Harlan Coben - Stay close

He checked the newspaper. The LOCAL MAN MISSING article featured the same photograph he had seen on the news last night. Carlton Flynn made a kissy face. Classic asswipe. He had dark hair spiked high; tattoos on gym-muscled, baby-smooth skin; and looked as though he belonged on one of those obnoxious Jersey reality shows that featured self-obsessed, arrested-development numb nuts referring to girls as “grenades.”

Carlton Flynn had a record-three assaults. He was twenty-six years old, divorced, and “worked for his father’s prominent supplies company.”

Ray folded the paper and jammed it under his arm. He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to think about that photograph of Carlton Flynn on his computer or wonder why someone had attacked him to get it. He wanted to put it behind him, move on with life, day at a time, moment at a time.

Block, survive-just as he had for the past seventeen years.

How’s that been working for you, Ray?

He closed his eyes and let himself slip into a memory of Cassie. He was back at the club, balmy from the booze, watching her give some guy a lap dance-totally, positively in love with every fiber of his being-and yet not the least bit jealous. Cassie gave him a look over the man’s shoulder, a look that could melt teeth, and he’d just smiled back, waiting to get her alone, knowing that at the end of the day (or night) she was his.

The air had always crackled around Cassie. There was fun and wildness and spontaneity, and there was warmth and kindness and intelligence. She made you want to rip off her clothes and throw her on the nearest bed, all while writing her a love sonnet. Sudden flashes, smolder, slow burn, hearth warmth-Cassie could do them all at the same time.

A woman like that, well, something had to give, right?

He thought about that photograph by those damn ruins in that park. Could that have been what the mugger was really looking for? It seemed unlikely. He ran through the scenarios and possibilities and made a decision.

He had hidden long enough. He had gone from the big-time photojournalist to that horrible rehab center to the times of joy here in Atlantic City to losing everything. He had moved to Los Angeles, worked as a real paparazzo, gotten himself into another mess, moved back here. Why? Why move back to the place where he’d lost everything unless… unless something drew him back. Unless something demanded he come back and figure out the truth.

Cassie.

He blinked her away, got back into his car, and drove to the park. The same spot he’d been using nearly every day was still open. Ray probably couldn’t verbalize what brought him here. So many things about him had changed, but one hadn’t-his need for the camera. Many things make a photographer, but in his case, it was more about need than want. He didn’t really see or process things unless he could photograph them. He saw the world through that lens. For most people, something doesn’t exist unless they see, hear, smell, taste it. For him it was almost the opposite-nothing was real until he captured it on his camera.

If you took the path on the right corner, you could reach the edge of a cliff that overlooked the Atlantic City skyline. At night, the ocean behind it shone like a glimmering dark curtain. The view, if you were willing to risk the trek through the underbelly, was breathtaking.

Ray snapped pictures as he started up the remote path, staying behind the camera as though it offered protection. The old ruins of the iron-ore mill were on the edge of the Pine Barrens, New Jersey’s largest track of wooded area. One time, many years ago, Ray had gone off the path and deep into the woods. He found a long-abandoned cement hut covered with graffiti, some of it appearing satanic. The Pine Barrens were still loaded with ruins from ghost towns. Rumors swirled of the deeper malfeasance within the bowels of that forest. If you’ve ever watched any cinematic Mafia portrayal, you’ve seen the part where the hit men bury a body in the Pine Barrens. Ray thought about that too often. One day, he figured, someone will invent a device that will let you know what is buried in the dirt beneath you-differentiating between bones and sticks and roots and rocks-and who knew what you would find then?

Ray swallowed and pushed the thought away. When he reached the old iron-ore furnace, he took out the photograph of Carlton Flynn and studied it. Flynn had been standing over to the left, moving toward that path, the same path Ray had been on seventeen years ago. Why? What had Carlton Flynn been doing here? Sure, he could have just been another hiker or adventurer. But why had he been here, in this very spot, seventeen years after Ray had been here, and then disappeared? Where had he gone from here?

No idea.

Ray’s limp was hard to notice anymore. It was still there if you looked closely, but Ray had learned to cover it up. When he started up the hill so that he was standing exactly where he’d been when he’d taken the photograph of Carlton Flynn, the always-present twinge from his old injury flared up. The rest of his body still ached from last night’s attack too, but for now Ray was able to move past it.

Something caught his eye.

He stopped and squinted back down the path. The sun was bright. Maybe that was it-that and the strange angle on this little hill. You wouldn’t see it if you were on the path, but something was reflecting back at him, something right at the edge of the woods, right up against the big boulder. Ray frowned and stumbled toward it.

What the…?

When he got closer, he bent down to get a closer look. He reached his hand out but pulled back before he touched it. There was no question in his mind. He took out his camera and started snapping pictures.

There, on the ground almost behind the boulder, was a streak of dried blood.

Megan lay in bed reading a magazine. Dave lay next to her, watching television, the clicker in hand. For men the TV remote control was like a pacifier or security blanket. They simply could not watch television without holding one close, always at the ready.

It was a little after ten P.M. Jordan was already asleep. Kaylie was another story.

Dave said, “Do you want the honors or should I?”

Megan sighed. “You did it the last two nights.”

Dave smiled, eyes on the television. “The last three nights. But who’s counting?”

She put down her magazine. Kaylie’s bedtime was a firm ten P.M., but she never went on her own, waiting until one of her parents insisted. Megan rolled out of bed and padded down the corridor. She would yell out, “Go to sleep NOW!” but that was equally exhausting and could potentially wake up Jordan.

Megan stuck her head in the room. “Bedtime.”

Kaylie didn’t even glance away from the monitor. “Just fifteen more minutes, okay?”

“No. Bedtime is ten P.M. It is almost quarter after.”

“Jen needs help with her homework.”

Megan frowned. “On Facebook?”

“Fifteen minutes, Mom. That’s all.”

But it was never fifteen minutes because in fifteen minutes the lights would still be on and Kaylie would still be on the computer and then Megan would have to get out of bed again and tell her to go to sleep.

“No. Now.”

“But-”

“Do you want to be grounded?”

“God, what’s your problem? Fifteen minutes!”

“NOW!”

“Why are you yelling? You always yell at me.”

And so it went. Megan thought about Lorraine, about her visit, about her not being cut out for kids and those mommies in the corner at Starbucks and how your past never leaves you, neither the good nor the bad, how you pack it into boxes and put it in some closet and you figure that it will be like those boxes you pack in your house-something you keep but never open-and then one day, when the real world closes in on you-you go to that closet and open it again.