Харлан Кобен - The Boy from the Woods

“There’s nothing important,” Delia said.

“Then contact the FBI.”

“We can’t.”

“Which suggests that you have something to hide. Sorry, I’m not great with subtle, so let me get right to it: I think you’re lying. Worse, you’re lying to me. So let me make this clear. I don’t care what you’re hiding or what’s on those tapes. If I know about it and I’m your attorney? It stays secret.”

Delia smiled but there was no humor in it. “Always?”

“Always.”

“No matter what?”

“No matter what.”

Delia crossed the room and looked out the window. The view was spectacular, but it didn’t seem to be bringing Delia Maynard much peace or comfort or joy. “I told you I watched your show the other night. When Saul Strauss was on.”

“What about it?”

“Strauss started to raise the ‘if you could have stopped Hitler’ speculation. You cut him off.”

“Of course I did,” Hester said. “It’s utter nonsense on a thousand levels.”

“So let’s say hypothetically I knew something that could have stopped Hitler—”

“Oh please—”

“—and I confide it to you under attorney-client privilege.”

“Would I tell?” Hester said. “No.”

“Even if it means letting Hitler rise to power?”

“Yes, but it’s a dumb hypothetical,” Hester said. “I don’t want to get too deep into this, but have you read much on the Hitler paradox? In short, if you went back in time and killed baby Hitler, the changes may be so massive that everything would change, almost every birth thereafter, and so you and I wouldn’t be here. But that’s not why this is dumb. It’s dumb because I can’t read the future or go back in time. The future is all conjecture — none of us have a clue what it will be like. So I can tell you that whatever your grave secret is, I won’t tell. No matter what. Because I don’t know if it will really stop the next Hitler. I also don’t know if stopping the next Hitler is even desirable. Maybe if I stopped Hitler, a more competent psycho would have risen instead — after those German scientists developed a nuclear bomb. Maybe it would have gone even worse. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“I do,” Delia said. “There are too many variables. You may think you’re stopping a slaughter — and end up creating a bigger one.”

“Exactly. I’ve heard some horrible confessions in this job. Gruesome, terrible...” Hester closed her eyes for a moment. “And maybe the world would have been better if I broke my oath. But only on a micro level. Justice for that family maybe. Preventing another tragedy and even worse. But in the end, I have to believe in the system, flawed though it may be.”

Delia nodded slowly. “There’s nothing on those tapes.”

“You’re sure?”

“I am. There are some things Rusty’s enemies may try to use against him. But there is no smoking gun.”

“Okay then,” Hester said. Her phone buzzed. She saw a text from Wilde:

My security people will be there within the half hour.

Delia was about to make another call. Hester watched her for a moment. Delia felt the eyes on her and looked up. “What?” Delia said.

“Let me add one caveat to the above,” Hester said, “mother to mother.”

“Okay.”

“If it meant saving my son, I’d talk.”

Delia didn’t move.

“I’d scream, I’d shout, I’d reveal everything. That’s where all our paradox theories would go out the window. If I could go back in time, if I could reveal a truth and it would bring my son back to me, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Do you understand?”

“I think so.”

Hester’s eyes stayed dry as she nodded and turned away.

The team from Wilde’s old security firm pulled up in two vehicles.

The first car was a forest-green Honda Odyssey minivan. The driver was Rola Naser, the firm’s founder. When Rola opened the car door, Wilde could hear her kids screeching from the backseat. The radio was blasting out a Wiggles tune about fruit salad being yummy.

“Mommy will be right back,” Rola said.

Neither the screeching nor the music paused for that announcement. Rola got out of the minivan and started toward Wilde. Her blue blazer had a stain on the lapel. She wore Puma sneakers and Mom jeans. A diaper bag of some sort was slung over her shoulder.

She stomped toward him, head high. Rola was barely five feet tall so she had to look up to meet his eye. Wilde braced himself.

“Are you kidding me, Wilde?”

“What?”

“‘What?’” Rola said, doing a pretty good, pretty sarcastic impression of him. “Don’t even with that, okay?”

“Sorry.”

“I deserve better from you, do I not?”

“You do, yes.”

“So how long has it been?” Rola asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Yes, you do. Two years. Two frigging years, Wilde. Last time I saw you was when Emma was born.”

Emma was Rola’s fifth child — three boys, two girls, all under the age of twelve. Years ago, Rola had been his foster sister at the Brewers’ house. Over the years, the Brewer family had almost forty foster kids go through their lives, and all had been made better by the experience. Some stayed only a few months. Some, like Wilde and Rola, stayed years.

“And this stain you keep staring at” — she pointed to her lapel — “the one I know you are dying to clean off me? That’s Emma’s spit-up, thank you very much. What do you have to say to that?”

“Gross?”

She shook her head. Rola’s background, like his, was something of a mystery. Her mother was a Sunni Arab who fled the kingdom of Jordan, arriving in the United States pregnant and unmarried. She’d cut off all ties to family and friends from her native country. She never spoke of them. She never told anyone, not even Rola, who her father was.

“What the hell, Wilde? Two years.”

“Sorry,” Wilde said again. He looked toward the minivan. “How is everyone?”

Rola arched an eyebrow. “For real?”

“What?”

“‘How is everyone?’” Rola repeated, doing the impression again. “That’s the best you can do? You don’t visit. You don’t call.”

“I called,” he said.

“When?”

“Today. Just now.”

Rola’s mouth dropped open. “Are you for real right now?”

He said nothing.

“You called because you needed help.”

“Still a call,” he said.

Rola shook her head and said with deep regret in her voice: “Ah, Wilde. You’ll never change, will you?”

He had warned Rola when she’d insisted he be her full-time partner that there was no way he could last. She knew and even understood, but Rola had always been the craziest sort of rah-rah optimist, even when she had no right to be. In the Brewer house, Rola had been outgoing and boisterous and engaged and social and never stopped talking. She’d loved the frenzy of activity, the shuffling of foster kids in and out, in part, Wilde thought, because she hated being alone.

Rola craved a crowd the way Wilde craved solitude.

More than overcoming the obstacles, Rola had excelled — valedictorian of her high school class, vice president of the class, captain of her soccer team on every level. As a college standout athlete, she’d been heavily recruited by the FBI. She joined, rose up the ranks quickly, and then when Wilde came home from the army, she somehow convinced him to open a private investigation firm with her. She had decided to call it CRAW — Chloe, Rola, And Wilde.

Chloe, now deceased, had been the Brewers’ dog.

“CRAW,” Rola had said at the time. “The name is cute, right?”

“Adorable.”