Shari moved closer to the computer and frowned. "Are all of these chat rooms?"

"Yeah." Tony said angrily. "Is this what you've been doing on the computer?"

"Daddy, no," Cookie whimpered. "I mean, we only got on there once."

"Once?" He started counting the URL locations in the history box. "One, two, three . . ."

"It's the same one, Daddy."

"I don't care if it is," he said. "We specifically told you what the rules were for having a computer in your room, didn't we?"

"Yes," Cookie said looking at the floor.

"What are the rules, Cookie?" Shari asked as she stood next to Tony with her arms folded.

"No chat rooms," Cookie said softly.

"And why?" Shari asked, tapping her foot.

"Because they're not safe."

"What kind of people visit chat rooms, Cookie?"

Cookie looked confused.

"What kind?" Shari repeated.

Cookie shrugged. "I don't know."

"Exactly," Tony intervened as he began to exit out of the browsing history window. "You don't know. You don't know who you're talking to, and too many times we hear about grown men pretending to be boys luring young girls away from home."

"And who is we?" Shari asked.

"Huh?"

Shari was losing patience. "Cookie, stop standing there acting like you don't understand English! You said, 'we only got on there once' so I'm asking you, who is we?"

"Me and Serenity," she said.

Tony shut down the computer and began disconnecting the mouse and keyboard from the monitor. Then he disa.s.sembled the rest of the computer. "Since you've shown us that you can't follow the rules, you won't be using this computer anymore," he said as he unplugged it from the wall.

"I'm sorry," she said softly.

"You should be," Shari said, still standing in front of Cookie with her arms crossed. "Trust is a very important part of a person's character, and you've just shown us that we can't trust you."

"I'm sorry," she said again tearfully.

"Stop being sorry," Shari said. "Be more responsible. You know better!"

"But I wasn't talking to n.o.body on there. Serenity was."

"What do you mean, Serenity was? Who was she talking to?" Shari asked.

"A boy she met."

"What was this boy's name?"

"Saucer."

The frown on Shari's face deepened. "What?"

"We called him Saucer."

"Was that his real name?"

"I don't know. That's what we called him."

"Lord, have mercy," Shari said.

"And what did this boy and Serenity talk about?" Tony asked sternly.

"He wanted to meet her."

Shari looked at Tony.

"Meet her where?" Tony asked.

"At the mall but she said she couldn't."

"Thank G.o.d," Shari said.

"But she said she was gonna meet him in front of the restaurant today," Cookie added.

Tony looked at her in amazement. "What restaurant?"

"He just said some parking lot where a pizza restaurant used to be across the street from the mall."

"I'm going to call Tia," Shari said. She pulled out her phone and waited while the phone rang on the other end. "She's not answering," she said to Tony and disconnected the call. She gave the phone to Cookie. "Call Serenity and see if she's home," she said.

Cookie called Serenity's house number and listened to it ring several times before going to voice mail. "She's not answering."

Shari looked at Tony. "What should we do?"

"Let's go," he said. "Maybe we can find her."

Chapter Thirty-one.

Homer smiled as he parked his tan two-door Cavalier across the street from the empty parking lot and waited for his little fish to show up. His car glistened under the February sun as he kept the engine running.

He marveled at how easy it had been to get her to meet him. The younger girls were so gullible, and that's what Homer liked best. But he liked them a little older too-they were just as gullible. Most of them required little to no coercing if a man knew what he was doing.

He smiled at his own cunningness. He was smart enough not to park his car directly on the deserted parking lot, but he'd chosen this particular area because it sat adjacent to a heavily trafficked street. He hadn't wanted to scare her off by suggesting they meet in a secluded location. This way, she would think she was safe. She wouldn't even realize that she was a fish out of water, already caught.

But then they never realized what they had gotten themselves into until it was too late . . . at least on their end. Sometimes, the teen girls-expecting to see a teenage boy-would be frightened when they saw him . . . a grown man. Many would try to run away, but they were never successful. They were no match for his strong grip, and he'd pull them into the car, and then drive them to a secluded location.

It was during these times that almost all of them would suddenly remember some vague responsibility they had to attend to at home. Homer thought it was funny how none of them ever came up with a different excuse to get away from him, and each time he ignored their pleas.

It was a game of bartering that Homer engaged in with the girls, and he never became violent with any of them. He might have been somewhat firm and aggressive getting them into his car but never violent. Not even with the girls who were unwilling to cooperate. With them, he offered a deal, a trade-off of sorts. "You do this for me," he'd say, "and I'll take you home."

Well, he hadn't meant their actual home. Once they stopped crying and did what he wanted them to do, he'd take them back to the pickup location and drop them off. He didn't know how they got home, and he didn't care. That was not part of the bargain.

The occasional women he'd met through online chat rooms were different. Most of them had been quite agreeable to meeting him at various motels, and there had been no need for him to barter and trade for favors.

Once he'd gotten married to Sandra, Homer had slowed down-no, he'd practically stopped-his search for women and young girls on the Internet. But then Sandra began to reveal her dissatisfaction with him, and he'd had no idea of how to become the man she said she needed him to be.

