Linwood Barclay - Fear The Worst

“I know. I’d just slow you down. I just hope… I hope I haven’t fucked something up permanent. The hip’s killing me, and the knee still hurts like a son of a bitch.”

“It just takes time.”

“Thanks for not rubbing it in.”

“Rubbing what in?”

“About Bob, about my doing a stupid thing like parasailing, thinking I’m eighteen or something. It shows a lot of restraint, not making wisecracks about it.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m not thinking them,” I said. She laughed softly. When she didn’t say anything for a moment, I said, “Suze.”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“What’s going on? With Evan?”

“I really can’t get into it, Tim. I mean, he’s Bob son. What am I going to say?”

“I can tell something’s going on. When he came out of the office, he was furious.”

“He’s… he’s a good kid, mostly.”

“Mostly.”

“He’s just… He hardly ever comes out of his room. He’s on the computer all the time.”

“Kids do that, talking to their friends.”

“No,” she said quietly. “It’s something else.”

“Porn,” I said. “He’s whacking off to porn.”

“No,” Susanne said, stretching the word out, wondering. “I don’t think it’s that either. I think it’s something… worse.”

“Have you talked to Bob about this?”

“I’ve told him… that there are things I’ve noticed.”

“What? What have you noticed?”

“I think Evan’s stealing.”

“The petty cash,” I said. “And you mentioned your watch went missing, and money from your purse.”

“All of that. Bob says I’m just stressed out, that it’s making me absentminded, forgetful.”

“You think he’s right?”

“I think he’s full of shit. And the watch came back. I know exactly where it was, in my drawer, and it was gone. And this morning, it was back.”

“What do you make of that?”

“I think Evan might have pawned it. And I think Bob bought it back.”

“He’s covering for him.”

“Bob’s very defensive about Evan.”

“Move out, Suze,” I said. “Get out of there. Go back to your own house.”

She shot back, “Oh yeah, that’s the answer. Don’t try to work things out, just wash my hands of them. Is that what you’d like?”

“You have enough to worry about. You don’t need to be living under the same roof with some kid who’s stealing from you.”

“I can’t talk about this. I can’t. Just find Sydney.”

“Okay,” I said.

“You know,” she said, “I really blew it with you.”

I didn’t say anything. I was watching one of the terminal clocks. My flight was due to board shortly.

“I never should have pushed you,” she said. “Our life was good.”

“I know.”

“I got caught up in the whole… I thought, if we had more, that’d be good for all of us, right? I mean, sure, I like nice things, I admit that. I was thinking about myself, but I also believed that what I wanted would be good for all of us, good for Sydney. You’d make it big, we could get her nice things, a bigger room, a top-notch college, a better future, you know?”

“Sure.”

“So I pushed you. But it wasn’t what you wanted. It wasn’t what you were good at. I should have been smart enough to see that from the beginning.”

“Suze, you don’t have to-”

“And then it all went to shit. I pushed you because I wanted more for us, for Sydney, and ended up with so much less. Sometimes, I think she hates us. Hates me. For letting things fall apart. I keep thinking that maybe, if we’d stayed together, this never would have happened. Syd wouldn’t have left.”

“There’s no way to know that.”

“Somehow, things would have been different.”

“I think they’re calling my flight,” I said.

“You’ll call.”

“I promise.”

THE THING ABOUT DRIVING IS, you feel like you’re doing something to get yourself there. You’re in charge. You’re in control. It helps funnel the tension. You’re reading the map, finding a different radio station, looking for an opening so you can pass a pickup driven by an old guy in a hat.

But in a plane, you just sit there and slowly go out of your mind.

Of course, driving to Seattle was not an option. A six-hour flight was preferable to a three-day drive. But the fact that I could do nothing more than look out the window, leaf through my magazines, or watch in-flight entertainment that, even with headphones, could barely be heard over the drone of the engines made the trip interminable.

But it did finally end. While I may have been screaming in my head while I waited for everyone in the seats ahead of me to get their luggage together and exit the plane, I managed to keep my cool. Once I was off the plane, I powered up my cell phone and checked to see whether I had any messages.

I didn’t.

I found my way to the taxi stand, got in the back of one, and said to the driver, “Second Chance.” I offered him the address, but he waved me off.

“I’ve been driving a cab in Seattle for twenty-two years,” he said. “I know my way around.”

I settled into the seat, gazed out at the unfamiliar territory, feeling like a stranger in a strange land.

I’m coming, Syd. I’m coming.

THE TAXI WAS HEADING INTO DOWNTOWN in the middle of the afternoon commute home. The regular traffic would have been bad enough, but we got bogged down where three lanes were being narrowed to one for an accident. Just before six, we were pulling up in front of the Second Chance shelter, a light rain coming down. I’d lost all sense of direction coming in, couldn’t guess north from south, east from west, especially with no sun visible.

I paid the cabby and grabbed my bag. I was in an older part of town. Used-record shops, discount clothing stores, pawnshops. This must have been the only block in Seattle where there wasn’t a Starbucks. Second Chance looked more like a diner than a refuge. There were tables pushed up to the windows, young people in scruffy clothes seated at them, drinking coffee out of cardboard cups. They had an aimless look about them, as though they’d already been sitting there a long time, that if I came back a couple of hours from now they’d still be there.

Already I was looking. Scanning the sidewalk in both directions, searching the faces. Satisfied that Syd wasn’t hanging around the street, just waiting for me to show up, I entered Second Chance.

Once inside, I started doing the same thing. I scanned. A couple of dozen teens-some actually looked older than that, late twenties maybe, even one who could have been in his early thirties-were milling about, but none of them was Syd. They seemed to sense that they were being studied, and several of them subtly turned their backs to me.

I was expecting something like a hotel front desk, I suppose, but what I found off in the corner of the room was a door resting on two sawhorses, and sitting behind it, peering through wire-rimmed glasses at a computer, was a man in his late thirties, prematurely balding but with enough hair at the back to make a short ponytail, dressed in a plaid shirt and jeans.

“Excuse me,” I said.

He held up one finger, resumed typing something, then hit, with some fanfare, one button. “Send,” he said. He turned in his chair and said, “Yeah?”

“My name is Tim Blake,” I said. “I just flew in from Connecticut.”

“Good for you,” he said.

I wasn’t in the mood for attitude, but pressed on. “Is Yolanda around?”

“Beats me,” he said. “Who’s Yolanda?”

“She works here,” I said.

“News to me.” He shrugged, as if to say, So what if I don’t know who works here? “Is there something I can do for you?”