Джозеф Файндер - Vanished

“Huh. Did anyone ever volunteer to get in the wheelbarrow?”

I shrugged.

“How’d the guy die?”

“In bed. Forty years later. From diabetes.”

“Bummer.”

“Better than falling to his death, don’t you think?”

“Can I use that in my novel?”

“All yours.”

“So what’s your point, Nick? We all die someday, is that it?”

“No. I’m just telling you, sometimes you just gotta have a little faith.” I stood up. “Good night, Gabe.” As I walked out of his bedroom, he said, “Hey, Uncle Nick?”

“Yeah?”

He hurled something at me, and I caught it in midair.

His notebook. His graphic novel.

“Let me know what you think,” he said.

Then it was my turn to tear up.

Lauren was racing wildly around her bedroom, tossing clothes into a couple of suitcases on the bed. Her face was flushed, glistening with perspiration.

“Chill,” I said. “Take a nice, deep breath.”

“No, Nick. I can’t. We can’t stay here.”

“Lauren, sit down, please.”

“Will you at least tell me what happened to him this afternoon?”

“I will if you sit down.”

Slowly, grudgingly, she lowered herself onto the ottoman of the big overstuffed reading chair in the corner. I gave her a quick summary of what had happened to Gabe and how deftly he’d handled it.

“So they were fake cops,” she said. “Impostors.”

I nodded.

“They’re trying to find Roger, aren’t they?”

“Maybe,” I said. “But I don’t think getting information was the point of that exercise. That was a threat. Just like that video clip you got today. We’re watching you. You and your son, you’re vulnerable. You’re not safe anywhere.”

The blood seemed to drain from her face. “And this is supposed to calm me down ?” she said, her voice rising.

“I’m not here to calm you down.”

She began speaking quickly, almost muttering to herself. “My sister doesn’t have room for us. But we can stay with Mom for a few days while I look for something.”

“What makes you think you’ll be any safer in your mother’s apartment? Or in some Comfort Inn somewhere? You think they can’t track you down? I don’t think there’s any hiding from them.”

“Jesus, Nick!” She got to her feet.

“Did my guy Merlin come by today to put in the new security system?”

“Yeah?”

“I want you to start using it.”

“For what?” she said sharply. “So we can stay locked up inside the house all day with the alarm on like, like, it’s a fortress? You think we’re really safe here? And what happens when Gabe goes to school? You think they’re not going to grab him again? And this time–”

“If anyone wanted to hurt you or Gabe, they’d have done it already. I don’t think that’s what they want.”

“Then what do they want?”

“My guess? Cooperation.”

“Cooperation? On what ?”

I answered her question with one of my own: “What are you keeping from me?”

“I’m not keeping anything from you.”

“Lauren. You have something they want.”

“I have no idea what anyone could possibly want from me.”

“Look,” I said. “I saw my father this morning.”

“Victor? In prison?”

“Where else? And he told me that Roger tried to extort a lot of money from a private military company called Paladin Worldwide.”

Eyes wide, she shook her head. “I don’t believe that. Roger? No way.”

“Well, whatever Roger did or didn’t do, I’m sure that’s who these people are. Paladin. And they’re not messing around. You have something they want. Maybe something Roger left for you, whether you’re aware of it or not. And if you don’t give it to them, they’ll take something from you. Something very important to you.”

“Don’t say that. God, Nick, don’t say that.”

“The meaning of the threat was obvious. But it didn’t contain a single explicit demand. So what do you have that they want?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea!”

“Roger said in that e-mail that he’d taken precautions to protect you. That he’d given you the means to hold them off. What else aren’t you telling me?”

She shook her head again, this time more violently. “I don’t know what he meant by that. He never told me anything about any extortion. He never mentioned this… Paladin. You have to believe me. I’m telling you everything I know.”

“You told me everything was fine between you two,” I said.

She paused, frowned, and said, “That was different. That was… personal. I didn’t think it was right to talk about that with you. I’m not withholding anything.”

I was tempted to press her on that point. But instead I said, “Look, I want to do everything I can to protect you guys. So I need you to think really hard about anything Roger might have said to you, maybe something that didn’t mean anything at the time. Or something he gave you.”

“I’m telling you, Nick, I can’t think of anything. You think I’d ever hold out on you, with Gabe’s life at stake?”

“Of course not. Not knowingly. Not consciously. But I need you to think really hard.”

“I will.”

“And give me the chance to find these guys. The only solution is to flush them out and neutralize them.”

“ ‘Neutralize’? Meaning what, exactly?”

“I’ll know when I get there. Have a little confidence in me, please.”

She paused, swallowed hard. “All right,” she said. “But one more threat – one more phone call or e-mail or anything like what happened today, and I’m taking Gabe and driving as far away from here as I can.”

“Deal.”

She reached out her hand, and we shook. Once, up and down, firmly. Then for the first time she noticed Gabe’s notebook in my other hand. “He gave that to you?”

“He just wants my expert opinion.”

“Why you?”

“No idea,” I said.

“I’m his mom, for God’s sake.”

“Maybe that’s why he didn’t want you to see it.”

The doorbell rang, and she looked at me, her eyes wary. “Who could that be?”

“Merlin again. And Dorothy, a colleague of mine at work. They’re here to sweep the house.”

“Sweep it…?”

“For electronic devices. Hidden cameras and microphones, all that sort of thing. And I’m going to have them start in Gabe’s room.”

“Gabe’s room? I don’t want him to know about that video thing, Nick. He’ll freak out.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “At first. But give him a little credit. He can handle it.”

“You have no idea what it’s like to have a kid,” she said.

“Can’t argue with that.”

“It’s like you go from all-powerful to powerless. You – you produce this being that you want to protect with all of your heart and all of your strength, but then you discover that you can’t. You realize that at some point you just can’t protect them anymore.”

“You know what you can do?” I said softly. “If you really want to protect Gabe and yourself?”

“What?”

“Open up. Level with me. Whatever you’re hiding, you need to let me know what it is.”

Walter McGeorge, aka Merlin, was small and compact, like a lot of Special Forces guys. He had a black buzz cut, a porcine nose, and a pencil-thin mustache. He had deep vertical furrows carved into his forehead, which made him look permanently angry.

I helped him carry his equipment upstairs to Gabe’s room: a couple of ridged aluminum cases lined with black polyurethane egg-crate foam and something that looked like a big old video camera out of the early eighties on a tripod.