My name is Ed, and this story takes place when I am 42 years old and Denise is 43. But first, it will be helpful for you to understand a little about ...ur pasts. Denise was 17 years old and a senior in high school when I was 16 and a junior. She had been dating a Puerto Rican Boy named Luis since she was a junior and he was a senior, and she was still dating him after he graduated and was going to the nearby community college for their mechanical technology program. I started to hear rumors. I swear I could hear the screams of each as they died. Jerking awake it seemed I had half of my memory back. Looking around I saw that I was in a safe house, though I didn't see the agent I had before. Reaching out to the plain looking lamp I thumbed the base 'til a communicator appeared."Agent," I said into it, "I have need of you, please appear."A mere ten seconds later the same creature from before appeared, "Yes councilor? I am hoping that the cure we gave you is working though, it has to. They swept throughout the main residence, taking everything of value that could be carried. After that, they methodically checked all of the other buildings on the estate, as well as the surrounding woods and grounds. Pedro Cohecho had indeed fled. The lieutenant radioed this information to Mexico City, which confirmed that Cohecho had flown out of Merida that morning, bound for Miami, then New York.Meanwhile, in the most populous city in the world, sporadic gunfire and occasional explosions. It felt like it should have been obvious, but I couldn't put my finger on it. It wasn't until I sat by the window to read the newspaper that anything jumped out at me. Even then, it didn't exactly jump - it just sort of crept up on me.There was a painting on the wall that was nagging at my thoughts. Done in grays and browns, it featured a single, dead tree on a forested hill over a lake. Almost as an afterthought, there was an owl in the tree. There was something odd about the owl's eyes. It.