The author retains all rights to this original work of fiction.

Last Updated: 2/8/2024 to smooth out the story.

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March 9th, 4:59 a.m.
Getting my bag checked in was the easiest thing I'd done this morning. Just an hour before, I was struggling with my hair and makeup, and on top of those difficulties, I hated the shoes I was wearing with my Braxton skirt but they’d have to do. The Alaska counter agent was helpful, but this day was about to get worse as I realized I needed to get through the TSA gauntlet.

How the hell had that major obstacle escaped every part of my planning and obsessing over every detail for this trip?

A perk of flying first class I hadn’t realized was that there was a premium line to get through the security check, and at this time of the morning, that line was nearly empty compared to the general screening lines. I made my way nervously to the TSA pre-check agent manning the podium and handed him my boarding pass and driver's license.

He looked over the two, looked at me, passed my documents back, and said, "Have a nice flight."

I should have been more panicked, but I was Xanax-fortified, and I had successfully made it through the first hurdle of governmental checks of flyers. Curious that he didn't question my appearance compared to my boarding pass? I glanced at it and saw why, 'Edward Gallagher'—it matched my driver's license, the one I was too poor to go through the legal process of getting changed. Why didn't this part of getting to Phoenix register last night when I checked in online?

This was yet another thing I had totally spaced on—a detail, a fact—lost in the swirl of crushing pressures of being me, Elizabeth Gallagher, and agreeing to assist in the search for Amber.

My thought process was certainly clouded, and my 'on guard every waking second' having lapsed since agreeing to help in her search. I should have been in total control—albeit panicked to the edge of my ability to function, with these possibilities for problems! As I thought about it I figured it out—Kendal. When I got back, I would have to thank her for knowing I might have a problem with TSA and a ticket as my current self. She had made getting on the plane easier for me with that consideration.

Of course the next obstacle loomed large and that was getting through a scan—a body scan. This unfortunately had to be done twice because, well, I’m not exactly what I appear to be presenting as. I wasn't aware their scans were programmed for the standard genders and anomalies were flagged. The first scan was done for a female's anatomy because the TSA agent at the scanner thought she saw a female, so that's how I was scanned.

The TSA agent behind the computer screen reading the scan flagged my original screening for obvious reasons. The female agent at the scanner was polite and asked me if I was a transgendered woman, and I nodded. She spoke a code aloud and then turned to me and said with a reassuring smile, "Let's try again, Miss."

Scan: passed. No strange looks, no alarm bells went off, and I picked up my purse from the other scanning process conveyor belt and made my way to my gate.

March 9th, 6:16 a.m.
Boarding began with the typical, "Those needing additional assistance..." call. That was followed by all levels of mileage plan members and first-class passengers being invited to board. I was ahead of the curve on this one, though, and passed on loading ahead of a fully booked flight. I didn't want to be sitting there and have every passenger pass by me, wondering about how I rated or why I might look ‘off’ and maybe not CIS enough.

I guess I could have just boarded early and stared out the window or something, but being next to last on the plane sure seemed like an easier way to get on with this show. When I got to my seat, I barely got a look from anyone in first class. I pushed my purse under the seat in front of me and nodded 'no' to the offer of a beverage; I probably should have gotten water. I buckled my seatbelt, and the plane pulled back from the gate at 6:47 AM.

March 9th, 11:02 a.m.
My room was amazing; in fact the entire property was amazing and nothing short of a five-star resort. I thought the hotel would be some old Holiday Inn rebranded; happily, that wasn't the case. The weather was in the mid-seventies, pure sunshine, and nothing like the rain I left behind in Seattle this morning. I pulled things from my suitcase, hung items that needed hanging, and arranged shoes in the closet. I had the AC on, and over the drone, I heard a slight knock at the door.

I froze for a moment, making my way to the door and looked out the peephole, seeing a man in his early thirties, maybe late thirties. I did not recognize him and was about to just walk away when I heard, "Elizabeth Gallagher, I'm Paul Kline. I work for Jacob Wentz." There was a pause, "Janet Larson said I was to meet with you when you got checked in..."

