by Harlan Coben
She wondered where Oren had been that night when he got the call. Was he at work, in a squad car, at Tony’s like tonight—or was he at home with Cheryl? Did he get woken up in bed and Cheryl turned to him and asked if something was wrong and then maybe Oren shook his head and kissed her gently and told her to go back to sleep, murmuring…
“It’s just a car accident on Mountain Road…”
This all made sense now. Hester considered herself neither pessimist nor optimist, but she knew somehow that this couldn’t work, that the happy bubble she’d been in with Oren last night had to be too fragile not to burst. Now she understood. Oren had been there that tragic night. Like it or not, he was entangled in the worst moment of her life—and there was no way to change that. She would see Oren, maybe kiss him, maybe hold him, and she would always be transported back to that horrible night.
How could any relationship survive that?
She dried her face with a paper towel, took out her phone, and clicked for an Uber. Eight minutes away. Hester took a few more deep breaths and another look in the mirror. She looked old—like an old woman—which she was. It sucked to look in the mirror and see it sometimes. The harsh light of this stupid pizzeria bathroom amplified every wrinkle.
Her phone buzzed. She checked the number and saw it was Allison Grant, her producer. Hester said, “What’s up?”
“You near a television?”
“I can get to one. Why?”
“Someone leaked a tape of Rusty Eggers.”
Hester felt her back straighten. “Bad?”
“Very. There is no way Rusty Eggers survives this.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
Rusty Eggers watched on the TV in his penthouse.
Gavin stood behind him. Rusty’s two top aides—Jan Schnall, onetime chief of staff to South Carolina’s Republican governor, and Lia Capasso, a campaign manager for two Democratic senators—sat on the couch taking notes. The crawl on the bottom of the screen unimaginatively screamed in red caps:
BREAKING NEWS: SHOCKING RUSTY EGGERS VIDEO
Anchorman Scott Gallett: “The video is believed to be ten years old, from season one of The Rusty Show…”
“They got that part right, at least,” Rusty said.
“The young woman is Kandi Pate, the young star of the hit kid comedy Amazing Darcy, who did three guest appearances on The Rusty Show that season. At the time of this taping, she would have been sixteen or seventeen years old while Rusty Eggers would have been in his midforties. Again we caution: This story is breaking. While the video appears to be authentic, we have not yet independently authenticated—”
“Not that that will slow the jackals down,” Rusty said.
Gavin noticed that Rusty seemed remarkably calm. His two aides did not.
On the video, Rusty Eggers has his arm around Kandi Pate on a couch. Kandi seems to cringe at his touch.
Rusty Eggers: Most guys your age don’t know what they’re doing. Sexually, I mean. You know what I’m saying?
Kandi Pate: Uh-huh, my agent is waiting downstairs.
Rusty: I don’t think your agent is doing right by you.
Kandi: (nervous laugh) She’s gotten me this far.
Rusty: Kiddie roles. You’re a full-grown woman now. And so talented.
Kandi: Thank you.
Rusty: Why don’t you come by my hotel room tonight and we can talk more about it?
Kandi: Tonight? I’m not sure—
And then Rusty Eggers kisses her hard on the mouth.
“Look!” Rusty gestured to the screen. “She’s not exactly fighting back, is she?”
But she wasn’t exactly pulling him closer either.
Rusty’s two female aides blanched.
Gavin asked, “Do you know where this was taped?”
“Looks like Maynard’s New York studio,” Rusty said.
The kiss ends. Kandi Pate quickly stands, smooths her skirt, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. She forces a smile.
Kandi: I have to go now.
Rusty: Tonight then? Nine o’clock. We’ll just talk.
Kandi rushes out of the room.
Rusty turned away from the television and looked at his two aides. “To answer your first question, yes, she showed up that night.”
Anchorman Scott Gallett: Kandi Pate ended up being fired from The Rusty Show for what was rumored to be drug use and insubordination, but we have our expert panel with us who now wonder about the veracity of those rumors and if she was a victim of—
Rusty flipped off the television. “Expert panel,” he repeated. “Give me a break.” He rubbed his hands together. “Lia?”
Lia Capasso looked up in a daze.
“You have the bots ready?”
“They’re on standby,” Lia said.
“Good.” Rusty began to pace. “So get the first group of them to claim that this tape was a teaching demonstration.”
“A teaching demonstration?”
“Yes. That’s why we filmed it. Kandi and I were acting out inappropriate workplace behavior, so that anyone employed by The Rusty Show would know that we would have zero tolerance for this kind of thing.”
Jan Schnall said, “You think that will fly?”
“That’s just bot group one, Jan. For bot group two, we say that Kandi was working on a ‘Me Too’ screenplay. Way ahead of her time. She asked me to act out a scene with her. Lia, get our graphic design people to create a screenplay with this exact dialogue. Use one of the big screenwriting programs from ten years ago. Final Draft or Movie Magic maybe. Tell them to add a page of dialogue before, a page of dialogue after, that kind of thing. Make it look legit. Then we leak it as the ‘unproduced manuscript’ Kandi Pate hoped to develop before her career hit the rails.”
