Harlan Coben - Don’t Let Go

She had thought of everything.

“You can’t go home, Nap.”

I hadn’t planned on that anyway. She starts up the car.

“So where are we going?” I ask.

“I have a safe place,” she says.

“So since that night” — I don’t even know how to put it — “you’ve been on the run?”

“Yes.”

“So why now, Maura? Why after fifteen years is someone killing the rest of the Conspiracy Club?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you were with Rex when he was shot?”

She nods. “I started relaxing the last three, four years. I figured, I mean, why go after me anymore? There was zero evidence. The base was long closed. No one would believe a word I said. I was low on funds and trying to find a safe way... a safe way to see what was happening. Anyway, I took a risk, but it was like Rex wanted to keep the past closed as much as I did. He needed help in his side business.”

“Setting up men for drunk driving.”

“He had nicer labels for it, but, yes.”

We turn off Eisenhower Parkway right near Jim Johnston’s Steak House.

“I saw some CCTV footage from the night Rex was murdered,” I say.

“The guy was a stone-cold pro.”

“And yet,” I say, “you escaped.”

“Maybe.”

“Meaning?”

“When I saw Rex go down, I figured, they found us, I’m dead. You know. I was there that night — I was the real target, I thought — but maybe they knew about the whole Conspiracy Club. It made sense. So as soon as Rex was shot, I moved fast. But the guy was already turning the gun on me. I jumped into the driver’s seat, started the car, drove like a bat out of hell...”

“But?”

“But like I said. He was a pro.” Maura shrugs. “So how come he didn’t kill me too?”

“You think he let you go?”

She doesn’t know. We park in the back of a dumpy no-tell in East Orange. She isn’t staying there. It’s an old trick, she explains. She parks at the no-tell, so if the police or whoever spot the car or start a search based on the car, she’s not there. She’s renting a room about a quarter mile down the road. The car is stolen, she explains. If she senses any danger, she’ll just abandon it and steal another.

“Right now I’m changing locations every two days.”

We get to her rented room and sit on the bed.

“I want to tell you the rest,” Maura says.

As she does, I stare at her. There is no sense of déjà vu. I’m not the teenager who made love with her in the woods. I try not to get lost in her eyes, but in her eyes, it’s all there — the history, the what-ifs, the sliding doors. In her eyes I see you, Leo. I see the life I once knew and have always missed.

Maura tells me about where she’s been since the night you died. It is hard to hear what her life has been like, but I listen without interrupting. I don’t know what I’m feeling anymore. It’s like I’m one exposed nerve ending. It’s three in the morning when she finishes.

“We need some rest,” she says.

I nod. She heads into the bathroom and takes a shower. She comes out in a terry cloth robe with her hair wrapped in a towel. The moonlight hits her in just the right way, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more magnificent sight. I head into the bathroom, strip down, shower. When I come out, I have a towel wrapped around my waist. The lights are out except for a low-wattage lamp on the night table. Maura stands there. The towel is gone from her wet hair. She still wears the bathrobe. She looks at me. No pretense anymore. I cross the room fast. We both know it. Neither says it. I take her in my arms and kiss her hard. She kisses me back, her tongue snaking into my mouth. She pulls the towel off me. I yank open her robe.

This is like nothing I have ever experienced before. It is a hunger, a tearing, a ripping, a healing. It is rough and loving. It is gentle, it is harsh. It is a dance, it is an attack. It is ravenous and intense and ferocious and almost unbearably tender.

When it’s over, we collapse on the bed, staggered, shattered, like we’ll never be exactly the same, and maybe we won’t. Eventually she moves so as to lay her head on my chest, her hand on my stomach. We don’t speak. We stare at the ceiling until our eyes close.

My last thought before I pass out is a primitive one:

Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me ever again.

We make love again at dawn.

Maura rolls on top of me. Our eyes meet and stay locked. It’s slower this time, more soulful, comfortable, vulnerable. Later, when we are lying back and staring up into the silence, my mobile dings a text. It’s from Muse and it’s short:

Don’t forget. 9AM sharp.

I show it to Maura. “My boss.”

“Could be a setup.”

I shake my head. “Muse told me about it before I met up with Reeves.”

I am still on my back. Maura flips around so that her chin is on my chest. “Do you think they found Andy Reeves yet?”

It is something I’ve been wondering too. I know how that will play out: Someone notices the yellow car first, maybe they call the cops right then and there, maybe they search the premises. Whatever. They find the body. Did Reeves have ID on him? Probably. If not, they’ll figure out his name from the car’s license plate, they’ll get his schedule, they’ll see he worked that night at the Hunk-A-Hunk-A. A club like that will have CCTV cameras in the lot.

I’ll be on them.

So will my car. The CCTV will show me getting into Reeves’s yellow Ford Mustang with the victim.

I’ll be the last person to see him alive.

“We can drive by the scene on the way,” I say. “See if the cops are there yet.”

Maura rolls off me and stands. I’m about to do the same, but I can’t help pausing in something approaching sheer awe to admire her first.

“So why did your boss call this meeting?”

“I’d rather not speculate,” I say. “But I don’t think it’s good.”

“Then don’t go,” she says.

“What do you suggest I do?”

“Run away with me instead.”

That could be the greatest suggestion ever made by anyone ever. But I’m not running. Not now, anyway. I shake my head. “We need to see this through.”

Her reply is to get dressed. I do the same. We head outside. Maura leads the way back to the parking lot of the no-tell motel. We scout the area, see no nearby surveillance, and decide to risk it. We get in the same car we used last night and start toward Route 280.

“You remember how to get there?” I ask.

Maura nods. “The warehouse was in Irvington, not far from that graveyard off the parkway.”

She takes 280 to the Garden State Parkway and veers off at the next exit, for South Orange Avenue. We pass by an aging strip mall and turn into an industrial area that, like many such areas in New Jersey, has seen better days. Industry leaves; manufacturing plants close. That’s just the way it is. Most times, progress comes in and builds something new. But sometimes, like here, the warehouses and factories are simply left to decay and disintegrate into bitter ruins that hint at past glory.

There are no people around, no cars, no activity at all. It looks like the set from some dystopian movie after the bombs hit. We cruise past the yellow Mustang without so much as slowing down.

No one has been here yet. We are safe. For now.

Maura swings the car back onto the parkway. “Where is your meeting?”

“Newark,” I tell her. “But I better shower and change first.”

She gives me a crooked smile. “I think you look great.”

“I look satiated,” I say. “There’s a difference.”

“Fair enough.”

“The meeting will be serious.” I point at my face. “So I need to figure a way to wipe this grin from my face.”