Wildwood Road by Christopher Golden Page A

got into the patrol car and drove off. Her policeman waved at her as they passed. A moment later, Michael came to stand beside her on the roadside, car keys jangling at the end of one finger.
    “Do you want to drive?” he asked.
    “No,” she said, surprised by the venom in her voice. She and Michael rarely fought, and on those rare occasions it was more healthy debate than bitter argument. At the moment, however, she wasn't in the mood for a healthy debate.
    “You drive,” she told him, walking around toward the passenger's side. “And on the way, you can explain what the hell just happened.”
     
    I N THE MONTHS BETWEEN HIS junior and senior years at Emerson College, Michael worked a summer job at the secretary of state’s office, right up on Beacon Hill in Boston. He had grown up in Sudbury, thirty minutes west of the city, and the commute was a bitch. But he had spent enough time delivering pizzas and working in video stores, and wanted to have a real job on his résumé. As always when it came to city politics, strings had been pulled to score him the job. More than a decade earlier, his father had been a state representative out of Sudbury. The old man had been taken by cancer when Michael was in high school, but he’d been well liked and the connections remained. Teresa Dansky had made a few phone calls on her son’s behalf, and quick as you please he had a job.
    Other than its location—Michael loved Boston Common and the State House—the job was wholly unremarkable. He answered phones and filled out paperwork; the department had half a dozen people doing the work of two. He sketched a lot, working on covers to imaginary CD's and books, and sometimes he even read, there at his desk.
    But the job was not a total loss. If he hadn't made that trek into Boston all summer, if his mother hadn't made those calls, if his father hadn't been in state politics, he never would have met Jillian.
    One July morning, he sat at his desk typing up a form and trying to ignore the uncomfortable closeness of the air. The air-conditioning wheezed from vents in the ceiling as though on its last gasp. His desk was nearest the window, and the glare of the sun on his back combined with the failing air conditioner to make his work space almost stifling. They were supposed to get around to fixing the a/c soon, but Michael had no faith in what “they” said. It was a government building, after all. It took two to do half the work of one, and that was on the off chance they weren't on break. He figured they'd get around to fixing the a/c just in time for the cold weather to come blustering in.
    The office was filled with conversation, a steady hum of voices. Michael typed the date at the bottom of the document he was completing, then tapped the key to print it. He stood to stretch, and glanced around. Kara, the woman who headed up his department, was on the phone. Sheila was bent over her computer, doing a background search on a corporation. He had no idea where the others were. Their area was separated from a much larger room of files and computer stations where paralegals could come and do UCC searches for their firms' clients, but his missing coworkers were nowhere in sight.
    “Michael?”
    He turned to Sheila, who had pulled her focus away from her computer long enough to get his attention. She smiled and gestured toward the long open counter-window at the front of the office.
    “You have a customer.”
    The girl on the other side of the counter stood patiently, a file clutched against her chest. Michael felt a warmth kindled in his gut that had nothing to do with the faltering air-conditioning. He knew her name, of course. She came up to the Corporations division at least twice a day to do UCC searches or to get certificates of good standing for her firm's clients. There were other things he knew as well. She was Italian. From Medford. She had only just graduated from Suffolk University, and in addition to her B.A. had earned a