Harlan Coben: Home

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“That’s sad. How about a cognac?”

“I’m good right now. What can you tell me, Mee?”

Me, Mee. Myron wondered whether that was her real name. Win had liked the name. He would take her to the back of the plane and make intentionally cringe-worthy double-entendre puns like “I need a little Mee time” or “I enjoy having carnal knowledge alone with Mee” or “I like the pillbox hat. It suits Mee.”

Win.

“What can you tell me?” Myron asked again.

Mee said, “The weather forecast in London calls for intermittent rain.”

“Gee, that’s a shock. I mean, what can you tell me about Win?”

“Good question,” she said. “What can you tell Mee”-she pointed to herself-“about Win?”

“Don’t start with that.”

She gave him a smile. “There’s a live feed of the Knicks game, if you’d like to watch.”

“I don’t watch basketball anymore.”

Mee gave him a look of sympathy that almost made him want to turn away. “I saw your sports documentary on ESPN,” she said.

“That’s not why,” Myron said.

She nodded, not believing him.

“If the game holds no interest for you,” Mee said, “there’s a video for you to watch.”

“What kind of video?”

“Win instructed me to tell you to watch it.”

“This isn’t, uh…”

Win liked to film his, uh, carnal trysts and play them back while meditating.

Mee shook her head. “He keeps those for his own private viewing, Mr. Bolitar. You know that. It’s part of the waiver we sign.”

“Waiver?” Myron held up a hand before she could reply. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.”

“Here’s the remote control.” Mee handed it to him. “Are you sure there isn’t anything I can get you at this time?”

“I’m good, thanks.”

Myron spun toward the mounted television and switched it on. He half expected Win to be on the screen with some Mission: Impossible -type message, but no, it was one of those true-crime shows you see on cable television. The subject was, of course, the kidnappings, a look back now that the boys had been missing ten years.

Myron settled back and watched. It was a good refresher. In simple terms, here was the gist:

Ten years ago, six-year-old Patrick Moore was on a playdate at the estate of his classmate Rhys Baldwin in the “tony”-they always used that word in the media-suburb of Alpine, New Jersey, not far from the isle of Manhattan. How tony? The median home price in Alpine last quarter was over four million dollars.

The two boys were left in the care of Vada Linna, an eighteen-year-old au pair from Finland. When Patrick’s mother, Nancy Moore, came to pick up her son, no one answered the door. This was not a huge cause for concern to her. Nancy Moore figured that young Vada had taken the boys for an outing or ice cream or something along those lines.

Two hours later, Nancy Moore returned and knocked on the front door again. There was still no answer. Still only mildly concerned, Nancy called Rhys’s mother, Brooke. Brooke called Vada’s mobile phone, but it went immediately to voicemail.

Brooke Lockwood Baldwin, Win’s first cousin, rushed home at this juncture. She unlocked the door to the house. The two women called out. At first there was no answer. Then they heard a noise coming from the finished basement, which was an expansive playroom for the young children.

That was where they found Vada Linna tied to a chair and gagged. The young au pair had kicked over a lamp to get their attention. She was scared but otherwise unharmed.

But the two boys, Patrick and Rhys, were nowhere to be found.

According to Vada, she had been fixing the boys a snack in the kitchen when two armed men stormed in through the sliding glass door. They wore ski masks and black turtlenecks.

They dragged Vada to the basement and tied her up.

Nancy and Brooke immediately called the police. Both fathers, Hunter Moore, a physician, and Chick Baldwin, a hedge fund manager, were summoned from their places of work. For several hours, there was nothing-no contact, no clues, no leads. Then a ransom request via an anonymous email came to Chick Baldwin’s work account. The note began by warning them not to contact the authorities if they wanted to see their children alive.

Too late for that.

The note demanded that the families get two million dollars ready-“one million per child”-and that further instructions would be forthcoming. They gathered the money and waited. Three agonizing days passed before the kidnappers wrote again, directing Chick Baldwin and only Chick Baldwin to drive alone to Overpeck Park and leave the money in a specific spot by the boat launches.

Chick Baldwin did as they asked.

The FBI, of course, had full surveillance on the park, all entrances and exits covered. They had also put a GPS in the bag, though a decade ago, that technology was slightly more rudimentary than it would be today.

Up until this point, the authorities had done a good job of keeping the abductions a secret. No media found out. At the urging of the FBI, no friends or family members, including Win, were contacted. Even the other Baldwin and Moore children were kept in the dark.

Chick Baldwin dropped off the money and drove away. An hour passed. Then two. During hour three, someone picked up the bag, but that ended up being a Good Samaritan jogger who planned to bring it to lost and found.

No one else picked up the ransom money.

The families gathered around Chick Baldwin’s computer and waited for another email. In the meantime, the FBI pursued a few theories. First, they took a hard look at Vada Linna, the young au pair, but there was nothing there. She had been in the country only two months and barely spoke English. She had only one friend. They scoured her emails, her texts, her online history, and came up with nothing suspicious.

The FBI also looked at the four parents. The only one who gave them serious pause was Rhys’s father, Chick Baldwin. The ransom emails had come to Chick, but more than that, Chick was something of an unsavory character. There were two cases of insider trading and several lawsuits involving embezzlement. Some claimed that he ran a Ponzi scheme. Clients-some of whom were powerful-were upset.

But upset enough to do something like this?

So they waited for word from the kidnappers. Another day passed. Then two. Then three, four. Not a word. A week went by.

Then a month. A year.

Ten years.

And nothing. No sign of either boy.

Until now.

Myron sat back as the credits rolled. Mee sauntered over and looked down at him.

“I think I’ll have that cognac now,” he said.

“Right away.”

When she came back, Myron said, “Sit down, Mee.”

“I don’t think so.”

“When was the last time you saw Win?”

“I am paid to be discreet.”

Myron bit back the wisecrack. “There were rumors,” he said. “About Win, I mean. I was worried.”

She tilted her head. “Don’t you trust him?”

“With my life.”

“So respect his privacy.”

“I’ve been doing that for the last year.”

“Then what’s a few more hours?”

She was right, of course.

“You miss him,” Mee said.

“Of course.”

“He loves you, you know.”

Myron said nothing.

“You should try to get some sleep.”

She was right about that too. He closed his eyes, but he knew sleep wouldn’t come. A close friend had recently convinced Myron to take up Transcendental Meditation, and while he wasn’t sure he completely bought into it, the simplicity and ease made it perfect for those moments when sleep eluded him. He set his Meditation Timer app-yes, he had one on his phone-for twenty minutes, closed his eyes, and started to sink down.