Nervous energy pulsed through my veins as I opened the door and said, "I'm Elizabeth..." and I felt foolish all of a sudden.

He knew who I was, or he wouldn't be here—did he say he had talked to Janet? I stood in the doorway as if we were going to have a long conversation here in the hallway and then realizing how stupid I must look. I stepped aside, and he stepped forward, offering his hand, which I shook tentatively.

"Nice to meet you,” he said smiling. “Janet and Jacob have high praise for you. I look forward to working with you," he said as he made his way to the couch in the anteroom of the suite.

I followed, but I had no idea what I was supposed to say to that. I hadn't checked my work email yet; had Janet emailed me about this meeting? I should have logged into my work email account right after I got into my room. I knew I hadn't missed any calls or text messages since arriving. Was this guy the computer forensics specialist; why hadn't I asked Janet about this guy?

He was attractive, nice smile, maybe an inch taller than I was, and dressed business casual. He came off as being all business and was already pulling a laptop from his bag. We’re going to start now? I was felt a little uncomfortable and was hoping he didn’t expect me to be the lead on this assignment. I wasn't even sure what I was here to offer up anyway; I knew nothing about computer stuff, and I hoped he had some kind of plan.

So much for getting a power nap in before jumping into work—I guess that wasn't going to happen.

"I... I think the WiFi password is 'Scottsdale' and my room..."

"Yup, I'm staying here too; I got here Monday. I thought we could go over some of the basic stuff and get you up to speed on what I've gotten from her computer so far," he said, pulling a portable drive from his bag and plugging it in. "This is a copy of her hard drives, from both her computers. I'm still running some scans on the laptop to see if I can recover things that have been deleted. There wasn’t much on her desktop unit of value, but we can discuss that."

I just watched; he was clicking and opening windows faster than I could grasp on his laptop.

"Can I get you something to drink? Is there anything I can do?"

"No, I'm... Yeah, if you have water, that would be good. Oh, and," he pulled a stick from his bag, "If you can plug this into your TV, we won't have to crowd around this tiny screen."

I took the stick, and I’m sure I looked confused, asking, "Plug it into?"

"If you can plug it into any of the HDMI slots, there are a couple on the left side, I think."

I did as requested, grabbed the remote, and turned on the TV. The hotel entertainment menu was showing. I knew enough that the stick would be accessible via one of the TV's aux connections from his computer. I found a Google Chrome Cast listed on HDMI 3. Paul looked up, did something, and the screen went black. Five seconds passed, and Facebook was showing on the screen. Amber's Facebook—it was the first time I had seen what she looked like...

"Think I could get that water?"

I literally jumped, his voice shocking me, like static electricity. I was that focused on Amber's picture on the 42-inch TV screen. She appeared to be so much more female-looking than I had expected for only being seventeen. I turned reluctantly toward the full-size kitchen and pulled a bottle of 'complimentary' water from the refrigerator. I gave Paul the bottle, and he thanked me.

When I looked at the TV, it was in split screen mode; her Facebook account was on top, and some other computer language stuff was zipping off the screen nearly as fast as it was displaying: 'For (i 0=0;i 0 < z;i 0++)... void tBreakImg(const double a[20])'. It looked like complete gibberish to me.

"I'm trying to recover anything hashed—well, lost sectors, actually—from her hard drives." He was banging keys and obviously lost in his own thoughts, as if I were just a fixture in the room.

After a couple minutes of silence, nothing moving on the Facebook side of the TV, and lots of computer garbage flying by still, I couldn't take being ignored any longer.

"Have you talked to Mr. Wentz?"

"One second... Okay, last," he kept typing, not even looking at me. "There. Yeah, Jacob and I met this morning for breakfast. He's meeting with someone from the FBI," he said, looking at his watch. "Now I think. Anyway, he wants you to see what I've found. See if we can turn any of this stuff into leads for the police or FBI if Jacob can secure some assistance. Tonight we're having dinner at Carson's. Jacob wants you to check out her room, ask questions of Carson's, not sure what else Jacob has in mind for the day."

Wait, what?

"We're going to Mr. Wentz's sisters' house tonight?" I could feel my voice was shaky having asked that.

Paul turned away from his screen to look at me for the first time in nearly two minutes.

"Is that going to be a problem?" he asked.

I'm sure his tone didn't hold any malice, but he didn't get any of this—me, me being here, what I have to deal with just to function as me around people—none of it. I looked at him a few seconds before saying, "No, but I wasn't expecting this to move so quickly."

Paul's face showed no real emotion; maybe a little confusion?

"Time is of the essence, Elizabeth; we're now seven days behind Amber, and not much is known," he paused to study my face. "Are you going to be alright with this?"

No! I mean, I don't know yet.

"I don't know..." I said, trying to collect my thoughts. "To be honest, I'm probably way outside my comfort zone."

"How can I make this easier for you?" he asked, his voice sounding sincere.

"I just... Ah, I don't think you understand."

"I know and understand more about you than you think."

"What? What does that mean?" I went from stunned and near cowering to having an angry lump in my throat.

"You were born Edward Anson Gallagher in Seattle twenty-three years ago. You got my GED three years ago and graduated from Tacoma Community College four months ago with a paralegal certificate…"

"What the hell!" Did this guy run some kind of background on me? Why did he run a background check on me? What else did he know? This is bullshit! This isn't right! What's going on here?

"All I'm saying, Elizabeth, is that I know a little bit about you and where you're coming from, but that doesn't mean I understand your journey. Jacob and Janet think you are valuable to the search, and so do I, because I don't understand a lot of things I've found. I won't pretend to know where this kid was going in life, but you probably do, and you're going to make way more sense of the stuff I’ve found than I ever could. We're on the same side, with the same goal—bringing Amber home."

I wanted to bite his head off, and at the same time, I wanted to run. It almost sounded like he had just complimented me, or was he putting me in a box? Damn it! Amber, or for me, this wasn't some kind of mental disease or whatever he thought. It wasn't a game with her or I we decided to ‘play’ or whatever! God damn you! Breathe... I needed to figure out quickly how to move this along without us stepping on each other or being at each other's throats. Rules: set some ground rules for working together. Go with what you know, drag him along if you have to.

"Ah, okay, but I'm not some experiment for you to try to figure out. I am who I am, and I will not apologize or walk on eggshells around you for the next however many days. Are we clear?"

Paul looked confused. "Whoa. Dial it back a few notches. I'm not the enemy, and I'm not saying..."

"No, we're going to establish some ground rules, and rule number one is that I'm not part of this investigation. I'm not the subject matter; my past is mine alone, and I will not be the focus of any of this investigation. Do you think you know me? Think again!"

I had raised my voice angrily to shout that at him, and I probably sounded like a raspy Stevie Nicks with laryngitis. I could feel my nails digging into my clenched fists and tried to relax.

"Wow, I feel like I should leave and come back in again," he said calmly with the slightest of grins.

I was angry, scared, and scared for Amber. I was scared I was going to let Janet and Jacob down. I was scared that some of the pieces of my past life I hadn’t fully resolved, buried deep, were going to trickle out during this whole process. Slow it down, slow down the doom speak already!

"No, you don't need to leave," I said calmly. "But you need to understand that none of the decisions, actions, or whatever came without a lot of pain and consequences." I was rambling and just stopped before I started to sound preachy. I had said that for Amber’s benefit, but also mine, because it was true.

"I would never try to minimize anything you or Amber have gone through." Paul's face, now very somber, looked away. "I know a little bit about the pain a family goes through—the pain, the blame, and the shame." His voice sounded as if it were breaking a little.

I wanted to say something but was lost as to where this conversation had just gone—how could he know about the family dynamic going on with Amber or with my family? Paul stood, looked toward the window, and took a slow breath in.

"My brother came," he paused, "came out as being gay. It did not go over to well with my family." He walked to the window, pulled the curtain aside, and looked out. "About a year later, he committed suicide. He was seventeen. While not exactly... I think I know about some of the things you've gone through."

I felt an instant and intense emptiness in my chest.

"I'm so sorry...," I whispered.

Three rapid beeps from Paul's computer interrupted this posturing I was so determined to win—until Paul shared his brother’s story. I watched him as he continued to stare out the window. A hand went to his face for a moment. I thought about going over to...

Three more rapid beeps from the computer, and he turned to look at the TV screen. His left cheek was a little wet. He excused himself and went to the bathroom. I could hear him blowing his nose.

March 9th, 11:48 a.m.
The computer beeps turned out to be a good thing. It knocked us off a destructive path I’d taken us down the last however many minutes. Yes, I was being a bitch, but I wasn't going to be someone's pincushion or punching bag or experiment or avenue to my dark side or whatever.

Our focus returned to finding clues to Amber's disappearance as quickly as we took that detour thankfully. Paul revealing his brother's story flipped a switch in me, and I started to believe that maybe he wasn't the enemy or had overstepped in his looking into my background. I had an overwhelming urge to hug him, but only to say that I got it. We got back to the business at hand with nary a word to either of our positions we’d thrown at each other.

The laptop's first beep told Paul that the process of file recovery on Amber's desktop hard drive was complete. There were a few files, mostly selfies of her trying on various outfits in various boutiques—at least three different ones. They were older according to the date-time stamps, Paul said, a year and a half at least. One of the pictures caught Amber's mom, Stephanie, in a mirror smiling about something. They looked very much like the mother-daughter pair you would expect, both smiling, maybe giggling, and seemingly enjoying shopping together.

Paul had already met Amber's parents and said he didn't sense anything but support for their daughter's chosen path. From the little I had seen of her Facebook account, which had maybe twenty or fewer posts, the last being well over three months ago. She looked to be getting more than enough support from her parents in the pictures, but not so much from her friends; in fact, for a teen, I expected much more communication on this wide-reaching social platform.

There was nothing much to see actually, not even bullying of any kind. I thought that was odd. She had less than fifty friends in total, wasn't following anything Trans or LGBTQ+ related, and the posts with pictures of herself in them was only about ten—all very tasteful ones of her in outfits from cute dresses to pajamas. It seemed excessively sterile. I wondered if someone had made changes to her account, posts having been deleted before we could inspect what was there. Was there a way we could find that out?

In comparison, my Facebook account had every transgender or LGBTQ+ group out there, especially the local Seattle ones. I had hundreds of friends, and my last post was from last weekend, where I commented on some legal action against the city of New Orleans for discriminating against a lesbian passed over for a promotion. While nothing in any of my posts was wild, it didn't take a genius to know where I stood on the issues. I didn't flaunt my sexuality or try to force it down anyone's throat, but I used Facebook as a way to legitimize my being just another woman out there.

Facebook was a long cry from the swamps I used to frequent.

It was probably obvious when people looked at the few pictures I had posted of myself, that I was Trans. The last picture was of me on my first day of work at Brandt, Wentz, and Larson three months ago. I hated pictures of myself because they screamed 'dude in drag' generally. My shoulders were too wide, long legs with a shorter torso, hair never quite right when I posed... Augh! STOP IT!

Okay, it would be a lie to say I wasn't envious of Amber, of how she looked as female as if she were born a girl, and of the support she had, which boiled down to her family's love for her and, of course, money. Get over yourself! This work we’re doing isn’t about me!

But, hadn’t I struggled? I made it to here almost all by myself—fuck not having money! Yes, it sucked to be disowned by my father and brother. It sucked! I barely had a speaking relationship with my mom, which was a different assortment of problems, like the Forest Gump box of chocolates. In my case, though, each chocolate tasted like shit from that box, generally speaking.

And, I owed my mom money for college and whatever else it took to survive this past year—money she had loaned me without my dad's knowledge, I was sure. I paid her two hundred dollars last month and promised to increase that in the months to come until I had paid her back nearly four thousand dollars. Hello! Relevance? Grrr!!! Focus!

I needed to suppress my jealous reactions to the comments Paul was making about Amber's appearance as he scrolled through her pictures. Yes, she looked cute. Not helpful, dude. To distract him from frothing at the mouth more about Amber, I got him talking about computer forensics stuff by asking him stupid questions. Luckily, he was pretty easily distracted, especially for such a smart guy. Ha! Take that boi! I smiled thinking I’d gotten one over on him.

