Maxwell Makenzie sat in Judy’s Diner. He glared at his cell phone, ignoring his cooling cup of coffee. Something had gone wrong. His daughter, Morgan, was late. Morgan was never late to Sunday Breakfast. Sunday Breakfast at Judy’s had been a family tradition for all of Morgan’s life, and barring a few times when Morgan’s mother, Marianne, was in chemotherapy, nobody in the Mackenzie family had ever missed this.

And yet, it was 25 minutes past noon, and he was alone. The boys—having followed in their father’s footsteps—were deployed in Afghanistan, so they got a pass, but it wasn’t like Morgan at all to pull a no-show.

Nor was it like her to not call, or text, or even this “PM” thing. Max gave his coffee a hard look, as if expecting it to explain itself. The coffee remained silent.

The click of the waitress’s shoes on the tile caught his attention, and his head swivelled around to look at her. Max’s face was well worn. A short jarhead cut, still clean-shaven, even after being retired almost ten years. All the scars of a life lived hard, and with few regrets.

“She’s not here? That’s not like her, Max.”

“I know.“ His voice was a rough rasp, courtesy of 20 some-odd years of yelling at shitbird Marines. He stood up, dropping a ten on the table, and headed for the door. “If she shows up, tell her to call me. If you see her, call me.“

“Will do, hon.”

He levered his 6’2” frame into his car, and turned the ignition. The 1968 Thunderbird rumbled to life. Max smiled briefly, enjoying a memory of rebuilding the car with the boys, with Morgan supervising.

Easing the car into drive, he threaded through traffic, heading for Morgan’s apartment. “She probably just overslept, or let her phone die and missed her alarm. She’s been working late a lot recently…” Even as he told himself these things, he knew he was bullshitting himself. He recognized bullshit vibes, even coming from his own mind.

That the radio was playing CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising” didn’t make him feel any better, either.

Max pulled into a parking space in front of Morgan’s apartment and put the T-bird in park. Out of habit, he drew his carry piece—a 1911 he’d owned for almost 30 years—and checked it. He’d been given it as a gift from his father, when he had graduated from Parris Island. His father, in turn, had received it from Max’s grandfather, much the same way. It had seen service everywhere the Marines had ever gone, from 1917 to 2009. He would have given it to one of the boys, but it never seemed fair to choose between the two, so he’d had a pair of custom 1911s built, with consecutive serial numbers, and gifted them to the boys, in order of their birth. Smiling at the memory, he tucked the pistol back into its holster, stepped out of the Thunderbird, and locked it.

Marianne had bought that car as a project for him and the kids. It had arrived on a flatbed, looking like death warmed over. Max and the kids had spent half a decade of weekends rebuilding it. When he’d tried to sell it to pay for the cancer treatments, Marianne had made him promise to keep it. He’d given in to her insistence, and he’d kept his promise.

The neighborhood wasn’t great, but he was known here. The last time someone had tried to touch the car, he’d jumped out of Morgan’s second story window, grabbed the would-be car thief by the neck, and beat his face on the curb next to the car, bellowing rage.

He grinned at the memory of the window jump, even though he’d limped for weeks afterward. “Worth it,” he said to himself.

Max noted the presence of Morgan’s little beater, a hard working little Toyota with a zillion miles on it that refused to die. Morgan had dubbed it ‘zombie,’ and swore she’d only part with it “if or when it ever dies.” She’d taken good care of it thus far, so who knew how long that would take. He walked past the car, placing a palm on the hood to note its temperature.

Stone cold. That car had not moved in a while. “Must have just overslept,” Max said to himself as he walked up the steps and hit the buzzer next to Morgan’s name. Max waited, but the door didn’t open.

Max hit the buzzer again. Still no answer. He growled, pulled out his wallet, and dug into the back of it, under his license, and pulled out a spare key. When he’d co-signed Morgan’s lease, he’d promised her he’d never use it.

He’d kept that promise till now.

The door opened easily. Max glanced around the tiled foyer, and took the stairs two at a time. Despite being almost 50, Max stayed in shape, so he wasn’t even out of breath when he hit the second floor. He came off the staircase and moved to Morgan’s door.

He stopped for a moment, listening. The building sounded normal—the usual moans and groans of a small brownstone full of people living their lives. No unusual smells, just the odd yet familiar mix of Mexican from the third floor and Punjab cooking from the second. “They oughta open a restaurant together," Max said to himself.

