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were colleagues; they were…“I mean, I’ll have to check with my department and all first, to make sure it will all be okay at UCSD. But I think it could be really interesting.”
    “Oh good. Good. I was hoping you’d say yes.”
             
    The next morning, at work his doorway darkened, and he swung his chair around, expecting to see Diane, there to discuss their move to the Presidential Science Advisor’s offices—
    “Oh! Edgardo!”
    “Hi, Frank. Hey, are you up for getting a bite at the Food Factory?” Waggling his eyebrows Groucho-istically.
    “Sure,” Frank said, trying to sound natural. It was hard not to look around his office as he saved and shut the file he was working on.
    On the way to the Food Factory, Edgardo surreptitiously ran a wand over Frank, and gave it to Frank, who did the same for him. Then they went in and stood at a bar, noisily eating chips and salsa.
    “What is it?”
    “A friend of mine has tracked down your friend and her husband.”
    “Ah ha! And?”
    “They work for a unit of a black agency called Advanced Research and Development Agency Prime. The man’s name is Edward Cooper, and hers is Caroline Churchland. They ran a big data-mining effort, which was a combination of the Total Information Awareness project and some other black programs in Homeland Security.”
    “Wait—she didn’t work
for
him?”
    “No. My friend says it was more like the other way around. She headed the program, but he was brought in to help when some surveillance issues cropped up. He came from Homeland Security, and before that CIA, where he was on the Afghanistan detail. My friend says the program got a lot more serious when he arrived.”
    “Serious?”
    “Some surveillance issues. My friend didn’t know what that meant. And then this attempt on the election that she tipped us to.”
    “But
he
worked for
her
?”
    “Yes.”
    “And when did they get married?”
    “About two years before he joined her project.”
    “And he worked for her.”
    “That’s what I was told. Also, my friend thinks he probably knows where she’s gone.”
    “What!”
    “That’s what he told me. On the night she disappeared, you see, there was a call from a pay phone she had used before, a call to the Khembali embassy. I take it that was to you?”
    “She left a message,” Frank muttered, more and more worried. “But so?”
    “Well, there was another call from that pay phone, to a number in Maine. My friend found the address for that number, and it’s the number of your friend’s college roommate. And that roommate has a vacation home on an island up there. And the power has just been turned on for that vacation home. So he thinks that’s where she may have gone, and, as I’m sure you can see, he furthermore thinks that if he can track her that well, at his remove, then her husband is likely to be even faster at it.”
    “Shit.” Frank’s feet were cold.
    “Shit indeed. Possibly you should warn her. I mean, if she thinks she’s hidden herself—”
    “Yeah, sure,” Frank said, thinking furiously. “But another thing—if her ex could find her, couldn’t he find me too?”
    “Maybe so.”
    They regarded each other.
    “We have to neutralize this guy somehow,” Frank said.
    Edgardo shook his head. “Do not say that, my friend.”
    “Why not?”
    “Neutralize?” He dragged out the word, his expression suddenly black. “Eliminate? Remove? Equalize? Disable? DX? Disappear? Liquidate?”
    “I don’t mean any of those,” Frank explained. “I just meant neutralize. As in, unable to affect us. Made neutral to us.”
    “Hard to do,” Edgardo said. “I mean, get a restraining order? You don’t want to go there. It doesn’t work even if you can get them.”
    “Well?”
    “You may just have to live with it.”
    “
Live
with it? With
what
?”
    Edgardo shrugged. “Hard to say right now.”
    “I can’t
live with it
if he’s trying to harm her, and there’s a good chance of him