*ProtectVision* by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

A past EQMM Readers' Award winner, Kristine Kathryn Rusch began her fiction-writing career in our sister genre, science fiction. Occasionally, science fictional elements appear even in her mystery writing. In this new tale, for instance, the product at the root of the story's mischief does not (as far as she knows) exist. Nevertheless, insists Ms. Rusch, the technology does exist, and could be developed at any time for the sort of purpose she describes....

* * * *

Sharyn's clothes were spread across the backseat, turning red, then black, then red again in the flashing light from the dash. Rick still had his shirt on. He was groping for his pants, and not finding them. Each flash of red caught him in a different position -- up-right, looking terrified; bent at the waist, looking panicked; on his knees, looking as if he was going to burst into tears.

Sharyn's heart was pounding, but she wasn't going to panic. She wouldn't give her father the satisfaction.

She and Rick had parked near Enger Tower, deep in the park. Actually, she had parked up there. It was her car, her decision, her idea to seduce Rick on a cold October evening.

She was sixteen. She knew what she was doing.

Damn her father, anyway.

"Hurry up," she said to Rick, and he made a sobbing gasp. Maybe it wouldn't help to push him.

Methodically, she reached for her own clothes, bra first, then shirt -- in a sort of pants-less solidarity with Rick -- then underwear, socks, and jeans.

The light on the dash continued to flash. Its red blinking horrified Rick, but it didn't bother her.

What bothered her had been the voice, flat, androgynous, and official: _Illicit sexual activity between minors detected. Ignition has been disengaged. Car will remain sealed until authorities arrive._

Sharyn had just discarded her underwear when that voice boomed. Rick had just flung his pants aside in reckless abandon, laughing at the way his penis had bobbed to life despite the cold.

There hadn't been sexual activity yet, at least not anything she would describe as real sexual activity, although she knew her father probably would argue that point.

Her high-and-mighty father, who liked to pretend he'd never had a youth at all. She knew if she found the right people, she would discover a whole new side to her dad, a side that would show him as the hypocrite he truly was.

She should have known, though. She had believed him when he said he was sorry for the names he called her, the way he tried to make her follow his beliefs, beliefs he knew she didn't share.

She should have known when her father bought her a present -- a car, no less -- that he wasn't forgiving her. He wasn't trying to please her. He had found a new, and even more creative, way to humiliate her.

"It's all twisted." Rick's voice hitched. He held up his pants-socks-underwear, which had become one big bundle.

Sharyn snatched it from him and started to untangle it. The material was still warm from his skin, which both excited and disgusted her. If she had realized he was this sensitive, she never would have brought him out here. Maybe it was a good thing they hadn't finished the act -- as her father liked to call it. Rick would have been one of those guys who thought it meant something, who would want movies on Friday nights, exclusivity in the school halls, and maybe even a ring that held some kind of promise.

Sharyn didn't want rings and promises, certainly not from Rick. She didn't want anything more than a night of fun, away from the folks, the house, the church. All she wanted was to be her own person.

And her dad was doing everything in his power to prevent it.

* * *

The waiter had just set Walter Broome's grilled porkchop in front of him when his pager beeped. Walter's wife Irene shot him an annoyed look, but didn't say anything. She picked up her fork as if nothing had happened and poked the baked chicken she had ordered. She had learned long ago never to wait for Walter. His business took him away from the family more times than not.

The waiter left at the sound of the pager, whisking the tray away, navigating through the thin spaces between the tables. Other diners continued their conversations, and above the mahogany bar, CNN broadcast the day's headlines.

The porkchop smelled good, and the mashed potatoes above it looked fluffy and moist. The scents of butter and garlic rose from them, along with a slightly bitter odor from the beets that had their own separate plate so that their red juice wouldn't ruin the perfection of the meat.

For one brief moment, Walter contemplated ignoring the page, shutting off the little gadget, and enjoying a quiet night out with his wife. But if he shut off the pager, his secretary would track him down. Her resourcefulness was the main reason he had hired her, and she would put it into play the moment she realized she couldn't find him.

Walter reached for the pager.

"Sorry, my love," he said to Irene, and the softness of his words took the pinched look from her face. When they had met in college, she had been a beauty -- young, athletic, with round cheeks and a tall, graceful form.