He knocked on Morgan’s door.

Silence answered him.

“Morgan? It’s your father. Answer the door, please.” Max tried to make it sound like something other than an authoritarian bark, with some success.

Silence.

“Honey? I need you to come to the door.”

For some reason, Max found himself gripping his pistol, still in its holster. Strange, how even old men do rookie shit when they’re scared, he thought.

“I’m coming in, Morgan.”

He opened the door, still keeping one hand on his holstered pistol. He had no proof, but every instinct he had was screaming that something was horribly wrong.

Closing the door behind him, he stood stock still for a long moment in the small apartment. He listened to his senses.

No sounds. The air feels still. It’s cool in here; nobody’s been moving around making heat, cooking, or running equipment. The coffee smells stale.

He frowned and began checking the apartment. The bed had clearly not been slept in for at least a day, maybe two. The sink was dry, and the sponge was hard, suggesting nobody had used them in several days. The line on the coffee pot was a good half inch above the level of the very stale coffee, suggesting that the coffee was also at least several days old. He looked in the trash, and sniffed the contents. Rot was just starting to take hold, and with American food, with all the preservatives, also suggested a couple of days.

“Two days, minimum.” He frowned.

Things didn’t get weird till he inspected the bathroom.

The tub was missing. The tub was huge, fully seven feet long, at least three and a half feet wide, with big old claw feet. A magnificent antique, and one of the reasons Morgan had wheedled him into co-signing the lease. And the doorway was only 30 inches wide. Someone had remodelled the place after the tub had been installed. There was no way it would fit through the door, or any other possible exit from the room, without major construction. And there were no signs that either the tub or the walls had been damaged. The two water taps hung forlornly over empty space, and the drain coupling was so cleanly cut the edge looked like a mirror.

As he stood in the center of the bathroom, looking around, he saw a dent in the wall near the corner. And on the floor, a cellphone. Max picked it up off the floor—noting the shattered display—and, taking a second look, noted the globe-and-anchor Marine Corps sticker on the back. This was Morgans’s phone, no doubt. His face darkened.

“Who took you, baby girl?”

Max cradled the broken phone in one hand while gripping his still holstered pistol so tightly the wood grips squeaked against the steel frame in protest.

“I’m coming, baby…”

He closed the apartment door and locked it, the broken phone in his pocket, his free hand dialing 911. “Hello, I’d like to make a missing persons report?”

Two hours later, Max sat in the Thunderbird and stared out the windscreen. The police had come, given their plethora of excuses, barely took down any notes, sneeringly asked how much CSI he watched when he tried to walk them through the apartment, and suggested that he get a hobby instead of stalking his own daughter. When he pictured that smug little fatbody’s face, he could hear his own heartbeat. The older patrol officer’s common sense had belatedly kicked in, and he’d dragged his younger partner out of Max’s sight before something bad had happened. They’d left, leaving him feeling alone. And very, very angry.

He touched the faded photograph on the dash and forced a smile. “Don’t worry, honey, I’m gonna go get her.”

He started the car and headed out for a phone repair shop.

The radio growled out Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “On the Hunt” as he drove.

The store was a national chain, just like thousands of others. Annoying pop muzak, annoying advertisements, and clerks who hated their jobs.

Don’t let them see what you’re thinking, you’re just a bored, somewhat annoyed father, replacing a phone broken by an inconsiderate child… Max schooled his face and walked in.

One of the clerks approached him with the usual, “Welcome to PhoneCo, how can I help you today?”

“Hey there, my kid dropped her phone, and I need to get it replaced; can you help me with that?”

“Sure thing! Are you the account holder?”

“Yes. Here’s my number.”

“Thank you!”

Twenty minutes later, Max had a working phone with all of Morgan’s data on it. He sat in the Thunderbird, took a deep breath, and turned it on. “I’m sorry, honey, I gotta know.”

Max hit pay dirt almost immediately. A photo of the vaguely remembered ‘boyfriend,’ with a lapful of someone who clearly wasn’t Morgan was the first thing to come up. “Now who might you be, little girl?”

Max smiled. It wasn’t a pretty smile, but it had lots of teeth. “Time to take your daddy to work, daughter.”

Max put the Thunderbird in park in front of the chain restaurant Morgan worked at. He’d made a point of not coming to her place of work, because, dammit, he was not going to helicopter if he could help it. Well...any more than he already had. A twinge of guilt crossed his face at that thought.