Little by little, Homer returned to his online obsession where neither his persona nor his existence required an explanation. But it didn't stop there. As his wife's dissatisfaction grew, Homer's fixation with his neighbor and her daughter began to intensify.

He surveyed the parking lot from behind the dark sungla.s.ses he had on. The weeds sprouting up through the many cracks in the pavement were an indication of how long the restaurant in the center of the city had been closed.

The building had housed several different establishments over a period of five decades; from a mom-and-pop diner when he was a child to countless fast-food burger joints that migrated into various soul food restaurants to its last reinvention which was now defunct. Now, the mortar and brick building stood abandoned, and had been for quite some time, its windows boarded up.

Homer ran his fingers through the few strands of hair remaining on the top of his head. He looked up at the sign perched on top of the building's roof. It was a faded remnant of what used to be.

His attention was drawn to the city bus pulling up to its stop. Three teenage boys got off, and then the bus drove away. He looked at his watch and sighed. It was 2:20 p.m. Ten minutes pa.s.sed before Homer saw the white top of the city bus approaching with its flashing LED letters. At the same time, his laptop lying on the pa.s.senger seat next to him beeped, indicating he had an e-mail message. He clicked on the mail link, and saw it was a delayed message from his fresh catch. Apparently, she'd uploaded a picture of herself after all.

"Hi" she wrote, "Here's my pic."

He clicked on the attachment and waited for the picture to download. He saw the light brown hair and recognized the cherry coloring on the tips of the bangs. Well, well, well. He chuckled. So that's who the little fish is.

His humor was short-lived when he looked up and noticed a brown Pontiac trailing two cars behind the city bus. His heartbeat increased as he looked at the front b.u.mper held down with bungee cords. Surely there's more than one brown Pontiac with a loose front b.u.mper in this city . . .

The computer stalled right at the bottom of her bangs, and his hands grew sweaty as he rolled his finger around the mouse pad, desperate to confirm her face. The screeching brakes of the bus startled him, and he looked up again. His heart was beating wildly as he searched for the Pontiac which had gotten caught by the red traffic light at the intersection.

The bus came to a stop, and Homer saw Serenity get off. Only her brown bangs that were dyed red on the ends were visible underneath her h.e.l.lo Kitty hat. He slouched down in his seat and watched as she looked up and down the street, and then suddenly removed her h.e.l.lo Kitty hat.

He continued watching her as she merged into the crowd of other people who had gotten off the bus, and quickly walked in the opposite direction of where his car was parked. Homer remained in his slouched position until Serenity-and the brown Pontiac-had disappeared.

He slowly returned to an upright position, wondering if it was just a coincidence that Tony and Shari happened to be driving down that particular street at 2:30 in the afternoon. He pulled out his cell phone. He'd missed the little fish this time, but what one won't do another one will, he thought.

He pressed *67 before dialing Tia's number.

"h.e.l.lo?" she answered with a hint of caution.

Homer got straight to the point. "Why haven't you returned my calls?" he asked.

"Homer, this is not the time," she said. "I'm on my way to work."

He ignored the irritation in her voice. "Are you so busy that you can't take five minutes out of your day and pick up the phone?"

"Yes," she said as she sat in her car in the hospital's parking structure.

"Can I see you tonight?" he asked. "I can give you one of my ma.s.sages to relax you."

Tia sighed heavily. "No, you can't see me tonight, Homer. Or any other night. I'm going to need you to stop calling me."

"Oh, okay," he said as his words spewed from his mouth with a moderate amount of speed. "Let me make it easy for you, then. I won't call you anymore, and you don't have to worry about calling me any-"

"I haven't," she interrupted.

"That's right," he said. "But you could have at least returned my calls. When were you going to anyway?"

Tia switched the phone to her other ear. "Homer, I told you what happened was a mistake." She took a deep breath. "I'm going to need you to stop calling me, now. I mean it."

"That's not what I asked you," he said dryly.

"But that's what I'm telling you." She began to feel uncomfortable. "I'm going to let you go, now."

Homer laughed sarcastically. "You already have, haven't you?" He cleared his throat. "If you don't want me, all you have to do is let me know."

Tia looked at her phone in astonishment. She didn't have time for this. Hadn't she made it clear that he would have to stop calling her? She knew what he wanted, the only thing he wanted, and her conscience would not allow her to cheat on her husband a second time. "I don't want you," she said firmly.

"The problem is," he said with a mixture of anger and urgency in his voice, "I still want you."

For just a few seconds Tia felt sorry for him. She knew what it felt like to want someone who didn't want you. But she was a married woman, and she'd had no business dealing with him-a married man-in the first place. Why hadn't she considered his wife and how she would have felt had she known her husband was cheating on her?

"This should have never happened," Tia said. "I have to go." And she disconnected the call before he had a chance to reply.

Chapter Thirty-two.

Lorenzo sat on the couch floating in and out of consciousness. The tiny Ziploc bag lay empty on the floor at his feet.

"Suicide is not the answer," the elderly woman on the local Christian channel said. "G.o.d, through Jesus Christ, made a way for you to surrender your heavy load. All of your burdens. Not some of your burdens," she emphasized as she stretched her arms out wide. "All of them to Jesus."

Lorenzo kept listening.

"Jesus," she continued, "said, 'Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest . . . '"