by Harlan Coben
“I would suggest the family take a bit of a break from this town. Maybe travel overseas.”
“Why?”
“People perceive Rusty Eggers as an existential threat.”
Gavin Chambers waited for one of them to argue this point. Neither did.
Delia said, “Gavin?”
“Yes.”
“We are safe, right? You won’t let anything happen to our son.”
“You’re safe,” Gavin said. “He’s safe.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
Matthew made himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, sat alone at the kitchen table, ate it, still felt hungry, made a second, and was eating when there was a knock on his back door.
He looked out the window and was surprised—closer to shocked—to see Crash Maynard. Prepared for anything, Matthew carefully opened the door halfway.
“Hey,” Crash said.
“Hey.”
“Can I come in a second?”
Matthew didn’t move or open the door any wider. “What’s up?”
“I just…” Crash used his sleeve to wipe his eyes. He looked out at the yard. “Remember when we used to play kickball out here?”
“In fifth grade.”
“We sat next to each other in Mr. Richardson’s class,” Crash said. “He was out there, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“But he was also kinda awesome.”
“He was,” Matthew agreed.
“We were tight then, remember?”
“Yeah,” Matthew said. “I guess.”
“It was easier.”
“What was?”
“Everything. No one really cared about who had the big house or what other people thought. We just…we cared about kickball.”
Matthew knew this wasn’t exactly true. It may have been a more innocent time, but it wasn’t that innocent.
“What do you want, Crash?”
“To say I’m sorry.”
Tears streamed down his cheeks. His voice was more a sob now.
“I’m so damn sorry.”
Matthew stepped back. “Why don’t you come in?”
But Crash didn’t move. “There is so much shit going down around my house right now. I know that’s no excuse, but it’s like I’m living on top of a volcano and I’m waiting for it to erupt.”
Gone was the high-school-hallway confidence, the swagger, the sneer. Matthew wasn’t sure what to make of this, but something felt very wrong. “Come on in,” he tried again. “We used to drink Yoo-hoo, right? I think my mom still has some in the fridge.”
Crash shook his head. “I can’t. They’ll be looking for me.”
“Who?”
“I just wanted you to know, okay? I’m really sorry I hurt you. And Naomi. What I did…”
“Crash, just come in—”
But Crash was already running away.
* * *
Wilde didn’t feel like going back to his Ecocapsule yet.
His regular hangout—as much as one could say he had such a thing—was a bar located in the atrium lobby of the glass-towered Sheraton hotel on Route 17 in Mahwah, New Jersey. The hotel advertised itself as “unfussy yet upscale,” which seemed pretty close to the truth. This was a hotel for businesspeople, here for one night, maybe two, and that worked for both the guests and Wilde.
The Sheraton’s bar had a nice open feel, being in a glass atrium. The bartenders, like Nicole McCrystal who gave him a welcoming smile as he entered, stayed the same, while the clientele, mostly young executives blowing off a little steam, constantly changed. Wilde liked hotel bars for that latter reason—the transient nature, the openness, the rooms and beds being conveniently located only an elevator ride away should they be needed.
Was it too soon?
Probably, but how long should Wilde give it? A week? Two weeks? The wait seemed arbitrary and unnecessary. He wasn’t heartbroken. Neither was Laila.
It was what it was.
“Wilde!” Nicole called out, clearly happy to see him.
She brought him a beer. When it came to beer, he was, like the hotel, “unfussy,” but he enjoyed whatever local ale was on tap. Today, that was a “blonde lager” from the Asbury Park Brewery. Nicole leaned over the bar to buss his cheek. Tom down at the other end gave him a wave.
“Been a while,” she said to him.
Nicole smiled. She had a kind smile.
“Yeah.”
“Back on the prowl?”
He didn’t reply to that one because he didn’t yet know the answer.
She leaned toward him. “A few past conquests were asking about you.”
“Don’t call them that.”
“What name would you prefer?” A guy bellied up to the other end of the bar and raised his hand. Nicole said, “Think it over and I’ll be back later.”
Wilde took a deep sip from his mug and listened to the hum of the hotel. His phone buzzed. It was Hester.
“Wilde?”
He could barely hear her over the background noise on her end. “Where are you?” he asked.
“At a restaurant.”
“I see.”
“I’m on a date.”
“I see.”
“With Oren Carmichael.”
“I see.”
“You’re a great conversationalist, Wilde. Such enthusiasm.”
“Do you want me to yell, ‘Yippee’?”
“Naomi’s mother won’t talk to me.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“What do you think I mean? I mean she won’t talk to me. She refuses to return my calls. She says her daughter is none of my business.”
“So Naomi is with her?”
“I don’t know. I was going to send my investigator over to her house, but get this: She’s vacationing in the south of Spain.”
“So maybe Naomi is traveling with her. Maybe Naomi needed to escape all the bullying so her mother took her to Spain.”
“Where are you, Wilde?”
“I’m at the Sheraton bar.”
“Careful,” Hester said. “You hold your liquor like an eighteen-year-old co-ed at her first mixer.”