The tech talk continued with Paul explaining that there was a bulk of disk space that couldn't be recovered on her desktop computer's hard drive due to the read/write operations of the computer's operating system, which plunked down data wherever it wanted. I didn't pretend to understand half the shit he was spouting, but at least I didn't have to hear more compliments about Amber for a couple of minutes. In his estimation, the desktop wasn't used much, so whatever we couldn't recover was likely more of the same, older pictures of Amber.

I wrote down a question on a hotel notepad: When did Amber get her laptop?

The second beep of Paul's laptop signaled the completion of the recovery process of anything deleted from Amber's 1TB laptop hard drive. It was a haul of over one thousand files, consisting of Word documents, pictures, and video files—along with some system files, of course. The earliest deleted file was from a year ago, and Paul mentioned that was when the laptop was first used. The initial Windows update from the factory-installed operating system was a week before the date of the first file deletion date. Okay, so that's the answer to the question of when she got the laptop, I thought. Why a laptop a year ago? Was it a gift? Shit, it was a present!

I blurted out, "Do you know when Amber's birthday is?"

"It was last Friday; why do you ask?"

"I was just trying to figure out the reason for her getting the laptop; guess that answers that question."

"Yeah, she just turned eighteen."

Eighteen... 'Legal age of majority' or when you're considered an adult legally in all states except Alabama and Nebraska, which are nineteen.

"Did her parents say anything about her wanting anything, I don't know, like a tattoo or something, but they were against it?"

"I didn't think to ask, but I'm pretty sure she already has a couple tattoos." Paul said that by clicking open a new window that appeared on the TV, replacing the computer language gibberish window, "Got these..."

The screen showed his file explorer and six images in 'Extra Large Icons' mode. He highlighted them and clicked 'Preview'.

The first was Amber's hand, dark ink in intricate line patterns—a Henna tattoo. She had perfectly manicured nails. Stop! Fuck the nails! The tattoo wasn't something permanent—focus! There were four other pictures of Henna tattoos: on her feet and the side of her chest. That picture was of an orchid and included her Henna tattooed hand covering her left breast so you could see the orchid. Tattoo aside, she had breasts! Small but none the less breasts, and that meant HRT.

"Did her parents say anything about HRT?"

"I didn't ask, but I assumed so; it's kind of obvious from the pictures of her..."

I couldn’t take any more of his complimenting her and interrupted him mid-sentence, "What's the date on this photo?"

Paul checked, "A year ago. Is that significant?"

"No, I'm trying to put what I know into a time line. She comes out to her parents sometime when she's fifteen and this picture is from a year ago, and that makes her about seventeen—give or take. I was told her coming out was 'difficult' for the family. She obviously started HRT not that long after getting over whatever was 'difficult' for the family at fifteen and there a changing to full support of her transition."

"Well, this picture is going to muck things up for your time line, I think," he said.

I looked back at the TV to see a picture of Amber shooting a selfie over her shoulder in a mirror. The picture showed her backside, a beautifully shaped female’s naked ass, her smiling with a knowing grin, and centered at the base of her hips at the center was a colorful tramp stamp tattoo. It consisted of tribal-inked wings in black, powder blue, and lime green for accent. There was a small pink crown centered on top of the wings.

The tattoo looked cute—nothing I would ever do, but it appeared to be well done. It wasn't huge, so later in life she probably wasn't going to regret it. It also appeared to have been done recently, as the skin around it was red and some of the lines of the tattoo appeared raised.

"Did her parents mention her getting or having a tattoo?"

"No, this is the first time I've seen it, and trust me I've seen more of her than I care to admit."

I wasn't sure what that meant and ignored it, asking, "When was it taken?"

"This past Friday, her birthday,"

"Look at the clock. It says 3:41, and the edge of the curtains is here." I was now standing at the TV, pointing, "It's dark outside the window, so she got someone to do this after midnight on her birthday—Friday morning."

"Oh, shit. Good catch."

"She went missing Friday," I said, thinking aloud.

"Her school reported her missing from class Friday mid-morning."

