Харлан Кобен - Run Away

“What wasn’t easy?”

“What happened with Paige. Here, I mean. At Lanford. We had that small room, the two of us, and, I don’t know, we connected. She was my best friend right away. I’m an only child. I don’t want to make too much of this, but Paige was like a sister to me. And then...”

Eileen had been hurt and she’d recovered and now Simon was ripping open the stitches. He felt bad about that, but Eileen was young, and thirty minutes after he walked out the door, she’d go to a class or one of her roommates would get her for dinner in the Cushman Cafeteria and then they’d study at the Elders Library and probably hit a dorm party — and those “wounds” would be back sealed up tight.

“What happened?” Simon asked.

“Paige changed.”

No hesitation.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

He tried to think how to approach this. “When?”

“It was toward the end of first semester.”

“After this trip with your car?”

“Yes. Well, no. Something was off even before then.”

Simon leaned forward a little, making sure to keep away from her personal space. “How long before?”

“I’m not sure. It’s hard to remember. It’s just that...”

He nodded for her to go on.

“When Paige asked to borrow the car, I remember feeling weird about it. Not just because it was out of character. But because she’d been distant lately.”

“Any idea why?”

“No. I was hurt. I was maybe a little angry with her about it.” Eileen looked up. “I should have reached out to her instead, you know? Instead of getting all hurt about it. Making it all about me. Maybe if I had been a good friend—”

“None of this is on you, Eileen.”

She didn’t seem convinced.

“Could Paige have been taking drugs?” Simon asked.

“You mean before she met Aaron?”

“One theory is that Paige was doing drugs already — so Aaron might have been a source or something.”

Eileen considered that. “I don’t think so. For one thing, I know this is a college campus and drugs are supposed to be rampant. But that’s not really how it is here. I wouldn’t even know where to buy anything stronger than weed.”

“Maybe that was it,” Simon said.

“What?”

“Maybe Paige wanted to buy something stronger.”

“So she went to Aaron?”

“That’s one theory.”

Eileen wasn’t buying it. “Paige didn’t even smoke weed. I don’t mean to make her sound like some kind of priss. She drank and stuff, but I never saw her stoned before or high or whatever you want to call it. The first time I saw her like that was after she met Aaron.”

“So it comes back to the same thing,” Simon said. “Why did Paige borrow your car? Why did she drive to this quiet corner of Connecticut?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“You said she was different.”

“Yes.”

“How about her other friends?”

“I think...” Her gaze traveled up and to the left. “Yes, looking back on it, I think Paige just kind of withdrew. From all of us. One of our friends, Judy Zyskind — do you know her?”

“No.”

“Judy’s one of my suitemates now. She’s at a lacrosse game at Bowdoin or I’d ask her to explain. Anyway, I don’t think this is it, but Judy thought maybe something had happened to her at a frat party.”

Simon felt a cold jolt run through him. “What do you mean, ‘happened to her’?”

“We talk a lot about sexual assault on campus here. A. Lot. I’m not saying too much. We really need it. But I think Judy sort of has it on the brain now. So when someone becomes withdrawn, it’s kinda all we see. I remember one night Judy confronting Paige about it. About some guy who Judy thought was bothering Paige.”

“What guy?”

“I don’t know. They didn’t say a name.”

“And this is before Aaron?”

“Yes.”

“How did Paige react?”

“She said that it had nothing to do with any of that.”

“Did she say what it did have to do with?”

Eileen hesitated, turned away.

“Eileen? Did she say something else?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“I think Paige was just trying to deflect. To get us off her back.”

“What did she say?”

“She said” — Eileen turned back, met Simon’s eyes — “that there were problems at home.”

Simon blinked and leaned back, taking the blow. He hadn’t been expecting that. “What kind of problems at home?”

“Paige wouldn’t elaborate.”

“No clue at all?”

“I thought, well, with what happened after, with Aaron and the drugs and everything, I thought maybe you and Dr. Greene were having problems.”

“We weren’t.”

“Oh.”

Simon’s mind swirled.

Problems at home?

He tried to piece it together. It wasn’t the marriage — he and Ingrid were good, better than ever, actually. It wasn’t financial — her parents were both at the height of their careers and earning power. How about Paige’s siblings? Nothing strange, nothing that he could remember. There had been a minor drama with Sam’s science teacher, but no, that had been the year before, and that wouldn’t warrant a “problems at home” comment.

Unless something had been going on that Simon didn’t know about.

But even if that were the case — even if Paige imagined or saw some real problem with something back home with her family — how had that led her to drive to Connecticut and Aaron?

He asked Eileen that.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Greene. I don’t know.”

Eileen Vaughan glanced at her mobile phone the way someone older might glance at their watch. She shifted on the couch, her body language suddenly all wrong, and Simon knew that he was losing her.

“I have a class soon,” she said.

“Eileen?”

“Yes?”

“Aaron’s been murdered.”

Her eyes widened.

“Paige has run off.”

“Run off?”

“She’s missing. And now I think whoever killed Aaron is after her too.”

“I don’t understand. Why?”

“I don’t know. But I think whatever brought them together — whatever made Paige seek Aaron out — is responsible. That’s why I need your help. I need to figure out what happened to her, on this campus, that made her borrow your car and go to Aaron.”

“I don’t know.”

“I get that. And I get that you just want me to leave. But I’m asking you for your help.”

“Help how?”

“Start from the beginning. Tell me everything that happened, no matter how insignificant it might seem. Something made her change. Something made her borrow your car and go find Aaron.”

Paige became a “Try Hard,” Eileen Vaughan told him.

“A what?”

“A Try Hard,” Eileen repeated. “You know how during Orientation Week they tell you that you can be all you want to be, that this is your chance to start anew and take advantage of all the opportunities?”

Simon nodded.

“Paige took that to heart.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“I thought she was overdoing it. She wanted to be in a play. She tried out for two a cappella groups. There’s this club on campus of science nerds who build robots. She joined that. She ran for a freshman judiciary seat and won. She got obsessed with the Family Tree Club, which hooked up with our genetics class, to figure out where you’re from and all that. She also wanted to write a play. Looking back on it, it was all too much. She was driving herself too hard.”

“Did she have any boyfriends?”

“No one serious.”

“The guy your lacrosse roommate mentioned...”

“I don’t know anything about that. I’ll text Judy, if you like.”

“Please.”