The round cheeks were gone, as was some of the beauty, lost to long nights spent worrying. The lines beneath her eyes were frown lines, not laugh lines, and he always felt that was his fault. If he had been home more, less of a workaholic, less of a traditionalist, maybe she would have kept some of that softness that had so appealed to him when they met.

"It's all right, Walter," she said, and the sad part was that she didn't seem to mind. She was so used to his absences, even from promised events, that she always brought a PDA with her. She would check her e-mail or read a book or watch some television.

At least she was a traditionalist, too. At least she accepted that this was their lot in life, a lot they had built together.

At least she hadn't gone trolling for someone new.

Walter grabbed his pager and looked at the screen. Instead of the message he had expected, an update from his secretary or a colleague or his research partner, he saw _Call ProtectVision_ with the number displayed below the message.

His heart lurched. He glanced at Irene, and felt the truth of the moment: Should he tell her or handle this on his own?

He was used to working on his own. But he had bought the ProtectVision more for Irene than for Sharyn. Irene hadn't believed their pretty sixteen-year-old daughter was promiscuous. When he had brought up the evidence -- the e-mails Sharyn had gotten from boys, the phone calls, the slutty clothing she wore when she wasn't in her school uniform -- Irene had laughed.

_She's young, Walter. The teen years are an experimental time. We brought her up well. She'll make the right choices._

But Sharyn hadn't. She wasn't. She may have attended church at their side, and still did, every single Sunday morning, but she hadn't absorbed any of the lessons.

The one time he had tried to talk with Sharyn about abstinence and saving herself for marriage, she had wrinkled up her pug nose, so like his sister's, and had said:

_Daddy, I got the birds-and-bees lecture years ago._

Walter had been a young man. He knew about the temptations, the lack of control, the raging hormones. He knew how vulnerable girls could be.

So, since his daughter refused to protect herself, he started to take steps to watch over her himself.

He just hadn't expected the ProtectVision to activate the first weekend she owned the car.

"Problem?" Irene asked. She understood him so well.

He made himself smile and attached the pager to his hip.

"Business," he lied, and in that moment the decision had been made. The ProtectVision made a video of the activity. It documented every movement from the moment the pheromones reached the activation level to shutdown of the car itself.

If the device worked the way the salesman and the literature claimed, Walter would have all the proof he needed. Irene wouldn't be able to deny the problems caused by her daughter's behavior, and maybe, just maybe, that all-girls school in New England would go back on the table.

"Do I ask them to keep your meal warm for you?" The question was perfunctory. Irene already had her PDA out. He was beginning to suspect she enjoyed her books more than she enjoyed being with him.

He wanted to say yes. He wanted to shut off the pager, forget he got the message, and spend the evening with his wife.

But his daughter was locked in a car somewhere with a teenage boy who hadn't learned how to control his sex drive. Walter had to leave.

"Have them bag it," he said. "I'll eat it when I get home."

Even though he and Irene knew he wouldn't. He would grab something fast and unhealthy on his way to wherever ProtectVision told him to go, and the food would rot in the refrigerator -- like the memory of a quiet evening that never was.

* * *

Sharyn tried to start the car, but the key wouldn't even turn in the ignition. The light continued to flash -- red, black, red, black -- and it was making her dizzy.

The heat had dissipated from the interior, and the car was getting cold. It was supposed to go down to the teens tonight -- the weather guys had predicted snow in time for Halloween (God, how she hated living in this hellhole!) and she didn't doubt it, not the way the air felt now.

Rick remained in the backseat. He was shaking and rocking back and forth, his arms wrapped around his waist. He had said something about panic attacks, but Sharyn hadn't listened. Panic never got anyone anywhere. If Rick was going to panic, she would have to be the one to get them out of the car.

And she would.

The windshield was fogged from their breath and the heat of their bodies. Sharyn wondered how long they would be here, waiting for someone to find them. If the car got any colder, she would have to crawl into the backseat and put her arms around Rick.

The idea didn't sound as appealing as it had half an hour ago.

His breath was whistling in and out, and it sounded like he was getting a cold, like he had mucus in his throat.

