Chapter 49

Cooper

––––––––

After that night, I am looking worse than I have since some of my first bad fights back in middle school, before I learned how to block my opponents properly. My lip is busted, my eye is swollen under a big black bruise, I have random pound marks and scars all over, including a nasty-looking gash right above my ear. But years of getting pounded on, even if it was not nearly as much as the guys going against me got pounded on, have trained my body to be resilient and I bounce back quick. I nurse my injuries like a bad hangover the next morning, but by midday I’m feeling better and even starting to look less banged up.

I should be at the gym, training. In the middle of tournament season isn’t exactly the time for a rest day and Vlad is appropriately pissed when I am a no-show at the gym, but I don’t answer my phone when it starts ringing off the hook with annoyed, then concerned, then flat-out livid calls from Vlad. Eventually, my inbox is full, so that quiets things for a while. It’s a good thing, too, because I need to focus. I spend all day on my computer, using all of my intelligence skills to hunt down clues that will lead me to Branna.

But skills alone aren’t enough to get into the real business of finding a smart woman who doesn’t want to be found. No, I need equipment, or rather elite, military-grade software, if I want any chance of finding her—and I know exactly where to find it.

Vlad looks ready to spit fire when I show up at the gym. Then he takes in how banged up I look and looks even madder.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, man?” Vlad yells, “You’ve gone absolutely off your rocker—first throwing a tournament match, then not showing up to training, then daring to show your face here looking like that. What, you blew off your big fight so that you could go get yourself pounded at a bar instead? Man, I would expect that from some of the juice heads the other trainers are working with but not from you. I know you, man, and this just isn’t you! Are you on crack? Be straight with me, are you on crack?”

He stares me down hard.

“No, man,” I say. “And I know it looks bad, and I know I’m risking my career here, but it’s important. I don’t have time to explain, but if you’re my friend and if you trust me, then I need your help right now.” Vlad has an untraceable computer—my old untraceable computer from my Navy days, with scores of heavy-duty software downloaded on it. The government doesn’t know I still have it. It was supposedly lost on mission, but I was bitter and was going to keep something from my time in service when they said I couldn’t go back. When I got back here, sorted myself out, and came back to myself, I didn’t want it anymore. Vlad likes to do some online gambling, which isn’t exactly above-board in our state, so I let him have the computer as thanks for all he did for me.

But now I need the computer. I need the incredibly powerful gigabytes downloaded onto its hard drive.

“Man, I need the computer,” I said.

“What are you doing?” Now Vlad doesn’t look angry anymore, just troubled. “Dude, I know I’m not Mr. Legal or anything, but what are you getting involved in here? Are you sure it’s worth it? I don’t want to see you locked up. You’re too good for that.”

“I’m sure,” I say, resolutely. I am. “I don’t have time to explain, but I need it. Now.”

Vlad and I lock eyes for a moment. Then he sighs.

“Just be careful, man,” he says. “I don’t want to see you get in over your head. This has to do with Branna, doesn’t it?” I don’t answer and he just shakes his head and sighs again. “I’ll drive home for it now and bring it by your place immediately.

“Thanks, man,” I say.

True to his word, Vlad has the computer to me in less than thirty minutes. As soon as I get my hands on it, I get straight to work. First, I hack into her personal records on a federal site, securing my computer first so that the FBI or CIA doesn’t come knocking down my door. She doesn’t have any active credit cards or debit cards that have been used in the last week, or even the last few months, so that’s little help. So I think. I scour the net for hours, but I’m not finding anything. It’s like looking for a white sprinkle on a white sand beach. But I’m not a quitter.

What could lead me to the girl? What leaves tracks for a woman who travels so light and inconspicuously that all she has is a backpack and the clothes on her back?

Money. Or rather, the lack thereof. I remember the necklace Branna always wore, a beautiful gold locket that she told me, in a moment of unguarded openness on one of our jogs with the dog, was a gift from her mother. She clammed up right after that and wouldn’t say anything more about the necklace or her mother after that, but I could tell that the necklace was important to her.

I could also tell that the necklace was valuable, however, from the way the gold gleamed. That was real high quality gold that definitely wasn’t pyrite or some metal mix. And knowing Branna as the practical girl that she was, even something so sentimental would eventually be sacrificed to practicality in her quest for self-sufficiency in the face of extreme adversity. That she’d get desparate was my last hope.

I’m sitting there, searching the internet with all possible combinations of search terms, for thirteen uninterrupted hours. I’m sifting through the results the web spits out at me of items that match my description of the locket and the appropriate time window for listing. Nothing. Nothing, but my eyes feel like they’re going to bleed out of their sockets and I’m not getting any closer. It’s a fool’s errand.

But there it is, on the online listing for a Harlem pawnshop called Uncle Johnny’s Treasures and Trinkets. I rub my eyes, sure it’s a mirage in my information dessert. But it’s still there — Branna’s necklace, sure as can be.

It’s early in the next morning and I haven’t slept a wink, and only eaten at my computer, but finding the listing makes me feel energized like I slept ten hours on a bed of feathers and fluff. I found my girl.

Bingo.