KUTGW.
Sergeant Vince Paulo stared at the text message on his smart
phone and didn’t have a clue.
In many respects, Vince was at the top of his game. Good
looking and full of confidence, he’d come to the city of
Miami police force straight out of the marines after a tour
of duty in the Gulf War. He was born to be a cop, and a
college degree in psychology combined with his battle-tested
coolness under pressure made him a natural for crisis
management. Five years as lead negotiator had earned him the
reputation of a risk taker who didn’t always follow the
conventional wisdom of other trained negotiators. His
critics said that his unorthodox style would eventually
catch up with him. The prediction only made Vince bolder.
But this texting bullshit made him feel impotent. New
acronyms popped up every hour. The coffeehouse had free
Wi-Fi, so Vince put down his latte and Googled the
definition of “KUTGW.”
Keep up the good work.
Benign enough, especially from a sixteen-year- old girl.
Intercepting text messages between teenagers wasn’t Vince’s
regular duty, but there was little he wouldn’t do for his
best friend, Chuck Mays. For years now, Chuck had partnered
with Vince on a number of high-tech law enforcement
projects. He was currently in Asia looking to outsource the
collection of personal information on millions of consumers
and globalize his company’s data mining services.
His wife Shada and their daughter Mc‑Kenna had
stayed behind in Miami. It was an important trip, but Chuck
had almost canceled it. Shada was
that concerned
about their daughter’s ex-boyfriend.
It was while Vince was giving his friend a lift to the
airport that Chuck had flashed a deadly serious expression
and uttered the ominous words that Vince would never forget:
“I don’t know the whole story, but I’m telling you, Vince:
Shada is convinced that the son of a bitch is going to hurt
McKenna if she doesn’t stay away from him.”
As a cop, Vince had seen plenty of restraining orders
ignored, so he didn’t even suggest that the Mays family seek
one. McKenna wasn’t exactly cooperative anyway. She refused
to let her parents monitor her cell or computer, and to
Chuck’s dismay, her mother had sided with McKenna. Chuck was
standing on the curb outside the international terminal, two
hours away from boarding the Miami-London leg of his flight
to Mumbai, when he persuaded Vince that this was a potential
safety issue that transcended teen privacy concerns. But he
didn’t want “just anybody” looking over McKenna’s shoulder.
Chuck provided the spy software—rudimentary stuff for a
self-taught computer genius who was pioneering the personal
information business. Vince agreed to review McKenna’s text
messages from three p.m. to nine p.m. Eastern time, hours
that Chuck spent sleeping on the other side of the world.
Chuck would cover the rest of the day.
Vince removed the plastic lid from his tall paper cup and
grimaced. More foam than fuel. That would teach him to order
something other than his usual straight cup of joe. No
wonder customers felt entitled to monopolize a table for
hours on end—just them, their laptops, and five-dollar cups
of no coffee.
TFANC. Time for a new coffeehouse.
Vince spooned away the foam as McKenna’s text messages
continued to load on his smart phone. The wireless transfer
from McKenna’s memory card to his occurred in seconds, no
way for McKenna to know what had hit her. Message after
message, line after line, nothing but teenage babble. Vince
was actually feeling pretty fortunate to be single.
How do parents keep up with this insanity?
Vince scrolled through McKenna’s messages, coffee in one
hand and his cell in the other. Reading this stuff was
downright painful. OMG. LOL. CU L8R. It was the endless
electronic version of Exhibit A in the case against the
existence of intelligent life on Earth. One last swig of
coffee—and then he froze. The most recent message hit him
like a 5 iron to the forehead. It was thirty-five minutes
old. McKenna had sent it to Jamal—the ex-boyfriend.
FMLTWIA.
It was alphabet soup to just about anyone who wasn’t in high
school, but Vince had seen the Miami Police Department’s
crib sheet on teenage sex and texting—“ sexting.” FMLTWIA
had stuck in his mind only because it was among the most
vulgar.
He had known and loved McKenna since she was a ponytailed
little girl with half of her teeth missing, so it shocked
him that she would even know what it meant. The thought of
her actually sending such a message to her
ex—
supposedly ex—boyfriend made him sick to his
stomach. Vince suddenly felt an avuncular need to intercede,
to step in where his friend Chuck would if he weren’t eight
thousand miles away.
Vince dialed McKenna’s cell. There was no answer, but
Chuck’s spyware also had GPS tracking ability. A simple
punch of a button on Vince’s cell would reveal the exact
location of McKenna’s phone, which 99.9 percent of the time
meant the exact location of McKenna. It wasn’t something he
did lightly, but this kind of sexting wasn’t just the
high-tech version of the “truth or dare” games that kids
used to play when Vince was in school. The on-screen
coordinates told him that McKenna was at home. Vince dialed
the landline for the Mays residence. No answer, which didn’t
mean that McKenna wasn’t there—but it
did mean that
McKenna’s mother wasn’t. McKenna was home alone.
Alone with Jamal.
FMLTWIA. Fuck Me Like the Whore I Am.
Vince didn’t shock easily; and yes, it was a different world
now. But if Chuck was right—if seeing Jamal was playing with
fire—then this was gasoline. His hand was shaking as he
dialed McKenna’s mother on her cell.
Shada didn’t answer.
Now what?
© 2003-2026