Харлан Кобен - The Boy from the Woods

Wilde continued to walk toward Gavin. Gavin squinted at the screen.

“Hi, Gavin. My name is Hester Crimstein. We met once at a dinner party at Henry Kissinger’s.”

Gavin Chambers glanced up at Wilde as if to say, Really?

“Don’t make that face, bubbalah ,” Hester said. “I’m recording all this. Do you understand?”

Gavin closed his eyes and let loose a long sigh. “For real?”

“No, for fake. I want you to know that if anything happens to Wilde—”

“Nothing is going to happen to him.”

“Cool, handsome, then we’ll have no issue.”

“This isn’t necessary.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s not, but when you have a dozen armed men sneak up on my client’s home — a home which you subsequently threatened to destroy — label me paranoid, but as his attorney — and just to make it clear for the record, I am your attorney, correct, Wilde?”

“Correct,” Wilde said.

“So as his attorney, I want this on the record. You, Colonel Chambers, approached my client’s home with armed men—”

“This is public land.”

“Colonel Chambers, do you really want to spend time arguing detailed legalese with me?”

Gavin sighed. “No, I do not.”

“Because I can do that. I’m not in a rush. Are you in a rush, Wilde?”

“I got all day,” Wilde said.

“Fine, sorry,” Gavin said, “no legalese, let’s move on.”

“Now what was I saying?” Hester continued. “Right, you approached my client’s home with armed men. You threatened to break into said home and even destroy it. Don’t roll your eyes. Me, I would have you arrested, but my client, against my high-priced advice, is still willing to talk to you. He seems to have what I would consider badly placed trust in you. I will honor his wants while also making our position on this clear: If Wilde is harmed in any way—”

“He won’t be harmed.”

“Shush, you, listen. If he’s harmed or held against his will, if I call him back and cannot reach him or you do anything other than what he requests, I will become a permanent part of your life, Colonel Chambers. Like shingles. Or piles. Only worse. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal.”

“Wilde?”

“Thanks, Hester. Okay to disconnect?”

“That’s up to you,” she said.

“Yeah, thanks.”

He hit a button and slipped the phone into his pocket.

Gavin Chambers frowned. “You called your mommy?”

“Wow, now you’ve hurt my feelings.”

“What I wanted to tell you was supposed to be in complete confidence.”

“Then call me on the phone next time instead of sending armed men.”

Gavin gestured toward the capsule. “I was a little surprised we found your place so easily. I figured you’d set up decoys. You ever read about the Ghost Army in World War Two?”

Wilde had. “The Twenty-Third Headquarters Special Troops.”

“Whoa,” Chambers said. “Label me impressed.”

The Twenty-Third, aka the Ghost Army, were an elite force of artists and special effects soldiers who worked “tactical deception.” They’d use stuff like inflatable tanks and rubber airplanes and even create a soundtrack of war, all to create the twentieth-century version of a Trojan horse.

“How did you find it?” Wilde asked.

“Drone with a sensor,” Gavin Chambers said. He gestured toward the Ecocapsule. “Please open the door.”

“No one is inside.”

“And opening it will prove that.”

“Don’t trust me?”

Exhaustion emanated from him. “Can we just check this box, please?”

“Who are you looking for?”

“No one.”

“You just said—”

“That was before you decided to blab to someone with a TV show.”

“She’s my attorney. If I tell her not to tell anyone, she won’t.”

“You can’t be that naïve.” Gavin Chambers looked off and shook his head. He was weighing a decision, but it was a fait accompli. There was only one way this could go. “It’s about Crash Maynard.”

“What happened to him?”

“He’s missing.”

“A runaway or—”

Gavin took out his gun. “Just open the goddamn door, Wilde.”

“Are you serious?”

“Do I look in the mood to continue this?” He did not. He looked like a worn garment fraying at the edges. “I told you that Crash is missing. Let me eliminate your hovel, so we can find him.”

Wilde wasn’t afraid of the gun, nor was he tempted to draw his own, but he also saw no reason to antagonize the man any further. He got what was happening here: Crash Maynard had vanished, and Wilde was as likely a suspect as anybody.

The Ecocapsule door opened by the same kind of remote you use to unlock your car door. Wilde reached into his pocket, pulled out the remote, and pressed the button with his thumb. Gavin tucked the gun back into the holster as the hatch door rose. He leaned his head in, looked around, pulled his head back out.

“Sorry about the gun.”

Wilde said nothing.

“Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“The Maynards want to see you. In fact, they insist on it.”

“Going to pull the gun again if I refuse?”

“You really going to hold that over me?” Gavin started down the path. “I said I was sorry.”

Neither man spoke during the short ride to Maynard Manor. In the morning sun, the mansion glittered atop a clearing of grass so uniformly green it might have been spray-painted that color. The painstakingly mowed lawn looked to be an almost perfect square, the house being dead center, with what Wilde estimated to be about three hundred yards of grass on each side before you reach the woods. There was an Olympic-sized pool on the right, a tennis court on the left, and a regulation soccer pitch with freshly laid-out lime in the back.

The SUV came to a stop by an ornate carriage house. Gavin got out of the vehicle. Wilde followed.

“Before we go any further, I need you to sign this.”

Gavin handed Wilde a piece of paper on a clipboard with a pen attached.

“It’s a standard NDA — that’s a nondisclosure agreement.”

“Yeah,” Wilde said, handing it back to him, “I know what an NDA is.”

“If you don’t sign, I can’t tell you any more about what’s going on.”

“Buh-bye then.”

“God, you’re a pain in the ass. All right, forget the NDA. Come on.”

Gavin started walking toward the woods in the back-left corner of the estate.

“Did you really think I, what, I kidnapped the boy?” Wilde asked.

“No.”

“Or hid him in my capsule?”

“Not really, but it was a possibility.”

Gavin kept walking. He stopped in the side yard midway between the house and the woods. “There is where we lose him.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“This morning, Crash wasn’t in his bedroom. We checked the CCTV footage. Security here is fairly extensive as you might imagine. CCTV covers the exterior from the home to right about where we are standing.” He took out his mobile phone, swiped across, turned it toward Wilde. “This is Crash walking past where we are now, probably heading in that direction.”

He pointed to the woods behind him and hit the play button. The camera must have had a night filter on it. On the screen, Wilde watched as Crash traveled from the house, across where they now stood, seemingly on his way to the woods. The time stamp in the lower left-hand corner of the video read 2:14 a.m.

“Anyone else show up on the CCTV before or after him?” Wilde asked.

“No.”

“So you figure Crash ran away.”

“Probably. All we know for certain is that he walked toward those trees.” He turned toward Wilde. “But someone with a strong knowledge of the woods could have been lying in wait.”