"Hey, kid, where's your mom?"

"My mommy is very far away," says Zaida, helpfully. "They took her away because she's very bad."

Fred blinks. "Okay, can we find the people who are responsible for you?"

"No."

"Why... not?"

"They'll try to make me be good," she explains, patiently, still drawing on her arms with the purple marker. She doesn't know how to draw five-pointed stars, so she's drawing little lop-sided asterisks with six lines that all meet in the middle. "And that would be awful."

"What's so bad about being good? Good little girls get ice cream for dessert, or so I'm told."

Zaida wrinkles her nose in disgust. "Good little girls have to sit on people's laps all day and never go anywhere ever or draw any stars, and they have to hug people who hit them and never scream. So I am bad like my Mommy."

Fred kneels so he can talk to Zaida eye-to-eye. "Being good is a pain, huh? You don't get to do anything fun!"

She nods seriously.

"But I bet the people who look after you are really scared if they don't know where you are. So how about this: you come out of the closet, and we'll go to your people and tell them you're okay, and then you can draw stars all over me. Sound good?"

"No. Escaping doesn't work if you let the bad guys find you."

Damn. There go all his manipulating three-year-olds skills. 

"You can come out of the closet and show me where your people are, or I will pick you up and take you to the lady who runs Sunday school and ask her who your people are. Your choice, but the second one will take longer and leave less time for drawing stars."

Zaida regards him very seriously. She is angry and she is terrified, and she does not know how to hide these things, because she is three. She has also decided to stick to her guns on being bad, though.

"I'm not afraid of people hitting me!" she says, with conviction. "I am GOOD at people hitting me."

"I'm not going to hit you. I am sure your people are not going to hit you either. It is bad to hit children for playing in a closet."

"I'm not allowed to play in closets."

"You don't hit kids every time they do something they're not supposed to. If you did that, you'd have to hit kids all the time. You hit kids when they do something dangerous, like running out into the street."

"You hit kids if they're bad. Except for Mommy and Auntie, because they're wicked," says Zaida, working hard to make sure she is saying that right. "I don't know how to be wicked but I am working on it. I am starting with bad."

Fred is torn between "d'awwwwww adorable" and "Jesus Christ."

"I don't think people should be hitting you at all if your mommy doesn't want them to hit you. --Where did those bruises come from?"

Zaida knows this one! She points. "This one is from I wouldn't come to the kitchen. This one is from I wouldn't go to bed. This one is from I didn't call her Mommy. This one is from a tree. The tree one is my favorite."

Even if she's lying... those are a lot of bruises for a little girl. 

"It's not okay for grownups to hit little girls that much. Can you tell me your name and your grownups' name? I will tell some grownups whose job is to look after little girls and make sure they're safe."

"I don't want to be safe."

"Their job is to make sure that little girls don't get hit too much."

"I'm going to get hit a lot from now on because I'm going to be bad. I'm not going to be good even ONCE."

...This is not going anywhere. 

Fred says, "I'm going to pick you up and take you to the Sunday school teacher to find out who your people are."

"I don't want to."

"I'm sorry," Fred says, and picks her up.

Zaida has seen cartoons where people slip out of the bad guys' grasp by slipping out of their coats, so she decides to try pulling her dress off. This doesn't actually do anything on the escape front, which she figures is because she gets it stuck on her head and arms, rather than because cartoons are fundamentally untrustworthy. 

It does reveal much heavier bruises and a series of little red welts, streching from her lower back to her upper thighs and disappearing behind her underwear.

Fred picks her up very gently, taking care to avoid touching her bruises, and carries her to the nursery teacher. "Excuse me," he says, "I found this girl in a closet? Perhaps you could help me return her to her parents."

"You are NOT my daddy," says Zaida, because this is what her Mommy told her to say if a strange man ever picked her up and took her anywhere. She is sort of unclear on why this phrase in particular, because Zaida doesn't actually have a daddy, but she's going to say it anyway.

"Commander Waterford isn't trying to kidnap you, sweetheart," says the nursery teacher. "This is Zaida Melton, Cameron and Ellen Melton's youngest."