Skinny Puppies’ “Going Down” snarled to a halt on the radio as Max shut the Thunderbird off and stepped out of the car.

Max walked inside, a cloud of suppressed rage billowing around him. The place was sort of a Red Lobster rip-off; the food wasn’t bad, though somewhat overpriced. He gave something approximating a smile to the hostess. “Hi there, I’d like to speak with your manager? It’s about Morgan Mackenzie.”

She gave a deer-in-the-headlights smile, nodded, and fled for the back. A few minutes later, a somewhat portly man in his 30s came out, scowling. “We don’t talk about our employees, mister. I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave.”

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Max… paused for a second, counting to ten mentally. “I understand that; I’m her father, and she’s missing.”

“Then call the cops. We’re done here.” The man barely came up to Max’s shoulder.

“I did call them. They don’t seem too interested. Look, she’s been gone almost two da-”

The manager interrupted him.

“So she split for a couple of days. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Something in Max…gave. Morgan being missing, nobody giving a shit, and people actively giving him static. Old habits came rushing to the fore.

Max was not a small man. At 6’2” and 240 pounds of practiced, if aging, muscle, he cut an imposing figure, which normally worked to his advantage. What wasn’t evident from his appearance was the fact that Max was remarkably quick for his size.

Max moved.

The manager never saw the kick to the groin coming. he simply folded on impact, his face coming down to meet Max’s denim-clad knee coming up. Max’s left hand gripped the greasy hair on the back of the manager’s head, speeding the manager’s face along to its meeting with Max’s denim clad knee. His right hand, not wanting to be left out, reached under his denim jacket and drew the 1911 in a blur.

Max yanked the manager upright from his abrupt faceplant into Max’s knee and stuck the 1911 in his face. Looking the manager in the eye, he slowly and deliberately flicked the safety off with his thumb, trigger finger parallel to the slide.

“Do not test me, maggot.”

“Buh, wah, you hit me!” the manager blubbered. Blood flowed from his broken nose.The

“I’m going to do worse than hit you if you don’t tell me what you know about my daughter’s whereabouts,” Max snarled, smearing the bore of the pistol across the manager's lips. “I will kill you right now if you don’t tell me what I want to know.” He cringed internally and promised to clean the pistol as soon as he was done here.

The gravity of the situation finally dawned on the manager, and the realization that this grey-haired old man would blow his brains all over the wall if he didn’t get what he wanted finally started to sink in. He chose survival.

“YES, YES, whatever you want!” The front of the manager’s slacks darkened.

Max holstered the pistol. “I’m going to let go of you and show you a picture. You’re going to tell me what you know, and then I’m going to leave and never come back. Deal?”

“Anything you want!”

Max pulled out the new phone and showed the picture to the manager. “Do you know these people? And if so, who are they, and what do you know about them?”

“I…I’ve seen the man before, with Morgan. The girl works here. Her name is Sara Smith.”

“Where can I find her?”

“I…” The manager hesitated.

Max waited, his grey eyes boring into the manager’s.

The manager caved and gave him the address.

“See, that wasn’t hard. You could have started there and saved yourself from a broken nose and needing new pants.”

Max patted the man on the back and turned, the fake smile falling off his face before he’d even fully turned around, and stalked out the door.

Max slid behind the wheel of the Thunderbird and hit the ignition. “See? We’re making progress already...”

The radio played Midnight Riders’ “One Bad Man” in response.

Max pulled up in front of a tiny house in a grubby, but not quite shitty, neighborhood, and parked the Thunderbird. He touched the photograph on the dash. “Wish me luck, honey.” Stepping out of the car, he locked the doors and looked at the house. “Better hurry, before that fat fuck of a manager finds his balls.”

Max speed-walked up to the house and, without slowing, slammed a booted heel into the lock plate of the door, kicking the door wide and moving in fast.

It was a small house, and Max was at the bedside before anyone in the house had a chance to get up.

Max’s lips pulled back in a snarl. Laying there, like a gift-wrapped package, were the two people he wanted to talk to most.

He helped Dylan finish waking up by driving a fist into his gut. Dylan cried out and rolled out of the bed to land face-first on the floor, retching.

“GOOD MORNING, SCUMBAGS!” Max was in full Drill Instructor mode. “TIME TO FACE THE DAY, CHILDREN!”

Sara yanked the covers around her neck and managed a shrill “What the fuck?!”

