Harlan Coben - Home

The barista wore a hipster beanie and fungus-like facial hair. His poncho had to be made from hemp.

CU Latte was all in.

They ordered two Turkish coffees and sat down.

“What’s going on?”

Win checked his phone and pointed to the door. “Now.”

Myron looked at the door as Zorra entered in all his sartorial splendor. He wore his Veronica Lake-on-meth wig, a green monogrammed sweater, and a skirt in a hue Zorra would undoubtedly call “sea foam.”

When Zorra spotted Myron, he spread his arms and shouted, “Dreamboat!”

Zorra’s wig was half on, half off. His facial hair would make the barista even greener, though this time with envy. Myron remembered an old clip his father had shown him of Milton Berle in drag. Like that, only less attractive.

“I thought he was in Finland,” Myron muttered to Win as Zorra approached.

“He just landed at Newark,” Win said.

“Long flight,” Zorra said. “Zorra had no time to freshen up. I must look a fright.”

Myron wasn’t about to touch that one. He rose and gave Zorra a hug. He smelled like a male flight attendant’s cologne.

“How long has it been?” Zorra asked.

“Too long,” Myron said. Or maybe not long enough.

“Zorra is happy to see you.”

“Same,” Myron said. Then, getting back on track, he asked, “So what’s the deal with Vada Linna?”

“Her new name is Sofia Lampo.”

“Did you find her?”

“She works at a fast-food restaurant, dreamboat. In a small town outside Helsinki. How you say-the middle of nowhere. So I went there. But her boss said she hasn’t shown up for work for three days. This concerned Zorra. So I do some research. She’s not home either. I make some calls. You know. Old contacts. They can find anything.”

“So did you find her?” Myron asked.

Zorra smiled. It was not a pretty smile. “Very soon, dreamboat.”

“I’m not following.”

“Yesterday Sofia Lampo took a plane from Helsinki to Newark. She’s here, dreamboat. Vada Linna-or Sofia Lampo-is back.”

“Let’s start with the obvious question,” Myron said when he and Win were back in the car. “Why would the au pair come back to the United States?”

“What have we told ourselves since this all began?”

“That something isn’t right,” Myron said. “That we’re missing something.”

“Whatever that ‘something’ is,” Win said, “it’s been missing for ten years. It’s been missing since the boys vanished.”

“So what now?” Myron asked.

“Your call.”

Myron made the final turn onto the Baldwins’ street. “We need to tell Brooke what Fat Gandhi told you. We don’t have the right to keep it from her. She also needs to know about the au pair coming back.”

“That’s a lot,” Win said.

“Too much?”

“No,” Win said. “Brooke can handle more than you can imagine.”

As they pulled into the driveway, the front door opened. Brooke stepped out. She came to the passenger side of the car and gave her cousin Win a long hug. Win wasn’t normally much for long hugs, but he held on. Brooke put her head on Win’s shoulder. Neither cried. Neither collapsed or anything like that. They didn’t move or readjust their arms or pull each other closer. They just stayed there for several beats.

“I’m glad you’re back,” Brooke said.

“Me too.”

When they let each other go, Brooke turned and studied Myron’s face. “This isn’t good news, is it?”

“Nothing definitive,” Win said.

“But not good.”

“No,” Win said, “not good.”

They were about to head inside when another car started down the driveway. Myron recognized the Lexus sedan from Nancy Moore’s garage. They all stood and waited as the car came to a stop. The driver’s door opened. Nancy Moore stepped out. The front passenger door opened.

Patrick Moore stepped out.

Brooke stiffened when she saw their faces. Under her breath, she said, “This isn’t good news either.”

They were back in the kitchen, the place where it all began.

Patrick, Nancy, and Brooke all sat at the kitchen table. Myron and Win stood off to the side, close enough to hear but not be involved. Patrick sat with his back to the big glass doors, intentionally, Myron supposed. His mother sat next to him and held his hand. Brooke sat across from him and waited.

Patrick looked at his mother. She nodded for him to go ahead. Patrick stared down at the table in front of him. His hair was close cropped, almost shaved. He rubbed his head for a moment before letting his hands drop.

“Rhys is dead, Mrs. Baldwin.”

Myron glanced at Brooke. She had steeled herself for this. There was barely a tell. Myron turned to Win. His expression was blank, the same as his cousin’s.

“He died a long time ago,” Patrick said.

Brooke’s voice did not crack. “How?”

Patrick kept his head lowered. His hands were folded on the table in front of him. His mother kept her hand on his forearm.

“We were taken from this kitchen,” Patrick began. “I don’t remember a lot of things. But I remember that.”

His voice was stilted now, a chilling monotone.

“The men, they stuck us in the back of a van.”

“How many men?” Brooke asked.

“Brooke, please.” It was Nancy Moore. “It’s the first time he’s been able to speak. Just let him get through this, okay?”

Brooke said nothing. She turned her focus back to Patrick. Patrick had his head down. “I apologize,” she said with too much formality. “Please go ahead.”

“They stuck us in the back of a van,” he repeated, almost, Myron thought, as though someone had backed up the teleprompter. “We drove for a long time. I don’t know how long. When we stopped, we were on a big farm someplace. There were animals. Cows, pigs, chickens. Rhys and I, we shared a bedroom in the farmhouse.”

Patrick stopped, keeping his head down. The silence was suffocating. Brooke wanted to ask something, maybe a million things, but the moment felt bubble fragile. No one moved. No one spoke. No one dared disrupt the moment.

Nancy gave her son’s arm a squeeze. Patrick gathered himself and continued.

“It was a long time ago,” he continued. “Sometimes it feels like a dream. It was nice there. On the farm. They… they were nice to us. We got to play a lot. We could run around. We got to feed the animals. I don’t know for how long. It might have been like that for a few weeks. It might have been like that for a few months. Sometimes I even think it might have been like that for years. I just don’t know. It’s not like me and Rhys kept track or anything.”

Again Patrick stopped. Myron looked past Patrick, out that back window into the spacious yard, all the way to the trees in the back. He tried to see it as Patrick spoke, the men breaking in here, grabbing the two boys, vanishing into that yard.

“Then one day,” Patrick said, “it changed.”

His tone was more hesitant, the words coming out in a strange, uneven flow.

“They brought men around,” Patrick said. “I… I was abused.”

Brooke still hadn’t moved, still hadn’t changed her expression, but it was as though Patrick’s words sped up the aging process. Nothing about Brooke changed, and yet Myron could see that she was hanging on by the most brittle of threads.

“Rhys… he was stronger than I was. Braver. He tried to save me. He tried… he wouldn’t let them do that to him. He stood up to them, Mrs. Baldwin. He fought them. He poked one guy in the eye with a pencil. Really got him good. So…” Patrick still couldn’t lift his eyes from the table, but he managed something like a shrug. “They killed him. They shot him in the head. They made me…”