Harlan Coben - Hold Tight

“No, Heritage.” Then he took one more swig and said to her, “You okay?”

“Me? Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Your eyes look red.”

“I’m fine.”

“And I saw those guys come by.”

He meant the FBI agents. They had come and asked questions about her practice, about Mike, about stuff that simply made no sense to her. Normally she would have talked to Herschel about it, but he seemed more concerned with preparing for the rest of his life without her.

“I thought you’d gone out,” she said.

“I stopped to pick up Ricky and doubled back down the street. They looked like cops or something.”

Ilene Goldfarb said nothing.

“Were they?”

“It’s not important. Don’t worry about it.”

He let it go, bounced the ball and himself out the door. Twenty minutes later, the phone rang. She glanced at the clock. Eight A.M. At this hour it had to be the service, though she wasn’t on call. The operators often made mistakes and routed the messages to the wrong doctor.

She checked the caller ID and saw the name LORIMAN.

Ilene picked up and said hello.

“It’s Susan Loriman,” the voice said.

“Yes, good morning.”

“I don’t want to talk to Mike about this”-Susan Loriman stopped as if searching for the right word-“this situation. About finding Lucas a donor.”

“I understand,” she said. “I have office hours on Tuesday, if you want-”

“Could you meet me today?”

Ilene was about to protest. The last thing right now she wanted to do was protect or even help a woman who had gotten herself into this kind of trouble. But this wasn’t about Susan Loriman, she reminded herself. It was about her son and Ilene’s patient, Lucas.

“I guess so, yes.”

TIA opened the door before Betsy Hill had a chance to knock and asked without preamble: “Do you know where Adam is?”

The question startled Betsy Hill. Her eyes widened and she stopped. She saw Tia’s face and quickly shook her head. “No,” she said, “I have no idea.”

“Then why are you here?”

Betsy Hill shook her head. “Adam is missing?”

“Yes.”

Betsy’s face lost color. Tia could only imagine what horrible memory this was conjuring up. Hadn’t Tia thought before about how similar this whole thing was to what happened to Spencer?

“Tia?”

“Yes.”

“Did you check the high school roof?”

Where Spencer was found.

There was no argument, no more discussion. Tia called out to Jill that she’d be right back-Jill would soon be old enough to leave alone for brief spells and it couldn’t be helped-and then both women ran toward Betsy Hill’s car.

Betsy drove. Tia sat frozen in the front passenger seat. They had driven two blocks when Betsy said, “I talked to Adam yesterday.”

Tia heard the words, but they didn’t fully reach her. “What?”

“Do you know about the memorial they did for Spencer on MySpace?”

Tia tried to swim through the haze, pay attention. The memorial site on MySpace. She remembered hearing about it a few months ago.

“Yes.”

“There was a new picture on it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It was taken right before Spencer died.”

“I thought he was alone the night he died,” Tia said.

“So did I.”

“I’m still not following.”

“I think,” Betsy Hill said, “that Adam was with Spencer that night.”

Tia turned to face her. Betsy Hill had her eyes on the road. “And you talked to him about this yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“In the lot after school.”

Tia remembered the instant messages with CeeJay8115:

What’s wrong?

His mother approached me after school.

Tia asked, “Why didn’t you come to me?”

“Because I didn’t want to hear your explanation, Tia,” Betsy said. There was an edge in her voice now. “I wanted to hear Adam’s.”

The high school, a sprawling edifice of numbing brick, loomed in the distance. Betsy had barely come to a stop when Tia was already out the door and sprinting toward the brick building. Spencer’s body, she remembered, had been found on one of the lower roofs, a well-known smoking hangout from way back when. There was a ledge by a window. The kids would hop up there and scale a gutter.

“Wait,” Betsy Hill called out.

But Tia was almost there. It was Saturday, but there were still plenty of cars in the lots. All SUVs and minivans. There were kids’ baseball games and soccer clinics. Parents stood on the sidelines clutching Starbucks cups, gabbing on cell phones, snapping photos with long-range lenses, fiddling with BlackBerrys. Tia had never liked going to Adam’s sporting events because as much as she didn’t want to, she ended up caring too much. She loathed those pushy parents who lived and breathed their child’s athletic prowess- found them both petty and pitiful-and wanted to be nothing like them. But when she watched her own son compete, she felt so much, worried so about Adam’s happiness, that his highs and lows wore her down.

Tia blinked away the tears and kept running. When she reached the ledge, she stopped short.

The ledge was gone.

“They destroyed it after Spencer was found,” Betsy said, coming up behind her. “They wanted to make sure that the kids couldn’t get up there anymore. I’m sorry. I forgot about that.”

Tia looked up. “Kids can always find a new way,” she said.

“I know.”

Tia and Betsy quickly searched for a new approach, couldn’t find any. They sprinted around to the front entrance. The door was locked, so they banged on it until a custodian with KARL stenciled onto his uniform appeared.

“We’re closed,” Karl said through the door’s glass window.

“We need to get to the roof,” Tia shouted.

“The roof?” He frowned. “What on earth for?”

“Please,” Tia said. “You have to let us in.”

The custodian’s gaze slid to the right and when he spotted Betsy Hill, a jolt tore through him. No doubt. He had recognized her. Without another word, he grabbed his keys and threw open the doors.

“This way,” he said.

They all ran. Tia’s heart pounded so hard that she was sure it would burst through her rib cage. Tears were still filling her eyes. Karl opened a door and pointed to the corner. There was a ladder attached to a wall, the kind of thing you normally associate with a submarine. Tia did not hesitate. She sprinted for it and began to climb. Betsy Hill was right behind her.

They reached the roof, but they were on the opposite side from where they needed to be. Tia sprinted over the tar and gravel with Betsy right behind her. The roofs were uneven. One time they had to jump down almost a full story. They both did it without hesitation.

“Around this corner,” Betsy called out.

They made the turn onto the right roof and pulled up.

There was no body.

That was the key thing. Adam was not up here. But someone had been.

There were broken beer bottles. There were cigarette butts and what looked like the remains of pot. What had they called those butts? Roaches. But that wasn’t what made Tia stay very still.

There were candles.

Dozens of them. Most were burnt down to a waxy mess. Tia went over and touched them. The residue had hardened on most, but one or two were still malleable, as if they had just been burnt down recently.

Tia turned. Betsy Hill stood there. She didn’t move. She didn’t cry. She just stood there and stared at the candles.

“Betsy?”

“That’s where they found Spencer’s body,” she said.

Tia squatted down, looked at the candles, knew that they looked familiar.