"Thank you," he says to the nursery teacher, and "that's right, I'm not your daddy, but I'm going to return you to the people who are taking care of you now," he says to Zaida. 

"I don't want to," says Zaida, with a little less conviction than before.

Fred finds Cameron. "Your daughter was playing in a closet."

"Zaida! You're supposed to stay with your mother at all times, what have we told you about that?"

"I am being bad," says Zaida, determinedly.

"I did tell her she could draw on me if I returned her to her parents."

Cameron laughs a little. "That's nice of you, but I think we should get her home before she slips away again." He holds his arms out for Fred to pass Zaida to him.

Zaida shrinks away from the other man who isn't her daddy and clings to Fred.

Fred hands her over and attempts to telepathically transmit the message that he will fix this!

Zaida is not a telepath! She does wave sadly at him as Cameron carries her away, though.

Well, that's heartbreaking. 

When he returns home, Fred calls Child Protective Services. "Hello, I'm reporting a suspected case of child abuse."

"Can you give us your name and the names and address of the child and their caretakers?"

"Fred Waterford. She's Zaida Melton, the daughter of Cameron and Ellen Melton. I'm sorry, I don't know their home address, but they attend Grace River Church."

"All right, thank you," says the person on the other end of the phone, after a pause. "Can you tell us what you witnessed?"

"Zaida is three years old. She had bruises up and down her arms and welts and heavy bruising all along her legs. She told me that she was beaten hard enough to bruise because she wouldn't come to the kitchen, wouldn't go to bed, and didn't call Ellen Mommy."

"I see. Thank you, we'll look into it."

Several days later, CPS calls Fred back to let him know that they've looked into it and have determined that Zaida is perfectly safe and loved with the Meltons. They thank him for his interest.

Uh huh. 

Next time they're at church, Fred keeps an eye out for Zaida and looks for any more suspicious bruises. 

She sits next to Ellen all the time; she doesn't play with the other kids or go to the nursery during the service. 

There aren't more obvious bruises on her arms, but she's sitting funny and she winces when she has to get up or sit down.

Uh huh.

He goes home. He reads some Asimov and some Pratchett and some Williams; he forgets what happens in each page after he finishes it. He vaguely tries to work. He talks to Serena without paying attention. He has sex with his mistress without paying attention. He plays with a pen. 

Zaida is being abused. No one is going to do anything about it. She has a mom and an aunt, who apparently did a very good job of raising her. 

He leans on a few people in CPS, calls in a few favors, makes a few promises, gets someone's kid an internship, gets someone's cousin let off with a warning. Everyone smiles and says "we'll get right on that, Commander Waterford" and never talks to him again. At church every weekend, Zaida is covered in bruises.

Melton is a high-ranking Eye, or he has blackmail material on someone important, or he's doing someone important a very big favor, but either way Fred can't touch him. He makes a list of the leverage he has and he thinks about the best way to use it. 

He doesn't decide that he is going to kidnap this toddler. He withdraws some cash from the bank. Assigns Nick to provide support for Chris, whose wife had just had a baby. Packs up a suitcase and leaves it in the trunk. Makes sure his tank is full of gas. Tells his subordinates that he might disappear unexpectedly, hints around that it's Eye business. Keeps an eye on her and waits for her to run off again.

Zaida is literally constantly trying to run away from her caretakers. Eventually she succeeds at running away at church again. Ellen is talking to some other adults and stops holding her hand, so she slips off and runs out to the yard behind the sanctuary.

Her plan is mostly to hang out with squirrels and collect weird-looking rocks until she's caught.

Fred notices!

"Hey kid."

"Hello!"

"How'd you like to go back to your mom?"

"Do you know where she is???"

"No, but I bet I can find out, and in the meantime you won't get hit."

Zaida looks back at the church building thoughtfully.

"I miss my mommy a lot."

"I bet. I would miss my mom too if I couldn't see her."

"OK," says Zaida. "I want Mommy and Auntie again."

Time to encourage a three-year-old to get into a strange man's car!

