on my hip. It stung. I hissed. Gritting my teeth, I pulled myself back up, slipped, caught myself on the bar. Fought back a tremendous urge to vomit. Forced myself to gulp down deep lungfuls of air.

Why waste the energy standing? I thought. The bar is solid. It's fucking metal. There's no way I can break that.

My inner optimist—truly, all programmers are ever optimists—refused to be quelled so easily.

Maybe I can pick the lock on the cuffs.

That idea was quickly followed by another thought: With what, Einstein?

Maybe there's something on the floor, like a nail or something I can pick up with my toes.

And you'll find it in the dark?

I'll feel it with my feet.

...Right. You're gonna die. Oh my god, I'm going to die.

"Shut up, Elizabeth," I mumbled. The sound was swallowed by the darkness around me.

The cuffs scraped along the bar as I moved to the left as far as possible. I slid my foot across the floor until it reached the corner. Then, concentrating hard, I began to slid my foot outward, away from the back of the container, keeping my toes in contact with the left wall. The metal floor beneath my foot was smooth but for a thin layer of dust and grit.

Come on...God, let there be something...a stick, a paperclip, a hairpin, anything.

A second later, I began to laugh. The harsh sound reflected off the metal walls. Just to think: I might've been free by now if I'd been the type to tame my hair with a few bobby pins before I left for work each morning. But I'd never had the patience for that sort of thing...

I leaned backwards, pulling away from the bar as far as the cuffs allowed so I could stretch my leg back further, until I was squatting down on my right leg with my left leg out as far as it would go. I struggled to keep my balance.

There was nothing but cold metal and soft dust beneath my foot.

Gulping, I slid it a few inches away from the wall and began feeling my way back towards the rear of the container...

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The industrial park was in the middle of a wide field, surrounded by dry, brown weeds and decidedly unhealthy looking trees. John Reese arrived at the park just as dawn broke the horizon. He pulled into the empty parking lot and stepped out into the early morning chill, drawing his gun. There was no one else around.

"I'm at the industrial park, Finch," he said, tapping his earpiece. "No one else here."

There was a strip of low cement buildings, many of which were boarded up. An old repair garage, a decrepit hardware store, a kitchen and bathroom tile wholesaler, a small office building for an internet service provider. The front doors were all locked. Rather than break in at once, Reese headed around to the back, his senses all hyper-alert, scanning simultaneously for danger and any sign of the missing Elizabeth Ruben.

Wading through weeds, Reese scanned the back of the buildings. A fat transformer hummed nearby on a concrete pad. Next to it was a metal door—and it was ajar.

He said, "I found an entrance to one of the buildings. I'm going in."

"Carefully please, Mr. Reese," Finch said.

Wary of any traps, Reese nudged it further open, pulled out his flashlight, clicked it on, and stepped inside the building—the repair garage. It was dark within and the atmosphere was permeated with the odor of oil and metal. Reese moved deeper into the shadowy, carnivorous chamber. Two long, sloped pits in the concrete floor were lined up with a set of heavy garage doors. Reese avoided the pits as he skirted the room.

There were two open doors at the end of the garage. One of the doors led to a tiny office. The white door frame was stained gray where greasy hands had once grasped it. An aging, yellowing CRT monitor sat atop a desk that was clearly struggling to hold it aloft.

The other door led to a storage room. As soon as Reese peered inside, he knew that something was wrong. The room was empty—and it was too clean. Too organized. The bare metal shelves had been set neatly against one wall. A heavy wooden chair had been placed in the corner. There was nothing else of interest in the room.

Reese clicked on the lights and swept inside.

"Finch?" he said, looking around the room. "Someone's been at the garage recently. This room is too clean."

"I just found a link to Fandango Transportation," Finch said. "It appears that the company used to send some of its smaller vehicles to this garage for maintenance."

"Maybe Dodson knew about it."

He made a circuit of the room, checking under the shelves for anything that might have been missed. When he got to the chair, he paused and knelt down to examine it.

There were marks at the top and bottom of the chair legs, as though something had been tied to them.