Okay, she promised herself, this would be the last guy that she would ever, ever go out with before she got to know him. Rick had looked good and he had made her laugh, but if she had known he was this useless in a crisis --

"Shar?" His voice sounded strangled.

"The key won't turn in the ignition," she said. "I think the device shut everything down."

"Shar, I don't -- " He gasped, a large whooping sound, and then choked.

She turned. He was patting himself down, as if he was searching for something. Quickly, panicked, just like he had before. His eyes were big and his face was a weird bluish color and he was making whoopy, gaspy noises that she had never heard before.

"What's going on?" she asked him.

His right hand went to his nose, his mouth, then his chest. The message would have been clear even if he weren't wheezing: He couldn't get any air.

Sharyn had ducked all her health classes. She thought sitting around listening to how to work the family defibrillator, which she had known how to do since she was three, was dumb. But now she was beginning to wonder what else she had missed.

"What do I do?" she asked.

He lifted a hand, mimed pressing something in front of his mouth. An inhaler. Of course. It would back up whatever drugs he was taking to keep his lungs open.

"You brought it, right?" she asked

He shrugged -- or at least she thought he did -- and then he started coughing so hard that it seemed like he was going to cough his stomach out.

She got scared then, more scared than she had ever been. She grabbed her cell phone and pressed the gold emergency button as she climbed into the backseat.

By then, he was rigid, his body bent in half, his eyes rolled in the back of his head. She felt every part of him for the inhaler, trying to remember what little she knew about asthma -- inhalers were still used as last-ditch devices, and what had happened just recently? A group of kids dying because they forgot theirs? Something like that. Surely Rick wouldn't be that stupid, would he?

He was sweating, even though his skin was cold, and she could feel his heartbeat. It seemed too fast to her.

She had nearly patted all of him and found nothing when the emergency dispatch answered, and Sharyn was shocked at how calm her own voice sounded as she explained the situation, from being trapped in the car to Rick's inability to breathe.

She didn't feel calm. Her hand found the dome light, and as she talked, she patted the floor, searching for a device she had never seen before.

And all the while she talked, and Rick's eyes got bloodshot, and his gasps seemed even harder, and a horrible smell started filling the car, and Sharyn couldn't fight the feeling that somehow she was failing, somehow things would never ever be right again.

* * *

Sergio Kaplan was half an hour away from the end of his shift when he and his partner, Wren Connors, got the dispatch's call. He and Connors had been heading back to the garage from the west end of town, and the satellite tag had told the dispatch they were only three miles away from some emergency near Enger Tower Park.

The dispatch couldn't explain it all, just two teenagers trapped in a car, one seriously ill. Apparently an ambulance was on its way, but something in the initial contact had sounded suspicious and the dispatch wanted police on the scene as well.

Wren had made a face when she heard the call, but said nothing. They hadn't caught anything major in a week; Duluth got quiet when winter approached. Crime always took a hiatus in the cold.

Kaplan swerved the squad up Skyline Drive. He loved this vista at night. The city spread below him like a group of captured stars. The High Bridge, its halogen lights adding yellow to the display, glittered over the harbor, and on the other side of the bridge, Superior, Wisconsin, actually looked pretty, its impoverished homes and dying downtown hidden by the darkness.

Wren said nothing as they drove. She didn't like calls concerning teenagers. She had two at home, children of her middle age, and she took the troubles of others as if they were her own.

The squad struggled up a road that hadn't been improved for at least a century. Enger Tower Park was one of Duluth's premier tourist spots, complete with a golf course and a well-kept hiking trail, as well as stunning gardens in the summer. The park was built around Enger Tower, a tall old stone cylinder that had some historical value which Kaplan couldn't remember.

What he did know about the park was that it usually avoided trouble, except of the accidental kind -- people falling from the tower onto the concrete sidewalk below; kids sliding down the graded hill toward the highway; the usual mess of trapped and exhausted hikers in the middle of the summer.

In the spring and fall, Enger Tower Park acted as Duluth's lovers' lane. Kids had parked there when Kaplan was young, just like they had when his father was young, and his grandfather before him.

Kids would probably park there until someone invented some other vehicle that was mobile and had enough room for sex. The park was quite secluded at night.

This night was no exception. The squad wound its way into the parking lot, which was, as he expected, empty. Even though cars weren't supposed to drive into the park itself, they did. Kids had been using the service roads for years.

