Joseph Finder - Vanished

“So Roger was right,” I said. “He said ‘they’ can intercept e-mail. Whoever ‘they’ are. He called them ‘the people who are trying to stop me.’ ”

“But who’s he talking about?”

“I was hoping you might have some idea.”

She shook her head. “He never said anything about…”

“About people threatening to kill him?”

“It sounds paranoid. Crazy. But his e-mail sounded totally rational, don’t you think?”

“You think he wrote it himself?”

She looked at me, furrowed her brow, gave a skeptical smile. “I hadn’t thought about that. But it sure sounded like him. I’d say it was definitely Roger.”

“I agree. Though it sounds more… emotional than I would have expected.”

“Nick, you have no idea.” She sounded annoyed. “I don’t think you ever saw that side of him. The affectionate side.”

“He kept it pretty well hidden.”

“Maybe he was just different with me.”

“No doubt.”

She was quiet a moment. “That was the last thing he said to me, you know.”

“What was?”

“ ‘I love you.’ ”

“Interesting.”

“Why interesting?”

I shook my head, and we didn’t say anything for a while, and then she asked, “But why didn’t he come right out and say what he’d found or who he was afraid of?”

“To protect you, I’d guess. Maybe he figured you’d be safer if you didn’t know anything. Since he thought his e-mails were going to be read.”

“Then what was the point of his sending any e-mail at all?” she said. “I mean, to go to the trouble of signing up with this morbid ‘in case of death’ website so he could have an e-mail sent to me that told me almost nothing-why?”

“But I think it tells you a lot. In ways that other people won’t understand. Like this line he added about a librarian. What do you think he’s referring to?”

“I have no idea. I can’t think of the last time he even went to a library.”

“He didn’t say ‘library,’ he said ‘librarian,’ ” I pointed out.

“Right,” she said. “Librarian.”

“Is ‘librarian’ a code for something?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“Or the word ‘library’?”

“I really have no idea.”

“Well, it’s a signal of some sort,” I said.

“What about the police? Did you talk to them?”

I nodded.

“Do they have any leads?”

I thought for a moment. “So far just one,” I said, and I told her about the withdrawal from Roger’s bank account after the attack.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “If they stole his ATM card, wouldn’t they need his PIN code to withdraw money?”

I nodded again.

“So it’s possible they forced it out of him? At gunpoint or something? Which means maybe they have him alive?” There was such hope in her face that I felt bad.

“Yes, it’s possible,” I said. The other obvious possibility, which I didn’t want to suggest to Lauren, was that once they got the money from him, they no longer needed him alive. She was too fragile. She might have lost her husband, the stepfather to her child. I didn’t want to make things even worse for her.

“Where does Roger keep his laptop?”

“His study.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s late. I’ve got to be at the office early tomorrow morning.”

“You sure you’re up to it?”

“Yeah, I think so. Leland needs me back there. No matter what he says.”

“You know,” I said, “you may be able to help out.”

“How?”

“Find out what Roger was doing before-before this happened. What he was working on.”

“Ask around, you mean.”

“Be discreet about it. It may help explain things.”

“Or it may not.”

“Agreed. But at this point, we need to sweep up everything. Then we see what we have. Okay?”

“I have to be careful. Being the CEO’s admin and all that.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll do what I can, Nick.”

“Good. You don’t mind me poking around in Roger’s study for a bit, do you?”

“Of course not. Actually… would you like to spend the night in one of the guest rooms?”

“No need. Thanks anyway.”

“No, I mean… would you mind spending the night here? I’m just feeling really spooked. That terrifying e-mail from Roger, then the way it vanished? That just scared the hell out of me, Nick. I’m scared about whatever’s going on with Roger, and I’m scared for Gabe, and… Jesus, Nick, I’m too scared to even think clearly about anything anymore. Would you, please?”

“Of course. Though I’ll have to get out of here early so I can stop at my place and change.”

“I’ll probably be gone by the time you leave. I get to work early.”

“What about Gabe?”

“He gets picked up by his car pool. Don’t worry about him, he’ll be fine. He’s used to being alone here in the morning.”

“Roger always left early, too?”

She nodded. “Sometimes we drive in together, unless he wants to get in to work before me.”

I noticed that I’d referred to Roger in the past tense-as if he was dead-and she didn’t catch it.

“Poor Gabe,” I said. “Latch-key child.”

“Yeah, right,” she said, getting up and giving me a quick peck on the cheek. She picked up a couple of remote controls, and switched off the TV and the cable box.

On her way out of the living room, she stopped. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I think you know me well enough to know that I’m not, you know, a scaredy-cat. I don’t panic, you know that. But after the last couple of days, when I think of Gabe, and I think-”

“You don’t have to explain.”

“I’m scared out of my mind. Okay? I’m just flat-out terrified.”

She turned around quickly, as if she was embarrassed she’d been so open, and she walked toward the door.

“Lauren,” I called out.

She stopped, turned her head.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you guys,” I said.

Lauren whirled around, half walked, half ran toward me, and threw her arms around me. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Then just as quickly she let go. “I’ll get your room ready.”

I never thought I’d see a home office more grandiose than my father’s. Until I saw my brother’s.

Dad’s library made a certain pompous kind of sense, since it was located in a thirty-room mansion built in 1919 on a ninety-acre estate in Bedford, New York. That’s horse country, of course, where women do their shopping in jodhpurs or jeans with holes at the knees and men walk around in flip-flops and everyone gets Lyme disease.

Roger, though, had carved his library out of a far more modest, suburban house. He’d knocked out a couple of rooms on the second floor to create a two-story stage set, complete with a catwalk, and lined with leather-bound books he’d never even opened, probably sold by the yard. Here, my brother got to feel as important, as baronial, as I was sure he didn’t at work, where he no doubt just pissed people off.

I found his laptop right where it belonged, on his ornately carved mahogany desk. It was next to an open copy of a book called Field Guide to Birds of Eastern and Central North America. Roger was a “birder”: a bird-watcher.

That was a hobby I didn’t get, like most aspects of my older brother. I have no hobbies, but I basically understand why a guy might want to restore vintage muscle cars or brew his own beer or collect sports memorabilia. I know accountants who wield nothing more dangerous than a sharpened number two pencil at work but have workshops in their basements with table saws that could slice off your thumb in half a second. I know mild-mannered pediatric pulmonologists who race remote-control monster trucks or rock out on their Fender Stratocasters by themselves when they get home at night.