Харлан Кобен - Run Away

Easier to just say it: “My oldest.”

“Paige. I won’t pry.”

“You’re not prying.”

“May I give you a little advice, Simon?”

“Sure.”

“I mean, that’s what you do, right? Give advice. You come here and you give me financial advice. Because you’re an expert in money. My expertise is... anyway, I always knew Barry was gay. It was strange. Identical twins. Raised in the same house. Barry used to sit right where you are. That was his seat. Greg sat next to him. But from as young as I can remember, they were different. It gets everyone mad when I say that Barry from Day One was, I don’t know, more flamboyant. That doesn’t mean you’re gay, people tell me. But I know my truth. My boys were identical — and different. If you knew them both, even as little children, and had to guess which was gay — go ahead, say I’m stereotyping — you’d know. Barry was into fashion and theater. Greg was into baseball and cars. I mean, I was practically raising clichés.”

She tried to smile at that. Simon folded his hands and put them on the kitchen table. He had heard some of this before, but this wasn’t a place Sadie went to very often.

And that was when it began to dawn on him.

The twins, genetics.

The story of Barry and Greg had fascinated him the first time he’d heard it because he’d wondered how identical twins, who had the exact same DNA and were raised in the same home, ended up with different sexual preferences.

“When Barry got sick,” Sadie continued, “we didn’t see what it was doing to Greg. We ignored him. We had to deal with all the immediate horror. Meanwhile Greg is seeing his identical twin wither away. There’s no reason to go into the details. But Greg never recovered from Barry’s illness. He was scared, so he just... ran away. I didn’t see that in time.”

Greg was the only beneficiary of his mother’s estate, so Simon still kept somewhat in touch with him. Greg was now thrice divorced and currently engaged to a twenty-eight-year-old dancer he’d met in Reno.

“I lost him. Because I didn’t pay attention. But also...”

She stopped.

“Also what?”

“Because I couldn’t save Barry. That was really it, Simon. For all the problems, all Greg’s fears of maybe being gay too, all that, if I could have saved Barry, Greg would have been okay.” She tilted her head. “Can you still save Paige?”

“I don’t know.”

“But there’s a chance?”

“Yeah, there is.”

Genetics. Paige had been studying genetics.

“Then go save her, Simon.”

There were no signs for Truth Haven, which was hardly a surprise.

“Take a left,” Dee Dee said, “by that old mailbox.”

Old was an understatement. The mailbox looked as if passing teenagers had started whacking it daily with a baseball bat during the Carter administration.

Dee Dee looked at his face.

“What?”

“Something else I read,” Ash said.

“What?”

“Are you forced to have sex with them?”

“With...?”

“You know what I mean. Your truth or your visitor or whatever the leaders call themselves?”

She said nothing.

“I read that they force you.”

Her voice was soft. “The Truth can’t be forced.”

“Sounds like a yes.”

“Genesis 19:32,” she said.

“What?”

“Do you remember the story of Lot in the Bible?”

“Seriously?”

“Do you remember the story or not?”

This sounded to him like a deflection, but he answered, “Vaguely.”

“So in Genesis chapter 19, God allows Lot and his wife and their two daughters to escape the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.”

He nodded. “But Lot’s wife turns around when she’s not supposed to.”

“Right, and God turns her into a pillar of salt. Which is, well, seriously messed up. But that’s not my point. It’s Lot’s daughters.”

“What about them?”

“When they get to Zoar, Lot’s daughters complain there are no men. So they come up with a plan. Do you remember what it is?”

“No.”

“The older daughter tells her younger sister — I’m quoting Genesis 19:32 — ‘Come on, let’s get our father drunk, so that we can sleep with him and have children by him.’”

Ash said nothing.

“And they do. Yep, incest. Right there in Genesis. The two daughters get their father drunk, sleep with him, and become pregnant.”

“I thought the Truth had nothing to do with the Old or New Testament.”

“We don’t.”

“So why are you using Lot as an excuse?”

“I don’t need an excuse, Ash. And I don’t need your permission. I just need the Truth.”

He kept staring out the front windshield.

“That still sounds like a ‘yes, I have sex with them.’”

“Do you like sex, Ash?”

“Yes.”

“So if you were in a group where you got to have sex with a lot of women, would it be an issue?”

He didn’t reply.

The car tires kicked up dirt from the road as he headed into the woods. No Trespassing signs — a wide variety of them in various colors and sizes and even wording — hung from trees. As they approached the gate, Dee Dee rolled down her window and made a complicated hand gesture, like a third-base coach signaling a runner to steal second.

The car glided to a stop before the gate. Dee Dee opened her car door. When Ash did the same, she stopped him with a hand on his shoulder and a shake of her head.

“Stay here. Keep both hands on the steering wheel at all times. Don’t take them off, even to scratch your nose.”

Two men in gray uniforms that reminded Ash of a Civil War reenactment appeared from the small guardhouse. They were both armed with AR-15s. They both had huge beards and scowled at Ash. Ash tried to look nonthreatening. He had his own handguns within reach and was probably a better shot than either of these posers, but not even the best marksman is a match for two AR-15s.

That was the part people didn’t get.

It isn’t about talent or skill. You could be LeBron James, but if you’re using a basketball with no air, you’re not going to be able to dribble as well as someone whose ball got plenty.

Dee Dee approached the guards and did something with her right hand that looked a bit like someone crossing themselves, but the shape she made was more triangular. The two men returned the gesture/salute.

Ritual, Ash guessed. Like all religions.

Dee Dee spoke to the two men for a minute or two. The men never took their eyes off Ash, which took considerable self-discipline when you consider what Dee Dee looked like. Ash would have had to look.

Perhaps this was why the religious life had never called to him.

The Truth. What bullshit.

She came back to the car. “Just pull over there to the right.”

“Why can’t I just turn around and go?”

“What happened to you taking me away from all this?”

His heart leapt into his throat when she said that, but her just-kidding smile brought it back down again. He tried to keep the disappointment off his face.

“You’re back,” he said. “You’re safe. There’s no need for me to hang around.”

“Just wait, okay? I need to check with the council.”

“Check what?”

“Please, Ash. Just wait.”

One guard handed her folded clothes. Gray. Like theirs. She slipped them over the clothing she was wearing. The other guard handed her headgear that looked like something you’d find in a convent. Also gray. She put it on top of her head and tied it like a bonnet under her chin.

Dee Dee always strode with her head high, her shoulders back, the definition of confidence. Now she was bent over, eyes lowered, her whole persona subservient. The transformation startled him. And pissed him off.