Okay, she gets a tattoo the morning of her disappearance; that's an avenue to pursue—tattoo parlors. The question is: Why take a picture of it and not share it? Why take it and then delete it? Paul had been over her phone and online presence; this picture was not there, I assumed, or he would have mentioned it.

"I don't understand why she would take the picture and then delete it," he said offhandedly.

"I was just thinking that," and I wondered if his skills went beyond computers and into the paranormal—like mind reading. "Have you been able to crack into her email account, assuming she has one?" That was stupid—what teenager didn't have at least one email account?

"I got access to one of her accounts, but there wasn't anything of interest there. I don't think she used it much."

"How did you get in?"

"She had a Post-It note in her room with user IDs and passwords to various accounts—no computer magic involved with that. The police actually found it during their search," he said smiling as if he’d complimented the police about their investigative skills.

He began concentrating on the laptop screen I studied him for a second, thinking he had a nice smile.

"Various accounts?" I asked.

"Yeah, it's dark stuff. Let's concentrate on what we've got mined here from the deleted files; then I'll take you to the dark side of her online presence."

"Okay, that's a little cryptic, but whatever..."

Paul clicked on the first directory of recovered files from Amber's laptop and sorted them in order of file type.

"She left a Post-It note, so maybe there's a file here that will get us into some of her accounts or accounts we don't know about," he said concentrating on what he was doing.

I watched him highlight twenty or so PDF files and opened them all at once. They were in the '_Care' directory, and I watched the files overlay quickly on the TV. He closed the split-screen view, and the screen showed more of the opened files. It was evident that these were all SRS-related, a mix of technical medical information and blog entries from various websites.

Pictures in some of the PDF's contained actual surgical procedures documented in living color and some present-day new techniques were described in regard to nerve preservation during surgery. Heavy stuff for a teenager—even if this was the end goalie you wanted for yourself one day. I would be curious to review these privately to get a sense of what she was looking for or at specifically. I knew enough about this stuff already, but I’d never be able to afford it for years to come if I could even save up the money to do it eventually do it.

Paul copied links from some of the files, when available, and pasted them in a document he pulled up involving his research to date.

"We can go back over these sites later. Let's say she was looking to—as an adult—run off to get SRS; maybe these sites are a place to start."

Nice thought, but you don't just walk in and order up SRS like you would a Big Mac at McDonald's; it's way more complicated than that. Paul getting up from the couch and walking to the bathroom interrupted my snarky train of thought. I watched him walk to the door and close it behind him. He had a nice ass—not that I cared or anything, but I could give him that.

Paul returned a few minutes later, which had given me a chance to check my phone—no messages, a few personal emails, but nothing worth reading. I thought about grabbing my Android tablet to log into my work email, but he didn't spend as much time in the bathroom as I had hoped.

"These SRS files are likely a dead end; I doubt you can just get that kind of surgery without a lot of work leading up to something that big. That and the cost factor are probably pretty high."

Fucking shit! Is this guy in my mind?!!

"I agree...," was all I could muster in reply. I was going to lose my shit if he said anything about me thinking he had a nice ass. I thought of another question: did Amber have a passport? I wrote that down.

The next several directories had mostly pictures and video downloads. Paul's comment about Amber's dark side became a little clearer. Much of the stuff we looked at had no value or benefit to her transition struggle to be who she was on the inside. When there were no more pictures of shemale like porn to view, Paul queued up the first video. He paused and looked a little uncomfortable.

"I'm... I'm not really a fan of this kind of stuff, but we need to see if Amber appears in any of it. I highly doubt it. I can fast forward through them quickly, so keep an eye out for her, though most of these are probably staged professional releases. If any are of these are of the 'amateur' variety, that's our best chance of catching her."

Shit, are you kidding me? This wasn't healthy, and I could speak from first-hand knowledge on that. Of course there was no way in hell I was going to say that, ever!

"I understand..."

What did he mean by 'keep an eye out for her'? Had he seen her in something already posted online?