Kaplan continued to drive, and Wren looked at him in surprise. She hadn't grown up here; she didn't know all the little byways that only teens would know. Sometimes she wondered where he got his information, and he didn't have the heart to tell her that teenagers had to learn things in the bitter frozen north or go mad.

A sporty late-model sedan was parked on the dying grass just off the service road. The windows were fogged up, much as Kaplan expected. What he hadn't expected was the red light that blinked on and off inside the car, illuminating a single thin form, female by the shape of it, although he couldn't really tell with the fog and the intermittent nature of the light.

The form rose up and down, moving almost violently against the seat of the car.

"You sure there's a problem here?" Wren asked.

"I don't know what that light is, do you?" Kaplan said.

A siren woo-wooed ever so faintly in the distance. He drove close to the parked car, so close that his headlights illuminated the back window. The car was mauve, and its Minnesota license plate matched the one dispatch had given him.

The figure inside stopped moving for just a moment, and then continued.

"I don't think they want to be interrupted." Wren's tone was dry.

He and Wren wouldn't be the first officers to answer a prank call at Enger Park, interrupting someone's night of fun. But usually, the kids stopped whatever they were doing the moment they realized the cops had found them.

Kaplan was familiar with those movements -- the quick separation of two bodies, often with a head popping up from the seat below, the frantic struggle for clothing, the absolutely silly attempts at composure.

He thought it even odder that the people in this car didn't try any of those things.

He got out, slamming the door loudly in case the couple hadn't realized they had company. The person in the car continued her jerky movements.

Kaplan pulled his coat closed. It had to be down to at least 15 degrees up here, maybe less with the wind chill. And the car in front of him wasn't running at all. No matter how much body heat two people generated, they couldn't stay warm in a car on a night like this without the engine on.

He walked to the back window on the driver's side -- which happened to be the direction the girl was facing -- and knocked on it.

To his surprise, the girl didn't roll the window down.

The red light illuminated the interior again, but he couldn't see much through the fog. She had stopped moving, he could tell that much from her shadowy shape, but he couldn't tell anything else.

He knocked again. "Open the door!"

"I can't." The girl's voice was muffled and faint, but he could hear panic in it all the same. "We can't get out. The car just shut down and started broadcasting these warnings. Please, please get us out. There's something wrong with Rick."

That matched the report the dispatch had given Kaplan.

"Clear off the window," he said. "Let me see."

A hand splayed against the glass, then closed into a fist, wiping at the fog. Water ran down the glass.

Kaplan tried the door. It was locked. Wren had joined him. She tried the driver's door and got the same result. While Kaplan waited for the girl to finish clearing the window, Wren walked around the car, trying to find a way in.

Finally the hand quit moving, revealing a girl's face. She had an alarming beauty -- upswept eyes, a small nose, and a rather wide mouth -- but she also had uneven skin and round cheeks that would become sharper and more angular as she aged.

A less careful man would have thought she was in her twenties, but Kaplan had been a cop for a long time, and knew what to look for. That hint of baby fat and skin that required treatment to keep it clear marked this girl as a teenager.

She moved out of his view almost as quickly as she moved into it, allowing him a view of the interior. At that moment the red light flared. It was near the dash, and he thought he saw words, but he ignored them.

What caught his attention was the boy, sprawled on his back on the seat. His lips were blue, his skin unnaturally pale, and his eyes were rolled up in his head.

"Please," the girl said. She was huddled against the front seat, her feet on the divider in the middle. "Help us."

The sirens were closer now. Clearly the ambulance winding its way up the narrow road.

"Shit," Wren said from the passenger side. "Is this car coded?"

"I don't know."

"What?" Kaplan asked.

"It's going to take a code to get them out of there," Wren said to him, looking over the top of the car.

Kaplan peered into the window again. "Do you know the satellite code?" he asked the girl.

She looked at him in confusion. "Please," she said again, "Rick can barely breathe."

They didn't have time to find a code or to explain to this girl how the car's safety features worked.

"Stay close to the driver's side," Kaplan said to the girl.

"But..."

He moved away, unable to hear her response. He went around the car, stopping at the passenger window.

