Free The Grid by Harry Hunsicker

young, too innocent.
    The desire to crawl into the bed with Dylan and hold her is overwhelming. After a moment, however, another desire surpasses that urge—the craving to get online and set up an anonymous meeting, something closer to home this time.
    Right now, that would be like a cup of water in the desert.
    The physician drones on, and Sarah wonders why neither man has so much as looked askance at her clothes, the ratty raincoat and the Dallas Cowboys ball cap.
    It’s because I am rich, she thinks. Rich and powerful. And the regular rules don’t apply.
    She begins to weep.

- CHAPTER SIXTEEN -
    Our convoy left the damaged telco station and drove the few hundred yards back to the power plant itself, a facility called the Black Valley Generating Station.
    Two guards wearing Sudamento uniforms waved us through the gate. The guards had pistols on their hips but gave the appearance of hourly security personnel the world over: pudgy and tired-looking, a mite slow in the thinking department. I imagined they were very effective at checking credentials and not much else.
    We parked by a low brick building that served as the main office for the plant, several hundred yards in front of the two towers and their smokestacks.
    Price and Whitney exited their vehicles, took up position at the front of my car, waiting.
    I got out as well, and the enormity of the place became apparent. Everywhere you looked, there were power lines and storage tanks and about a billion miles of metal piping, everything clustered around the two towers.
    Whitney pointed her index finger at me like a gun. “Cantrell, you and me are gonna take a ride. Price, you stay here.”
    Price shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I need to explain to Jon—”
    Whitney aimed the gun finger at him. “I’m not asking. I’m telling.”
    Price said, “Oh, c’mon, Whit. Seriously?”
    “Round up those personnel files I asked for.” She pointed to the office. “We’ll be back in a little while.”
    Trying not to laugh, I shrugged at Price, waved good-bye, and followed Whitney Holbrook to one of the black Suburbans. She got behind the wheel; I hopped into the passenger side. The doors slammed shut, and it was just the two of us. Her security team stayed behind.
    “How come you’re so mean to Price?” I asked. “Did he give you chlamydia or something?”
    She cranked the AC to high. “Your file doesn’t adequately communicate how big of an ass-munch you are.”
    “Don’t take anything he does personally,” I said. “Price is the master of the hump-and-dump. If there were an Olympic slutbag team, he’d be captain.”
    “For the record, I am not sleeping with Price Anderson.” Whitney pointed the SUV down a gravel road that cut across the site and headed toward the rear of the property.
    “Not sleeping with him now ?”
    “Why do you care who I’m bumping uglies with, Cantrell?” Her fingers were white on the steering wheel. “You looking to hook up? Maybe brag to all your friends about how you nailed a Southie?”
    I didn’t reply.
    “I thought you had a wife and a kid at home.” She slapped her forehead. “Oh, that’s right. Your old lady hit the road right after the baby was born. Went off the reservation, total radio silence.”
    “We weren’t married. That should be in my records, too.”
    She slowed to drive through an open gate. “And you’re not even sure the kid is yours, are you?”
    I didn’t take the bait. A tiny current of anger pulsated in my stomach, quickly squelched.
    The child was mine. The color of her eyes, the shape of her mouth. No DNA test was needed.
    Two months after the birth of our daughter, Piper had disappeared with the infant. The stress of the pregnancy and the hormonal cocktail flowing through her veins had exacerbated her normal state of mind—a base level of paranoia, which manifested itself in a burning desire to remain hidden from view.
    I had no idea where she was. I searched for