Lia jotted that down. “Got it.”
“We say that as a mentor figure to many young people who appeared on my show, I was trying to be supportive in reading these lines with her, but I was clearly uncomfortable in what she wanted me to do. Jan, get a few body language experts to insist that I’m clearly acting and I look hesitant during the pretend kiss.”
“Right.”
“Next, we go right and left. Jan, get some right-wing bots to say stuff like ‘How come the left is always into sexual freedom and women making their own choices and now they are saying that Kandi Pate is too weak to decide who to date?’—that kind of thing. Then Lia, get the left-wing bots to say, ‘We don’t belong in people’s bedrooms and this mature woman should be able to make her own choices.’ You know the drill. Do you guys know the age of consent in New York?”
Lia tapped something into her iPad. “Seventeen.”
“California?”
“Eighteen.”
He thought about it. “We also have an office in Toronto. How about there?”
Lia typed some more. “It was fourteen. Now it’s sixteen.”
“Okay, cool. Let’s spread another rumor that this happened in our Toronto office. We also get another group of fake profiles to raise the ‘macho man’ excuse.”
Jan frowned. “Macho man?”
“You know, like ‘What red-blooded all-American male wouldn’t make a move on a hot piece of ass like Kandi Pate?’ and ‘All the whiny babies online are just jealous of a real man,’ that kind of thing. They should all keep repeating that Kandi was of legal age.”
Lia and Jan both nodded, warming slightly to the task. Gavin just watched in silence.
“Finally, let’s get the ‘fake news’ groups to say the tape had obviously been doctored. Again we have those social media accounts with various levels of”—Rusty made quote marks with his fingers—“‘expertise,’ right? Let’s get them to work up the conspiracy nuts. Have them notice, I don’t know, some kind of irregular shadows in the film and claim that it’s a clear Photoshop job or that the sound is off. Have them make up those YouTube videos where they circle stuff and say, ‘Whoa, this shadow or whatever can’t be, someone had to have tampered with it, y
ada yada.’ Oh, then get a few voice ‘experts’ to say that it’s not my voice, that it is someone doing a bad impression. Have some of the bots say it sounds like it was spliced from old footage or something. With me?”
“With you,” Lia said.
Jan added, “That’s perfect.”
Neither woman was blanching anymore. They were both, in fact, smiling.
“Then I want our own bots fighting with each other. ‘Who cares if it’s a Photoshop? It’s totally legal anyway!’ Or ‘Stop worrying about the ethics—the tape is fake news, it never happened.’”
Lia asked, “You want to go with all these?”
“All these and let’s come up with a few more. Like, why don’t the networks show what happened before this—like when Kandi Pate was hitting on Rusty? Oh, that’s good. Let’s get a group posting ‘Here’s a link to the WHOLE tape where you can see Kandi is aggressively making moves on Rusty and he’s trying to back off, why don’t they show that?’ But then—oh, I’m loving this—the link will lead to an error message and then the bots will claim the mainstream media or the government took it down. It’s a cover-up, they’ll scream. Full bot attack—get the right- and left-wing ones on that. I want people fighting over how we can’t blame me for any of this.”
“Love that,” Lia said.
“And then let’s do the standard attack-the-process. You know. The real crime isn’t on the tape—the real crime is, who illegally taped us? What awful partisan with a clear axe to grind broke into my office and unlawfully spied on me? Those are the real criminals. Why are powerful people willing to break laws to stop my message from reaching the people?”
“Oh, that’s good,” Jan said.
“Right? Also, Lia, have one of our lawyers reach out to Kandi. Remind her of the nondisclosure agreement she signed. She’s not allowed to say anything. If she does, we will destroy her a hundred different ways. If she backs us, let her know that we are financing a new film which we think will be a great comeback role for her.”
“Got it,” Lia said.
“One question,” Jan said.
“Shoot.”
“The media is going nuts right now looking for a comment. What do we put in our official press statement?”
“Nothing yet. Let’s wait and see what social media looks like in a few hours. We should know better then. My guess is, our statement will be pretty vague. Something like ‘We will not comment because we do not want to harm the reputation of Ms. Pate, who is a fine person and vulnerable mentee, and we find it disgusting that the media would drag her through the mud like this just to get some additional clicks and we won’t participate in that kind of gossipy trash over what is clearly not what it is being made out to be.’ That sort of thing. But not yet. I want to see which story takes root. Let’s get the talking points to our people, so they can get on the air asap. We need to keep seeding confusion here, people.”
“On it,” Lia said.
The two women took to their phones and tablets.
Rusty pulled Gavin to the side. “You know where the tape came from, right?”
“I assume the Maynards.”
“You were supposed to stop this.”
“I told you. They fired me.” Then, lowering his voice, Gavin added, “You also told me the tapes had nothing harmful.”
“If this is the worst of it, we will be fine.”
“If?”
“What?”
“You said ‘if.’ What else is there?”
“Get the car,” Rusty Eggers said. “I want to go to the Maynards’.”
* * *
Wilde was in the library with Delia and Dash Maynard when the newscasts began. They watched the “breaking news” in silence.
