Harlan Coben - Hold Tight

“Rosemary?”

“Yes?”

“Something about your rap isn’t working with me,” Mike said.

“My rap?”

“Your sales pitch for this place. On one level it all makes sense.”

“And on another?”

He turned and looked at her straight on. “I think you’re full of crap. Where is my son?”

“You should leave now.”

“If you’re hiding him, I’m going to tear this place down brick by brick.”

“You’re now trespassing, Dr. Baye.” She looked down the corridor at the group of goths and gave a small nod. They shuffled toward Mike, surrounding him. “Please leave now.”

“Are you going to have your”-he made quote marks with his fin- gers-“ ‘facilitators’ toss me out?”

The tallest goth smirked and said, “Looks like you’ve already been tossed around, old man.”

The other goths giggled. There was a soft blend of black and pale and mascara and metal. They wanted so to be tough and they weren’t and maybe that made them that much scarier. That desperation. That want to be something that you are not.

Mike debated his next move. The tall goth was probably in his early twenties, lanky, big Adam’s apple. Part of Mike wanted to go for the sucker punch-just deck the son of a bitch, take out the leader, show them he meant business. Part of him wanted to go with a forearm blow to that bobbing throat, leave the goth with sore vocal chords for the next two weeks. But then the others would probably jump in. He might be able to take on two or three, but maybe not this many.

He was still mulling over his next move when something caught his eye. The heavy metal door buzzed open. Another goth entered. It wasn’t the black clothes that made Mike pull up this time.

It was the black eyes.

The new goth also had a strip of tape across his nose.

His recently broken nose, Mike thought.

Some of the goths came over to the broken-nose guy and offered up lazy high fives. They moved as though swimming through pancake syrup. Their voices too were slow, lethargic, nearly Prozac induced. “Yo, Carson,” one managed to utter. “Carson, my man,” croaked another. They lifted their hands to slap his back as if this took great effort. Carson accepted the attention as though he was used to it and it was his due.

“Rosemary?” Mike said.

“Yes.”

“You not only know my son, you know me.”

“How’s that?”

“You called me Dr. Baye.” He kept his eyes on the goth with the broken nose. “How did you know I was a doctor?”

He didn’t wait for the answer. There was no point. He hurried toward the door, bumping the tall goth as he did. The one with the broken nose- Carson -saw him coming. The black eyes widened. Carson stepped back outside. Mike moved faster now, grabbing the metal door before it closed all the way, heading outside.

Carson with the broken nose was maybe ten feet in front of him.

“Hey!” Mike called out.

The punk turned around. His jet-black hair dangled over one eye like a dark curtain.

“What happened to your nose?”

Carson tried to sneer through it. “What happened to your face?”

Mike hurried over to him. The other goths were out the door. It was six against one. In his peripheral vision he saw Mo get out of the car and come toward them. Six against two-but Mo was one of the two. Mike might just take those odds.

He moved up close, getting right into Carson ’s broken nose and said, “A bunch of limp-dick cowards jumped me when I wasn’t looking. That’s what happened to my face.”

Carson tried to keep the bravado in his voice. “That’s too bad.”

“Well, thanks, but here’s the kicker. Can you imagine being a big enough loser to be one of the cowards who jumped me and ended up with a broken nose?”

Carson shrugged. “Anyone could get in a lucky shot.”

“That’s true. So maybe the limp-dick loser would like another chance. Man-to-man. Face-to-face.”

The goth leader looked around now, making sure that he had his supporters in place. The other goths nodded back, adjusted metal bracelets, flexed their fingers, and made too much of an effort to look ready.

Mo walked over to the tall goth and grabbed him by the throat before anyone could move. The goth tried to spit out a noise, but Mo’s grip kept any sound from coming out.

“If anyone steps forward,” Mo said to him, “I hurt you. Not the guy who steps forward. Not the guy who interferes. You. I hurt you very badly, do you understand?”

The tall goth tried to nod.

Mike looked back at Carson. “You ready to go?”

“Hey, I don’t got no beef with you.”

“I have one with you.”

Mike pushed him, school yard style. Taunting. The other goths looked confused, unsure of their next move. Mike pushed Carson again.

“Hey!”

“What did you guys do to my son?”

“Huh? Who?”

“My son, Adam Baye. Where is he?”

“You think I know?”

“You jumped me last night, didn’t you? Unless you want the beating of a lifetime, you better talk.”

And then another voice said, “Everybody freeze! FBI!”

Mike looked up. It was the two men with baseball caps, the ones following them before. They held guns in one hand, badges in the other.

One of the officers said, “Michael Baye?”

“Yes?”

“Darryl LeCrue, FBI. We’re going to need you to come with us.”

AFTER saying good-bye to Betsy Hill, Tia closed the front door and headed upstairs. She crept down the corridor, past Jill’s room and into her son’s. She opened Adam’s desk drawer and started ri- fling through it. Putting that spy software on his computer had felt so right-so why didn’t this? Self-loathing rose up in her. It all felt wrong now, this whole invasion of privacy.

But she didn’t stop looking.

Adam was a kid. Still. The drawer hadn’t been cleaned out in forever, and there were remnants from past “Adam eras,” like something unearthed in an archeological dig. Baseball cards, Pokémon cards, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yamaguchi with a long-dead battery, Crazy Bones-all the “in” items that kids collected and then dispensed with. Adam had been better than most about the must-have items. He didn’t beg for more or immediately toss them aside.

She shook her head. They were still in his drawer.

There were pens and pencils and his old orthodontia retainer case (Tia had constantly nagged him about not wearing it), collector pins from a trip to Disney World four years ago, old ticket stubs from a dozen Rangers games. She picked up the stubs and remembered the blend of joy and concentration on his face when he watched hockey. She remembered the way he and his father would celebrate when the Rangers scored, standing and high-fiving and singing the dumb goal-scoring song, which basically consisted of going “oh, oh, oh” and clapping.

She started to cry.

Pull it together, Tia.

She turned to the computer. That was Adam’s world now. A kid’s room was about his computer. On that screen, Adam played the latest version of Halo online. He talked to both strangers and friends in chat rooms. He conversed with real and cyber buddies via Facebook and MySpace. He played a little online poker but got bored with it, which pleased Mike and Tia. There were funny briefs on YouTube and movie trailers and music videos and, yes, racy material. There were other adventure games or reality simulators or whatever you’d call them where a person could vanish in the same way Tia could vanish into a book, and it was so hard to know if it was a good thing or a bad thing.

The whole sex thing nowadays too-it drove her mad. You want to make it right and control the flow of information for your kids, but that was impossible. Flip on any morning radio and the jocks riffed on boobs and infidelity and orgasms. You open up any magazine or turn on any television show, well, to complain about the nonstop eyeful is passé. So how do you handle it? Do you tell your child it’s wrong? And what’s wrong exactly?