For over thirty minutes, we fast-forwarded too many video clips to count. The saving grace was that by fast-forwarding the videos, we didn’t have to ‘hear’ the action on the screen. That cut down on the awkwardness of this exercise, though maybe not completely the arousal factor. I wondered if Paul felt the same way. No, he said as much—this wasn’t his thing. Someone like me wasn’t his cup of tea. Augh…

Near the halfway mark of the collection of videos, Paul stated what I already had figured out. Amber had been involved in making videos and posting them online. He mentioned there was evidence she was also live streaming from her bedroom. I knew that already, but it still made my heart sink a little; none of this was a good sign. I sensed there was more, but we weren't really talking much as the video images pathetically zipped across the TV screen.

I asked if her parents knew about her being online. He looked away from the TV to study me for a moment.

"Yes, the police found evidence of her being online pretty early on. Jacob said it was a heartbreaking blow to them I think."

I shook my head and continued to watch as a familiar sadness crept into my thoughts. We sat in silence until all the videos had been viewed.

"Was there undeleted content on her laptop, like this stuff?" I meekly asked.

"Yes, but nothing useful. Between this bunch of deleted stuff and the undeleted stuff, we're looking at plenty of sites she either downloaded or surfed and may have uploaded too, as a minor I’m thinking. There’s stuff she was featured in," he paused as if measuring what he was about to say. "Any idea of why she would be involved in this kind of thing?"

I felt my throat tighten a little and jokingly blurted out, "How much time do you have?" My joke was lost on him, and I stammered to recover. "A lot of it is a need for attention, even if it's not the good kind... You're alone a lot of the time, depressed, sad, numb, and adrift, because people don't know what you're going through or understand how you are about to lose your mind trying to find your way through your transition... Something as simple as a smile from another human being can carry you over the distance of the largest desert."

I was reaching clumsily to explain the trap, and it really was a trap.

"Some of the attraction is a feeling of being wanted—you feel validated, gratified... Then again, some people are all about the kink, the fetish... The trap is that this shit takes you away from where you really wanted to go in the first place. Who you want to really be when you come out the other side. Then there’s the lure of easy money; people are willing to pay to see something considered taboo." I stopped, slowly exhaling. Did I answer the question?

I must have, because Paul brought up another directory and began opening documents. It contained what looked like stories—fictional stories pulled from a site called Big Closet. Yet another site I would have to check out, as I'd never heard of it.

He was clicking through Word documents now, some containing medical information regarding transformation and some that looked like diary entries, which, on closer inspection, appeared to be from a MTF woman describing her life after SRS. Paul was organizing the documents, which were too many to count, into categories and saving them for later review. He was about to close a Word document that had only 'parola d'ordine' in it.

"What's that?"

"No idea," he said, closing it and moving the file to a document directory.

"Can we Google that?"

"I guess..." He opened the file again, copied the words and pasted them into a browser window, hit enter, and said, "Oh shit!"

The Google results listed on the TV screen appeared, and I couldn't help but speak it aloud: "A Password..."

"No, don't you see?" The TV screen flipped back to the document, and he clicked some keys, highlighting everything on the page, and there were user IDs and passwords for email accounts and sites. I wasn't how that could be. "She used white text on a white page background to hide this stuff from view," he said excitedly.

Paul was instantly energized by the find and tried the credentials for Amber's Tumblr account. They worked!

"This changes everything," he said with a big smile.

While it was awesome that we had access, what was showing on the screen was anything but... Amber, in an animated GIF, was being taken from behind by an overweight older man. The scene wasn't more than a couple seconds long and repeated itself in a loop.

This investigation was about to get much darker.

::: --- :::

I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Bronwen Welsh in proofreading and giving me insightful advice. She is an accomplished author in her own right and I appreciate her time more than I can say...

Don't be afraid to click the "Thumbs Up" icon for this short story if it's done anything for you (you don't have to have an account to do so, and there are no prizes for most likes or payouts for that matter (I’d have bot’ed that bitch long ago if there was)). If you comment, I will reply, so let’s chat or not or whatever floats your noddle.

If there are problems or you have criticisms you'd like to share privately, feel free to message me on the site (you’ll need an account) or via email ([email protected] (link sends e-mail)) - I'd love to address them if I can.

I'm trying to grow as a storyteller; I'm far from perfect, so any help is much appreciated and valued. Thanks for reading...