“Come in, sit down for a minute, this won’t take long,” Randy, Ayla’s boss’s boss, said, with a smile. “I know you have to get down to the belt soon to get started.”

Ayla returned his smile with a nervous one of her own. She’d come to work early, as he’d requested, despite being up later than she expected the previous night. The novel she’d been reading, which she only wanted to get deep enough into to get to one of the “steamy” sections, was too good to put down, so she’d finished it after her bath. She was exhausted. But it was Thursday, so she was on the downhill part of the week. One more day and it would be off to Southern California.

“It’s about your attendance,” Randy began. He shuffled some papers on his desk, pulling out one with her name at the top and lines highlighted in different colors; days she’d been late and others she’d left early. “I know you have your son, you know I have three boys of my own, I can sympathize. But I also have people I report to, and work that has to be done every day. And by done, I mean completed. Emergencies are one thing, but when you’re leaving early too often, it stretches everybody else. It puts me in a bind. I want to work with you, to make it as easy as I can for you, heck, for everybody, but when I let you slide, other people think they can slide, and pretty soon half the people on the belt are ducking out early, or trying to. Am I making sense?”

Ayla nodded. Randy had been more than fair with her, and he was making perfect sense.

“Jeff was livid when he came in here after we got finished yesterday. I mean furious. You know he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty, and he had to finish loading your trucks. Save me from having to listen to him bitch and moan anymore, okay?”

Ayla laughed, relieved.

“I don’t want to do any discipline on you, so consider this an unofficial verbal warning. And hopefully you have your childcare situation straightened out?”

“I do,” Ayla confirmed. “I promise. I really, really need this job. I would never do anything to jeopardize it, if I could help it. Thank you, Randy.”

“Thanks for your hard work,” Randy replied. “Now get down there before I have Jeff in here looking for you.”

Ayla’s day went without incident, although Jeff just scowled at her when she got overwhelmed with work, rather than offering any of the support he provided to others doing the exact same job.

Lupe showed up as scheduled, Desiree left for work on time, and between the two of them, they armed Preston with enough Spanish to continue his progress toward becoming bilingual.

Even Teri was on her best behavior, an almost-bearable version that rarely showed up at work.

That evening, after putting Preston to bed, Ayla sprawled out on the sofa next to Desiree to dig into a pint of mint chocolate chip that she’d managed to keep hidden from her son in the back of the freezer.

“Behind the frozen broccoli,” Ayla bragged to Desiree. “Vegetables are like Kryptonite to him. He won’t even touch the bag; he might accidentally absorb something healthy by osmosis.”

Desiree laughed and began to surf through the channels with the television remote.

A commercial ended and went into a teaser for the evening news, and just as Desiree went to check the next channel, Ayla stopped her.

“No, no, no! Don’t turn it! Oh my God!”

Desire dropped the remote onto the ottoman and held up her hands as if she’d been holding a venomous snake. “What, girl?”

Ayla had set her ice cream down and picked up the remote. Her hands were shaking. She pressed the button to rewind seven seconds, then she pushed the pause button. “That’s him. Right there in back. That’s him. Holy shit.”

Desiree studied the image. Two men in suits, stood in front, shaking hands. A young guy she recognized as some sort of local casino executive, the man next to him an older Asian fellow. They stood in front of a Watterson Gaming banner, with a small group, three men and one woman, off to the side, in the background.

Ayla walked over to the television and pointed at the tallest of the group, a rugged, broad-shouldered man with closely-cropped dark hair, just graying at the temples.

“That’s Preston’s dad. I swear. I’d never forget him.”

“Are you sure?” Desiree asked. “I mean, what are the chances?”

“Shh, let me hear what they’re saying,” Ayla insisted.

Nightly news anchor Rikki Randle narrated the clip: “Tonight at eleven, our lead story is the announcement of Watterson Gaming taking their local casino empire overseas. Where and when will their project break ground?”

She went on to discuss an update on the search for a local missing person, an elderly Alzheimer’s patient who had wandered away from his nursing home and disappeared.

Ayla muted the TV.

“I swear on everything, on Preston’s life, that’s him. That’s Preston’s father. He must work for Watterson. What do I do?”

Ayla had rewound it back and frozen the screen. She got close to the glass, studying it for a clue.

“I don’t know, Ayla, if you’re totally sure,” Desiree started.

“I am!” Ayla insisted.

“Okay, okay, let me finish,” Desiree said. “We have to figure some way to get you to talk to him, I guess? I don’t know. But look at him. He looks like a movie star. He must have a wife and kids somewhere. What do you think he’s going to say if you show up claiming Preston is his kid?”

Desiree joined Ayla right in front of the screen, to get a better look. Ayla was gazing intently at the man in question.

“Shit, Ay, he does look like Preston.”

“I know, right?” Ayla asked, wiping a tear from her cheek.

“I don’t know anybody at Watterson, I mean the place I work is small potatoes next to them, but some of the old-timers where I work retired from bigger casinos and wanted something smaller, slower-paced. Somebody might know who he is. Or know somebody who might know,” Desiree said, rubbing Ayla’s back.

“Let me get my laptop,” Ayla said, leaving the room for a moment and returning with her computer slung under her arm. The two friends sat down on the couch and brought up the Watterson Gaming web site. After doing some digging, they came up with Winston Watterson, the president of the company, as the man who was front and center on the television news story.

They searched for the Watterson board of directors and anyone else they could think of who might have been standing behind Winston, but the only one they found was a woman named Robin Chuang, who was “Director of International Development,” or some such. The mystery man remained a cipher.

It wasn’t long before the evening news aired, and the lead story, indeed, involved Watterson Gaming’s announcement that they were entering the lucrative Asian market, beginning in Macau.

Winston Watterson made a brief statement, but Ayla heard none of it. She was focused on the man over Winton’s right shoulder in the black suit. He was handsome and intense, eyes sweeping from side to side.

“I bet he’s security. Or a bodyguard, or something,” Desiree announced. “Look at how everybody else is relaxed and smiling; they’re excited about the announcement. But your guy is stone-faced. Except his eyes, they’re darting all over the place. Looking for danger?”

Ayla nodded. “Yeah, you might be right,” she agreed. “He was big… It would make sense if he was a guard or something.”

“How does that help, though? It’s not like you can just call up Winston Watterson, or send him an e-mail, and ask him who his bodyguard is, right?” Desiree asked. She commandeered Ayla’s laptop and punched Winston’s name into a YouTube search and checked on Google Images.

Several times, they found Winston with the same shadow; the handsome man in the black suit. The guy who looked like a grown-up version of Preston. Very grown.

“He’s with him all the time, and always in that black suit. He’s definitely his bodyguard,” Desiree offered. But the knowledge brought them no closer to the man’s identity. Nowhere was his name mentioned.

“This is so crazy,” Ayla muttered, going through the pictures. “I thought I’d never find him.”