"Son? You okay?"

Tyrone looked at the doorway. His father stood there.

"Your mother is worried about you. Is there something going on we can help with?"

His knee-jerk response was to wave his father off. No, nothing, I'm fine, just tired, nopraw No, nothing, I'm fine, just tired, nopraw. But he was too sick at heart to even lie about it.

"Bella and I broke up," he said.

His father came into the room. He leaned against the wall next to Tyrone's computer. "Not your idea, I take it?"

"No. Not my idea."

"You want to talk about it?"

"No. Not really." But then, as they had with Bella, the words somehow just came tumbling out. He told his father all about it, about seeing her in the mall, about her kissing that jockjerk, about seeing her in the hall. It just flowed from him like some kind of sour, bitter fluid.

John Howard listened to his son, felt his anguish and pain, and ached for him. If he could stand between his child and the world and stop anything from ever hurting him, he would do it, but he knew it didn't work that way. Some lessons you had to learn on your own. Some pain had to be endured. If you were to be tempered so that your edge would stay sharp, you had to go through the fire, be annealed, quenched, and heated again. But it hurt to watch your child suffer. More than anything else he could imagine.

Finally, the boy ran down. His grief was intense, all-consuming, it filled his world. He couldn't see any way around it.

There was nothing Howard could say that was going to heal this wound. A broken heart accepted no medicine except time. That the first case of puppy love squashed would some day be nothing more than a small scar in the grand cosmic scheme of things was not what Tyrone wanted to hear. You will survive this and get over it You will survive this and get over it was the truth, but it would not provide much comfort right at this moment. Still, it was all he had to offer. was the truth, but it would not provide much comfort right at this moment. Still, it was all he had to offer.

Howard sighed. "When I was sixteen, I was in love," he said. "A girl in my school, Lizbeth Toland, same cla.s.s. We were tight, went everywhere together. I gave her my junior cla.s.s ring. We called it 'hangin' out' back then. We talked about going to college together, getting married, having children. It was pretty serious."

Tyrone stared at him.

"It's kind of hard for you to imagine me with anybody except Mom, isn't it?"

Tyrone nodded. "Yeah." Then he must have realized that might not sound too good, because he said, "Well, no, I mean, well, I-I never really thought about it."

"That's okay. For the longest time, I believed my parents must have found me on a doorstep or under a cabbage leaf-the idea of them having s.e.x together was beyond my comprehension."

Tyrone shook his head, and Howard could almost read his thoughts: Gramma and Grampa? Having s.e.x? There There was a puker pix. was a puker pix.

"Summer after my junior year, I went to ROTC camp. Lizbeth and I wrote each other every day-snailmail mostly. And we talked on the phone when I could get to one. She said she missed me, couldn't wait for me to get back, and I felt the same way.

"Then I got a call from my best friend. Rusty Stephens. He'd been at a bar one night sneaking in to drink beer with a couple of buddies. They'd seen Lizbeth there, with somebody he didn't know, partying pretty good."

"That's terrible," Tyrone said.

Howard nodded, knowing his son knew just how he had felt when he'd heard it.

"Yeah, I thought so. I called her, asked her about it. She had a perfectly reasonable explanation. She'd been in the bar, sure enough, but the guy she was with was her cousin, come to visit with his folks, and her mother had told her to take him out. So it was family, it didn't mean anything, they didn't do anything, it was her cousin."

Howard shook his head. "I believed her. How could I not? We loved each other, we trusted each other. And I wanted to hear there was a reason other than what I was most afraid of, so I was happy."

"So what happened?"

"The summer went on. Rusty called again. He'd seen Lizbeth out again, dancing, drinking. Different guy, different place. He took it upon himself to follow them when they left. They drove up to Lover's Point, parked in the guy's car, fogged up the windows in the middle of July."

"Oh, man," Tyrone said.

"Right sentiment, but I used harsher language when I heard. I was pretty torn up about it. I called Lizbeth and asked her about it. She denied it. Said whoever told me they'd seen her was a liar.

"So here's the situation. Either my girl was stepping out on me, or my best friend was a liar."

Tyrone shook his head. "What did you do?"

"I checked it out. I called a couple of the guys Rusty said had seen Lizbeth. They confirmed his story, at least part of it."

"That's terminal," Tyrone said.

"Yeah. But it gets worse."