“What’s a mixer?”
“You’re too young to know.”
“For that matter, what’s a co-ed?”
“Funny. Let’s talk in the morning. I have to get back to Oren.”
“You’re on a date,” Wilde said. Then: “Yippee.”
“Wiseass.”
At some point, Wilde found himself talking to Sondra, a redhead in her early thirties with tight slacks and an easy laugh. They sat at the quiet end of the bar. She’d been born in Morocco, where her father had been working for the embassy. “He was CIA,” she told him. “Pretty much all embassy employees are spies. Not just the USA ones. All over. I mean, think about it. You get to bring in whoever you want to a protected location in the heart of a foreign country—of course you’re going to send your best counterintelligence people, right?” Sondra had moved around a lot as a kid, embassy to embassy, mostly in Africa and the Middle East. “My hair fascinated them. There are so many superstitions surrounding redheads.” She’d gone to UCLA and loved it and got a degree in hotel management. She was divorced and had one son, age six, at home. “I don’t travel much, but I do this trip every year.” Her son was staying with his dad. She and her ex got along. She liked staying at this Sheraton. They always upgraded her room to the presidential suite. “You have to see it,” she said in a tone that could knock a movie rating from PG to R. “Top floor. You can see the skyline of New York from it. It’s three rooms, so like, if we just wanted to have a drink in the living room space, I mean, I don’t want you to think…”
Eventually Sondra gave him a key card.
“They gave me two when I came in,” Sondra quickly explained. “One for the living room, one for the bedroom, you know what I mean?”
Wilde, still nursing his second blonde lager, assured her that he did.
“
Anyway, I can’t sleep yet with the time change. I’m going to do some work in the living room, if you want to come up later and have a nightcap.”
Nightcap. Mixer. Co-ed. It was like he was living in 1963.
He thanked Sondra but promised nothing. She headed to the elevator. He stared at the key card so as not to stare at her. A drink, she’d said. In the living room—not the bedroom. Maybe that was all it was. Maybe it was nothing more than that.
Then a tall man with a ponytail asked, “Are you going to go up?”
The tall man grabbed the stool right next to him, despite the fact that there had to be twenty open ones.
“She’s very attractive,” the tall man said. “I like redheads, don’t you?”
Wilde said nothing.
The tall man stuck out his hand. “My name is Saul,” he said.
“Strauss,” Wilde added.
“You know who I am?”
Wilde didn’t reply.
“Well, I’m flattered.”
Wilde had seen Strauss on Hester’s show every once in a while. He was a good talking head—an endearing mix of that super-progressive college professor with the cred of being a bona fide war hero. Wilde was not a fan of pundits. They came on television to either confirm your narrative or piss you off, and either way, that wasn’t healthy for anyone.
“I didn’t catch your name,” Strauss said.
“But you know it.”
“Does anyone?” He gave Wilde an inquisitive look that must wow the college—to use Hester’s vernacular—co-eds. “They call you Wilde, right? You’re the infamous boy from the woods.”
Wilde pulled out the necessary bills from his wallet and dropped them on the bar. “It was nice meeting you,” he said, rising.
Strauss was unruffled. “So you’re going up to her room?”
“Seriously?”
“I don’t mean to pry.”
“Hey, Saul—can I call you Saul?”
“Sure.”
“Why don’t we skip the rest of the foreplay and get to it?”
“Is that your plan when you go upstairs?” Strauss quickly raised a palm. “Sorry, that was going too far.”
Wilde started to walk away.
Strauss said, “I hear you had a run-in with the Maynard kid today.”
Wilde turned back to him.
“You asked me to skip the foreplay, right?” Strauss said.
“Heard from whom?”
“I have my sources.”
“And they are?”
“Anonymous.”
“Bye then.”
Strauss put his hand on Wilde’s forearm. His grip was surprisingly strong. “It could be important.”
Wilde hesitated, but then he sat back down. He was curious. Strauss was a partisan—who wasn’t nowadays?—but he’d also hit Wilde as something of a straight shooter. Instinctively, Wilde had thought that the best move was to simply blow the man off, but with a little more time to reason, he started to wonder what he had to lose by listening here.
Not a thing.
Wilde said, “I’m looking for a teenage girl who probably ran away.”
“Naomi Pine.”
Wilde shouldn’t have been surprised. “Your sources are good.”
“You’re not the only one here who is ex-military. What does Crash Maynard have to do with Naomi Pine?”
Strauss was all business now.
“Maybe nothing.”
“But?”
“She’s an outcast. He’s Mr. Popular. Yet there’s been some interaction.”
“Could you be more specific?” Strauss asked.
“Why don’t you ask your ‘source’?”
“Do you know anything about the Maynards’ relationship with Rusty Eggers?”
“I know that Maynard was his producer.”
“Dash Maynard created Eggers.”
“Okay.”
Strauss leaned in closer. “Do you realize how dangerous Eggers is?”
Wilde saw no reason to answer that one.
“Do you?” Strauss insisted.
“Let’s say I do.”