"Go get a truncheon," he said to Wren. She nodded, heading back to the squad. For the first time, he was relieved to have the equipment so many cops in bigger cities believed was de rigueur. He'd never had to use his truncheon before, and certainly not in this way.

While Wren ran, Kaplan got out his service revolver. He removed the clip and stuck it in his pocket, not willing to shoot into the car. He had seen what kind of damage stray bullets did. Instead, he grabbed the gun by the muzzle and used the grip to pound on the passenger-side window.

It took three powerful blows before he even raised a crack. Then Wren returned with the truncheon. It looked black and menacing in the lights from the squad.

"Stand back," she said.

Kaplan moved away from the window.

Wren swung the truncheon like a baseball bat, and slammed it into the window. The crack Kaplan raised grew, but didn't shatter.

The girl cringed against the far door. The red light seemed brighter along the window's crack. Nothing else inside the car moved.

Kaplan's sense of urgency grew. Car manufacturers thought of ways to keep cars intact during an accident. They never considered what would happen when someone got trapped inside. Child locks and unbreakable windows had already made for one fatal accident that Kaplan had heard of locally; a sedan with three children inside missed a turn near the Duluth Arena Auditorium and went into the harbor. The mother was knocked unconscious, and the children tried to get out. But they were trapped in the backseat, unable to get to the front, unable to open the doors. It looked like the oldest child had tried to smash the windows and had failed.

Wren slammed the truncheon into the window again. This time, a small hole formed in the center of the crack.

"Almost," Kaplan said. He wanted to take a stab at it himself, but he knew better. Wren had adrenaline on her side.

She pounded the window one more time, and this time it shattered. Large pieces of glass tumbled inward, and a few fell onto the frozen ground.

Moist air, not exactly warm, smelling of panic, urine, and blood, wafted out of the car.

"Oh God," the girl said. "Get us out. Get us out."

She started across the seat, but Wren said, "Stay back."

Wren took the truncheon to the window, getting rid of the last of the glass. Then she reached inside, and tried to unlock the door by hand.

It didn't work, and Kaplan doubted that Wren expected it to. But they both understood panic, and they knew that at times, panic precluded the most common-sense actions. These two teenagers wouldn't have been the first two who thought they were trapped in a car when the child locks in the back had been activated.

The sirens sounded close, and then with a final whoop, they stopped. Kaplan heard vehicles pull up not too far away -- probably in the parking lot.

"You can't get us out, either." The girl wasn't wailing, but her voice held that element, the element of terror.

Without the fogged window in front of it, the red light seemed violently red, like blood spilling across the upholstery every time the light activated.

Kaplan was standing at the wrong angle to see what device the red light was attached to.

"Position yourself," Wren said to him. "I'm going in."

It took him a moment to realize what she meant. She was going in to get the kid out all by herself. Her shoulders and hips were narrow; she'd make it through that small opening. Kaplan wouldn't.

He moved closer, to help her if she needed it, but she didn't need help getting into the car. She slithered through the window as if she'd been doing things like that all her life, her hands avoiding the large pieces of glass.

"What're you doing?" the girl asked. "We have to get out."

Wren fell across the front seat. "Stay calm, honey," she said. "You and I are going to get your friend out. Then we're going to see what we can do to save his life."

* * *

Walter pulled his Lexus into the parking lot at Enger Park. A squad car was parked haphazardly against the curb, as if someone had stopped in a hurry. The squad had its revolving lights on, sending surrealistic red light across the dying foliage and the naked trees.

Walter's breath caught. ProtectVision wasn't supposed to contact the police. It left those decisions up to the parents. Sometimes pressing charges got complicated -- was it worth pursuing a statutory rape case when the boy was eighteen and the girl seventeen? -- and the parent got the chance to decide what was best.

Walter had liked that feature of the system; it was one of the reasons he opted for ProtectVision, as opposed to AutoCarGuard, ProtectVision's closest competitor. But AutoCarGuard had theft and break-in features that Walter hadn't been interested in. This version of ProtectVision was designed specifically for concerned parents.

And he was concerned. More concerned than he had been. He was glad he'd decided not to bring Irene. She would have panicked when she saw the squad car, and he would have had to remind her that this was a public park. Things happened in places like this, things that the police still couldn't control, like drug sales and muggings.

