Linwood Barclay - Fear The Worst

I think all the adults exchanged glances at that one. Even Bob and I.

“It was no big deal,” Evan persisted.

“Did you sleep with my daughter?” Susanne asked, point-blank.

Ordinarily, that might have been something I’d have wanted to know myself, but I was worried about more than my seventeen-year-old daughter’s sex life.

“I don’t believe this,” Evan said. “What a fucking question.”

“How about answering it?” Susanne asked.

“We only, we just, you know, okay, we made out a bit.”

“Great,” Bob said.

“She’s not my sister,” Evan said. “Just because you and my dad are getting it on doesn’t mean I’m messing around with my sister.”

“You stupid idiot,” Bob said to him. He reached over and grabbed Evan by the scruff of the neck. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“You moved me into the house with her!” he shouted into his father’s face, like it was his fault. On this, we were more or less on the same page. “What, you think I wasn’t going to notice?”

I struggled to my feet and looked at Susanne, but she was avoiding me. Then, to Bob’s son, I said, struggling to make my voice as calm as possible, “Evan, I can’t pretend not to care about what you and Syd may have been up to. Any other time, I’d want to kick your ass across this lot.”

Bob, perhaps calmed by the even tone of my voice, if not the words, released his hold on Evan.

I continued, “But the only thing that interests me right now is finding Sydney. We now know you’ve been less than honest about how well you two were getting along. Okay. Now we want to know if you’ve been less than honest about where she may be.”

“I swear I-”

“Shut up,” I said. “If you’re not straight with me, right now, right here, I’m calling Detective Jennings and turning it over to her.”

“Honest, I don’t-”

“Tell him,” Bob said. “Tell him what you know.”

All eyes were on Evan. “She was just-first of all, she didn’t like her job.”

“What job?” I asked. “Where was she working? What was she doing?”

“She told me she was working at the hotel. Same as she told you,” Evan said, looking at me.

“What didn’t she like?”

“She said she wanted to quit, see if she could get her job back at the dealership.”

“What else?” I said. “What else did she say?”

Evan swallowed. “She was also kind of worried about another thing.”

Again, we waited for Evan to spit it out. Finally, he said, “She thought she might be late.”

“Late?” I said.

“Oh shit,” said Susanne.

And then she collapsed.

BOB AND I SHOUTED “SUZE!” at the same moment. But even after having been kicked in the nuts, he was down on his knees more quickly than I. He whipped off his sports jacket, folded it over, and slipped it under Susanne’s head.

“Are you okay?” he asked urgently. “Suze?”

It was as though she’d simply crumpled. Her leg or hip or something had momentarily given out and she’d dropped to the pavement like a marionette suddenly without strings. She’d managed to put a hand out to keep her head from striking the ground with any force.

Bob looked at his son and barked, “Call an ambulance!”

Evan didn’t seem to know which way to turn first, whether to grab a cell from one of us or run back to the office. Before he could get his feet to move, Susanne breathed, “No, no, it’s okay.”

“Don’t move,” Bob said. He was bent over, cradling her head with his arm. “What’s happened? One of the fractures give way or what?”

“Honestly,” she said. “It’s okay. I just kind of slipped. I don’t think I’ve broken anything again.”

I stood, transfixed, looking not at Susanne, but at Bob. He was focused entirely on my ex-wife. Propping his back against a car, he had lifted Susanne enough to take her entirely into his arms.

“You sure?” he asked, his voice shaking. “That was a nasty fall.”

“Really,” she whispered.

And then I thought I saw Bob’s chin quiver as he struggled to contain his emotions.

“Why don’t I get some water?” I said.

“I can do that,” Evan said, and ran.

“I’m just an idiot,” Susanne said. “I should have been using the cane.”

I found it on the ground, grabbed it, and handed it to Bob.

Bob, still cradling her, said, “It’s okay. There was so much going on.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, not just to Susanne, but to both of them. “I kind of stirred things up.”

Susanne bristled. “You did not get me all stirred up. My leg gave out. Simple as that. Maybe the two of you can stop acting like squabbling children for a minute and help me up.”

We did. We had her on her feet just as Evan returned with a bottled water he’d just cracked the cap on. He handed it to Susanne and she took a sip.

“Thanks,” she said, getting hold of the cane and testing her weight on it. “I’m okay.”

We all took a moment. Then Susanne said, “We’re not done here.” She had Evan in her sights again. “Talk to me.”

The implications of Evan’s last remark, that Syd was worried about “being late,” had finally sunk in. I wanted to hear what he had to say.

Evan kept his head low, like he was a puppy about to be hit with a rolled-up newspaper. “It was just the one time,” he said.

“That’ll do it,” Bob said.

“But like, a couple of days before she disappeared, she got one of those get-pregnant-at-home kits,” Evan said.

“Home pregnancy test,” Susanne said, her voice weighed down with dread.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s it.”

“What did it show?” Susanne asked.

“I think it was positive,” Evan said.

“Oh God,” Susanne said.

“Or negative,” Evan said. “Which is the one if you’re not pregnant?”

“Negative,” Susanne said.

“Are you sure?” he asked. Susanne glared at him. “I was thinking, it’d be positive to find out you’re not pregnant.”

“Was she pregnant or not?” my ex-wife asked.

“I’m not really sure,” he said. “I wasn’t with her when she did the test. You have to go into the bathroom and pee on-”

“I know how it works,” Susanne said.

“So she went and did it and she told me everything was okay, I didn’t have to worry about a thing. So I said, so, you’re not having a baby? And she said don’t worry about it, everything was fine.”

“Did she actually say she wasn’t pregnant?” Susanne asked.

Evan’s shoulders went up half an inch and dropped. “I think that’s what she meant. I kind of didn’t push it, you know? In case she told me something I didn’t want to hear.”

Susanne and I exchanged looks. This wasn’t the sort of thing you made assumptions about.

“When was this?” I asked.

“Just before she came to stay with you for the summer,” he said to me.

“ Where did this happen?” Susanne wanted to know.

Evan kept looking down. “At Dad’s. You guys were both here on the lot that night.”

“You’re really something else,” Bob said. “We welcome Susanne and her daughter into our home and this is what you do?”

“Hold on,” I said. “Let’s not get sidetracked. We can all have a chat later about what Sydney and Evan did, but what matters now is finding Syd. When we get her home, when we know she’s safe, there’ll be plenty of time for lectures on all this.”

I took a couple of deep breaths. “Let’s get back to the job thing,” I said to Evan. “Why wasn’t she happy?”

“Like I said, she didn’t really go into it. She just said the job made her sad. She said the people there, lots of them wouldn’t talk to her. It’s like they were scared all the time. It was creepy.”