by Brad Meltzer
The disappearance of her brother captivated people for a month. The press hounded her; Skip hadn’t been seen since announcing he was going to bring back the TV show. And then his DNA had been found in Ingrid Ludlow’s house, and inside an empty warehouse where Ingrid Ludlow’s body had been found, after an apparently gruesome suicide, but then it’d been found at the very same time at a hotel in Dubai, where Skip could be seen on a security camera that same day. Skip was being framed, people insisted. How can someone be in two places at once?
It was…a mystery. Possibly a vast, wide-ranging conspiracy.
Or just a well-executed distraction.
Even Anderson Cooper had an opinion, had reason to appear in a tight black shirt outside Jack’s house for a day, reporting breathlessly for a few hours, until a plane went plunging into the South China Sea and three hundred missing people became far more interesting than one.
And then there was a fire.
And then there was an earthquake.
And then there was an election. People won. People lost. People were angry.
And then Skip Nash was forgotten, pushed to the back end of the Internet, where Hazel sometimes visited him, just to see photos of him, to see people ranting and raving, to see how close they came to the truth, how close they came to knowing The Story.
Very, very far, it turned out.
Hazel laces up her shoes, puts her earbuds in, straightens her headband to keep her hair from rising up on her neck, keep people from seeing her tattoo. She slides a gun—a .32—into her water pack, thinks about it, decides she’d rather have her nine, and hits the road.
She jogs through the neighborhood, crosses over Ventura Boulevard, picks up Laurel Canyon for a few blocks, then over to Coldwater. She has a good sweat going now, her body feeling good. In no time, she’s getting that old high, her mind clearing, though that’s not always such a great thing, since her mind doesn’t have a whole hell of a lot in it, still.
She decides to keep going up Coldwater. It’s only a mile from her father’s house and she’s feeling strong. Up ahead, she spies a little girl playing hopscotch on the sidewalk, who can’t be more than five. Hazel thought kids didn’t do that anymore, that there was always something better to do than hopscotch, but no, that’s what she was doing.
There’s a man sitting on the front steps of the house, watching, and as Hazel gets closer, the man stands up, fully alert, and Hazel recognizes the fluidity of his motions before she recognizes his face.
Agent Rabkin steps out into the street and stands between his daughter and Hazel. She hasn’t seen him in months. Not since they both got back from the East Coast, after the debriefing, after she promised to contact them if Skip popped up, after she told them she was going to focus on her studies, finish that book she was working on, and her secrets were her secrets, the FBI didn’t need to worry about her, no sir.
But in fact, she’d just retreated to Jack’s house, which had its own mysteries, and tried to keep the old habits at bay. Which had worked.
Mostly.
Butchie, he still needed to make a living, see.
“What’re you doing here?” Rabbit asks.
“Jogging,” Hazel says.
“Right,” Rabbit says.
“Is that your daughter?”
Rabbit looks over his shoulder at the little girl. She’s not paying any attention to the two of them. “Yep.”
“What’s her name?”
“Candace.”
“She’s adorable.”
“She looks like her mother, thankfully,” Rabbit says. “I get her three days a week, which is good.”
“That is good,” Hazel says.
They stand there for a few seconds, not talking, just looking at each other. Hazel can’t remember ever seeing Rabbit not in a suit. Here, wearing sweatpants and a V-neck fleece, he doesn’t look so much like an FBI agent as he does a guy in a Macy’s ad in the Sunday LA Times.
“Have you heard from your brother?” Rabbit says, finally. Not in an accusing way. Just in…a way.
“Can’t say that I have,” Hazel says, which is true. “Have you?”
“He was spotted in China. I don’t think it’s him.”
“Daddy,” Candace calls, “watch me.”
“One sec, baby,” Rabbit says.
“You should go,” Hazel says. “My dad never watched me play hopscotch and look how I turned out. This is a pivotal time in her development.”
“Do you eat?” Rabbit says. “You doing that yet?”
“Sometimes,” Hazel says. “Taste sort of comes and goes.”
“There’s a Thai place in Encino that Candace and I like to go to. Exceptionally spicy. We’re going to go there for lunch today. If you’re interested.”
“Like a date?”
“No,” Rabbit says, “like three people eating together.”
“Two of whom are superspies,” Hazel says, and Rabbit actually laughs.
“Y’know, there’s been talk,” Rabbit begins, “of bringing the show back. An all-new House of Secrets.”
“That’s a dumb idea. Haven’t they milked enough of our nostalgia through every old TV show?”
“Agreed. I hate it. But if they did…y’know, they said I could be sort of an unnamed consultant. Maybe work with the host on some special cases. Doing some good. Some actual good.”
Hazel stared at him a moment. “That’s an even dumber idea. Like maybe, without getting into hyperbole, the truly worst idea of all time.”
“Right. I said the same,” Rabbit says, staring down the block at nothing at all. “By the way, you see that story about Moten?”
“I heard you testified. That you’re the one who proved he dressed up the bodies in the red coats.”
Rabbit didn’t say anything. Until: “So. Pick you up in an hour?”
Hazel tries to think of all the reasons why this might be a bad choice. But her total number of friends stands at one—Butchie—and he’s been busy looking for a new dog.
“An hour,” Hazel agrees. She starts to run off, makes it all the way down to the Stop sign, when Rabbit calls after her. Hazel thinks, Good. Smart. A werewolf and a rabbit. We shouldn’t be near each other.
“Hey, Hazel?” He jogs down the street to meet up with her. “Just so we’re clear, this is a no-gun lunch. So let’s leave the pistol at home, okay?”
Hazel flips her hood up, starts to pedal into her run, slowly, slowly, then faster. “I’m not making any promises.”
ALSO BY BRAD MELTZER
Novels
The Tenth Justice
Dead Even
The First Counsel
The Millionaires
The Zero Game
The Book of Fate
The Book of Lies
The Inner Circle
The Fifth Assassin
The President’s Shadow
Nonfiction
Heroes for My Son
Heroes for My Daughter
History Decoded
I Am Amelia Earhart
I Am Abraham Lincoln
I Am Rosa Parks
I Am Albert Einstein
I Am Jackie Robinson
I Am Lucille Ball
I Am Helen Keller
I Am Martin Luther King, Jr.
ALSO BY TOD GOLDBERG
Gangsterland
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue
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Epilogue
ALSO BY BRAD MELTZER
Newsletters
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Forty-four Steps, Inc.
Cover design by Jeff Miller/Faceout Studios
Cover image of father and daughter © Joana Kruse/Arcangel Images
Cover copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016934287
ISBNs: 978-1-4555-5949-7 (hardcover), 978-1-4555-6615-0 (large print), 978-1-4555-5950-3 (ebook)
E3-20160516-DA-NF