Just because the police were here didn't mean they were here for his daughter. There was no way they could know that Sharyn was up here or that she and this horrible boy she was with were breaking any public decency laws.

He only hoped he would find Sharyn in another part of the park, away from the police.

Walter got out of his car. The air was frigid up here. What had Sharyn been thinking, coming to a place like this with a boy? She had no protection at all if something went wrong.

Walter shrugged on his winter coat, checking the pockets for his PDA. Then he shoved the car door closed. In the distance, he heard panicked voices -- a man's shouting, someone else asking for calm, and a woman ordering other people out of the way.

The sounds were coming from the service road that led away from the parking lot. Walter peered down it, saw headlights illuminating more skeletal trees.

He swallowed hard, then picked up his PDA, using the satellite download to guide him to Sharyn's car. He looked at the illuminated map, then zoomed in and looked again. The red line indicating the most direct path to the car's location went across the service road in front of him.

Walter had been so convinced that Sharyn would be in the other direction that for a moment he didn't understand what he was seeing. Then he took off down that service road, running outdoors for the first time in decades.

The road felt strange after the uniformity of his NordicTrack, and he almost tripped over a fallen branch. His breath was coming in gasps, and it wasn't because he was out of shape. Walter stayed in shape -- he always did, it was part of being prepared for anything. No. His breath was coming in short gasps because his heart was pounding, because his mind was racing faster than his legs, because the panic he always knew would hit him finally had.

Something had happened to his daughter. Something horrible, something he couldn't stop. Maybe the crazy boy she had been with had tried to abduct her and the car had somehow protected her, maybe even accidentally, when it got a whiff of his pheromones and knew that his intentions weren't good.

But that would mean she was locked inside the car with someone crazy, and it had taken Walter nearly forty-five minutes to get up to Enger Park. Which could be why the police were here and the ambulance. Someone had heard Sharyn cry out for help, someone had heard her scream, someone was trying to save her....

He rounded the corner and saw a second squad car, its headlights on, but not its siren or its emergency lights. An ambulance was parked behind it, lights off, engine running, sending puffs of exhaust into the night sky. The ambulance's back doors were open, revealing a miniature hospital inside.

So far as he could tell, no one was inside. The paramedics were standing in the headlights of the squad. There was a medical cot between them. Both paramedics stood with their hands on the bed's rails, as if they were guarding it, waiting for instructions.

Exhaust swirled around the paramedics, making the light from the squad's headlights look a bit surreal. It was also tinged with red, but only faintly, only at odd moments, as if someone had left a blinker on.

When Walter realized what everyone was looking at, though, he tripped again. The headlights were focused on a purple sedan. Sharyn had a purple sedan; Walter had bought it especially for her, with the ProtectVision already installed, and he had told her, he had told her repeatedly, not to use the car for anything except driving, going from place to place. And maybe when she got older, maybe then she could take friends in her car, but until then, he expected her to be responsible, he expected her to know exactly what she was doing, and to behave like a girl who understood the world was dangerous, and she had to remain safe.

He had told her. And he thought she had listened.

"Balance. Steady." A man's voice spoke softly. "Keep steady."

Walter couldn't see where it came from. But there was a businesslike attitude to it, an attitude that worried him more than panic would have.

"Good," the man's voice said. "Okay. Almost. We almost have him."

The paramedics snapped into action, dragging their cot forward. It bumped along the grass, leaving a trail in the frozen earth. The metal rails reflected the headlights, sending flashes along the trees.

That snapped Walter forward, too. Someone was injured, and all these people, all these official people, surrounded Sharyn's car.

He hurried forward, stepping into the exhaust. A police officer in her heavy winter uniform stopped him with a hand to the chest.

"Sorry, sir, we can't let you past this point." Her voice was official. She was watching him as if he had a part in whatever had happened here.

"That's my daughter's car."

"Sir, this may not concern you."

"No," he said, shaking the PDA at the officer. "That's her car. It's locked. Let me get her out of there."

The paramedics came back, dragging the cot between them. They looked glum. Someone was on the cot, but Walter couldn't see who it was.

Walter pushed past the police officer. She no longer seemed to be trying to stop him. He got to the passenger side of the car in time to see Sharyn lever herself out. A male police officer caught her, then helped her to her feet.

