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eating my dinner when this Asian guy asked if he could share my table. I said sure, since I was just about to leave anyway. I didn’t even say anything else.”
    “Well, my friend, you thought nothing of it, I’m sure, but that picture shows you with your hand out, offering him a seat. The next shows the two of you sitting across from each other at a small table, both leaning inward. Looks like a cozy little conversation.”
    “I was working on my computer. I didn’t say more than two words to him,” Collin protested.
    “That was enough, though,” said Lukas. “They orchestrated this very cleverly. Apparently one of his guys snapped those pictures and posted them for the FBI to find.”
    “The FBI? So the guys with the shades are FBI?”
    “Probably not. They could have been Interpol, but I doubt that, too. My hunch is that they’re contractors for Pho Nam Penh. I can’t be sure since the facial recognition software didn’t pick up a match on the photos you sent me. The question is: what’s next? That’s what I can’t sort out at the moment.”
    “Penh must have a network in Europe looking for me.”
    “Wouldn’t surprise me. He’s got long tentacles. What alarms me most is that he has now essentially enlisted law enforcement in his search.”
    “That’s not what I wanted to hear,” said Collin with a heavy sigh.
    “If the FBI believes you are in league with Pho Nam Penh and had something to do with shutting down RBS, they’ll get Interpol involved. You’ll be a high priority international fugitive. When you add the list of attacks Penh is suspected of launching over the past few months, you’ll become one of the World’s Most Wanted. Congratulations, my friend.” Left unsaid were Lukas’s concerns for Collin’s ability to hold things together.
    “Oh, great. This is just lovely. I’m going to have this Asian mob and every cop in the world after me?”
    “I’m afraid so. We’re going to have to take measures, my friend.”
    “What measures?”
    “Drastic and immediate measures. Let me work on this and get back to you, OK?”
     
    *              *              *              *
     
    Huntington Beach, CA
    May 1
     
    At age sixty-three, Sarah Cook had become a Facebooking fool. Her first foray into social media came just a few weeks after Collin’s disappearance. After yesterday’s difficult meeting with Agents Crabtree and McCoy, she doubled her efforts to use this modern medium to reach out and find Collin’s and Amy’s friends. She now had 381 friends, but she was not satisfied, nor would she be, until she got these friends to help bring her lost son home. Most had expressed condolences over the family’s loss and Collin’s subsequent disappearance, but provided no useful information.
    Tonight, some ten months after the accident and six months since anyone had seen her youngest child, a familiar name and face appeared on an accepted friend request. Emily Burns was practically part of the family at one point in time. She and Collin dated steadily their entire senior year of high school. Everyone thought they would get married. They were so close and always had so much fun together. “Henry,” she called out from her desk in the den, “come here. You’ve got to see this.”
    Henry was watching ESPN in the family room, which was on the other side of the wall from her. He muted the TV and pretended to run to her side, shuffling his slippers along the hardwood floor noisily so she would hear his haste. “Yes, my dear,” he said.
    “Come around here and look at who just became my friend on Facebook,” said Sarah, pointing at the computer screen. Emily Burns’s radiant face smiled at them. Naturally beautiful, there was hardly a trace of makeup.
    “I’ll be darned,” exclaimed Henry. “Haven’t seen her in years. She looks as good as ever.”
    “Yes, she does,” said Sarah. After a pause, she added, “You know, Henry, I don’t remember