Харлан Кобен - The Boy from the Woods

Wilde saw no reason to reply.

“The library isn’t bugged. You can have a guy sweep the place.”

“Okay.”

“So you officially throwing me out?”

“No,” Wilde said.

“Then you want to fill me in on what’s going on?”

“As much as I can.”

“Hey, Wilde?”

Wilde looked up at him.

“Don’t insult me with your bullshit, okay? I know Hester isn’t just worried about privilege. I’m viewed as Rusty Eggers’s man.”

“Hmm. Sure you weren’t listening in?”

Gavin liked that one. “Even Captain Obvious could have figured that one out. Rusty was the one who brought me in, so someone feels that’s where my loyalty will be.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Would it do me any good to say no?”

“Probably not.”

“Either way, I just want to find the kid. So what’s the plan?”

“Most of the guards here were employed before you came on board.”

“Right. I brought in three men with me, including Bryce.”

“Bryce?”

“The blond guy you keep tangling with.”

“Okay. So Bryce and the other two are out.”

“Leaving you with Maynard’s untrained rent-a-cops?”

“I’ll bring in a few of my own people,” Wilde said.

“Ah, I see.” Gavin Chambers smiled. “From your old agency?”

He had already called Rola, who was more than game. She was, in fact, on her way with a crew in hand. “Yes.”

“You guys ever handle a kidnapping?” Gavin asked. “Because — no offense — you’ll screw it up.”

“Funny.”

“What?”

“Before you seemed pretty certain Crash was a runaway, not a kidnapping.”

“Yeah, that was before the Maynards called Hester Crimstein and tossed me out. And that was before I walked into that library and saw their faces. They were trying to hold it together — that’s what Dash and Delia do — but they were clearly coming undone.” Chambers reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pair of sunglasses. “By the way, did you tell them?”

Wilde waited. When Chambers didn’t say anything more, Wilde said, “Okay, I’ll bite. Tell them what?”

“That you met with Saul Strauss at the Sheraton bar.”

Wilde shouldn’t have been caught off guard, but he was. He was also more than a little upset with himself that he hadn’t spotted their tail. Had his heart-to-heart with Laila really thrown him off that much? “Impressive.”

“Not really.”

“Question: If your men were following me, then you knew I wasn’t at my capsule this morning. You also knew I didn’t take the boy.”

“That’s a question?”

“Why the big show of force in the woods, if you knew I wasn’t there?”

“We didn’t know.”

“You just said you were following—”

“Not you, Wilde. We weren’t following you.”

Strauss. They were following Strauss.

“Saul Strauss is a loon — and a threat,” Gavin said. “You can see that.”

“I can,” Wilde said.

“So what did he want with you?”

Wilde considered how to answer this.

“I’m not going away,” Gavin Chambers said. “We can either work together like we said before — I know more about Crash, you know more about Naomi — or I can just bulldoze my way into representing Rusty’s interest without your cooperation.”

Wilde wasn’t certain of the right move here, but the old proverb about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer echoed in his head.

“Strauss knew Naomi was missing,” Wilde said.

“How?”

“I don’t know. But he knew there was a connection between Naomi and Crash.”

“Why the hell would Saul Strauss care about Naomi Pine?” Chambers asked.

Something else surfaced in Wilde’s head, one of the first things Saul Strauss had said to him: “I hear you had a run-in with the Maynard kid today.”

Saul Strauss had known that Wilde had been at the school.

How had he known that?

There were witnesses in the parking lot, of course, but the only other person who might know more than that, the only other person who could really say what had gone on in that art room, was Ava O’Brien.

But no. How would Ava be involved in this?

She couldn’t be. She was just a part-time art teacher.

Wilde said, “You have a relationship with him, right?”

“Saul Strauss? We served together. I saw him yesterday when he protested by the Maynards’ office.”

“So maybe the first step is to find him,” Wilde said.

“You don’t think I thought of that already?”

“So—”

“Remember how he walked out of the Sheraton hotel?”

Wilde nodded. “He walked toward the back exit.”

“Maybe,” Gavin said.

“What do you mean?”

“My men saw Strauss go in. They never saw him go out. We lost him.”

The Maynards had given Wilde a Lexus GS to use. As he slipped behind the driver’s seat, he called Ava O’Brien. The call went into her voicemail. No one he knew ever checked voicemail, so he sent Ava a quick text:

Need to talk ASAP.

No immediate reply, no dancing dots. He wasn’t sure what he would ask her anyway. If Ava O’Brien was somehow aligned with Saul Strauss... no, that made no sense.

Speaking of Strauss.

As Wilde pulled into Bernard Pine’s driveway, he took out the business card Saul Strauss had given him and dialed the number. It went straight to voicemail.

“It’s Wilde. You told me to call if I had any information. I do. You’ll want to hear it.”

He didn’t know whether that was strictly true, but he figured that that message might get Strauss’s attention. Wilde thought about Ava. He thought about Strauss. He thought about Gavin and Crash and yes, of course, Naomi.

He was missing something.

Bernard Pine, Naomi’s father, opened his front door before Wilde could ring the bell.

“Do you know a man named Saul Strauss?” Wilde asked.

“Who?”

“Saul Strauss. He’s on TV sometimes. Maybe Naomi has mentioned him.”

Pine shook his head. “Never heard of him. Have you found anything new?”

“Have you?”

“No. I’m going to the police again. But I don’t think they’ll listen.”

“Do you know if Naomi’s passport is still here?”

“I can take a look,” Pine said. “Come on in.” He stepped back and let Wilde inside. The foyer smelled stale. Wilde spotted the half-full glass and half-full bottle of bourbon on the coffee table. Bernard spotted him spotting it.

“Taking a personal day,” Bernard said.

Wilde saw no reason to reply.

“Why do you need her passport?”

“Any chance Naomi is with her mother?”

Something skittered across his face. “Why do you ask that?”

“We called her.”

“You called Pia?”

No reason to clarify that the call was made by Hester’s office. “Last time we called, your ex-wife straight-up told us that Naomi wasn’t with her. This time she wouldn’t reply. We also have a report your ex is overseas.”

“Which is why you asked me about her passport.” Pine led Wilde to a home office in the back of the house. Standard stuff — desk, computer, printer, file cabinet. Wilde spotted an electric bill and something from the cable company on the right. The checkbook was out. The screensaver was a generic ocean shot, probably one of the computer default screens. The paperweight was a Lucite-block award with Bernard’s name on it, some kind of “salesman of the month” type thing. There was a classic photograph of a golf foursome at a pro-am outing, Bernard beaming on the far right as he held his driver.

There were no photographs of his daughter.

Bernard Pine rummaged through the drawer, ducking his head for a better look. “Here.”