Walter's breath stopped. He was relieved to see her, relieved to know she wasn't the one on that cot.

"Is that your daughter, sir?" the officer said from beside him.

"Yes," he said. His voice sounded tearful, which surprised him. "Yes, thank God."

"You mentioned that the car was locked. How did you know that, sir?"

"ProtectVision," he said, still not looking at the officer. He handed her his PDA, and then started for his daughter. But the officer caught his arm.

"What is ProtectVision, sir?"

"It just protects her," he said. "You know, from sex-crazed boys. It stops everything until help can arrive. It's a new feature to guarantee abstinence. You've heard about it, I'm sure."

"Abstinence," the officer said in an odd voice. "I guess, then, that it worked."

* * *

Sharyn's legs felt like rubber and she was suddenly very cold. She looked for Rick -- shouldn't they have been doing those cardio things the way they did on vids? Shouldn't someone have been helping him? She didn't see it all clearly, but it looked like the paramedics had just loaded him onto that bed, and then carried him away, as if he wasn't worth their time.

The police officer who helped her out of the car, Officer Kaplan, wrapped a blanket around her. She didn't know where he got the blanket from, but she was grateful. It seemed colder out here than it had been when she and Rick left the dance.

Her breath made little clouds that floated away. She was shaking. Even with the blanket, she was shaking.

"Come on," Officer Kaplan said. "Let's get you to the ambulance. Let's make sure you're all right."

He wasn't going to wait for Officer Connors. Officer Connors who had given Sharyn that odd look inside the car. Officer Connors had nearly lifted Rick out of the backseat all by herself. Sharyn had helped some, but Officer Connors had done most of it, Officer Connors who was no bigger than Mother.

"I'm okay," Sharyn said. "It's Rick that needs the help."

Officer Kaplan gave her that same strange look, as if there really was something wrong with her, as if she had some booger hanging off her face or something.

"What's your name, honey?" he asked.

Officer Connors levered herself out of the car, climbing out the window as if she were getting down from a swing set. Officer Kaplan gave her a hand, helping her balance, but he never took his gaze from Sharyn.

"Sharyn Broome," she said.

"Ms. Broome."

There was something in his voice she'd never heard before, a tone, an attitude, something that really worried her. It was almost as if he was trying to talk to her as an adult, but wasn't sure if it was the right thing. Sometimes -- most times -- her dad used that tone with her mother, as if Mother wasn't quite able to take care of things on her own.

"Your boyfriend, Rick?" That part was a question, as if Officer Kaplan wanted to make sure she knew what he was talking about before he said another word.

"Yeah?" Sharyn asked.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Broome, but your boyfriend -- he died in there."

Sharyn let the words roll around in her head for a minute. Died. Part of her had known that. His blue lips, the scary cough, the breathing. He was dead.

But he couldn't be. He had been laughing with her not two hours ago. They left the dance, and she drove him here, and --

She whirled, ran for the ambulance, her feet slipping on the frost-covered grass. The paramedics were loading the bed into the back, moving slowly, as if it didn't matter.

She stopped beside them, the air cold in her lungs. "Rick," she said, reaching for the black covering.

One of the paramedics caught her hand. "I'm sorry," he said.

She looked inside, saw equipment hanging from the walls, lights and computers and monitors, all beeping and on. "You can bring him back, right? I heard somewhere that people can come back if they're cold and not breathing. Right?"

"Children," the paramedic said. "Children who've fallen into icy water. Not young adults."

"I don't think he died from the cold," the other paramedic said. "He had asthma, right?"

"He never said." She didn't know anything about him except that he was cute and fun to kiss, and he made her laugh.

"No inhaler?"

His hand, scrinching, pointing. The fear on his face.

"I couldn't find one. He had me look for it, but I didn't find it anywhere."

The paramedic nodded. "I'm not sure it would have mattered. Sometimes, these things can't be prevented."

"They just happen?"

"Was he scared?" the paramedic asked.

Rick was laughing as he peeled off his pants. He smiled at her in the thin light, reaching for her -- and then the alarm went off. The look in his eyes -- all wide and startled, getting worse and worse as his breath got more and more choked.