During the first commercial break, Wilde said, “I assume that was the ‘very damaging’ upload.”
“We didn’t want to release it,” Delia said.
She stood and headed for the door. Dash looked surprised. “Don’t you want to watch—?”
“I’ve seen enough. I need some air.”
Delia left. Wilde looked up at the stained glass in the library’s turret. It was dark outside, yet the windows somehow still glowed as though the sun were shining through them. The room, as before, felt off to Wilde. A grand library like this should smell of age—leather from the books, pine from the wood, must from usage.
“That should do it, don’t you think?”
No one else was in the room, so Dash was talking to either Wilde or himself.
“Do what?” Wilde asked.
“Satisfy the kidnappers. End Rusty’s campaign.”
Wilde didn’t know. He also didn’t know whether Dash said this with regret or glee. There was fear in the man’s voice. That much was obvious.
“So what do you think is going on here?” Wilde asked.
“Pardon?”
“With your son. Do you think he was kidnapped?”
Dash folded his hands and leaned back. “In the end, Delia and I figured that it was better to be safe than sorry.”
“That doesn’t really answer my question.”
“It’s the best I can do.”
“There was more to your decision to release this video though, wasn’t there?”
“I’m not following.”
“The pressure is off now,” Wilde said.
Dash sounded annoyed now. “What are you talking about?”
“The media demanding you release the Rusty Eggers tapes, everyone constantly screaming at you to do the right thing, to be a patriot—you would have been hounded forever. No privacy. No real freedom. Relentless pressure on you, your businesses, your family. But now that this tape is finally out, that’s all over. There has to be some relief in that.”
Dash turned back to the television. “I don’t mean to be rude, but do you mind moving to another room for a while? I’d really like to be alone for a bit.”
Wilde rose and started for the door. He was just in the corridor when his cell phone rang.
The caller ID read NAOMI PINE.
He put the phone to his ear. “Hello?”
“Hey, Wilde.”
His pulse picked up a step. “Naomi?”
“Stop looking for us, okay?”
“Naomi, where are you?”
“We’re fine. We’re safe.”
“Crash is with you?”
“I have to go.”
“Wait—”
“Please. You’ll ruin everything. We don’t want to be found.”
“You already tried this, Naomi.”
“What?”
“When you did the Challenge,” Wilde said. “Do you remember what you said to me?”
“In the basement, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“I said I wanted to make a change.”
“You said more than that.”
“I said I wanted to make a total change. I wanted to do something so big it would erase my past and I could start again.”
“Is that what you’re doing now?”
“You’re going to say I failed then, so I’ll fail now.”
“No, Naomi, I’m not. I believe in you.”
“Wilde?”
“I’m here.”
“Please. If you want to help me, you’ll let me be.”
* * *
Rusty Eggers sat in the back of the car with Gavin. He kept straightening and bending his bad leg. Gavin watched him reach into his pocket, pull out a small tin box, and open it. Rusty plucked out two pills, threw them back in his mouth, swallowed. His glassy eyes turned to Gavin.
“Tylenol,” Rusty said.
Gavin didn’t reply.
Rusty picked up his phone, dialed a number, and said, “Hi, it’s me. Don’t explain. I’m coming up to your place. I hear there’s security. Just meet me out…yes, exactly. Thanks.”
Gavin Chambers asked, “Are you going to tell me what that’s about?”
“Do you remember when we discussed the horseshoe theory of politics?”
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“Yes, of course.”
“We talked about how most Americans used to be in the middle, relatively speaking. That’s how America kept its balance all those years. The left and the right were close enough to have disagreements but not hate.”
“Okay.”
“That world is gone, Gavin, and so it will now be easy to destroy the social order. The middle has become complacent. They are smart, but they are lazy. They see the grays. They get the other side. Extremists, on the other hand, see only black and white. They are not only certain that their vision is absolutely correct, but they are incapable of even understanding the other side. Those who don’t believe as they do are lesser in every way, and so they will kill for that vision. I get those people, Gavin. And I want to create more of them by forcing those in the middle to choose a side. I want to make them extremists too.”
“Why?”
“Extremists are relentless. They don’t see right or wrong—they see us and them. You’re a baseball fan, aren’t you, Gavin?”
“I am.”
“A Yankee fan, right?”
“So?”
“So if you found out the Yankee manager cheated or that all your favorite Yankees took steroids, would you then become a Red Sox fan?”
Gavin said nothing.
“Well?”
“Probably not.”
“Exactly. The Yankees could never do anything that would make you a Red Sox fan. That’s the power I want to harness. I read a quote recently from Werner Herzog. You know who he is?”
“The German film director.”
“Right. He said that America was waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that one-third of our people will kill one-third of our people while one-third of our people watches.” Rusty put his hand on Gavin’s shoulder. “You and I are going to change the world, my friend.” He leaned forward. “Drop me off up ahead on the next corner.”
“I thought we were going to the Maynards’.”
“Change of plans.”
“I’m not following.”
They pulled to the corner. There was a woman by a bus stop. She had her head down.