Harlan Coben: Hold Tight

“I’m not burying my head anywhere.”

Her voice was almost a plea. “You want the easy way out. You’re hoping, what, that Adam will just outgrow this?”

“That’s not what I’m saying. But think about it. This is new technology. He puts his secret thoughts and emotions down there. Would you have wanted your parents to know all that about you?”

“It’s a different world now,” Tia said.

“You sure about that?”

“What’s the harm? We’re his parents. We want what’s best for him.”

Mike shook his head again. “You don’t want to know a person’s every thought,” he said. “Some things should remain private.”

She took her hand off him. “You mean, a secret?”

“Yes.”

“Are you saying that a person is entitled to their secrets?”

“Of course they are.”

She looked at him then, in a funny way, and he didn’t much like it.

“Do you have secrets?” she asked him.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Do you have secrets from me?” Tia asked again.

“No. But I don’t want you to know my every thought either.”

“And I don’t want you to know mine.”

They both stopped, on that line, before she stepped back.

“But if it’s a choice of protecting my son or giving him his privacy,” Tia said, “I’m going to protect him.”

The discussion-Mike didn’t want to classify it as an argument- lasted for a month. Mike tried to coax his son back to them. He invited Adam to the mall, the arcade, concerts even. Adam refused. He stayed out of the house until all hours, curfews be damned. He stopped coming down to eat dinner. His grades slipped. They managed to get him to visit a therapist once. The therapist thought that there might be depression issues. He suggested perhaps medication, but he wanted to see Adam again first. Adam pointedly refused.

When they insisted that he go back to the therapist, Adam ran away for two days. He wouldn’t answer his mobile phone. Mike and Tia were frantic. It ended up that he’d just been hiding at a friend’s house.

“We’re losing him,” Tia had argued again.

And Mike said nothing.

“In the end, we’re just their caretakers, Mike. We get them for a little while and then they live their lives. I just want him to stay alive and healthy until we let him go. The rest will be up to him.”

Mike nodded. “Okay, then.”

“You sure?” she said.

“No.”

“Neither am I. But I keep thinking about Spencer Hill.”

He nodded again.

“Mike?”

He looked at her. She gave him the crooked smile, the one he’d first seen on a cold autumn day at Dartmouth. That smile had cork-screwed into his heart and stayed there.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you too.”

And with that they agreed to spy on their oldest child.

THERE had been no truly damaging or insightful instant message or e-mail at first. But that changed in a big way three weeks later.

The intercom in Tia’s cubicle buzzed.

A brash voice said, “My office now.”

It was Hester Crimstein, the big boss at her law firm. Hester always buzzed her underlings herself, never had her assistant do it. And she always sounded a little pissed off, as though you should have already known that she wanted to see you and magically materialized without her having to waste time with the intercom.

Six months ago, Tia had gone back to work as an attorney for the law firm of Burton and Crimstein. Burton had died years ago. Crimstein, the famed and much-feared lawyer Hester Crimstein, was very much alive and in charge. She was known internationally as an expert on all things criminal and even hosted her own show on truTV with the clever moniker Crimsteinon Crime .

Hester Crimstein snapped-her voice was always a snap-through the intercom, “Tia?”

“I’m on my way.”

She jammed the E-SpyRight report into her top drawer and started down the row with the glass-enclosed offices on one side, the ones for the senior partners with the bright sunshine, and the airless cubicles on the other. Burton and Crimstein had a total caste system with one ruling entity. There were senior partners, sure, but Hester Crimstein would not allow any of them to add their name to the masthead.

Tia reached the spacious corner office suite. Hester’s assistant barely glanced up when she walked by. Hester’s door was open. It usually was. Tia stopped and knocked on the wall next to the door.

Hester walked back and forth. She was a small woman, but she didn’t look small. She looked compact and powerful and sort of dangerous. She didn’t pace, Tia thought, so much as stalk. She gave off heat, a sense of power.

“I need you to take a deposition in Boston on Saturday,” she said without preamble.

Tia stepped into the room. Hester’s hair was always frizzy, a sort of bottled off-blond. She somehow gave you the sense that she was harried and yet totally together. Some people command your atten- tion-Hester Crimstein actually seemed to take you by the lapels and shake you and make you stare into her eyes.

“Sure, no problem,” Tia said. “Which case?”

“Beck.”

Tia knew it.

“Here’s the file. Bring that computer expert with you. The guy with the awful posture and the nightmare-inducing tattoos.”

“Brett,” Tia said.

“Right, him. I want to go through the guy’s personal computer.”

Hester handed it to her and resumed her pacing.

Tia glanced at it. “This is the witness at the bar, right?”

“Exactly. Fly up tomorrow. Go home and study.”

“Okay, no problem.”

Hester stopped pacing. “Tia?”

Tia had been paging through the file. She was trying to keep her mind on the case, on Beck and this deposition and the chance to go to Boston. But that damn E-SpyRight report kept barging in. She looked at her boss.

“Something on your mind?” Hester asked.

“Just this deposition.”

Hester frowned. “Good. Because this guy is a lying sack of donkey dung. You understand me?”

“Donkey dung,” Tia repeated.

“Right. He definitely didn’t see what he says he saw. Couldn’t have. You got me?”

“And you want me to prove that?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Just the opposite, in fact.”

Tia frowned. “I’m not following. You don’t want me to prove that he’s a lying sack of donkey dung?”

“Exactly.”

Tia gave a small shrug. “Care to elaborate?”

“I’d be delighted. I want you to sit there and nod sweetly and ask a million questions. I want you to wear something formfitting and maybe even low cut. I want you to smile at him as though you’re on a first date and you’re finding everything he says fascinating. There is to be no skepticism in your tone. Every word he says is the gospel truth.”

Tia nodded. “You want him to talk freely.”

“Yes.”

“You want it all on the record. His entire story.”

“Yes again.”

“So you can nail his sorry ass later in court.”

Hester arched an eyebrow. “And with the famed Crimstein panache.”

“Okay,” Tia said. “Got it.”

“I’m going to serve up his balls for breakfast. Your job, to keep within this metaphor, is to do the grocery shopping. Can you handle that?”

That report from Adam’s computer-how should she handle it? Get in touch with Mike, for one. Sit down, hash through it, figure their next best step…

“Tia?”

“I can handle it, yes.”

Hester stopped pacing. She took a step toward Tia. She was at least six inches shorter, but again it didn’t feel that way to Tia. “Do you know why I picked you for this task?”

“Because I’m a Columbia Law School grad, a damn fine attorney, and in the six months I’ve been here, you’ve barely given me work that would challenge a rhesus monkey?”