Page 63 of Single Dad's Christmas Cookie

“Are we there yet?” Amelia stopped singing to ask as I turned another corner.

I glanced at the GPS. “Close, sweetheart, close,” I said. I drove around the corner. “According to the GPS, her apartment should be coming up on the—holy smokes.”

There was a large sign announcing her apartment complex, like it was a shopping center. I turned on to the drive, which was really a private street, and slowed the car to a crawl.

“Oh, boy,” I muttered.

“Is this it, Daddy?” Amelia called from the back seat.

“This is it, but we’ve got a problem.” There was a double locked gate with a keypad at the entrance, and I didn’t have a clue what the number was. I lowered the window as the SUV rolled to stop, examining the keypad, seeing if there was a guest code printed anywhere. No guest code, but there was a printed set of instructions reminding residents to press the star key after they finished entering their passcode.

Great. Just great. Was the passcode four or five digits? There were only ten thousand potential combinations for four digits, and ninety thousand for five digits.

“This is going to be a little tricky,” I said, backing the SUV up. I swung the car around and pulled into a small parking lot next to what looked like a pool house, probably the apartment complex manager’s office.

“Why aren’t we going to get Nova?” Amelia demanded as she rocked back and forth in her car seat.

“Give me a minute, Amelia,” I snapped. “There is a code to get into the apartment complex and I don’t know what it is.”

“Why can’t we ask Nova?” Amelia asked.

She had a point. Why didn’t I pick up the phone and call Nova and say, ‘where are you? We’re coming to get you.’ Because I was afraid that she would hang up on me or that she would say she didn’t want us there. I was afraid that Nova would say, 'I don’t want you.’

“I thought we were going to surprise her?” I reminded Amelia.

“Yes, we should surprise her. That would make it a good Christmas present,” Amelia confirmed.

Somehow, on the drive over, rescuing Nova had turned into surprising her. She went back to humming one of the songs from the night we were snowed in together. I was going to have to correct her words. Then again, maybe not. It was just as well she didn’t understand the song was about drugs. I should have played more Christmas carols that night. Honestly, I knew more old rock songs that people liked to sing along with. TheChristmas music I knew was from my training, classical pieces that didn’t exactly have words.

I sat trying to figure out what possible number combinations Nova could have used. I jotted down a list of potential numbers that I thought she might have tried, the last four of her phone number, the last four of her social security number, her birth date, the year she was born. All of these were the kinds of passwords that security companies highly recommended not be used. Nova was a first grade teacher. Would she even be aware of the suggestions of security from cybersecurity companies?

I noticed a car approaching in my rearview mirror, and another car behind that one. I backed out of the parking space I was in and carefully eased the SUV back onto the drive. As the second car cleared the open gate, I sped through behind them. I didn’t have time to sit there and try to second-guess a number code. I wasn’t some kind of code hacker. Now, I needed to figure out which of these many buildings Nova lived in.

The apartment complex was huge, consisting of many two-storied buildings. Each building had two open walkways with stairs. It looked like each walkway-stairwell combination had four units that made eight units per building. This complex was huge. There had to be ten, maybe twelve or fifteen buildings with eight units each.

I didn’t even know where to begin. I slowly drove past the first set of buildings. I noticed that some of the apartments seemed to have balconies, while others didn’t. And some of the balconies were decorated with festive lights.

Would Nova be in a balcony department? Would she have decorated for the holiday? She seemed like the kind of person who would have twinkle lights all around her apartment. Irecalled she mentioned her apartment was small, so maybe not. Was there a way to tell from the outside how big the apartments in this complex were?

I drove around the complex trying to figure out the best approach to finding out which one of these apartments was Nova’s. That’s when I noticed there was a numbering scheme, and the buildings were labeled alphabetically, but I didn’t know which building Nova lived in. I didn’t have an apartment number for her, only a street address.

I pulled the SUV into an open parking spot and helped Amelia to unbuckle and get out of the car.

“Where do you think we should start?” I asked.

Amelia pointed to somebody walking their dog along one of the walkways in front of a building. “Why don’t we ask him?”

I shrugged. That was as good as any place to start. “Excuse me,” I called out, jogging toward the guy with the dog,

“I don’t want any,” he barked at me.

“Not trying to sell anything. Promise. Do you know your neighbors?” I asked.

“Are you a collections agent?” he asked me, barely slowing down to walk.

“No, no, I’m just trying to?—”

“We’re trying to find Nova,” Amelia cut me off.

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