He has possibly made some poor decisions. 

"If you come with me into my car, I promise we will find your mommy and I won't hit you."

Hmmmm.

Her Mommy did say not to get in cars with strange men.

On the other hand, she has been doing that a lot lately. And Fred said that she's allowed to draw stars. And he says he can take her back to her mommy, and her mommy is not strange OR a man.

Zaida toddles toward the car.

That's good! He was not looking forward to what would happen if she screamed! Mostly to him but also, incidentally, to her. 

He walks with her to the car, keeping an eye out for people who might see them. No one does; the yard is pretty deserted.

Zaida needs help getting into the car, and also needs to take several seconds to figure out how to sit so she isn't hurting herself, but eventually she finds something tolerable.

"I would like to go to my mommy now."

Fred frowns when he sees that she can't sit without hurting herself. 

"Unfortunately, I don't know where your mommy is. If you know her name, we can find her soon. Did you know your mommy's address?"

She shakes her head. "My mommy is called Mommy and my Auntie is called auntie Keturah."

Well, this is going to be complicated.

Irritated at himself for being the strange man kidnapping a little girl by giving her candy, he gives Zaida a pack of Skittles. "Sorry, kid, I don't know what kind of candy you like, hope this is good."

"I like candy!"

"I'm glad, kid!"

Fred pulls away and starts driving in a scrupulously legal fashion. He can talk his way out of problems, but no sense causing problems where they aren't needed. 

"Sometimes grownups call mommies names other than 'mommy'. Can you think what grownups like Auntie Keturah called your mommy?"

"Auntie Keturah calls her Azubah."

On one hand, no surname. On the other hand, how many Keturahs whose sibling is an Azubah can there really be?

...Fred thinks about some of the people he knows from church. 

Okay, yeah, that's not going to work. 

"Sometimes grownups tell children to learn their parents' phone number and address and full name so that other grownups can help them when they're lost. Did your mommy make you learn anything to tell other grownups when you get lost?"

"I don't know those things," says Zaida. She frowns thoughtfully. "ONE time, Auntie told a lady at the restaurant that she was Keturah Teller."

Score!

"Do you remember whether you lived in Boston?"

"We don't live in Boston. I don't like Boston. We live in a little white house at the bottom of the hill. Mommy says that, so I think it's an important hill."

A hill. That narrows it down to "not Florida."

Fred will have to get out of town as quickly as possible. He's planning on heading southwest, but it would be nice to have any idea if he's going in the right direction. 

"Do you remember what it looked like where you lived? Were there cactuses, or big tall buildings, or lots of corn?"

"There are houses where we live! And there are pine trees on the hill. And there is the library, and there is the Subway, and there is the restaurant, and there is the church with the blue door, and there is the bridge that takes you into the city with the Arch."

Fred has a vague sense that if he had studied more geography he would know where the city with the arch is.

As it is, southwest is a reasonable direction. 

"There's a bag of toys near your feet. Is there any music you want to listen to?"

"I like Silly Songs with Larry!"

"I like Silly Songs with Larry too!"

They can listen to Silly Songs with Larry.

If Zaida looks at the bag of toys, she will find a water bottle full of glitter, a wallet full of old membership cards, a whiteboard with markers, a coloring book with crayons, a deck of cards, a slinky, a plastic cell phone, some old magazines, Goodnight Moon, and a lift-the-flap picture book about Noah's Ark.

Zaida likes the whiteboard! She draws a field of flowers and lots of stars in the sky above them, and then a spaceship, and then a dragon attacking the spaceship, and then Saint Martha attacking the dragon. Saint Martha can fly like Superman in this picture, because that's cooler.

Fred drives and sings along to Silly Songs with Larry.

Zaida also sings along! She's pretty bad at singing, but she knows the words to most of the songs. Except the lips song and the Song of the Cebu, because those are hard.

Eventually they pull in to a Subway for lunch!

Fred helps Zaida out of her car seat. 

Zaida is able to make it out of the car with only a little wincing. 

