by Harlan Coben
Wilde felt his hands tighten on the steering wheel.
“They wanted to know what I told her. I rolled away. When I saw an opening, I ran.”
“You’re okay now?”
“Yeah.”
“You want me to take you to a doctor?”
“No, I’ll be a little sore, I guess.”
“Most likely. Does Crash have something to do with Naomi?”
“I don’t know. It’s…”
“It’s what?”
“You can’t tell anyone, okay? About Naomi. About tonight.”
“We’ve already been through this, Matthew.”
“I’ll figure out how to tell Mom. But tomorrow, okay? Tonight I don’t want to say anything.”
As he turned onto Matthew’s street, he heard the whoop of a siren and the blue squad-car lights came on. A voice over the loudspeaker said, “Pull over immediately.” They were right down the street from the house, no more than two hundred yards, so Wilde signaled out the window that he was going to cruise up to it. The car hit the siren again and spun right alongside them.
The familiar voice over the loudspeaker—they both knew Oren Carmichael—said in a tone that left no room for argument: “Immediately!”
To Wilde’s surprise, Oren cut them off with his squad car, forcing them to the curb. Oren opened his car door and made his way toward them. By the time he arrived, Wilde had the window down.
“What the hell, Oren. You know we live right down the block.”
Oren arched an eyebrow. “We?”
Mistake, Wilde thought. “I meant Matthew, this car. You know what I mean.”
Oren looked inside the car. He nodded at Matthew. Matthew said, “Hey, Chief.”
“Where are you coming from, son?”
Wilde said, “Maynard Manor.”
“Why were you there?”
“Why would you care?” Wilde countered.
Oren ignored him. “Son?”
“I was at a party,” Matthew said.
Oren took a longer look at Matthew now. “You don’t look so good, Matthew.”
“I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
Wilde wasn’t sure whether they should tell Oren about the incident in the house or not. Before he had a chance to say anything, Matthew said, “I’m fine, Coach. We were playing Midnight Skull.”
“What?”
“It’s like tag or something. Running around outside. That’s why I look like this.”
Oren Carmichael frowned. He glanced at Wilde. Wilde gave him nothing. Then Oren said, “Why did you ask your grandmother to look for Naomi Pine?”
Ah, Wilde thought, so that explained the sudden stop. Oren wanted to corner Matthew alone—away from both his mother and grandmother, two renowned attorneys—so he could get less evasive responses.
Wilde said, “Don’t answer.”
Oren didn’t like that. “What?”
“I’m telling him not to answer.”
“You don’t have any legal standing here, Wilde.”
“Yeah, I’ve been hearing that a lot tonight. But I’m not letting you question him without his mother present.”
“I don’t know where Naomi is,” Matthew blurted out. “That’s the truth.”
“So why did you ask your grandmother to find her?”
“I’m just worried about her, okay? She hasn’t been in school and…”
“And?”
Wilde said, “Matthew, not another word.”
“And kids pick on her, is all.”
“Are you one of those kids, Matthew?”
Wilde put his hand up. “Okay, that’s it. This conversation is over.”
“Like hell—”
Wilde restarted the car.
“Turn that engine off right now,” Oren snapped.
“You charging us with something?”
“No.”
“Then we are on our way. You can follow us to Matthew’s house if you’d like.”
* * *
But Oren didn’t follow them.
As Wilde pulled the car into Laila’s driveway, the front door opened. It was dark now, but with the light behind her, Wilde could make out Laila’s silhouette standing in the doorway. She held her hand up high and awkwardly waved. When Wilde and Matthew got closer, he could see that she was holding her mobile phone.
“There’s a call for you,” she said to Wilde. Then she added: “On my phone.”
He nodded, and she handed it to him. He put the phone to his ear.
“We good?”
It was Gray Hair. Wilde wasn’t surprised. They would have seen the license plate. Guys with his kind of juice would have no trouble getting a registration, a name, an address, phone numbers both home and mobile. Laila was the car’s owner. That would be the number they’d try.
“I guess,” Wilde said.
“Crash may have acted inappropriately.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But the boy is under a lot of pressure. We hope you’ll understand.”
“There’s a missing girl,” Wilde said.
“He doesn’t know anything about her.”
“So why’s he under a lot of pressure?”
“Other things.”
“Can I ask your name?” Wilde said.
“Why?”
“Because you know mine.”
There was a pause. “Gavin Chambers.”
“As in Chambers Security? As in Colonel Chambers?”
“Retired colonel, yes.”
Whoa, Wilde thought. The Maynards were not messing around when it came to security. He was tempted to move away so Laila wouldn’t hear, but from the look on her face, that would only get him in hot water.
“Do you know what Crash did to Matthew, Colonel?”
Laila’s eyes widened when she heard that.
“We have CCTV in the basement area,” Gavin replied.
“So you saw it?”
“I did. Sadly, that particular footage no longer exists. Accidental deletion. You know how it is.”
“I do.”
“Will you accept our apologies?”
“I wasn’t the one assaulted.”
“Will you please pass them to young Matthew then?”