“And you’ve heard about the Maynard tapes?”
“I don’t see the connection,” Wilde said.
“There may not be one. Wilde, can I ask you a favor? Not a favor really. You’re a patriot. You want those tapes released, I’m sure.”
“You don’t know what I want.”
“I know you want the truth. I know you want justice.”
“And I don’t know that you bring either of those things.”
“Truth is an absolute. Or it used to be. The Maynard tapes should be released because the people should know the truth about Rusty Eggers. Who can argue with that? If the people see the truth—the full truth—and still want to hand the keys to the country to this nihilist, okay, that’s one thing.”
“Saul?”
“Yes.”
“Get to the point.”
“Just keep me informed—and I’ll keep you informed. It’s your best bet for finding that girl. You served admirably because you love this country. But Eggers is a threat like none this country has faced before. He’s hoodwinking this nation with his charisma, but his supposed ‘manifesto’ is really a call for anarchy. It’ll lead to food shortages, worldwide panic, constitutional crises, and even war.” Saul slid a little closer and lowered his voice. “Suppose the Maynard tapes show the real Rusty Eggers. Suppose they open people’s eyes to the grave dangers right in front of them. This is bigger than any mission we undertook overseas, Wilde. You have to believe me on that.”
He handed Wilde a card with his mobile phone and email. Then he slapped him on the back and walked past the reception desk toward the door.
* * *
Wilde pocketed Saul Strauss’s business card and stood.
He meandered toward the lobby bathroom, urinated for a fairly long time, then—to quote-paraphrase Springsteen—he checked his look in the mirror and wanted to change his clothes, his hair, his face. He splashed water on his cheeks and tidied himself up as best he could. He walked to the glass elevator and pressed the up button. Nicole the bartender caught his eye and gave a small nod. He didn’t know how to read it or if it meant anything at all, so he gave her a small nod back.
To get to the top floor you needed to slide a key card into the slot. He did that with the card Sondra had given him. He rode up, leaning against the glass, looking down as the lobby grew smaller and smaller. Faces swirled through his mind’s eye—Matthew, Naomi, Crash, Gavin, Saul, Hester, Ava, Laila. Laila.
Shit.
He got out and headed down the corridor. He stopped in front of the door with the brass sign reading PRESIDENTIAL SUITE in fancy script. He looked at his key card. He looked at the door. Sondra was beautiful. You could criticize this type of relationship or label it or consider it empty or whatever other judgment card you feel like pulling out, but it was all a matter of perspective. He and Sondra could link up and have something special. Just because it didn’t last did not make it less so. Cliché, sure, but everything dies. A beautiful rose lives but a short time. Certain termites can survive for sixty years.
A Bon Jovi song came to mind. Man, first Bruce now Jon. How New Jersey could he be?
“Want to make a memory?”
Wilde took one more look at the door, thought of Sondra and that long red hair fanned across his chest. Then he shook his head. Not tonight. He would head back down to the lobby and call her from the house phone. He didn’t want her waiting up for him.
That was when the door opened.
“How long have you been standing here?” Sondra asked.
“Minute or two.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Probably shouldn’t.”
“Talk?”
“I’m not much of a talker.”
“But I’m a supergood listener,” Sondra said.
He nodded. “Yeah, that’s true.”
She took a step back. “Come on in, Wilde
.”
And he obeyed.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
When Wilde woke up, the first thing he thought about—even before he realized that he was in a strange yet familiar hotel room rather than his Ecocapsule—was Laila.
Damn.
Sondra sat in a chair with her feet tucked under. She looked out the window, her face lit by the morning sun. For a few long moments, neither one of them moved. She stared out the window. He stared at the profile of her face. He tried to read her expression—serenity? regret? contemplation?—and he realized that whatever he deduced would probably be wrong. Human beings were never that simple to read.
“Good morning, Sondra.”
She turned to him and smiled. “Good morning, Wilde.” Then: “Do you have to leave right away?”
Again, despite the warning he had just given himself on human beings, he tried to read her. Did she want him to leave—or was she giving him an out if he wanted to take it?
“I have no plans,” he said. “But if you do—”
“How about we order some breakfast?”
“That sounds great.”
Sondra smiled at him. “I bet you know the breakfast menu by heart.”
He didn’t reply.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
Wilde shook it off. She asked him what he wanted to eat. He told her. She stepped into the suite’s living room and picked up the phone. Wilde got out of bed naked. He was padding toward the bathroom when his phone erupted.
Not buzzed or rang or vibrated. Erupted.
He quickly snatched it up and stopped the alarm.
“Everything okay?”
He looked at the screen. The answer was no.
He swiped left, which some might find ironic under the circumstances. It wasn’t Tinder—it was his security system. A car had pulled into his hidden road. No big deal. The alarm doesn’t sound for that. It just triggers the other motion detectors. Two of them had gone off. As he watched the screen, a third lit up. That meant people, at least three, were walking in the woods in search of his home. He swiped left again. A map came up. A fourth alarm triggered. They were traveling from the south, east, and west toward the Ecocapsule.