Chapter 3

[ Hot. Hot as an oven. An oven cranked up to 11. ]

Emmy and Lin could both see the call sender. Jenn Lee. Their eyes were big, although I assumed from a lack of understanding rather than shock.

The shock was all mine.

I pressed answer and slowly raised the phone to my ear. I didn’t know what was going to be on the other end.

It was nothing.

Or rather, it was static. Not loud, or annoying, just a subtle white noise kind of hiss.

I listened for a couple of seconds, then said “Hello?”.

Still nothing but a low hiss.

“Is anyone there? Hey listen, if this is some asshole fucking with me, it’s not funny.”

Nothing.

I listened for a few more seconds then ended the call, not trusting myself to speak.

“Who’s Jenn?” asked Lin for the second time.

Emmy’s eyes widened and a shocked expression unfolded on her face.

“Oh my god, Lin. It’s his wife that’s been missing for years.”

Emmy looked at me and said “Is she back? Is that her calling on the phone?”

I finally took a breath, a slow, deep breath with just a bit of a catch to it.

“Can’t be. Nobody was on the other end. If it was anybody else, her family, or a friend, or law enforcement, it wouldn’t be in her name. Plus her phone account was closed long ago, although the cell phone company and the police still have her number reserved and monitored. No calls were ever made on her phone, and her phone was never found. If somehow she was going to call it would be from a different phone number.”

“Are you being pranked?”, asked Lin.

“That would take a lot of effort to get my wife’s old cell phone number and assume I still have it in my list of contacts. Which I do.”

“Umm, why?”, asked Emmy.

“I just can’t delete it. That seems like finally giving up. Which I guess I need to do. Shit, next year I can declare her legally dead, which would make sense for a lot of financial reasons.”

“Didn’t you get a text first? What did it have on it?” asked Lin.

I checked the text message.

“Hmm. Just garbage characters. Some digits. Nothing that makes any kind of sense.”

“So who could that be?” asked Emmy.

“I have no goddamned idea.”

I sighed. The sexual high from the camming and sex play had 180’ed with a vengeance.

We were still sitting around the kitchen island, dazed and confused and curious. I was dazed but we were all confused and curious.

“I remember the missing posters around the neighborhood and a little bit of the news stories on TV, but I was only eight or maybe nine years old, so I didn’t pay much attention,” said Emmy.

“And I remember Mom going over to the missing lady’s house ... umm, I guess that’s here, isn’t it? ... and when she came back home she would be sad. Darrien, you know when you called last year and asked my mom if I could check up on your house when you were gone, I didn’t think much about it, and I didn’t make the connection. The pictures I see around the house, I thought maybe you were divorced like my mom or something.”

“Your mom and Jenn were pretty close,” I said, “so maybe that’s part of why she trusts me with you.”

“Yeah, could be,” said Emmy.

Silence returned.

“So nobody knows what happened to her?” asked Lin.

“Nope. Nobody’s heard or found anything since she disappeared. The police, family, neighbors, friends, nothing.”

“Damn. That’s gotta be hard.”

Jenn. Jenn Lee. Just saying her name brought back the days and months and years of worry and despair, the occasional anger, the loneliness. And specially the frustration. The utter frustration of not knowing, of not being able to do anything, any fucking thing, to find or help her.

It also brought back the good memories, the glitter in her eye when she was in a frisky mood, the short bit of annoyance when she dragged me away from the computer for a walk down to the beach. Annoyance which always turned to enjoyment and pleasure at getting out for some exercise, even on the days when it was cool and gray and cloudy and misty, which are many on the Oregon coast.

“Jenn was smart, extremely smart. Hell, I’m good with technology, but she’s so much better. And she studied biology and chemistry, worked at a bio-tech startup in Seattle. That’s where I met her, I was also working at a startup in Seattle, not a bio-tech but a software company. It ended up being a ‘dot-gone’, but the bio-tech company she worked at did well. The name is DynaGenetics Northwest, I doubt either of you recognize it, but anyone connected to bio-tech would.”

I took a deep breath, gathering my thoughts. Lin and Emmy were completely quiet, staring straight at me.

“Not only was she smart, she was friendly, social, and outgoing, the center of our group of friends in Seattle. She had a way of connecting with people, of finding out what really mattered to someone, an almost scary ability to get someone to tell things about themselves that were usually private.”

We looked at each other for a few moments, lost in our thoughts.

Emmy smiled and looked at me, almost a smirk.

“Darrien, I think my mom kind of liked you. Umm, likes you now, probably. Some girls are into that sadness, like seeing a little hungry puppy dog or something.”

A flash of anger streaked through me and I glared at Emmy.

“Is that what you think about me, I’m like a sad little puppy dog?” I asked.

