Harlan Coben - Hold Tight

He took another blow, tried to roll with it. He kicked out wildly. It was dark, the night filling with grunts of exertion. He reared his head back, tried to head-butt.

“Help!” Mike shouted. “Help! Police!”

He somehow scrambled to his feet. He couldn’t see faces. But there was more than one of them. More than two, he guessed. They all jumped him at the same time. He crashed against the Dumpsters. Bodies, including his, tumbled to the ground. Mike fought hard, but they were all over him now. He managed to scratch a face with his fingernails. His shirt got torn.

And then Mike saw a blade.

That froze him. For how long, he couldn’t say. But long enough. He saw the blade and he froze and then he felt a dull thud on the side of his head. He dropped back, his skull smacking the pavement. Someone pinned down his arms. Someone else got his legs. He felt a thud on his chest. Then the blows seemed to come from everywhere. Mike tried to move, tried to cover up, but his arms and legs wouldn’t obey.

He could feel himself slipping away. Surrendering.

The blows stopped. Mike felt the weight on his chest lessen. Someone had gotten up or been knocked off him. His legs were free.

Mike opened his eyes, but there were only shadows. A final kick, a toe shot, landed squarely on the side of his head. All became darkness until finally there was nothing at all.

AT three in the morning, Tia tried Mike’s phone yet again.

No answer.

The Boston Four Seasons was beautiful and she loved her room. Tia loved staying in fancy hotels-who didn’t? She loved the sheets and the room service and flipping the television by herself. She had worked hard until midnight, burying herself in preparation for to- morrow’s deposition. The cell phone sat in her pocket, set on vibrate. When it wouldn’t go off, Tia would pull it out and check the bars and make sure that she hadn’t maybe missed the vibration.

But no calls came in.

Where the hell was Mike?

She called him, of course. She called the house. She called Adam’s cell phone. Panic played at her fringes; she tried hard not to let it all the way in. Adam was one thing. Mike another. Mike was a grown man. He was ridiculously competent. That was one of the things that first attracted her to him. Antifeminist as that might sound, Mike Baye made her feel safe and warm and fully protected. He was a rock.

Tia wondered what to do.

She could get in the car and drive home. It would take about four hours, maybe five. She could be home by morning. But what exactly would she do when she arrived? Should she call the police-but would they listen so soon and really what would they do at this hour?

Three A.M. Only one person she could think to call.

His number was on her BlackBerry, though she had never actually used it. She and Mike shared a Microsoft Outlook program that contained one address and phone book, plus a calendar, for both of them. They synchronized their BlackBerrys with each other and in this way, the theory went, they would know each other’s appointments. It also meant that they would have all the other’s personal and business contact information.

And in that way, it showed they had no secrets, didn’t it?

She thought about that-about secrets and inner thoughts, about our need for them, and as a mother and wife, her fear of them. But there was no time now. She found the number and hit the SEND button.

If Mo had been asleep, he didn’t sound like it.

“Hello?”

“It’s Tia.”

“What’s wrong?”

She could hear the fear in his voice. The man had no wife, no kids. In many ways, he only had Mike. “Have you heard from Mike?”

“Not since about eight thirty.” Then he repeated: “What’s wrong?”

“He was trying to find Adam.”

“I know.”

“We spoke about that around nine, I guess. Haven’t heard a word since.”

“Did you call his cell?”

Tia now knew how Mike had felt when she’d asked him something equally idiotic. “Of course.”

“I’m getting dressed as we speak,” Mo said. “I’ll drive over and check the house. Do you still hide the key in that fake rock by that fence post?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, I’m on my way.”

“Do you think I should call the police?”

“Might as well wait until I get there. Twenty, thirty minutes tops. He might have just fallen asleep in front of the TV or something.”

“You believe that, Mo?”

“No. I’ll call you when I get there.”

He hung up. Tia swung her legs out of the bed. Suddenly the room had lost all appeal. She hated sleeping alone, even in deluxe hotels with high-thread-count sheets. She needed her husband next to her. Always. It was rare they spent nights apart and she missed him more than she wanted to say. Mike wasn’t necessarily a big man, but he was substantial. She liked the warmth of his body next to hers, the way he kissed her forehead whenever he got up, the way he’d rest his strong hand on her sleeping back.

She remembered one night when Mike was a little out of breath. After much prodding, he had admitted to feeling a tightness in his chest. Tia, who wanted to be strong for her man, nearly collapsed when she heard that. It had ended up being bad indigestion, but she had openly wept at just the thought. She pictured her husband clutching his chest and falling to the floor. And she knew. She knew then and there that someday it could very well happen, maybe not for thirty or forty or fifty years, but it would happen, that or something equally horrible, because that was what happens to every couple, happy or not, and that she simply would not survive if it happened to him. Sometimes, late at night, Tia would watch him sleep and whisper to both Mike and the powers that be: “Promise me I’ll go first. Promise me.”

Call the police.

But what would they do? Nothing yet. On TV the FBI rushes out. Tia knew from a recent update on criminal law that an adult over eighteen could not even be declared missing this close in, unless she had serious evidence that he’d been kidnapped or was in physical danger.

She had nothing.

Besides, if she called now, the best-case scenario was that they’d have an officer stop by the house. Mo might be there. There could be some sort of misunderstanding.

So wait the twenty or thirty minutes.

Tia wanted to call Guy Novak’s house and talk to Jill, just to hear her voice. Something to reassure. Damn. Tia had been so happy about this trip and getting into this luxurious room and throwing on the big terry cloth robe and ordering room service and now all she wanted was the familiar. This room had no life, no warmth. The loneliness made her shiver. Tia got up and lowered the air-conditioning.

It was all so damn fragile, that was the thing. Obvious, sure, but for the most part we block-we refuse to think about how easily our lives could be torn asunder, because when we recognize it, we lose our minds. The ones who are fearful all the time, who need to medicate to function? It is because they understand the reality, how thin the line is. It isn’t that they can’t accept the truth-it’s that they can’t block it.

Tia could be that way. She knew it and fought hard to keep it at bay. She suddenly envied her boss, Hester Crimstein, for not having anybody. Maybe that was better. Sure, on a larger scale, it was healthy to have people out there you cared about more than yourself. She knew that. But then there was the abject fear you would lose it. They say possessions own you. Not so. Loved ones own you. You are forever held hostage once you care so much.

The clock wouldn’t move.

Tia waited. She flicked on the television. Infomercials dominated the late-night landscape. Commercials for training and jobs and schools-the only people who watch TV at this crazy hour, she guessed, had none of those things.