Zaida wants to know why the Subway is different inside than the Subway is supposed to be. This one has more tables.

"There are actually many Subways in the world."

"Wow. Do they all have BREAD."

"They do!!! They do all have bread."

"I like bread!!"

"That is good! You can have some bread, and also if you want you can have some things on the bread."

"I like bread with CHEESE and NO LETTUCE."

"Then we can order that!"

Fred herds Zaida to the ordering place and orders a tuna sub.

Zaida is very happy to have a sandwich that only has cheese and bread on it! The people she lives with now never let her do that. They always make her eat VEGETABLES.

She happily munches her food and then asks Fred if he knows how to get to her house from here.

Fred is on his phone!

"Does this look like the arch near your home?" he says, showing her a picture of the St. Louis Arch.

"Yeah! That's the Arch!"

"It looks like it will take us about three days to get there, and then you can be with your mom."

"OK!"

They finish their food and go back to the cars!

Zaida is VERY excited to see her mommy and her auntie and her brother again. Her mommy and her auntie and her brother are her favorite people in the whole world.

"Will we get in trouble after we see Mommy?"

"Probably not? But you might have to go live in a new place. It's called Mexico."

"Will Mommy and Caleb and Auntie Keturah be there?"

Oh god is he going to have to kidnap two children. 

"Mommy and Auntie Keturah will be," he says, "I don't know about Caleb."

"Oh," says Zaida, thoughtfully, and tries to think whether Caleb will be OK in the house by himself. Maybe Caleb is big enough to do that. Zaida is kind of unclear on how big you need to be to have a house.

Silly Songs With Larry?

"EVERYBODY WANTS A WATER BUFFALO! YOURS IS BIG BUT MINE IS SLOW!"

Zaida is so good. 

At some point it gets late and they get a hotel room for the night. 

"Zaida, I have a very difficult job for you. Only a really bad little girl could do it."

"I am VERY BAD."

"I don't know, I'm not sure if you're bad enough to pull this off."

"I am the MOST bad," she says, and then pulls up her skirt to poke at her collection of still-healing welts. She thinks they're pretty good evidence. "I do things that are bad ALL THE TIME."

He recovers.

"What I need is for you to be very very quiet. The most quiet person, a person who does not make a single sound, while I make this phone call. It is very important you don't make any noise. If you make some noise, ba-- good men might come and take you away from your mommy and back to the Mellons."

Zaida clasps her hands over her mouth to show that she will be THE QUIETEST PERSON EVER.

Fred takes out the quieter toys from the bag. "If you want to say something, you can play with this or this or this."

Zaida nods very seriously and keeps her hands over her mouth.

Well. His not being in prison depends 100% on the self-control of a three-year-old. This is fine. 

He scrolls through his contacts, pauses at one or two likely candidates, then eventually dials Luke Thomas. 

Luke Thomas answers his phone. "Hello?"

Fred puts on what he privately thinks of as his Commander Waterford voice-- deep, firm, authoritative. "This is Commander Waterford. I have a job for you."

"Of course, what can I do for you?"

"The Meltons' daughter has been kidnapped. We suspect terrorist involvement, perhaps Cascadian." Slight emphasis on the 'we'; let him think Commander Waterford is an Eye.

"I see. That's horrible."

"For obvious reasons we cannot go through the usual channels." What obvious reasons? Fred sure doesn't know, but if you say it confidently enough people will feel stupid and not ask. "We believe the terrorists may be in contact with the Meltons' daughter's biological aunt, one Keturah Teller of St. Louis. To help our investigation you must give me her last known address." 

"Of course, right away." It takes him a certain amount of time to find the information, and then Luke very enthusiastically hands over Keturah's last known address. It's not in St. Louis itself, it's in the suburbs across the river in southern Illinois.

"Thank you. You have done your country a great service today."

"Of course, sir. My prayers are with you."

"My prayers are with you as well. I expect good things from your career progression going forward. --And, of course, for national security reasons, I have to ask that you not discuss this with anyone."

"I understand, sir."

"Very good. God be with you." He hangs up. 