Max showed his teeth. “Hello there, little girl. I’m Morgan’s daddy, and Morgan is missing. The last thing on her phone before someone smashed it was a picture of you and fuckboy here getting it on in a bar. Anything you want to tell me?”

“Get the fuck out of my house, you freak!” Sara shrieked.

“Sure thing. I’ll just be taking fuckboy with me; he’s got some explaining to do.” Max grabbed Dylan by the ankle and began dragging him out of the room.

Sara fumbled frantically for her cell phone, trying to watch Max and find the phone at the same time, succeeding at neither.

Max paused at the door. “If you have anything to tell me about Morgan’s disappearance, now would be the time. If I have to come back here and find you… it won’t matter that you’re a woman.”

“I didn’t do anything.” Real fear began to register in Sara’s mind as she grasped that Max meant what he said.

“Then you’ve nothing to worry about.” Max resumed dragging a naked, gagging, and hung over Dylan out of the room by the ankle.

“I’ll pay for the door.”

Dylan struggled and yelped at being dragged to the car. Max resolved this by punching Dylan into submission, zip-tying his hands and feet, and dumping Dylan in the trunk like a struggling bag of groceries. The neighbors wisely stayed inside, and didn’t interfere.

Max slid behind the wheel and smiled. He was making progress. The radio played Megadeth’s ‘Angry Again,’ and the muffled screaming from the trunk tapered off fairly quickly. Apparently, Dylan didn’t have much stamina.

Max pulled into the driveway of his house, and moved quickly. He went to his closet, and grabbed one particular duffel bag. He paused in the kitchen to fill a big bowl of water, and cut open an entire bag of cat food.

“It’s your lucky day, you fat bastard.” He grinned at the cat, and then used his cell to call Marianne’s sister. “It’s Maxwell. I don’t have time, listen. Someone’s taken Morgan, and I’m going after them. You’ll need to come pick up the cat, OK? Look, if I gave a fuck what you thought, I’d have married you instead. Now just come deal with the fucking cat, I don’t have time for this shit.” Max hung up.

He slipped back behind the wheel of the Thunderbird, and drove for the countryside, not following any particular path, and changing roads often. Once he was deep in the middle of nowhere, he pulled over onto a side road and drove another mile before turning onto a barely-used dirt track in front of a very old and raggedy-looking cabin. He parked the car, and took a deep breath. “Just like the old days; nothing to it.”

He went around to the back of the Thunderbird, and opened the trunk. Dylan’s first view when the trunk opened was Max’s unsmiling face. “Son, the hour of your judgement is at hand. I hope you are prepared.”

Max roughly grabbed Dylan by the head and wrestled him out of the trunk, directing Dylan’s body out and into the gravel. Dylan hit the ground with a thud, and a scream.

He flicked a knife out of his pocket and cut the zip tie around Dylan’s ankles. “Get up.”

“Dude, what the fuck is wro-AUUUUUGH!” Max interrupted Dylan by jamming a high-powered stun gun into his ribs, giving him a good five-second jolt.

“Get up, or I’ll really hurt you.” Max stepped back and gave him room to stand.

Dylan complied. “Why are you...” Max raised the stun gun, and Dylan shut up.

“First reasonable person I’ve run into all day. Thank you.” Max picked up a bulky-looking duffel and pointed at the cabin. “Walk.”

Dylan walked. “Look, man, we were breaking up anyhow, I just got an early star—”

Max cut him off. “Walk.”The pair entered the small cabin. Max pointed to the kitchen table. “Sit.” Dylan sat.

Max dropped the duffel bag on the counter and pulled out a tool roll. He dropped it on the table in front of Dylan and unrolled it, like a Vegas dealer fanning cards. The tool roll contained a disturbing variety of cutting implements, pliers, and other…things.

Dylan moved to bolt. Max moved faster.

The shot rang out in the tiny room, just missing Dylan. “Sit. The. Fuck. Down.” Max’s rage pushed like a physical presence, putting Dylan back in the chair by sheer force of will.

Dylan babbled. Excuses and justifications poured from his lips as he tried to talk his way out of his apparent certain doom. Max let him talk, listening carefully.

After a while, Dylan’s fear subsided, and his voice trailed to a halt. “Aren’t you gonna say anything?”

Max looked Dylan in the eyes until Dylan broke the gaze first. “You really don’t know shit, do you? I’ll fill you in. Morgan was taken sometime Friday night. You were my prime suspect.” Max sat down in the opposite chair and ran a hand over his greying high-and-tight haircut.