"I think Elizabeth was here, Finch," he said, standing. "She's gone now. I'll check the other buildings."

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I gave up after going back and forth twice along the complete length of the bar, covering as much of the floor near me as possible. I had felt out an area about six feet long by five feet out with my soles and I had found nothing. Nothing but dirt and grit.

My thighs felt like they were on fire. My legs were sore and my poor feet were frozen. I sat down hard, drawing my knees in as close to my body as possible. I was cold, very cold, and I did everything I could to minimize my contact with the cruel metal around me.

Well, I thought, I tried. I really did, Mama. I tried my best and it's not enough. I'm dead. Because of that—that horrible woman.

I wondered: would she get away with my murder? 'Cause I was dead, I knew that for sure—there was no way I would ever get out of this by myself, and unless somebody Up There felt like pulling out a miracle, I doubted that anyone would find me—or rather, my corpse—for a long, long time.

How careful had Tara been? I knew there were cameras all over the Landis building. At least one of them would've seen us together. But if she was careful, and if she put my clothes somewhere else to draw the investigation away, and if she'd driven a different car to wherever I was...

She was going to get away with it. I knew it in my heart. I was going to die, and no one would ever know what had happened to me. And all for a fucking algorithm that didn't even work.

I'd poured six months of my life into that code, only to have it spew out nonsense and gibberish whenever I tested it. I didn't even know why it was broken. It was perfect. It should've worked. I'd been over each line of code dozens of times and yet I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it.

The source code hovered like a ghost before my eyes. Sections of each line of code were highlighted in orange and green, just as it appeared in my favorite text editor. While the algorithm was very complex, the actual code was less than a thousand lines, and after having slaved over it for half a year, it was burned into my memory for good. It taunted me.

You're here because of me, it said. You can't even figure out why I'm broken. And now you're going to die because you were too inept to figure me out.

She would've killed me anyway, I thought glumly.

Come on. Figure it out. Use that big brain of yours.

Well, it sure beat contemplating my death.

I concentrated on the first line of code. It declared a variable as a single character. Simple enough. I went on to the next line—another declaration—and found that I was beginning to relax, just a little bit. And then I read the next line, and the next. I began to mumble each line aloud as I got to it. By the time I got down deep into the nitty-gritty of the algorithm, I had managed to forget, for a precious short time, that I was tied up in a storage container.

I got to one line of code in particular, a perfectly innocent function call. Went past it. Paused. Went back. Mouthed each syllable, each symbol. I felt funny. Something was weird with that line of code, but I didn't have any references to compare it to.

I muttered. "...the function...takes a pointer to an int..."

A pointer to an int...

It hit me like a freight train, like the floor of the cargo container dropped out from under me. I felt my eyes go wide.

Oh. My. God.

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Reese was on his way back to the car when his phone rang.

"It's Carter," a voice crackled in his ear. "That van you told us to look for? We just found it."

"Where?" Reese slid into the driver's seat and started the engine.

"At the edge of the road in the middle of the boonies," Carter said. She sighed. "It's been torched. Not much left inside."

Finch's voice cut in on the connection.

"Detective Carter," he said, "is there any sort of GPS unit in the vehicle?"

"Uhm, lemme check." For a few seconds, there was the sound of people talking, gravel crunching, a hinge squeaking. "Yeah," she said. "I think that's a GPS unit, anyway. Pretty burnt up, but it's in one piece."

"Get it to me as soon as possible, Detective; I may be able to salvage its memory."

Reese said, "Any sign of Dodson or Elizabeth?"

Carter said, "Not yet—"

In the background, amid the hubbub of noise, a voice shouted: "Detective!"

"I'll call you back," she said, and she hung up.

"Finch," Reese said, "do you have a lock on her phone?"

"Of course, Mr. Reese. She's about thirty miles south of your position on a rather isolated road. There are no structures of any sort for miles around."

"Dodson's trying to throw us off," Reese said.

The phone rang again.

"John?" said Carter. "They found a woman's sandal in the back of the van."

