Харлан Кобен - The Boy from the Woods

Again the dancing dots. Then: Not a good time.

Wilde remembered the big bearded man and nodded to himself: One PM. Teacher parking entrance.

He finished up his hike, set up a lawn chair, started reading. He had been a voracious reader for as long as he could remember. When the park rangers found him all those years ago, Wilde could already read, something that had perplexed the experts. Surely, they claimed, the only explanation was that the young boy was lying or confused — someone had fed him and clothed him and educated him. He couldn’t have taught himself to read. But as far as Wilde knew, he had. He’d broken into homes and watched television, including so-called educational television shows like Sesame Street and Reading Rainbow . More to the point, in one house he’d found educational videotapes on how to teach your child to read.

That, he was sure, was how he’d learned to read.

Which brought him back to the DNA genealogy test.

He hadn’t yet looked at the results. Did he want to? Did he need that confusion in his life? He was content as he was. He liked being a minimalist in every way, including the people in his life. So why open that door?

Was he curious?

He put down his book. It was a hardcover novel. He mostly read actual physical books rather than something on an e-reader, not because he disliked the technology or enjoyed the tactile experience of turning pages, but simply because he used enough electronic equipment up here and so printed material, read and then donated, served him best.

He found the email from the DNA site. Two months ago, he’d signed up under an alias and spit into the test tube. Wilde had several fake aliases. They were in metal storage boxes, advertised as both fire- and waterproof, buried in the woods within a hundred yards of here. There was also cash in the boxes, plus bank accounts in all those names, plenty of easy ways for Wilde to vanish if need be.

He clicked the link and then he typed in the username and password he’d set up when he sent in his DNA sample. It led to a page announcing his Ancestry Composition, which in his case was all over the place, the largest percentage being vaguely “Eastern European.” So what did that tell him? Nothing. Did it change the way he felt or get him closer to any truth? Nope, not really.

The smaller banner under his Ancestry Composition read:

You have over a hundred relatives! Click the link to learn more!

Should he?

His mother or father could be behind that click. Wow, when you first thought about that. But then again, so what if they were? Most people sought these answers because they felt as though something was missing, that the answers could somehow fill some vague void. Most people wanted more people in their lives — more family, more relatives. Wilde did not. So why open this particular Pandora’s box?

Then again, ignorance was never bliss. Wilde firmly believed that. So why not click the link? He didn’t need to do more than take a quick peek for now. Just click and see whether the information is out there.

He tapped down on the link.

Wilde felt as though he were a contestant on a game show and the hostess was drawing a curtain and maybe there’d be a brand-new car or maybe there’d be nothing.

It turned out to be a lot closer to nothing.

There was no mother match, no father match, no full-sibling match, no half-sibling match. In fact, the closest relative listed was a second-to-third cousin with the initials PB who shared 2.44 percent of Wilde’s DNA and eight segments. There was a small graph with the following explanation:

You and PB may share a set of great-grandparents. You could also be from different generations (removed cousins) or share only one ancestor (half cousins).

It was something more than nothing, but not a lot more. He could, he guessed, contact PB and start working up some kind of family tree, but right now, today, with Naomi running away and Matthew deservedly haunted by what he’d done to her and Laila dating Designer Threads (not that he cared about that last one, he reminded himself), the idea exhausted him.

It could wait.

Wilde hadn’t been back to Sweet Water High School since his own graduation. As he got closer, the ghosts joined him. Or at least, one ghost. He could almost feel David, Matthew’s father, sidle up next to him. They’d walked like this together pretty much every day until David got his license during their junior year and drove them. The memories moved in for the kill, but Wilde battled back.

Not now. No distractions.

There had been no security guards when Wilde had attended. That wasn’t the case anymore. The crisply uniformed rent-a-cops were both serious and armed. They had their eyes on him the moment he hit the main road. Wilde took the most visible approach, smiling and keeping his hands in plain view.

Hands in plain view approaching a high school. What a world.

“What can we do for you?” the taller cop asked.

“I’m supposed to meet Ava O’Brien in the teacher lot.”

The other rent-a-cop sported a pencil-drawn mustache and looked young enough to be, if not still a student here, that guy who graduated a year or two earlier and spends all his time cruising around town in a beat-up sedan. He checked his clipboard for Wilde’s name while the taller cop tried to stare him down. Wilde didn’t mind that or the pat-down or the pocket emptying or the stroll through the metal detector. Sad how the world was now — really, did you want to arm two guys like this and stick them near a school? Do we really want to protect our children by giving guns to two underpaid cop wannabes and then mixing them in with a bunch of wiseass teens? Seemed a recipe for disaster. Wilde had worked in the security industry, so he knew that a lot of his competitors stoked these parental fears so they could cash in with big school contracts.

Create the problem — then monetize the solution.

The young armed guard made a phone call, and two minutes later, Ava O’Brien was leading him down a corridor. He liked the way Ava walked, which might seem like an odd thing to be thinking about, but there it was. She looked beautiful and strong.

It must have been between classes because the only sound was their feet on the linoleum. Wilde flashed back to his own years in these hallways. He still knew his way, of course. Do you ever forget? When they passed the gymnasium, Ava gestured to the portraits on the wall.

“I get to see your face every day.”

There were probably fifty faces under the listing “Sweet Water Sports Hall of Fame.” Wilde had been inducted under Track and Field. He didn’t attend the ceremony. Not his scene. During his senior year, Wilde had set almost every running record in the school — hurdles, sprints, miles. The school’s football coach tried to convince him to go for tailback, but Wilde didn’t like team sports with their comradery and rah-rah high fives. He didn’t like the football team in particular. Too tribal and clan-like.

“You look angry in the picture,” Ava said.

“I was aiming for macho.”

She studied it a second. “I’d say you didn’t hit that mark.”

“I rarely do.”

His eyes scanned down the plaques searching for Rola Naser. It didn’t take long. Rola’s beaming smile — no attempt at macho here — hit him like a sunburst. That was how Rola Naser was — beaming, loquacious, earnest, enthusiastic — even at home. Pretty much the opposite of Wilde. Maybe that was a forced facade, her way of compensating for her upbringing, but if so, Wilde rarely saw her break character.

“Soccer captain,” Ava said, following his eyes and reading Rola’s plaque. “Wow, she was an all-American?”

“Rola was the best soccer player the school ever had.”