Joseph Finder - Vanished

That was actually okay, though. We had a lot to talk about. She told me that she’d decided to take a leave of absence from her job. A long one. The leave she should have taken in the first place, after the injury.

“For the first time in I don’t know how long, I actually need to work for a living,” she said pensively.

I suppose I could have let my brother get away with it, which would have meant that Lauren and Gabe might have shared in the spoils, or so Roger had said. But in the end, they’d never have been safe-you never get away with something like that.

And it just didn’t sit well with me. Bad karma, maybe. I knew a little about living off tainted money.

And-call me a starry-eyed idealist, but I did sort of like the idea of doing the right thing.

“Have you started looking for a job yet?” I asked.

She looked at me with surprise. “I’m not leaving Leland,” she said. “Why would I?”

“He’d take you back?”

“Take me back? What’s that supposed to mean?”

I felt a pang of sadness. She hadn’t stopped concealing. “Lauren,” I said.

“Lee doesn’t blame me for what Roger did. That wouldn’t be fair.”

“So Leland still doesn’t know,” I said. “Well, I’ll say this much for my brother. He may have used you, but he did protect you.”

“Protect me? In what way?”

“He could have turned you in when he was arrested, but he didn’t. And I doubt he will.”

“Turn me in for what?”

“For what you did. For your role in all of this.”

“My role?”

“Lauren, come on.”

“What?”

I was really disappointed in my people-reading skills. It had taken me far too long to learn to read her. Maybe my usual perceptiveness had been blunted by my love for her and her son. “Well, for one thing, Roger couldn’t have stolen all of Gifford Industries’ assets without the RaptorCard. And there’s only one way he could have known that I had it. From you.”

Her eyes were opaque, hard to read. “I told you he contacted me. He left me a voice message. He gave me a-an untraceable cell number to call. Because he wanted to make sure this deal went off without a hitch. So, yes. I told him.”

“Right,” I said. “But that was only part of it.”

She looked wounded. “What are you accusing me of?”

“I’m not going to turn you in,” I said. “No point in that. I blame my brother for dragging you into this.”

“I wasn’t dragged…” she began.

“Lauren,” I said. “Don’t even bother. Leland didn’t trust Roger. He didn’t like him. He’d never have gone along with the idea of creating a holding company-and designating Roger as the full, temporary, owner-if you hadn’t urged him to do it.”

She winced as she shook her head.

But I kept going. “Dorothy told me you asked her how to access a password-protected BlackBerry. You told her you wanted to help me out. Get into his e-mails. Of course, you didn’t bother to tell me about it.”

Hollowly, she attempted, “I didn’t?”

“Of course not. Because that wasn’t true. You weren’t trying to help find Roger. You were sending out e-mails under Leland Gifford’s name. To a bank in the Caymans. Authorizing the transfer. Replying to the bank’s queries. And later, I assume, deleting all evidence of the correspondence so Gifford wouldn’t find out.”

“Nick,” she began.

“Roger needed a confederate in the CEO’s office, or none of this would have worked.”

She looked away.

“And-oh, yes-you made sure that Stoddard assigned me to locate the missing cargo. That billion dollars in cash. A theft Roger arranged. More bread crumbs, to lead me to Paladin.”

Her expression confirmed my theory. She’d e-mailed Jay Stoddard as Leland Gifford to be certain he put me on the case.

“I don’t like what you’re implying. You don’t seriously think I’d risk Gabe’s life for money, do you?”

“No, I don’t. I’m sure this wasn’t your idea in the first place.”

“Of course it wasn’t! The worst you can say about me is that I was naïve. I trusted him. When he told me he had to disappear because that was the only way to keep us safe, I believed him. And then things just started to spin out of control, and Paladin started making all those threats-”

“I know. That’s when Roger took the risk of calling you. To make sure you stayed with the program.”

A single tear streamed down her left cheek in a perfectly straight line. “He told me if I didn’t, they’d kill him. He said it was the only way to save him and protect Gabe. He used me. He manipulated me.”

“He’s good at that. I understand.”

“His relationship with Gabe is over. He’s destroyed it.”

“He doesn’t deserve Gabe.”

“No,” she said. “He doesn’t deserve Gabe.”

“I don’t think Gabe’s going to be visiting him in prison. You see how often I visit my dad.”

She nodded sadly. “And… what about you?”

“I’ll figure something out.”

“You think you might move?”

“I might. I’ll see. I’ve never loved Washington, you know that.”

“I hope not. That wouldn’t be easy for Gabe.”

“Or for me.”

“So don’t move. Stay in town.”

“I’ll figure something out,” I said. “I’m not worried.”

“You never worry, do you?”

“Sure I do. All the time,” I said. “I just don’t like to show it.”

BEFORE I left, I took Gabe for a walk around the block. The old oak trees shaded the path, their leaves rippling gently in the wind, the light dappled. He was wearing black shorts and his black Chuck Taylors and a red Full Bleed T-shirt with a big white fingerprint on it.

“Can you freakin’ believe it?” he said. “Dad asked Mom if I’d visit him in jail.”

“You’re not going to?”

“Are you kidding me? I told him I never wanted to see him again.”

“He loves you. You should know that. He may be a flawed person, but he does love you.”

“So? I don’t really care. He cheats on Mom, and he lies to us and almost gets us killed?” He shook his head. “And now I don’t think Mom can afford to send me to St. Greg’s anymore.”

“I thought you hated the place.”

“I never said that.”

I shrugged. I didn’t feel much like arguing.

“And we don’t even get any of that money he stole. If you hadn’t had him arrested, we could be rich .”

“Yeah,” I said. “Justice sucks sometimes. I get that.”

He glared at me.

“It’s like Batman,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Well, think about it. Batman these days, he’s an angst-ridden vigilante, right? Dark and brooding and tortured. He has these inner demons.”

He looked at me in surprise. “You’ve read The Dark Knight Returns ?”

“Nah. Saw the movies. But when I was a kid, Batman was this really cool superhero. He was the Caped Crusader. He was millionaire Bruce Wayne, and he had the Batmobile and the Bat Cave, and he was always saving Gotham City from the Joker or the Riddler. He always won . The bad guys always ended up behind bars.”

“You’re talking about the TV show.”

“Point is, real-life justice is a little more complicated. More like the dark and brooding Batman, you could say.”

“Yeah, well, you’re totally wrong. Batman was originally this, like, tragic figure. Bruce Wayne’s parents are killed in a holdup, and he makes this solemn promise on their grave to rid the city of crime.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. I should have known better than to talk comic books with Gabe. “What I’m trying to tell you is, the right thing isn’t always the easy thing.”