His son raised his eyebrows in question. "How could it get worse?"

"I called Rusty. Told him to go see Lizbeth and to get my ring back. If she was going to lie to me, we were through."

"Did he do it?"

"In a manner of speaking. He went to see her, told her what I'd said. She refused to give him the ring, but they talked for a long time. She said some... unkind things about me."

Tyrone blinked at him.

"Called me a 'stupid s.h.i.thead,' Rusty said."

"Jesus."

"So, I thanked Rusty for his efforts and said I'd take care of it. I bought a train ticket and waited for a long weekend in August when we didn't have much going on at camp. Went home. I got there on a Friday night late, caught a cab to Lizbeth's house. When I got there, I saw Rusty's beat-up old Chevrolet parked out front. He must have come by to try and talk to her again He must have come by to try and talk to her again, I figured. Maybe even to get my ring back. Good old Rusty Good old Rusty.

"I got out of the cab, walked over toward Lizbeth's front door, then I heard a noise coming from the Chevy-and I stopped and looked into the car. I saw Rusty and Lizbeth wrapped around each other in the front seat, both of them half undressed."

"f.u.c.k," Tyrone said.

Howard considered saying something about his son's language, but this wasn't the time. In the grand cosmic scheme of things, a bad word didn't mean much. "It didn't get that far," Howard said. "I thought I was going to die, right there, on the spot. I didn't know whether to pull good old Rusty out and beat the c.r.a.p out of him, or to turn and take off before they noticed me."

"What happened?"

"I stood there for what felt like a couple of million years, watching them kiss and fondle each other. It didn't seem real, like it was a bad dream. Then all of a sudden I got cold, really cold, as if I had turned to ice. August and it was probably still eighty-five degrees outside, hot, muggy, and I was cold. I reached out and tapped on the driver's-side window. They both jumped a couple of feet. When they turned and looked right at me, I smiled and waved good-bye. Then I left. The cab was gone, and I started to walk home.

"Rusty caught up with me a half a block or so away, on foot.

"He said, 'John! I can explain!'

"And I looked at him and said, 'No, you can't.' I was as cool as a barrel full of liquid oxygen. On the one hand, I wanted to smash his face in, but on the other, I was somehow... removed from it all. Like it was some kind of dream or vision, that I wasn't really even there. I said, 'You aren't my friend anymore Rusty. I don't want to talk to you, ever again.' "

"Jesus, Dad."

"Yep. Lost my girl and my best friend at the same time. I didn't know then this kind of thing happens all the time, so often it's a cliche, and I don't guess it would have mattered if I had known. They were both lying sc.u.m and they deserved each other. I could have punched Rusty's teeth in, but I figured, like my momma used to say, karma will get them. People who do c.r.a.p like this will get theirs someday. I didn't want to have anything else to do with them, even to the point of not b.l.o.o.d.ying my knuckles on Rusty's lying face.

"So I understand how you feel about all this, Tyrone, and all I can say is, you'll get over it eventually. It's terrible now, but someday, it won't seem so bad."

"Yeah? You still remember what happened to you pretty good."

"I didn't say you'd forget forget it. And it'll never go away completely, but it won't hurt as much as time goes by. Eventually there'll be a little scar that only aches a little if you poke hard enough at it. I know this doesn't help much, but that's the truth." it. And it'll never go away completely, but it won't hurt as much as time goes by. Eventually there'll be a little scar that only aches a little if you poke hard enough at it. I know this doesn't help much, but that's the truth."

There was silence. Howard waited, to see if they were done, if he should leave or if the boy wanted to talk more. Finally, Tyrone said, "So, what happened to them? Rusty and Lizbeth. Did karma get them? They get run over by a bus or like that?"

Howard grinned. "Not exactly. They got married right after graduation. Went to college. He's now a medical doctor, she's an English professor, they have three kids, and according to my relatives back home who keep me up to date about such things, they have a wonderful marriage."

"So much for cosmic revenge."

"Thing with karma is, it might take a couple of lifetimes to catch up with you," Howard said.

"Oh, good."

"What's done is done, Ty. You can't take back what you saw and heard, and if you could arrange to drop a piano on Bella and her new friend, it really wouldn't make you feel any better. Revenge hardly ever brings peace with it. Besides, if Lizbeth and I hadn't split, I'd never have met and married your mother. I figure I came out way ahead on the deal. No comparison." He smiled.