Emmy sat back, surprise on her face.

“No, not a bit. And I know Heather -- that’s my mom’s name -- is not like that. I think she really does like you just for you. And you’re a hell of a lot better than most of the guys she’s dated.”

The anger left as quick as it had arrived. I sighed and looked at Emmy.

“Well, I wonder what she would think about me if she saw us a bit earlier today.”

She grinned, not what I expected.

“You might be a bit surprised. I don’t know if she’d be happy about what we did today, but she’s a lot more open about sex stuff than most people. That doesn’t mean I don’t get in trouble for things. Fuck, sometimes she’ll ground me for stuff that most kids would barely get in trouble for. Yesterday when you came home early, I was scared shitless not about getting caught naked, but because we were sneaking around and didn’t tell you anything, and could put you in a bad position.”

“But ... I kind of like the position I ended up in,” I said softly.

Emmy looked at me with a mild expression of surprise.

“Me too”, she said, as soft as I had.

“I wish my parents were that open,” said Lin. “It’s not like they’re super strict or mean, but if they knew I was naked and being touched by an older guy, they would kill me. Figuratively, not literally. I know the difference.”

Emmy didn’t say anything, and I’m pretty sure she didn’t know the difference.

But I didn’t speak up. Now was not the time for grammar lessons.

“I think that’s part of why I’ve been experimenting so much lately,” said Lin. “I read, a lot, every day. And sometimes I read adult books. I don’t mean porn stories, I mean books written for adults. Sex and violence, people doing vicious things to each other. Or sneaky or difficult things. And then sometimes sexy or kinky or sweet things to each other. And some of it I want to experience.”

“Ahh ... The Love Scouts,” I said with a chuckle.

Lin’s smile spread even wider on her face. It looked good, really good, lighting up her face and bringing a joy that made her even more beautiful than her features alone.

“You haven’t read any porn stories?” asked Emmy, obviously stuck on a different portion of the conversation.

“Oh, well, yeah, I’ve read some porn stories, too” said Lin. “Most of them are not that good. But a few of them are written well enough.”

“Hey, didn’t I ask to see some porn earlier? I mean porn videos, not porn stories,” said Emmy. “That will give me some ideas. I want to see some fucking anal sex!”

I chuckled but didn’t respond.

Emmy stood up from her kitchen island chair and started wandering through the living room, looking out the picture window, glancing at the little bit of art I had on the walls, and seeming to check out the furniture.

“Where would the porn be. Hmmm. Come here, porn.”

I shook my head and laughed some more.

“Darrien, we’ll just have to find some online. I’ve heard there’s lots of porn online.”

Emmy walked over to the study area in the living room, sat down at the computer, opened a search engine and typed in “anal sex porn”. She clicked on a link and pictures of two well endowed and well toned guys popped up, taking turns plugging each other in the nether end.

“Shit, that’s not what I expected,” said Emmy.

“Well, shit could happen if things didn’t work out right,” I said.

Emmy clicked back and opened another link. Another set of pictures showing guys with even bigger cocks popped up.

“Fuck, those are huge. That would hurt like hell, I bet, whether it was in my ass or my pussy.” She continued staring at the screen.

“Emmy! Close that up and come back here,” said Lin.

Emmy walked back and rejoined me and Lin at the kitchen island. She looked down at my crotch.

“Yeah, I’m not as endowed as those guys, “ I said. “Remember, those are porn dudes. The screening for those kind of guys is pretty basic -- not too ugly, big dicks, toned, or willing to get toned, and keeping it hard when needed.”

“Do you wish you were that big?” asked Lin.

“No, I’m fine with my size. It’s big enough. Actually the perfect size for really tight...”

I left the sentence hanging and looked down at Emmy’s crotch. She stuck her tongue out at me.

“Sheep!” yelled Lin.

We all laughed.

“That reminds me of a joke about Montana, where the men are men and the sheep are nervous,” I said.

The girls groaned.

“Hey, I’ve got a joke,” said Emmy. “What do you call a lesbian dinosaur?”

Nobody responded.

“Lick-a-lot-o-puss!”

Emmy laughed. Lin and I just shook our heads.

“Ok, here’s one,” said Lin. “What’s the best part about sex with twenty eight year olds?”

Emmy and I looked at each other and shrugged.

“There’s twenty of them!”

I let out a loud groan.

Emmy looked confused. “I don’t get it,” she said.

“Twenty eight-year-olds, not someone that’s twenty eight,” said Lin, pronouncing the appropriate words slowly.

“Oh. Good one.”

“Hey, at least you’re both well above eight years old,” I said.

“Ha! Yeah, six years older. You’re still a perv,” said Emmy.

I just smiled.

“How did you end up here, since you met Jenn in Seattle?” asked Lin.