Seize the Night

whispered, “Better leave that out here. Lilly's shaky.”
    “Me too,” Bobby murmured.
    He put the shotgun on the porch swing. The Smith & Wesson revolver was tucked under his belt, concealed by his Hawaiian shirt.
    Sasha was wearing blue jeans, a sweater, and a roomy denim jacket.
    When we embraced, I'd felt the concealed handgun in her shoulder holster.
    I had the 9-millimeter Glock.
    If my mother's gene-swapping retrovirus had been vulnerable to gunfire, it would have met its match in us, the end of the world would have been canceled, and we would have been at a beach party.
    “Cops?” I asked Sasha.
    “They were here. Gone now.”
    “Manuel?” I asked, meaning Manuel Ramirez, the acting chief of police, who had been my friend before he had been co-opted by the Wyvern crowd.
    “Yeah. When he saw me walk through the door, he looked like he was passing a kidney stone.”
    Sasha led us into the kitchen, where such a hush prevailed that our soft footsteps were, comparatively, as loud and as rude as clog dancing in a chapel. Lilly's anguish cast a shroud over this humble house, no less tangible than a velvet pall on a casket, as though Jimmy had already been found dead.
    Out of respect for my condition, the only light came from the digital clock on the oven, from the blue gas flame under the teakettle on one of the cook top burners, and from a pair of fat, yellow candles. The candles, which were set in white saucers on the dinette table, emitted a vanilla fragrance that was inappropriately festive for this dark place and these solemn circumstances. One side of the table was adjacent to a window, allowing space for three chairs. In the same jeans and flannel shirt she'd been wearing earlier, Lilly sat in the chair facing me.
    Bobby remained by the door, watching the backyard, and Sasha went to the stove to check the teakettle.
    I pulled out a chair and sat directly across the table from Lilly.
    The candles in the saucers were between us, and I pushed them to one side.
    Lilly was sitting forward on her chair, her arms on the pine table.
    “Badger,” I said.
    Brow furrowed, eyes narrowed, lips pressed tightly together, she gazed at her clasped hands with such fierce attention that she seemed to be trying to read the fate of her child in the sharp points of her knuckles, in the patterns of bones and veins and freckles, as if her hands were tarot cards or I Ching sticks.
    “I'll never stop,” I promised her.
    From the subdued nature of my entrance, she already knew that I hadn't found her son, and she didn't acknowledge me.
    Recklessly, I promised her, “We're going to regroup, get more help, go back out there and find him.”
    At last she raised her head and met my eyes. The night had aged her mercilessly. Even by the flattering light of candles, she looked gaunt, worn, as if she'd been beaten by many cruel years rather than by a few dark hours. Through a trick of light, her blond hair seemed white. Her blue eyes, once so radiant and lively, were dark now with sorrow, fear, and rage.
    “My phone doesn't work,” Lilly said in an emotionless and quiet voice, her calm demeanor belied by the powerful emotions in her eyes.
    “Your phone?” At first I assumed that her mind had broken under the weight of her fear.
    “After the cops were gone, I called my mom. She remarried after Dad died. Three years after. Lives in San Diego. My call couldn't be completed. An operator broke in. Said long-distance service was disrupted. Temporarily. Equipment failure. She was lying.” I was struck by the odd and utterly uncharacteristic patterns of her speech, the clipped sentences, staccato cadences. She seemed to be able to speak only by concentrating on small groups of words, succinct bits of information, as if afraid that while delivering a longer sentence, her voice would break and, in breaking, would set loose her pent-up feelings, reducing her to uncontrollable tears and incoherence.
    “How do you know the operator was lying?” I prodded when Lilly fell silent.
    “Wasn't even a real operator. You could tell. Didn't have the lingo right. Didn't have the voice. Tone of voice. Didn't have the attitude. They sound alike. They're trained. This one was jive.”
    The movement of her eyes matched the rhythms of her speech. She looked at me repeatedly but each time quickly looked away, laden with guilt and a sense of inadequacy, I assumed that she couldn't bear the sight of me because I'd failed her. Once she'd shifted her