Harlan Coben - Don’t Let Go

First things first. Make copies. Put the original in a safe place.

I run it through my head, try to see how this all fits together. The old Nike base stayed under government control. It pretended to be some kind of harmless agriculture center so as to hide its real purpose. Okay, I get all that. I even get that you guys saw something that night that could open the place up to public scrutiny.

I might even be able to take it a step further. I might even get why they — and by “they” I just mean the “bad guys” working at the base — would want to silence you and Diana, even though I didn’t hear Diana on the tape. Was she there? I don’t know. But either way, the two of you ended up dead.

Question: Why would the others still be alive?

Possible answer: “They” didn’t know about Rex, Hank, and Beth. “They” only knew about you and Diana. Okay, that makes a modicum of sense. Not much. But I’ll take a modicum. And I can add Maura into this equation. Somehow “they” knew about Maura too. That’s why she ran and hid. On the tape, you and Maura are clearly the leaders. So maybe you two went back and did something careless. You got caught. She ran.

That all makes some sense.

But again: What about the others? Rex and Hank and Beth continued their lives. None of them hid. Maybe after fifteen years they started looking again. Maybe something happened after fifteen years so that suddenly they did know.

Like what?

No idea. But maybe Augie was onto something when he wondered about Tom Stroud. Maybe I need to figure out when exactly Tom Stroud came back to Westbridge.

Enough speculating. I’m still missing something. And there is something else I need to do right now.

Confront Ellie.

It can’t be a coincidence that Maura’s mother came to me via Ellie. Ellie knows something. This realization is one I half want to ignore. I’ve taken enough blows today, thank you very much, but if I can’t trust Ellie — if Ellie lied to me and doesn’t have my back — then where am I?

I take a deep breath and open the workshop door. The first sounds I hear are Leah’s and Kelsi’s laughter. I realize I’m making this family seem somewhat unreal, a little too perfect, but this is what I see. I once asked Ellie how she and Bob did it, and she said, “We’ve both been through some wars, so now we fight to preserve this.” Maybe I understand, but I’m not sure. Ellie’s parents’ late-in-life divorce was hard on her. Maybe that’s part of it, I don’t know. Or maybe we don’t know anybody that well.

I look for the seams in Ellie and Bob’s life. Just because I can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there. And just because Ellie and Bob may hide them doesn’t make them any less wonderful or human.

Dad’s quote: Every person has hopes and dreams.

I head into the kitchen, but Ellie isn’t there. There is an open seat. Bob turns to me and says, “Ellie had to run out. She left you a plate.”

Out the window, I see Ellie heading to her car. I make a quick excuse and sprint after her. She’s opening her car door and readying to slide in when I shout, “Do you know where Maura is?”

That stops her. Ellie turns toward me. “No.”

I meet her eyes. “To reach me, her mother came through you.”

“Yes.”

“Why you, Ellie?”

“I promised her I wouldn’t say anything.”

“Who?”

“Maura.”

I know that name is coming, and it still punches me in the teeth. “You” — it takes me a second — “you promised Maura?”

My mobile rings. It’s Augie. I don’t answer. Whatever happens now — whatever Ellie tells me — I know nothing will be the same between us anymore. There is very little in my world that keeps me grounded. I have no family. I let very few people into my world.

The person who is dearest to me just pulled the life rug, if you will, out from under me.

“I have to go,” Ellie says. “There’s an emergency at the center.”

“All these years,” I say. “You lied to me.”

“No.”

“But you never told me.”

“I made a promise.”

I try to keep the hurt out of my voice. “I thought you were my best friend.”

“I am. But being your friend doesn’t mean I betray everyone else.”

My mobile keeps buzzing. “How could you keep something like this from me?”

“We don’t tell each other everything,” she says.

“What are you talking about? I trust you with my life.”

“But you don’t tell me everything, do you, Nap?”

“Of course I do.”

“Bullshit.” Ellie’s voice comes out as a surprise whisper-scream, one of those things adults do when they’re angry but don’t want to wake the kids. “You keep plenty from me.”

“What are you talking about?”

Something flashes in her eyes. “You want to tell me about Trey?”

I am about to say Who? That’s how focused I am on this investigation, into the possibility of discovering the truth about that night and feeling betrayed by, of all people, the woman who is closest to me. But then, of course, I remember the baseball bat and the beating.

Ellie stares hard at me.

“I didn’t lie to you,” I say.

“You just didn’t tell me.”

I say nothing.

“You don’t think I know it was you who put Trey in the hospital?”

“It has nothing to do with you,” I say.

“I’m complicit.”

“No, you’re not. It’s on me.”

“Are you really that dense? There’s a line between wrong and right, Nap. You drag me across it. You break the law.”

“To punish slime,” I say. “To help a victim. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be doing?”

Ellie shakes her head, her anger flushing her cheeks. “You don’t get it, do you? When the police come around because they figure there might be a connection between an injured man and a battered woman, I have to lie to them. You know that, right? So like it or not, I’m complicit. You involve me, and you don’t have the decency to face me with the truth.”

“I don’t say anything to keep you safe.”

Ellie shakes her head. “Are you sure that’s it, Nap?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Maybe you don’t tell me because I’d stop you. Maybe you don’t tell me because what you do is wrong. I set up that shelter to help the abused, not to go vigilante on the abusers.”

“It’s not on you,” I say again. “I’m the one who makes that call.”

“We all make calls.” Her voice is quieter now. “You made the call that Trey deserved a beating. I made the call to keep my word to Maura.”

I shake my head as my phone starts up. It’s Augie again.

“You can’t keep this from me, Ellie.”

“Let it go,” she says.

“What?”

“You didn’t tell me about Trey to protect me.”

“So?”

“So maybe I’m doing the same for you.”

The phone still rings. I have to take it. As I put it to my ear, Ellie jumps into the car. I’m about to stop her, but then I notice that Bob is standing by the door, watching with a funny look on his face.

It’ll have to wait.

“What?” I shout into the phone.

“I finally got hold of Andy Reeves,” Augie tells me.

The “agriculture” commander at the military base. “And?”

“You know the Rusty Nail Tavern?”

“That’s a dive bar in Hackensack, right?”

“Used to be. Meet him there in an hour.”

I copy the old videotape in the least-tech but fastest way possible. I simply play it on the little camera screen while recording it with my smartphone. The quality is not as terrible as I thought it would be, but I won’t be winning any cinematography awards either. I upload a copy of the video to my cloud, and then, to be on the safe side, I email it out to another one of my email addresses.