"You were so evil, Zaida!"

"Was I very bad," whispers Zaida.

"You were so bad! Now we can order whatever we want off the room service menu and watch TV, and later we will brush our teeth and go to bed."

"I like TV!!"

"Well, first you have to pick what you want off the room service menu."

"OK! I can't read menus. I can only read letters."

Fred reads the parts of the menu he thinks she will like to her. She can have spaghetti, or chicken nuggets and french fries, or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Zaida wants peanut butter and jelly! Peanut butter and jelly has BREAD.

He calls the room service!

"I'd like a kale salad and the ravioli, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and-- mm-- TWO chocolate chip cookies."

TWO!!!

Zaida eats almost her entire sandwich before she asks for her cookie, but then she remembers that she is bad, and eating cookies before you finish dinner is something bad people do, so then she asks for hers.

Fred is not a monster who would deny small children cookies!

She has a COOKIE.

"This is a very good cookie," she informs him. "It's better than the cookies I stole."

"Did you steal cookies just from the bad people or also from your mommy?"

"Mommy gives me cookies unless they'll make me sick. I stole them from the other people because they said I couldn't have any cookies forever and ever unless I was good."

What the frick. 

Fred realizes there are so many worse things about the Meltons, but who denies a three-year-old cookies forever?

"Well, when you are at your mommy's, you won't have to steal cookies any more."

"Yeah! And Auntie Keturah will tell me stories again and I can go outside and I can pick up rocks and I can draw stars!"

"All of those things! I wish I could do some of them with you but we have to get you to your mommy as fast as we can, because your mommy misses you, and also because I am committing a felony."

"What's a felony?"

"A felony is one of the WORST things you can do, and if you get caught you are in so much trouble."

"Ohhh. Will you get caught?"

"I really hope not!"

"I hope not too! Can we watch cartoons?"

"Yes!!!"

Fred will, sadly, not watch the new Teen Titans show because it is not appropriate for three-year-olds.

That's fair. Zaida isn't picky about cartoons; she has favorites but she doesn't know what channel they're on and is mostly glad that she gets to watch cartoons at all. Cartoons are easier to understand than grown-up shows.

"I don't have my PJs," muses Zaida, eventually.

"I have PJs," Fred says. 

They have stars on them. 

Zaida was going to OBJECT to PJs because changing into PJs is usually not a great experience, but these ones have stars on them. Also she's tired right now, which is different than being forced to go to bed at your bedtime.

It takes her a kind of excessive amount of time to change into them. This is partly because she's not entirely sure how to get her arms and head through the right holes, and partly because she has to focus on not hurting herself while she does it.

Fred does not often curse, because God doesn't approve of cursing, but fuck Zaida's caregivers.

He helps her, and once she is in her PJs, he helps her brush her teeth.

Zaida cooperatively brushes her teeth. This isn't very bad of her, but Auntie Keturah said her teeth would get hurt if she ate cookies and then didn't brush them, and Zaida likes her teeth.

"Do you tell bedtime stories?" she asks him, when she's otherwise ready to go to sleep.

"I don't know that I've told one before, but I can try!"

He tells the story of the Three Little Pigs. He does the voices with great enthusiasm. 

Zaida hasn't heard this story before! It's pretty different from the stories that Auntie Keturah tells, but she likes it.

"You're good at stories! You're ALMOST as good as Auntie Keturah."

And she sleeps.

Fred stares at the ceiling for a while wondering how his life got to be like this, but eventually he goes to sleep too.

Zaida gets up with the sun. She draws things with the pen and paper on the hotel nightstand until Fred wakes up. She's trying to draw dragons but they mostly look like some kind of unholy mutant offspring of a fish and a dog.

"That's a nice dragon! I have some cereal for breakfast, and then we can hit the road."

"OK!"

Zaida sings to herself and eats her cereal and changes into her normal clothes because you can't wear PJs outside.

Fred takes a minute to text Serena. Sorry 4 disappearing-- govt work. Can't talk. BBS. Love you.

"Can we go find Mommy now?"

