Harlan Coben - Gone for Good

The Ghost shook his head. "I don't want to talk about that."

"You never have."

"That's right."

"Why?"

He did not answer the question directly. "My old man found out about us playing with the gun," he said. "He beat me pretty good."

"He did that a lot."

"Yes."

"Have you ever sought revenge on him?" McGuane asked.

"On my father? No. He was too pitiful to hate. He never got over my mother walking out on us. He always thought she'd come back. He used to prepare for it. When he drank, he'd sit alone on the couch and talk to her and laugh with her and then he'd start sobbing. She broke his heart. I've hurt men, Philip. I've seen men beg to die. But I don't think I ever heard anything as pitiful as my father sobbing for my mother."

From the floor, Joshua Ford made a low groan. They both ignored him.

"Where is your father now?" McGuane asked.

" Cheyenne, Wyoming. He dried out. He found a good woman. He's a religious nut now. Traded alcohol for God one addiction for another."

"You ever talk to him?

The Ghost's voice was soft. "No."

They drank in silence.

"What about you, Philip? You weren't poor. Your parents weren't abusive."

"Just parents," McGuane agreed.

"I know your uncle was mobbed up. He got you into the business. But you could have gone straight. Why didn't you?"

McGuane chuckled.

"What?"

"We're more different than I thought."

"How's that?"

"You regret it," McGuane said. "You do it, you get a thrill from it, you're good at it. But you see yourself as evil." He sat up suddenly. "My God."

"What?"

"You're more dangerous than I thought, John."

"How so?"

"You're not back for Ken," McGuane said. And then, his voice dropping: "You're back for that little girl, aren't you?"

The Ghost took a deep sip. He chose not to answer.

"Those choices and alternate universes you were talking about," McGuane went on. "You think if Ken died that night, it would all be different."

"It would indeed be an alternate universe," the Ghost said.

"But maybe not a better one," McGuane countered. Then he added, "So what now?"

"We'll need Will's cooperation. He's the only one who can draw Ken out."

"He won't help."

The Ghost frowned. "You, of alt people, know better." "His father?" McGuane asked. "No."

"His sister?"

"She's too far away," the Ghost said. "But you have an idea?" "Think," the Ghost said.

McGuane did. And when he saw it, his face broke into a smile. "Katy Miller."

Pistillo kept his eyes on me, waiting for my reaction to his bombshell. But I recovered fast. Maybe this was beginning to make sense.

"You captured my brother?"

"Yes."

"And you extradited him back to the United States?"

"Yes."

"So how come it wasn't in the papers?" I asked.

"We kept it under wraps," Pistillo said.

"Because you were afraid McGuane would find out?"

"For the most part."

"What else?"

He shook his head.

"You still wanted McGuane," I said.

"Yes."

"And my brother could still deliver."

"He could help."

"So you cut another deal with him."

"We pretty much reinstated the old one."

I saw a clearing in the haze. "And you put him in the witness protection program?"

Pistillo nodded. "Originally we kept him in a hotel under protective custody. But by then a lot of what your brother had was old. He would still be a key witness probably the most important we'd have but we needed more time. We couldn't keep him in a hotel forever, and he didn't want to stay. Ken hired a big-time lawyer, and we worked out a deal. We found him a place in New Mexico. He had to report to one of our agents on a daily basis. We would call him to testify when we needed him. Any break in that deal, and the charges, including the murder charge from Julie Miller, could be reinstated."

"So what went wrong?"

"McGuane found out about it."

"How?"

"We don't know. A leak maybe. Whatever, McGuane sent out two goons to kill your brother."

"The two dead men at the house," I said.

"Yes."

"Who killed them?"

"We think your brother. They underestimated him. He killed them and ran again."

"And now you want Ken back again."

His gaze wandered over to the photographs on the refrigerator door. "Yes."

"But I don't know where he is."

"I know that now. Look, maybe we screwed up here. I don't know. But Ken needs to come in. We'll protect him, around-the-clock surveillance, a safe house, whatever he wants. That's the carrot. The stick is that his prison sentence is subject to his cooperation."

"So what do you want from me?"

"He'll reach out to you eventually."

"What makes you so sure?"

He sighed and stared at the glass.

"What makes you so sure?" I asked again.

"Because," Pistillo said, "Ken called you already."

A block of lead formed in my chest.

"There were two calls placed from a pay phone near your brother's house in Albuquerque to your apartment," he went on. "One was made about a week before the two goons were killed. The other, right after."

I should have been shocked, but I wasn't. Maybe it finally fit, only I didn't like how.

"You didn't know about the calls, did you, Will?"

I swallowed and thought about who, besides me, might answer the phone if Ken had indeed called.

Sheila.

"No," I said. "I didn't know about them."

He nodded. "We didn't know that when we first approached you. It was natural to figure you were the one who answered the phone."

I looked at him. "How does Sheila Rogers fit into this?"

"Her fingerprints were found at the murder scene."

"I know that."

"So let me ask you, Will. We knew your brother had called you. We knew your girlfriend had visited Ken's house in New Mexico. If you were us, what would you have concluded?"

"That I was somehow involved."

"Right. We figured that Sheila was your go-between or something, that you'd been helping your brother out. And when Ken ran off, we figured you two knew where he was."

"But now you know better."

"That's correct."

"So what do you suspect now?"

"The same thing you do, Will." His voice was soft, and damn him I heard pity in it. "That Sheila Rogers used you. That she worked for McGuane. That she's the one who tipped him off about your brother. And that when the hit went wrong, McGuane had her killed."

Sheila. Her betrayal pierced me deep, struck bone. To defend her now, to think I had been anything more to her than a dupe, would be to turn a blind eye in the worst way. You would have to be naive beyond Pollyanna, to have rose-tinted glasses melded onto your face, to not be able to see the truth.

"I'm telling you all this, Will, because I was afraid you were about to do something stupid."

"Like talk to the press," I said.

"Yes and because I want you to understand. Your brother had two choices. Either McGuane and the Ghost find him and kill him, or we find him and protect him."

"Right," I said. "And you guys have done a bang-up job of that so far."

"We're still his best option," he countered. "And don't think McGuane will stop with your brother. Do you really think that attack on Katy Miller was a coincidence? For all your sakes, we need your cooperation."

I said nothing. I could not trust him. I knew that. I could not trust anyone. That was all I had learned here. But Pistillo was especially dangerous. He had spent eleven years looking into his sister's shattered face. That kind of thing twists you. I knew about stuff like that, about wanting to the point of distortion. Pistillo had made it clear that he would stop at nothing to get McGuane. He would sacrifice my brother. He had jailed me. And most of all, he had destroyed my family. I thought about my sister running off to Seattle. I thought about my mom, the Sunny smile, and realized that the man sitting in front of me, this man who claimed to be my brother's salvation, had smothered it away. He had killed my mother no one could convince me that the cancer was not somehow connected to what she went through, that her immune system had not been another victim of that horrible night and now he wanted me to help him.