"Blue?"

"Yeah. Used to be, at least. Doesn't look like there was anything else in the back. Look, when people start torching vans, that's a bad sign. I hate to say it, but your girl? She might be dead already."

"I'm aware, Detective. Get that GPS unit to Finch."

"All right." She disconnected.

"Finch? Any ideas where Dodson might've gone from the industrial park?"

Reese's phone beeped with an incoming message.

"I've sent you a list of the nearest Fandango properties, Mr. Reese. Until I have the GPS unit, I'm afraid I can't do much better."

"I'll try the closest one." Reese put the car in gear and pulled out of the parking lot.

"Detective Carter may be right, Mr. Reese. Despite our best efforts...it may be too late for Miss Ruben."

"Finch, do we have a new number this morning?"

There was a pause. "No. Why do you ask, Mr. Reese?"

"Because I won't stop looking for her until we do."

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One character. My god. One fucking little ampersand that should've been in front of the variable name, but wasn't. And it made the whole thing fall apart. Hell, it wasn't even the algorithm that was broken—it was my translation of the algorithm into the C programming language that was at fault.

How the hell did I miss that for all thosemonths? I thought.

I had no way to test the change without a computer and a C compiler, but I was near-certain that it was the root cause of the nonsensical output.

Great going, Elizabeth, I thought, shivering. You found the bug. Now if only you'd gotten it released to the world before psycho-bitch kidnapped you, you wouldn't be here.

I had just solved the problem that had been perplexing me for months, but I felt no elation, only bitterness. It was too late to do anything about it. Way, way, way too late. The algorithm was going to die with me in the next day or two. All my source code was on an encrypted partition on my desktop and I doubted anyone would be able to make sense of my notes. I'd been hoping that my work would've made some positive difference in the world—now the algorithm would never have the chance. It would stay locked away on my computer until the drives were wiped or destroyed.

I wondered what would happen to my computers after I died. My books, my clothing, my music. All my possessions. Would someone take them? Would they be sold? Would my sandals and novels end up on a shelf in a thrift store somewhere? Would my computers be wiped? Would they just be given away as they were? The thought of other people handling my possessions rankled me, especially when I thought of all the embarrassing things I had stored on my desktop computer but hadn't bothered to encrypt.

Once you're dead, you won't mind so much, I thought. You won't even know if they'll find the "Untitled Folder 7" on your hard drive. And who cares if they do? You'll be dead. You're gonna die.

I was exhausted, cold, frightened, and more than a little pissed-off. My arms were sore from being held up above my head. Frustrated, I yanked on the handcuffs. I felt nothing more than a dull ache of protest from my numb wrists. I yanked again, and again, and soon I started throwing my weight against the cuffs and screaming and shrieking, because I was so angry, and so afraid, and I just couldn't take it anymore, and I only stopped when I felt something warm and wet dribbling down my arm.

I couldn't feel my hands.

I sat down hard on my butt—at least I could still feel that, at least for now. Crossed my legs. Cried. Cried hard. I didn't know what else to do.

I think I fell asleep for a little while, or maybe I fainted.

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I was woken by a sharp sound, like a gunshot. Opening my eyes, I was surprised to find that I could see again. Tiny beams of light leaked into the container through cracks and holes in the walls and ceiling. A narrow ray of light fell across my foot and thigh.

There wasn't much to see. The container was empty and much smaller than I had thought. I almost preferred the abject darkness—at least I hadn't been able to see see the dimensions of my prison.

Looking up, I saw caked blood around my wrists where the handcuffs had bitten them. I wiggled my fingers. They moved, but the motion made my wrists burn.

Another metallic crack reverberated through the container. This time, I recognized the sound: thermal expansion. The sun was heating the exterior of the container...and that meant the interior would soon follow suit.

I was suddenly thinking of all the times I had entered my car after it had been sitting in the hot sun for a few hours.

Shit, I thought. I wonder which one will get to me first: heat stroke or dehydration?

I wished that Tara had just killed me when she'd had the chance.

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