"Yeah," she said. "I think he was."

"Severe emotion," the paramedic said. "Sometimes it makes the attacks worse."

She nodded, feeling numb. They loaded the bed into the back. The paramedic who'd been talking to her said, "We really should check you over."

"I'm fine," she said.

"You never know -- "

"I know." She didn't want them touching her. She didn't want anyone touching her. Not yet.

She walked away from the ambulance, away from the car, unsure how she was going to get home. She didn't ever want to get in that car again. That gift from her oh-so-manipulative daddy. Someone had died in that car.

Rick had died, all because he had been with her.

"Sharyn?"

At first, she thought she imagined the voice. Her father's, speaking to her with that mixture of disapproval and worry, the only way he seemed to talk to her anymore.

Then she saw him, standing near the squad car, surrounded by exhaust. It almost looked like he was rising out of a white cloud, wearing a black suit. Should she tell him how much he looked like the Devil? The Devil masquerading as a good Christian man.

"Sharyn, honey..."

He didn't seem to have any words. Neither did she. What could she say to him, after all?

She stood her ground. He came to her, slowly, as if he wasn't sure of what she would do. She wasn't sure, either.

The police watched. This seemed to be a show to them. Or maybe, with a dead body, they would have to look at everyone with suspicion. They wouldn't blame her, would they? She did everything she could. They probably even had her voice on the 911 tape, sounding all panicked.

Her father stopped in front of her. He was so much taller than she was, and broad-shouldered, but in shape because "God gave us bodies we have to take care of." The sole argument he had against her. He had never trusted her, never believed she would do the right thing.

So finally, she gave up and decided to do what she wanted. There was no pleasing him anyway.

He was looking at her with a slight frown on his face. In his left hand, he clutched his PDA. He had no reason to have his PDA out, unless it brought him here.

She snatched it from him, saw the map, showing him where the car was. Then she pressed the back button, saw the messages from ProtectVision.

"You did this on purpose," she said. "You planned to catch me doing something wrong."

"I hoped you wouldn't, honey," he said. "I hoped we'd never use this."

"Hoped," she said. "But you bought it anyway because you didn't trust me."

"You don't understand boys, Sharyn." His voice was soft. "You don't know what they can do -- "

"Yes, I do, Daddy," she said quietly. "They can die."

Then she dropped his PDA. It tumbled in the thin air until it hit the grass, bouncing once. She studied him for a moment, as if daring him to pick it up.

Walter didn't know what to do. He'd seen his daughter angry thousands of times, but never like this. Her anger ran to heat -- screams, threats, histrionics -- it was never this cold, this rational.

This frightening.

"You killed him, Daddy," she said. "Just as sure as if you pulled a trigger. These police might not be able to do anything to you, but that doesn't matter. You and I both know."

"You're just as guilty, little girl. If you hadn't brought him here -- "

"I didn't know about your ProtectVision! If I had known, I wouldn't've used my car. I trusted you, Daddy, even if you never trusted me. I thought that car was a gift, a peace offering. But it was just a big lie."

She put her foot on the PDA and smashed the screen with her heel. The equipment crackled as it fell apart. All of his information, much of his life, was on there.

"We're done," she said. "You and me. I'm going to Grandma's, and you're not going to come get me."

"Sharyn -- "

"It ends now," she said. "Any relationship we had. It's done."

Then she walked away from him, over to the small female police officer. The officer looked at her with compassion, put an arm around her, and led her back to the ambulance.

Walter stood in the grass, his feet getting cold in his thin-soled shoes. The remains of his PDA littered the ground in front of him. Around him, voices echoed, discussing the car, the ProtectVision, the suits the company would face when this hit the news.

But he didn't care about any of that. All he cared about was his daughter walking away from him.

He knew she was right. It did end here, just as it had started here, sixteen years ago. In the backseat of his father's car. With Irene.

Irene, who had been crying.

That's what he remembered. How she cried. And how he hadn't cared because of that feeling running through him, so new, so different.

He had tried to tell Sharyn about boys. He knew about them. He had been one of them.

ProtectVision wouldn't have stopped him from trying that night. But it would have stopped the rest of it -- Sharyn's conception, the wedding, the marriage itself.

He had just been trying to protect her.

To save her, from himself.