Harlan Coben - Stay close

“Did you see anyone on your way back down from that spot?” Broome asked.

“No, sorry.”

Ray got on the Internet and went to a Mac Web site. He typed in a user name and password and clicked on some folders and then he handed the laptop back to Broome. There were eighty-seven photographs. He started with the last, the photograph Ray had sent anonymously. Something struck Broome right away. The first few were all what one might call picturesque landscapes, except something in the composition brought on feelings of melancholy. Most times, landscape scenes make you yearn for the great outdoors and that solitude. But these were stark, lonely, depressing-interesting because that was clearly the photographer’s mood and intent.

Broome continued to click through the photographs. For some reason that dumb line from that song “A Horse with No Name” came to him: “There were plants and birds and rocks and things.” That pretty much summed it up. Broome had hoped to find, what exactly? He didn’t know. Clues. But all he saw were bland yet creative and moving photographs of the scene where one man lost his heart-and others lost… again what?

“You’re good,” Broome said.

Ray did not reply.

Broome could almost feel the foreboding now, the cumulative impact of Ray’s work starting to wear him down. He was nearly finished going through the photographs when something snagged his gaze.

Broome stopped.

“Can you zoom in?”

“Sure. Just click the command and plus buttons.”

The photograph was one of the first Ray had snapped that day, taken from a different viewpoint, so maybe that explained it. There were trees, of course, and the big rock and the old furnace chimney, but from here, Broome thought he could see something else, something behind the ruins of that old chimney in the background. He clicked, zooming closer and closer. The picture quality, fortunately, was excellent, so there was very little pixilation.

Broome felt his heart rise to his throat.

Ray looked over his shoulder. “What is that?”

Broome moved in closer. Something was jutting out behind the chimney. It was green and metallic with a black rubber end. Broome could only make out maybe six inches of it. But that was enough. He’d spent the summer after high school graduation working for a moving company, so, even though he could only see the handle, he had a pretty good idea what it was.

“It’s a hand truck,” Broome said. “Someone hid a hand truck near where these guys disappeared.”

Megan started the journey to her mother-in-law.

Her thoughts were with poor Harry Sutton. There was, of course, the possibility that the timing of his murder was a coincidence. She had returned to Atlantic City over a seventeen-year-old incident. The young couple being sought by the police would have been, what, five, maybe ten years old back in those days. So perhaps, if those two were the ones who did it, Megan and her past had absolutely nothing to do with what happened to Harry.

Her mind continued to nimbly do this denial dance step, but in the end, the truth seemed pretty obvious: She had dragged danger and death to Harry Sutton’s door. She couldn’t figure out how yet. But in her heart, Megan knew that once again, she had messed up.

Two weeks ago, she had returned to Atlantic City for the first time for that mundane trade show. Part of her had convinced herself that it was no big deal, that the visit was strictly for career opportunities. She had truly believed the gritty city she still missed hadn’t been calling to her. But that was more self-delusion. She could have stayed at the seminar, for example. Some other real-estate wannabes had even planned a group dinner at the Rainforest Cafe, but Megan had passed. Instead, she had gone to La Creme.

Who could blame her? Who doesn’t visit old haunts when they return to a city that meant so much to them?

She decided to try Dave again. When her call went to voice mail, she started to feel the first wave of anger. After the beep, she said, “Enough of this. We have to talk. Your mother is having serious issues. Grow up and call me.”

Megan hung up, nearly hurling the phone across the front seat. On the one hand, of course she understood his behavior. She was the one in the wrong. But maybe that was the problem. In a sense, she had always been the one in the wrong. Over the years, she had let the guilt of her deception color everything in their relationship. Her fault? Sure. But maybe Dave had taken advantage of it. Her guilt had made her acquiesce too many times. She didn’t resent the kids for any of it. She wouldn’t trade it but…

But why wasn’t Dave calling her back?

All those years he had been working, yes, providing, putting food on the table and all the rest of the crap men use to justify what they do-but Dave liked his work. He thrived on late hours and travel and golf on Sunday mornings and then coming home to his hot, willing wife. She had been all that for him, even when she didn’t want to be. Don’t get her wrong. Dave had never bullied her. He had never been mean or deceptive, but then again, why would he be? He had the perfect wife. She had given up on finding a career of her own. She paid all the bills, took care of all the shopping, drove all the carpools, made sure the household was in order. She took care of his mother, cared about her more than he ever could, and after all that, all the sacrifices she’d made, how did he treat her?

He was ignoring her calls-and he’d somehow been spying on her.

Not that she didn’t deserve that. But still. Here she wanted to talk to him, tell him about her past and inner demons and let him know that the wife he had sworn to protect was in danger, and he wouldn’t even return her desperate calls, choosing instead to act like a petulant child.

She reached for her phone again. She had already put Ray’s number in so she’d remember it. She hit the dial button, but before it could even start ringing, she saw the sign for the Sunset Assisted Living Home.

Don’t be an idiot, Megan, she told herself.

Megan hung up the phone, parked, and with the anger still seething, she headed inside.

Barbie stayed two cars back.

She wasn’t overly concerned about being spotted-Megan Pierce hardly seemed like an expert in noticing tails-but you never knew. The fact that this seemingly simple housewife was somehow caught up in all this indicated that she was not merely what she appeared to be. The same, of course, could be said about Barbie herself.

As Barbie drove, her mind kept slipping back to Ken’s sudden proposal. It was sweet and cute, sure, but it was mostly disturbing. She had always assumed that Ken saw past the illusions cast upon us, that their relationship had opened his eyes to a new and different reality. But it hadn’t. Even he could not see past the bill of goods we are sold from our first days on this planet.

We are told, for example, by our unhappy, miserable parents, that the way to find joy in life is to live and do exactly as they have. Barbie never understood that logic. What do they say about the definition of insanity? It is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Generationally the world seemed to do just that. Barbie’s father, for example, had hated trudging off to work in that tired suit and tie every morning, coming home at six P.M. feeling angry and defeated and finding classic solace in a bottle. Her mother had detested being a housewife-forced into a role her mother had played and her mother before her-and yet, in the ultimate life blind spot, what did Mom want for her own daughter?

To find a man and settle down and have children of her own-as though resentment and unhappiness were a legacy she hoped to pass down.