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founder of Gifford Industries. He’d find someone to cover for her, of course—likely Noreen, who worked in the same executive suite as Lauren but was underemployed as the admin to the CFO and lusted after Lauren’s job. She was a disaster, though: not too bright, not very detail-oriented, not half as competent as she thought she was. Now Lauren had something else to worry about. Leland ran a multibillion-dollar corporation, but he barely knew how to send e-mail.
    Half to herself, she added, “Somebody must have told him what happened.”
    Gabe shrugged. “I e-mailed him from your computer at home.”
    “You e-mailed him?”
    “What, I’m not supposed to e-mail your boss?”
    “No, it’s—I’m impressed, that’s all. Thank you.” She fumbled with the bed’s controls, raised the head of the bed so she was finally upright. She murmured, mostly to herself, “I’ve got to get myself released from this place. I’ve got to get back there.”
    “Mom, you have a serious concussion, and you just woke up from being unconscious for twenty-four hours. Leland Gifford will be fine for a while without you.” Abruptly, he added: “Okay, Mom. Where is he?”
    “Who?”
    “You know who I mean. Where’s Dad?”
    She hesitated for a few seconds while she tried to think. Her brain was operating at half speed. She blinked, silent for a beat too long. What had they told him? She tried never to lie to him. Even if she wanted to, he was too smart to lie to.
    The kid scared her sometimes, he was so smart. She wondered where he inherited it. Not from her gene pool, that was for sure. Richard, her first husband and Gabe’s father, was smart enough but no genius. She also wondered from time to time whether being so precocious made him an outcast at his private boys’ school. It couldn’t be easy.
    “He went on a business trip,” she finally said. “Sort of an emergency. A last-minute thing.”
    Now Gabe’s eyes went flat. “Don’t, Mom. The cops came to the house yesterday looking for him.”
    “You—you were alone, Gabe?”
    “Of course I was alone. I’m fine. I’m fourteen.”
    “Oh, God, Gabe.”
    “Chillax, Mom, okay? It’s all good.”
    “ ‘Chillax’?”
    “I’m just freaked out about Dad, that’s all. They wouldn’t tell me anything, but . . .”
    “But you overheard what they were saying to me.”
    He nodded.
    She bit her lower lip, shook her head, and after a few seconds, she said, “Look, I don’t know where he is.”
    “Did he—did he, like, go somewhere?”
    She finally returned his gaze with a look that was equally fierce, yet also sorrowful and compassionate at the same time. “It’s possible he got hurt in the attack—”
    “Like he’s lying somewhere bleeding to death?”
    She shook her head. “The police assured me that he’s not in any hospitals or . . .”
    “Or morgues,” he added.
    “Which is a huge relief, Gabe. That means that he’s—he’s probably fine, just—”
    “He’s dead. You know he is.” He swallowed, blinked rapidly, tears flooding his eyes.
    “No, Gabe. No, he’s not. Don’t think that way.”
    “How do you know he’s not?”
    “Gabe, there’d—there’d be . . .” She couldn’t continue.
    “Do you think it’s possible these guys who hurt you grabbed Dad or something? Like, kidnapped him?”
    Finally, she replied, defeated, “I don’t know what to think.”
    “Maybe Uncle Nick can find him.”
    “I know you love Uncle Nick. Me, too. I just don’t think he can find anything the police can’t. He does corporate work, mostly.”
    “Well, we’ll see,” Gabe said. “I called him and he told me he’s on his way home now. He promised me he’d find Dad.”

7.

    I ’m not married, even though I’ve come dangerously close a few times, and I don’t have a family of my own. My “family of origin,” as the shrinks say, had been pretty well shattered by my father’s very public arrest and the squalid events that followed. So my