Wilde said nothing.
“It’s my job to keep the Maynards safe, Mr. Wilde. There is much more at stake here than a teenage brawl.”
“Like what?”
But Chambers didn’t answer. “I know you’re good at what you do. But I’m good too. And I have vast resources. If there is conflict between us, it probably won’t end well. There will be collateral damage. Do I make myself clear?”
Wilde looked at Laila and Matthew. The collateral damage.
“I’m not a big fan of threats, Colonel.”
“Neither one of us wants to spend our lives looking over our shoulders, correct?”
“Correct.”
“That’s why I’m extending a hand of friendship.”
“Friendship seems a bit strong.”
“I agree. More like, to quote the French, détente. You can keep the gun, by the way. We have plenty of others. Good night, Mr. Wilde.”
He hung up. Laila said, “What the hell was that?”
Wilde handed her phone back. His mind was working overtime. The immediate threat—the one he’d worried most about—was that Maynard’s guys would come after them. That threat seemed to be neutralized for now. Matthew was home. He was safe. So now Wilde turned his attention back to Naomi Pine.
The father had told Hester that Naomi was with the mother. That was a lie. It seemed obvious that Naomi’s father was thus the place to start.
Laila asked, “Did that call have something to do with Naomi Pine?”
Matthew let out a small groan. “You know about that?”
“Everyone knows about that. After your grandmother’s report, the school sent out an emergency text. All the parent boards on social media are lighting up. Do you want to tell me what’s going on, please?”
“Matthew will,” Wilde said, tossing her the car keys. “I have to go.”
“Wait, go where?”
It would take too long to explain. “I’ll try to come back, if that’s okay.”
“Wilde?”
“Matthew will explain.”
He turned and ran toward the woods.
CHAPTER
TEN
There is a theory, introduced by psychologist Anders Ericsson and made popular by Malcolm Gladwell, that ten thousand hours of practice makes you an expert in a given field. Wilde didn’t buy it, though he understood the appeal in the simplicity of such encouraging pop slogans.
He sped now through the woods, his eyes already accustomed to the dark. Theories like Ericsson’s didn’t take into account intensity and immersion. Wilde had run through woods like these since before he could remember. Alone. Adapting. Surviving. It wasn’t practice. It was life. It was ingrained. It was survival. Yes, the hours mattered. But intensity matters more. Imagine if you have no choice. If you hike through the forest for fun or because your dad likes it, it isn’t the same as being forcibly immersed, of knowing the woods well or dying. You can’t fake that. A man does an experiment, tries to see what it’s like to be blind, so he covers his eyes—no, sorry, that isn’t the same thing as being blind. You can always take the blindfold off. It’s voluntary and controlled and safe. Some coaches tell kids to play like their life depends on it. That’s probably sound motivational advice, but if your life doesn’t depend on it—and it doesn’t—the intensity will pale compared to the real thing.
The best athletes? It is life and death, in their minds. Now imagine how much better they’d be if the stakes were really that high.
That was Wilde in the woods.
As he got closer to the Pine residence, he spotted a squad car and three news vans from local stations. The scene wasn’t frantic—this wasn’t the biggest story of the year or anything like that—but the news van had obviously heard Hester’s report and the cops had in turn asked them to move down the block away from the house. Wilde spotted Oren Carmichael by the Pines’ front door, talking to a guy who had to be the father, Bernard Pine. The father seemed upset, not about a missing daughter but about the police and media intrusion. He gestured wildly while Carmichael kept showing him his palms to calm him down.
Wilde’s phone double-buzzed, indicating an incoming text. He checked and saw it was from Ava O’Brien:
Did you find Naomi?
He was tempted not to reply. But that didn’t feel right. Not yet.
There was the moving-dots pause. Then Ava wrote: Come over tonight. I’ll leave the door unlocked.
More moving dots: I miss you, Wilde.
He pocketed the phone without a reply. Ava would get the message, much as he hated to send it this way.
Wilde crept out of the woods. He kept low and headed toward the neighboring backyard. No one spotted him. He stayed down. Naomi’s father finished whatever he had to say to Oren and slammed the door. For several seconds, Oren Carmichael didn’t move, almost as if he expected the door to reopen. When it didn’t, he turned away and headed for his car. Another cop—this one far younger—met him there.
“Keep the press back,” Carmichael said.
“Yes, Chief. Are we going in?”
Oren frowned. “Going in?”
“You know, like doing a search of the house.”
“The father says she’s safe.”
“But that reporter on TV—”
“A TV report is not evidence,” Oren snapped. “Get the press out of here.”
“Yes, Chief.”
When the kid left, Wilde saw no harm. He stood upright and approached the car. Because he’d had enough with itchy fingers, he called out as soon as he could possibly be seen. “Oren?”
Carmichael turned. When he saw who it was, he frowned. “Wilde? What are you doing here?”
“What did the father say about Naomi?”
“Not your business, is it?”
“You know he lied to Hester, right?”
Oren Carmichael sighed. “Why on earth did Hester involve you in this?”
“The father told Hester that Naomi is with her mother.”