“...fuck.”

“You...you’re a goddamn psycho, you know that?” Dylan seemed to have found his courage, realizing that Max was now focused elsewhere.

“What, you’re just now figuring that out, kid?” Max barked a laugh and showed his teeth, grinning. “My daughter is the most important thing in the world, and I’d feed you to a woodchipper a slice at a time just to make her smile. I never liked you, because you didn’t love her. She was just…convenient. But you never crossed the line, you never hurt her, so I tolerated you. Fucking her coworker…crossed that line.“

“Jesus, you really are crazy. Morgan warned me you were protective, but this?” Dylan gestured around with his bound hands. “This is fucking insane. You are fucking insane.” He got an offended look on his face. “I’m going to press charges.”

“Oh, are you now. A piece of advice?”

“Huh?”

“Make sure I go to prison, and make sure I die in there. Because there will be no place on this earth to hide from me when I get out. And everything you’ve experienced so far will feel like a lover’s kiss by comparison. Take your lumps for being a cheating shit, and be glad you got off with nothing but a couple of bandaids. Push it, and I’ll hurt you in ways you didn’t know were possible, and then put you in the ground.”

“Um…”

“I’m leaving now. If you follow the roads, you’ll reach civilization in a couple of hours. You’ll be fine. In the meantime, I have to find my daughter.”

Max stood up, rolled up his tools, packed his duffel, and left the cabin.

Dylan just stared at him as he left.

The Thunderbird’s radio crooned Megadeth’s “In My Darkest Hour.” as Max drove back to Morgan’s apartment. He must have missed something.

It was raining and dark when he got there. He’d need to find another car soon; the police were probably searching for him now. He rubbed the dash. The Thunderbird was an old friend, and a reminder of happier times, and it was going to hurt to lose it.

“Stupid.” Max grunted at himself. “What were you thinking, Cowboy? What, you’re somehow gonna help Morgan from inside a cell?” Max forced himself to calm. “So don’t get caught.” He exited the Thunderbird, grabbed his duffel out of the trunk, and shut it. Max’s face was a thundercloud as he walked up the steps of the apartment building, and let himself in. He closed the door to the apartment and looked around. “What did I miss? I missed something, I know it.” He returned to the bathroom and stood in the center, right where the tub had been, and took a knee. He glared at the room, and stared at the incredibly clean cut of the drain pipe.

“Dammit, Morgan, where are you?”

If Max hadn’t been so focused on berating himself for giving in to his anger, he’d have noticed an unmarked police car with two plainclothes officers in it just down the street.

“That’s him.” One of them made to get out of the car. The second man stopped him.

“Wait till he’s inside the apartment.”

“Why?”

“We try to arrest him on the street, he’ll have room to run. He’s a 20-year Marine infantryman, a dangerous piece of work with a concealed carry permit, and we know he’s armed. I think he won’t be as dangerous in his daughter’s space.”

The first man shrugged. “Whatever you say, professor.”

The second man rolled his eyes and tossed his cigarette butt out the window gap into the rain. “Let’s go.”

For the first time in Maxwell Mackenzie’s life, he didn’t know what to do. Morgan was gone; he had no leads, no witnesses—nothing but a missing bathtub and a broken cellphone.

And a laundry list of violent felonies, you idiot, he thought to himself.

As if summoned by that thought, there was a knock on the apartment door. “Mister Mackenzie? This is the police. We know you’re in there. We’d like you to come quietly, please.”

Max froze. “Fuck,” he whispered. Everything was ruined. He needed to find Morgan, to save Morgan, and he’d fucked it all up. He was going to prison, Morgan’s kidnapper would go free, and Morgan…

“No,” he said softly. “No, I have to find her. I have to...”

Max grasped the duffel as if to steady himself. He felt like he was falling.

It took him a couple of seconds to realize he really was.

Eventually, when the police entered the apartment, they found nothing but the perfectly severed tip of the strap of a duffel bag, cut so cleanly it shone like metal until it was touched.

“Where the hell did he go?”

“Out the fire escape?”

The shorter of the two tugged on the nearest window. It was shut, locked from the inside, and had been painted shut, several tenants ago. They checked the other windows as well, finding the same thing with all of them.

“All the windows are intact, and locked from the inside…”

“So how the fuck did he get out?”

“I have no idea…”

Both plainclothes detectives stood in the empty bathroom, staring at the cut strap.

“What happened to the bathtub?”