"Yes!!!"

"Oh good!!"

Two days pass! They sleep in motels that let you pay in cash and don't check ID, eat at restaurants, and listen to a LOT of Silly Songs with Larry.

Keturah has noticed over the course of the past two days that there are drones following her. They're hovering over her house, they're there when she goes to the library, they're there when she goes to the store, and they're still there when she goes to the nursing home, so she's pretty sure they're following her in particular.

She is concerned.

He didn't really expect that there wouldn't be spydrones. 

Leaving Zaida in the car for two hours risks some Good Samaritan calling CPS. Finding her short-term childcare risks someone recognizing her from the television news. It's a judgment call, and he's not sure which is going to be worse. 

"Zaida," he says, "have your grownups ever let you cut your own hair?" 

"They didn't! Never ever!"

Fred produces scissors and a set of markers and internally prays to Zaida's mother for forgiveness. "How would you like to cut your OWN hair AND draw whatever you want on your own face?"

"REALLY??"

"Absolutely!"

Zaida has very interesting opinions of what faces should look like. They involve lots of lightning bolts and stars and swirls and NO symmetry. Also her hair is annoying and it is gone now.

Literally no one would recognize this child as the girl from the TV!

"I have another job for you. A very important job!"

"I CAN DO IT."

She has no idea what it is.

"We are going to a place! The person who runs the place is a VERY GOOD LADY. She doesn't like it when little girls make up stories!"

"I like stories."

"Well, I need you to make up all the stories you can for her about yourself. Like that you're a princess, or you're a mermaid, or I'm an angel. Can you think of a story?"

"Can I be a DRAGON who EATS STARS. I like the stories that go like that."

"Absolutely! And if you tell the nice lady all about how you are a dragon who eats stars, I will buy you an ice cream."

"I CAN DO THAT."

"Okay, but you have to NOT tell her true things either! Because she is a good lady and she WANTS to hear true things. So you shouldn't tell her that your name is Zaida or I'm Fred or you were taken by the Meltons."

"Oh. You want me to tell LIES."

"Yes! I want you to tell as MANY lies as you can think of."

"I can tell LOTS of lies."

She has a lot of practice.

Awesome!

Fred drives around until he finds a high-end hackerspace, one that advertises its peacefully news- and television-free atmosphere. He takes a deep breath, helps Zaida out of her carseat, and puts on his best frazzled-parent face. 

He hurries into the hackerspace holding Zaida. "Excuse me-- I'm so sorry-- my daughter decided to give herself a haircut--"

"I am a space alien," Zaida informs them, solemnly.

Fred makes his best apologetic embarrassed parent face. "I swear I just looked away for one second, this never happens when her mom is watching her-- I know I don't have a membership, but do you think you could watch her for three hours so I can get my work done and find a salon that'll take her at the last minute?"

The receptionist looks deeply sympathetic. "Of course," she says, "that will be $100," and doesn't blink when Fred pays cash.

"The space alien planet is waaaaay up high," says Zaida, because actually she likes talking about how she is a space alien. "And it's called Gflaxgk."

Fred is pretty impressed about her ability to pronounce that!

He gets back in the car and drives to a Starbucks; he parks outside but logs in to their wifi. 

Up until now, everything he was doing was reversible. He could drop Zaida off back at the Meltons'; when she said he was her kidnapper, he could laugh and say that Zaida was always making up stories. But now he is using up one of his really good pieces of information, something it would be hard to get back.

Everyone wants their own Eye's login information. There are various ways to get it; all it takes is a moment of sloppiness or a well-positioned video camera. But Fred had always thought that was stupid. If you use the login credentials of the Eye that's watching you, then everyone will know who did it. Fred had bribed someone to give him access to the video camera that watched an Eye who focused on resistance groups in Iowa. Try to figure out who stole that. 

Mentally mourning the many long and boring hours he had spent trying to figure out if that Eye had been typing "p" or "o", Fred logged in, looked up the emergency number of the head of the St. Louis Eyes, and called. 

"This is Christopher," Fred says. "There's an emergency."