He got a small smile back from his son.

"You gonna eat supper?"

"I don't think so. I'm really not hungry."

"Okay. I'll cover it with Mom."

"Thanks, Dad. And, uh, Dad? Thanks for telling me the story."

"You're welcome, son."

Chapter Twenty-Six.

Wednesday, January 12th, 7:00 p.m. Washington, D.C.

The garage sure felt empty.

Michaels stood in the doorway to his garage, looking at the larger of his two big metal tool caddies. His most recent project car, the Plymouth Prowler, was gone, sold within a couple of days after he'd gotten it running right. He'd cleaned it up, and had taken it out only a few times, top up-it had been too cold and wet to drive the little convertible the way it was meant to be enjoyed-before his phone had rung with a potential buyer. That was how most of these things were done among the people he knew who restored old cars. Somebody told a friend, who told somebody else that this guy had a project car that was close to being finished, and if you were interested, you didn't want to wait for an ad on the net, because by then it would be too late.

Michaels smiled and walked back into the house. Might as well see what he had for supper.

In the kitchen, he dug around in the freezer and came up with a choice of Gardenburgers or teriyaki chicken sandwiches. He shrugged. The Gardenburger was going to get freezer-burned if he didn't eat it pretty soon, but h.e.l.l with it, he wanted the chicken. He tore the plastic bag to vent, and stuck the sandwich into the microwave to thaw.

So, that was how it had gone. The phone had rung one evening, and a man with a lot of money who knew somebody who knew somebody asked about the Prowler.

Michaels figured out what the car had cost him, what the parts had added to that, and how much labor it had taken him to rebuild the engine and the transmission and linkage and bodywork. He added thirty percent to that, and named a figure.

The potential buyer agreed with the number so fast that Alex realized he could have asked for more. Then again, he didn't restore old cars to make a living-although it was nice to know that if he ever decided to chuck Net Force he probably could survive that way. All you needed was a garage and some tools, and he already had those...

The microwave began its repet.i.tive cheep, and as he reached for it, the phone also called him.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"Uh, yeah, h.e.l.lo? I'm looking for Alex Michaels. The guy who does car stuff?"

Well, think of the Devil. "You found him."

"Oh, hey. My name is Greg Scates, I got your name from Todd Jackson."

Todd Jackson was the man who had bought the Prowler. "How are you, Mr.Scates? What can I do for you?"

"Well, uh, I've got an old car Todd thinks you might be interested in."

"What kind of car?"

"It's a Mazda MX-5, a 1995."

Michaels's eyebrows went up. MX-5 was better known in the U.S. as the Miata. A little drop-top two-seater, a lot smaller than the Prowler. He wasn't a big fan of j.a.panese hardware-he liked the big Detroit iron-but a Miata? He'd always thought those were on a par with the little MG Midgets. Fun.

And in '95 they still had the flip-out headlights too. Barn doors, they called them.

"So, tell me a little about the car."

"1 have to be honest with you. Mr.Michaels, I don't know a lot about it. It belonged to my father, who pa.s.sed away in November. He bought the car new after I'd left home. He drove it for a few months, but he didn't really have the reflexes for it-my mother was afraid he was gonna kill himself in it-so after a while, he put it in storage."

Interesting. "What kind of shape is it in?"

"I can't really say. Dad pulled the tires off it and put the car up on jacks in his garage-my folks live down in Fredericksburg-he drained all the fluids out of it, coaled everything with Armor-All and some kind of grease, then put a cover over it. The tires are in plastic bags in the garage. As far as I know, it's been sitting like that for about sixteen years."

Michaels felt a surge of interest. You heard about these things, low-or-no-mileage cars stored in somebody's barn for future sale. He'd never happened across one himself, but it was a common fantasy among car people-a rare model in near-mint condition, inherited by some relative who didn't have a clue what it was worth and who'd sell it for pocket change.

He moved to the kitchen computer terminal, next to the pantry, and called up the Cla.s.sic Book. Even though the car was only sixteen and technically not a cla.s.sic, it would be in there. Given the average half-life of cars since the eighties, sixteen was fairly old.

Mazda, Mazda, ah, there it was...

"So, what do you figure the car is worth, Mr.Scates?"

"Greg, please. I don't know. But Todd says if you're interested, you'll offer me a fair price."