S'wanee: A Paranoid Thriller Read Free

laundry. Thanks, kiddo.”
    “You’ll call tomorrow?”
    Marcie was silent a moment. “No, I don’t think so. Why would I?”
    “The school. S’wanee.”
    “Oh, the school. Yes. Yes, I’ll call the number. Why not?”
    “I can do it,” Cody said.
    “No, I said I’d do it,” Marcie said. “Why are you still up?”
    Cody could tell his mother had had one more glass of wine than usual.
    “I’m not,” he said. Cody needed only five hours a night and was usually up.
    “Me neither. Go to sleep, kiddo.”
    A few moments later, Cody heard the whir of the electric toothbrush, as Marcie polished and polished.

Chapter Two
    T wo days later, Friday, was hot, even by eight a.m. Marcie had to be at work early for a training seminar about a new antiaging serum. “You know, they don’t pay us extra for this,” she complained as Cody drove them to the mall after Marcie’s Starbucks pit stop. He didn’t ask but knew she hadn’t made the call yet.
    Cody sat outside in the employee bench area behind JCPenney. Marcie finished her wake-up cigarette and said she’d see him at lunch. Cody watched the rush-hour traffic in the distance under a peach haze. A river of cars heading to the city. He wanted to go.
    By 10:15 the Genius Bar was crowded, as usual. By noon he had fixed a slow iMac by reinstalling the Firefox browser, which he wasn’t supposed to do, but the customer was non-pushy and didn’t talk with a Jersey accent. Like Cody, he was from someplace else. He also fixed two “fucked-up” iPods by pressing the reset buttons. He wondered if anyone read their user’s manual.
    He checked in an old iBook that needed more extensive service from the pro techs in the back. “It’s password protected,” the customer whined. “Don’t you need the password?” “Don’t worry about it,” Cody replied to the grating voice, knowing the pro techs had password-hacking software, although he wasn’t supposed to reveal that. He would think that was obvious.
    At one thirty he took his sandwich from the employee refrigerator and met Marcie on the bench. The parking lot was mostly empty. Marcie was crushing out her first cigarette.
    “What are you doing tonight?” she asked. “Do you have a date?”
    “No,” Cody answered.
    “It’s Friday night. I’m taking you out. Dinner and a movie. My treat. That’ll be fun! We haven’t done that in a while.”
    They hadn’t done that since Christmas.
    “Okay,” Cody said, eating his sandwich. Marcie walked away from the bench to light her next cigarette, waving the smoke from her son who hated smoking.
    •   •   •
    Cody drove them home at six so Marcie could walk the dachshunds and “freshen up” before the movie. Stuck to their locked mailbox by the elevators was a purple and orange door tag from FedEx. For him.
    “You coming up?” Marcie asked.
    “I’ll wait here,” Cody answered.
    Cody had never gotten a FedEx before. He studied the door tag. His name was handwritten in a scrawl. The package was from “TN 37383.”
    S’wanee had sent him a FedEx package.
    It was a first delivery attempt. It had to be signed for. FedEx would attempt delivery twice more and then return the package to S’wanee. Or he could pick it up in person at the FedEx facility between five and seven today.
    Cody looked up the FedEx address on his iPhone. It was twenty minutes away. It was 6:22. If he left now, he’d get there in time, even in rush hour. Cody ran up the back stairs to the street level where Marcie walked the dogs. He could take them all and bring them back, or else he’d go by himself and come back and then they’d go to the movie.
    Marcie and the dogs weren’t outside. He called her.
    “Yes, kiddo?” Marcie said.
    “Where are you?” Cody asked.
    “Um. In the apartment.”
    “I got a FedEx package,” Cody said.
    “Yes. I saw that.”
    “I can go pick it up there before seven.”
    “Now?” Marcie asked. “Back back,” she said, slightly annoyed at the