Harlan Coben - Don’t Let Go

I’m dying. I know that now. A primitive part of me has given up, surrendered, wishing death would speed along and get it over with. But it won’t. I flail. I convulse. I suffer.

I hallucinate.

I hallucinate a voice yelling to stop, to get away from him. If every part of me wasn’t starving for air, if every fiber of my being was concentrating on my need to escape this, I might say the voice was female. I can actually feel my eyes start to roll back in my head as I hear the blast from somewhere deep inside my brain.

And then I see a light.

I’m dying, Leo, dying and hallucinating, and the last thing I see is the most beautiful face imaginable.

Maura’s.

I’m unstrapped and rolled to my side.

I suck in air, paralyzed to do anything more than that for a while. I gasp and try not to swallow. Water pours out of my mouth and nostrils, pooling on the floor and diluting the crimson blood oozing out of Andy Reeves’s head. I don’t care about any of that. I just care about air.

It doesn’t take all that long for my strength to start returning. I look up to see who saved me, but maybe I am dead or my brain was starved of oxygen too long. Maybe I’m still being waterboarded and this is some weird state I’ve reached because the hallucination — no, mirage — is still there.

It’s Maura.

“We have to get out of here,” she says.

I still can’t believe what I’m seeing. “Maura? I...”

“Not now, Nap.”

And something about her using my name.

I’m trying to put it together, figure the next move, but all that “stay where you are” logic has flown out the window.

“Can you walk?”

I nod. By the time we hit the second step, I’m back in the moment. One thing at a time, I tell myself.

Get out of here. We reach the ground floor, and I realize we are in a dilapidated warehouse of some kind. I’m surprised by the silence, but it’s probably... what time is it? I met up with Reeves at midnight. So it has to be deep into the night or early morning.

“This way,” Maura says.

We head outside into the night sky. I notice that my breathing is a little funny, faster than normal, as though I’m still fearful the ability to do so might be taken away from me again. I spot his yellow Mustang in the corner, but Maura — I still can’t believe it’s Maura — is leading me toward another car. She hits the remote in her left hand. In her right I see the gun.

I get in the passenger side, she the driver’s. She starts up and tears in reverse. Two minutes later, we are heading north on the Garden State Parkway. I stare at her profile, and I don’t think I have ever seen anything that beautiful.

“Maura...?”

“It can wait, Nap.”

“Who killed my brother?”

I see a tear run down that beautiful cheek.

“I think,” Maura says, “maybe I did.”

We are back in Westbridge. Maura parks the car at the Benjamin Franklin Middle School lot.

“I need you to give me your phone,” she says to me.

I’m surprised to find it’s still in my pocket. I use my fingerprint to unlock it and hand it to her. Her thumbs dance across the screen.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re a cop,” she says. “You know that these phones can be traced, right?”

“Yes.”

“I’m loading on a sort of VPN antitracker, so it looks like you’re in another state.”

I didn’t know that kind of technology existed, but I’m not surprised. Her thumbs finish the dance. Then she hands me back the phone, opens the car door, gets out. I do the same.

“What are we doing here, Maura?”

“I want to see it again.”

“See what?”

But she starts toward the Path and I follow. I try not to stare as she moves, her walk still panther-like, but I can’t help it. As we head up into the darkness, she turns around and says, “God, how I’ve missed you,” and then turns back around and keeps walking.

Just like that.

I don’t react. I can’t react. But every part of me feels ripped open.

I hurry to catch up to her.

The full moon tonight gives off enough light. The shadows cut across our faces as we start up the familiar route. We stay silent, both because the darkness calls for that and because, well, these woods used to be our place. You would think tonight of all nights that would haunt me. You would think that tonight of all nights, walking with Maura, the ghosts would be surrounding me, tapping me on the shoulder, mocking me from behind the rocks and trees.

But they are not.

Tonight I’m not falling back. I don’t hear the whispers. The ghosts, oddly enough, stay hidden.

“You know about the videotape,” Maura says, part question, mostly statement.

“How long have you been following me?” I ask.

“Two days.”

“I know about the tape,” I say. “Did you know?”

“I was on it, Nap.”

“No, I mean, did you know Hank had it? Or that he gave it to David Rainiv for safekeeping?”

She shakes her head. Up ahead the old fence comes into view. Maura veers off the Path to the right. She bounces a few steps down the hill and stops herself by a tree. I make my way there. We are getting closer to the old base.

She stops and stares at the old fence. I stop and stare at her face.

“I waited here that night. Behind this tree.” She looks down at the ground. “I sat right here and watched the fence. I had a joint from your brother. And I had my flask from you.” She meets my eyes, and maybe it’s not the ghosts, but something smacks me hard in the heart. “You remember that flask?”

I’d gotten it at a garage sale at the old Siegel house. It was old and dented. The color was gunmetal. The faded engraving read: A Ma Vie de Coer Entier, which was a fifteenth-century French saying, “You Have My Whole Heart for My Whole Life.” I remember asking Mr. Siegel where he’d gotten it, but he couldn’t remember. He called over Mrs. Siegel and asked her, but neither of them could even remember owning it. It felt somehow magical and stupid, like a genie’s lamp I was supposed to find, and so I bought it for three dollars and I gave it to Maura, who giddily said, “A gift that involves romance and alcohol?”

“Am I not the perfect boyfriend?”

“You are,” she’d said. And then she threw her arms around me and kissed me hard.

“I remember,” I say now. Then: “So you sat by this tree with a joint and a flask. Who else was with you?”

“I was alone.”

“What about the Conspiracy Club?”

“You knew about that?”

I give a half shrug.

Maura looks back toward the base. “We weren’t supposed to meet that night. I think seeing that copter, making that tape — it freaked some of them out. It was all a game before then. That night made it real. Anyway, I wasn’t really part of the” — finger quotes — “‘club.’ My only real friend was Leo. He had plans with Diana that night. So I came here and sat against this tree. I had my joint and my Jack in the flask.”

Maura slides now to the ground and sits just as, I assume, she sat that night. A small smile is on her face. “I was thinking about you. I wished I was at your game. I hated the whole jock thing before you, but I loved to watch you skate.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I stay still.

“Anyway, I could only get to the home games, and you guys were playing away that night. Summit, I think.”

“Parsippany Hills.”

She chuckles. “Figures you’d remember. Anyway it didn’t matter. We’d be together in a few hours. I was just getting a little ahead of you here in the woods. The kids call it ‘pregaming’ now. So I kept drinking, and I remember feeling a little sad.”