“And maybe she is.”
“Is that what he told you just now?”
“He said she’s safe. He asked me to respect her privacy.”
“And you’re going to do that?”
“Neither parent has filed a missing person report.”
“So?”
“So it’s almost midnight. You want me to kick his door down?”
“Naomi could be in danger.”
“And what, you think the father killed her or something?”
Wilde didn’t answer.
“Exactly,” Oren said, clearly exhausted by it all. “This is a girl who has run away before. My guess? That’s what this is.”
“Maybe it’s something worse.”
Oren slid into the driver’s seat. “If that’s true, we’ll find that out, too, eventually.” He stared up from the squad car. “Go home, Wilde.”
He drove off as Wilde headed back to the woods. He stopped behind the first tree and slipped on a thin black mask that covered everything except his eyes. He kept it with him always. The world now had more CCTV cameras than people. Or so it seemed. You never know. So Wilde, who had a thing about privacy in this privacyless world, always came prepared.
When Oren’s squad car was out of sight, Wilde circled back so that he was now behind the Pine house. There were lights on in the kitchen, one upstairs bedroom, and in the basement. As a child, he had broken into countless lake homes and summer cabins. He’d learned to silently case them, circle them, check the driveways and lights, see who if anyone was home. To break in, he’d search for unlocked doors or windows (you’d be surprised how often it was that simple), then move on to other means. If the locks were too strong or the alarm system too complicated, young Wilde would search for another house. Most of the time, even as a child, he had known to leave no trace of his being there. If he slept in a bed, for example, he made sure that it was made the next morning. If he ate their food or needed supplies, he was careful not to consume or steal too much, so that the owners wouldn’t notice.
Had someone taught him all this when he was too young to remember? Or was it instinctive? He didn’t know. In the end, man is an animal. An animal does what it has to do to survive.
It was probably that simple.
The phone in his pocket buzzed. The phone was a personally designed burner. That was all he used and never for more than a week or two. At night, he turned it off. He didn’t keep it with him—he knew that, even when the phone was off, it was possible to trace—and usually left it buried in a steel box by the road.
It was Hester: “Are you with Laila?”
“No.”
“Where are you then?”
“Casing Naomi’s house.”
“You have a plan?”
“I do.”
“Tell me.”
“You don’t want to know,” he said.
Wilde hung up and moved closer to the house. Loads of homes now had motion detector lights that snap on when you approach. If that were to be the case, Wilde would simply sprint back into the woods. No harm, no foul. But no lights came on. Good. He kept close to the house. The closer to the wall, the less chance of being seen.
He checked the kitchen window. Bernard Pine, Naomi’s father, sat at the table and played with his phone. He looked nervous. Wilde circled the perimeter and peered in through the first-floor windows. No one else present, no other movement.
Wilde bent down and checked the basement windows. The shades were drawn all the way—blackout shades—but Wilde still spotted the small sliver of light.
Someone down there maybe?
He had little trouble climbing onto the second-floor overhang. He worried about the structure, if it could hold his weight, but he decided to risk it. There was a light in a corrido
r that shone through what appeared to be the father’s bedroom. He climbed toward the corner back window, cupped his hands against the glass, and looked into the room.
A computer monitor displaying a dancing-lines screen saver provided the only illumination. The walls were blank. There were no posters of teen heartthrobs or favorite rock groups or any of the expected teenage girl clichés, except, perhaps, the bed, which was low to the floor and blanketed with stuffed animals—dozens of them, maybe hundreds, in various sizes and colors, mostly bears but there were giraffes and monkeys and penguins and elephants. It was hard to see how Naomi could fit in the bed with all of them. She must have just jumped in, like she was living inside one of those claw-crane arcade games.
Naomi was an only child, so Wilde was pretty sure that this was her bedroom.
The window was locked with a vinyl lever sash lock with keeper. Routine security for a second-floor room. Most burglars don’t scale walls to reach second floors. Wilde was, of course, different. He reached into his wallet and plucked out a loid—short for “celluloid”—card. Better than a credit card. More flexible. He slid the loid between the two sash frames and moved the lever into the unlocked position. It was that simple. Five seconds later, he was inside the room.
So now what?
Quick check of the closet revealed the following: a pink Fjällräven Kånken backpack on the top shelf, clothes neatly hung, no bare hangers. Meaning? He wasn’t sure. The backpack was empty. If she’d run away, wouldn’t she have packed it? Wouldn’t there be some signs of missing clothes?
Nothing conclusive, but interesting.
There was a time, Wilde imagined, where it would pay to check the desk drawers or perhaps look under the pillow or mattress for a diary, but nowadays most teens keep their secrets in their tech devices. The phone would be better to search, of course, the place we store our lives, and no, that wasn’t a comment on today’s youth. Adults too. Mankind has surrendered any pretense of privacy to those devices for the sake of…hard to say what. Convenience, he guessed. Artificial connections maybe, which might be better than no connection at all.
But it was not for him. Then again, real connections didn’t seem to be his bag either.
Had the police tried to ping Naomi’s location via her phone?