Lisa Gardner - The Neighbor

D.D. wondered if Sandy Jones had loved her husband. If she had viewed him as her white knight, her valiant savior, right up until Wednesday night when the last of her illusions had been violently, and sadly, stripped away.

Sandra Jones had now been missing three days.

D.D. didn’t believe they’d find the young mother alive.

Mostly what she hoped for at this stage of the game was to save Ree.

Ethan Hastings was having a crisis of conscience. This had never happened to him before. Being smarter than any adult he’d ever met, the teenager was naturally disparaging of them. What they couldn’t figure out, they didn’t need to know.

But now, sitting on the floor with his mother’s iPhone-yesterday’s incident at school had resulted in a total loss of computer privileges for the next month, but technically speaking, no one had said he couldn’t rifle his mother’s purse-he was reviewing e-mail and trying to figure out if he should call the police.

Ethan was worried about Mrs. Sandra. He had been ever since November, when it became clear to him that her interest in online security extended way beyond what one might need to know to teach a sixth grade social studies class.

She’d never told him she suspected her husband, which meant, of course, that he was the most likely culprit. Likewise, she’d never used the words “Internet porn,” but then again, what else would drive a pretty teacher to spend all of her free periods working with a kid like him?

Oh, she was kind about it. She knew that he worshipped her, because he wasn’t so good about hiding these things. But he got the message, loud and clear, that she was not in love with him the way he was with her. She needed him, however. She respected his skills. She appreciated his help. That was good enough for him.

Mrs. Sandra talked to him, person to person. Not many adults did that. They either tried to talk over his head, or they were so terrified of his staggering genius they avoided engaging him in conversation altogether. Or maybe they were more like his parents. They both tried to talk to him, but sounded like they were grinding their teeth the entire time.

Not Mrs. Sandra. She spoke warmly, with this pretty lilt he could listen to again and again. And she smelled of oranges. He never told anyone, but he got her to mention the name of the lotion she used. Then he bought an entire case of it online, just so he could smell her when she wasn’t around. He had the case of lotion stashed in his father’s closet, behind all the suits his father never wore, because he’d long ago figured out that his mother searched his room on a daily basis.

She tried very hard, his mother. Having a kid as bright as him couldn’t be easy. Then again, it wasn’t his fault he was so smart. He’d been born this way.

In November, after deducing that Mrs. Sandra was worried about her husband’s online activities, then determining that Mrs. Sandra’s husband was surprisingly computer savvy, Ethan had decided he needed to take further action to protect his favorite teacher.

First, he’d thought of his uncle, the only adult Ethan considered intelligent. When it came to computers, Uncle Wayne was a pro. And, better yet, he worked for the state police, meaning that if Mrs. Sandra’s husband was doing something illegal, Uncle Wayne could arrest him for it, and Sandra’s husband would go away. This had been a very good idea, in Ethan’s mind. One of his better plans.

Except Sandra’s husband hadn’t gone away. Neither, for that matter, had Uncle Wayne. Suddenly, his uncle had developed an enduring interest in JV basketball. Every Thursday night, Uncle Wayne would appear at the school, and off he and Mrs. Sandra would go, leaving Ethan all alone with pesky Ree.

Ethan had started to be annoyed by Thursday nights. It didn’t take three months of weekly meetings to hack into someone’s computer. Heck, he could’ve done it in five minutes or less.

Then it had occurred to him: Maybe he didn’t need his uncle or state police involvement after all. Maybe all he needed to do was write some code. It was called a Trojan Horse. He could tuck it into an e-mail. He could send it to Mrs. Sandra. And the Trojan Horse would open up a gateway on her computer just for him.

He would have access.

He could see what Sandra’s husband was really up to.

He could save the day.

Except that Ethan had never actually written the code before. So first he had to study it. Then he had to test it. Then he had to revise it.

Three weeks ago, he’d been ready to launch. He wrote an innocent little e-mail to Mrs. Sandra containing some links he thought she might find helpful for her social studies class. Then he’d embedded the code and sat back to wait.

It took her two days to open the e-mail, which annoyed him a little. Weren’t teachers supposed to be more responsive than that?

But the Trojan Horse passed the gates, the computer virus embedding itself instantly into Mrs. Sandra’s hard drive. Ethan tested it on day three, and yeah, he had access to the Jones family computer. Now he could sit back and catch Mr. Jones in the act-literally

Ethan had been very excited. He was gonna be on 48 Hours Investigates. A whole episode on the boy genius who nabbed a notorious child predator. Leslie Stahl would interview him, social websites would want to hire him. He’d become a one-man Internet security alpha team. A modern-day website Marine.

The first three nights, Ethan had definitely learned some things about Mr. Jones. He’d learned, in fact, quite a lot about Mr. Jones. More than he really wanted to know.

What Ethan hadn’t counted on, however, was how much he’d also learn about Mrs. Sandra.

Now he was stuck. To rat out Mr. Jones, he’d have to also rat out Mrs. Sandra, and Uncle Wayne, too.

He knew too little, he knew too much.

And Ethan Hastings was a bright enough boy to know that was a very dangerous place to be.

He picked up his mother’s iPhone, checked messages again. Told himself to call 911, set down the phone again. Maybe he could call that sergeant, the one with the blonde hair. She seemed nice enough. Then again, as his mother always told him, lies of omission were still lies, and he was pretty sure lying to the police would get him in even more trouble than school suspension and a four-week loss of computer privileges.

Ethan didn’t want to go to jail.

But he was terribly worried about Mrs. Sandra.

He picked up the iPhone again, checked messages, sighed heavily. Finally, he did the only thing he could bring himself to do. He opened a fresh e-mail box and started, Dear Uncle Wayne…

Wayne Reynolds was not a patient man. Sandra Jones had been missing for multiple days, and as far as the forensics expert could tell, the lead detectives were taking a slow boat from China to find her. Hell, he’d practically had to hand them Jason Jones on a silver platter, and still, judging from the five o’clock news, no arrests had been made.

Instead, reporters had picked up the scent of a registered sex offender living just down the street from Sandra. Some pale, freaky-looking kid with a blistered scalp they’d caught walking down the street, then literally chased all the way to an old 1950s ranch. “I didn’t do it!” the kid had cried over his shoulder. “Talk to my PO. My girlfriend was underage, that’s all, that’s all, that’s all”

Pervert had bolted into the house, and the erstwhile reporters had documented half a dozen shots of a closed door and blinds-covered windows. Really scintillating stuff.

At least Sandra’s father had entered the fray, deriding Jason Jones as a highly dangerous, manipulative man who’d isolated the beautiful young woman from her own family. The grandfather was demanding custody of Ree and had already won visitation rights to begin shortly. The old man wanted justice for his daughter and protection for his granddaughter.