Harlan Coben - Live Wire

“Just one,” Myron said. “Did you really use the word ‘ruckus’?”

Kyle stayed with the grin. “Defense mechanism,” he said again.

The three men spread out, fists tightened, muscles at the ready. Myron moved a little farther into the corner.

“So what’s your plan here, Kyle?” Myron asked.

“It’s pretty simple, Myron. We are going to hurt you. How badly depends on how much you resist. At best, you’re going to end up hospitalized. You will be pissing blood for a while. We may break a bone or two. But you will live and probably recover. If you resist, I will use the stun gun to paralyze you. It will be very painful. And then your beating will be longer and more savage. Am I making myself clear?”

They started to inch closer. Their hands flexed. One cracked his neck. Kleavage Kyle actually took off his jacket. “I don’t want to get it dirty,” he explained. “What with the blood stains and all.”

Myron pointed lower. “What about your pants?”

Kyle was topless now. He did that flex thing where you make your pecs dance. “Don’t worry about them.”

“Oh, but I do,” Myron said.

Then, as the men inched closer, Myron smiled and crossed his arms. The move made the men pause. Then Myron said, “Did I tell you about my new BlackBerry? The GPS feature? The two-way satellite radio? It all works when you press one button.”

“Your BlackBerry,” Kyle said, “is off.”

Myron shook his head and made a buzzing noise as though he had heard the wrong answer on a game show. Win’s voice came from the BlackBerry’s tinny speaker: “No, Kyle, I’m afraid it’s not.”

The three men stopped.

“So let me explain the situation,” Myron said, doing his best Kyle singsong, “so even you’ll understand. The button you have to press to activate all the newfangled features? You guessed it: It’s the off button. In short, everything that’s been said has been recorded. Plus the GPS is on. How far away are you, Win?”

“Heading through the club entrance now. I also activated the three-way caller. Esperanza’s on the line on mute. Esperanza?”

The mute button was clicked off. The club music came through the phone speaker. Esperanza said, “I’m by the side door where they dragged Myron out. Oh, and guess what? I found an old friend here, a police officer named Roland Dimonte. Say hi to my friend Kyle, Rolly.”

The male voice said, “I better see Bolitar’s ugly, untouched mug out here in thirty seconds, asswipe.”

It took more like twenty.

“It might not have been her,” Myron said.

It was two A.M. by the time Myron and Win got back to the Dakota. They sat in a room rich people called “a study,” with Louis the Something wood furniture and marble busts and a large antique globe and bookshelves with leather-bound first editions. Myron sat in a burgundy chair with gold buttons on the arm. By the time things had calmed down at the club, Kitty had vanished, if she’d ever been there in the first place. Lex and Buzz had cleared out too.

Win opened a leather-bound first-edition false front bookcase to reveal a refrigerator. He grabbed a Yoo-hoo chocolate drink and tossed it to Myron. Myron caught it, and reading the directions-“Shake It!”-did just that. Win opened the decanter and poured himself an exclusive cognac called, interestingly enough, The Last Drop.

“I could have been wrong,” Myron said.

Win lifted his snifter and checked it against the light.

“I mean, it’s been sixteen years, right? Her hair was a different color. The room was dark and I saw her for only a second. So really, when I add it up, it might not have been her.”

“It might not have been she ,” Win said. “Subject pronoun.”

Win.

“And it was Kitty,” Win said.

“How do you know?”

“I know you. You don’t make those kinds of mistakes. Other mistakes, yes. But not those kind.”

Win took a sip of cognac. Myron splashed down some of the Yoo-hoo. Cold, chocolaty, sweet nectar. Three years ago Myron had all but given up this, his favorite beverage, in favor of boutique coffees that eat away the stomach lining. When he returned home from the stress of being overseas, he started up again with Yoo-hoo, more for the comfort than the actual taste. Now he loved it again.

“On the one hand, it doesn’t matter,” Myron said. “Kitty hasn’t been part of my life for a long time.”

Win nodded. “And on the other hand?”

Brad. That was what the other hand, the first hand, both hands, every hand-the chance, after all these years, to see and maybe reconcile with his baby brother. Myron took a moment, shifted his seat. Win watched and said nothing. Eventually Myron said, “It can’t be a coincidence. Kitty in the same nightclub-same VIP room even-as Lex.”

“It would seem unlikely,” Win said. “So what’s our next step?

“Find Lex. Find Kitty.”

Myron stared at the Yoo-hoo label and wondered, not for the first time, what the heck “dairy whey” was. The mind stalls. It dodges, weaves, finds irrelevancies on soda cans, all in the hopes of avoiding the unavoidable. He thought about when he first tried this drink, in that house in Livingston, New Jersey, he now owned, how Brad always had to have one too because Brad always wanted to do what big brother, Myron, did. He thought about the hours he shot baskets in the backyard, letting Brad have the honor of fetching him rebounds so Myron could concentrate on shooting. Myron spent so many hours out there, shooting, moving, getting the pass from Brad, shooting again, moving, hours and hours alone, and while Myron did not regret one moment of it, he had to wonder about his priorities-the priorities of most top athletes. What we so admire and call “single-minded dedication” was really “obsessive self-involvement.” What in that exactly is admirable?

An alarm clock beeping-a truly grating ringtone the BlackBerry people had for some reason labeled “Antelope”-interrupted them. Myron glanced down at his BlackBerry and flicked off the offending noise.

“You might as well take that,” Win said, standing. “I have somewhere to go anyway.”

“At two thirty A.M.? You want to tell me her name?”

Win smiled. “Maybe later.”

Given the demand for the one computer in the area, two thirty A.M., Eastern Daylight Time-seven thirty A.M. in Angola-was pretty much the only time that Myron could get his fiancée, Terese Collins, alone, if only technologically.

Myron signed on to Skype, the Internet equivalent of a videophone, and waited. A moment later, a video box came up and Terese appeared. He felt the heady rush and the lightness in his chest.

“God, you’re beautiful,” he said to her.

“Good opening line.”

“I always open with that line.”

“It doesn’t get old.”

Terese looked great, sitting at the desk in a white blouse, hands folded so that he could see the engagement ring, her bottle-brunette hair-she was normally a blonde-pulled back into a ponytail.

After a few minutes, Myron said, “I was with a client tonight.”

“Who?”

“Lex Ryder.”

“The lesser half of HorsePower?”

“I like him. He’s a good guy. Anyway, he said the secret of a good marriage is being open.”

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you too.”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I love that I can just blurt that out. I never had that before. I’m too old to feel this way.”

“We are always eighteen, waiting for our lives to begin,” Myron said.

“That’s corny.”

“You’re a sucker for corny.”

“True enough. So Lex Ryder said we should be open. Aren’t we?”

“I don’t know. He had this theory on flaws. That we should reveal them to each other-the worst things about us-because somehow that makes us more human and thus closer.”