Харлан Кобен - Run Away

“As far we know right now, yeah,” Elena said.

Simon switched the phone from his right hand to his left. “Have you read about those cases where an infertility doctor ends up using his own semen to impregnate his patients? There was one case in Indiana, I think, where a woman found eight unknown siblings on one of these DNA sites, sort of like what you’re saying here, and then the siblings all got together and figured out the infertility doctor had been using his own sperm and pretending it came from a bank or something.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Elena said. “There are a number of cases like that. A big one in Utah, Canada too.”

“You sound skeptical.”

“I just don’t see how it would work here. The women in those cases weren’t giving up the babies for adoption. They wanted them more than anything.”

She had a point.

“We’re still missing something,” he said.

“Agree. So I’m going to take another run at Alison Mayflower because she’s the one who set up the adoptions. I’m going to threaten her with prison, whatever it takes. I also want to try to get the FBI interested, but I’ll have to do that through a backdoor channel.”

“Why?”

“All the info I just gave you, you can’t tell anyone. Someone could claim that it was obtained illegally — the fruits of a bad act or some such thing. Either way, even if we go to the feds today, it won’t be a priority. It’ll take days, probably weeks, just to get it assigned to someone. We don’t have...” There was a pause. “Simon, hold on, I have another call.”

Simon’s eyes drifted across the campus. He remembered something that had impressed his father during the tour. The main campus — where Simon now sat on these steps, across College Walk where he’d entered, then past the South Fields — was bookended by Low Library and Butler Library.

“Two libraries, Simon,” his father had said with a shake of his head. “What better symbol of learning?”

Odd thought to conjure up right now, but it was keeping Simon from allowing a bigger, uglier one to consume him: Even if he could figure out what was going on with these half brothers and adoptions, how could that help him find Paige?

Elena came back on the line. “Simon?”

A man hurried past him on the steps on his way, no doubt, to the Alma Mater statue. Simon recognized the face from his online profile — Professor Louis van de Beek. With the phone still against his ear, Simon stood to follow.

“Yeah, what’s up?” he said.

“Gotta go. Alison Mayflower wants to meet.”

Ash parked the car behind the house. You couldn’t see the car from the road, but Dee Dee still stood guard, just in case someone made the turn into the long driveway. Ash checked the back of the car. The bags were all there. He unzipped them and laid the weapons across the backseat.

All present and accounted for.

He grabbed what he needed, put the other weapons back in the bag, and whistled with two fingers. When Dee Dee came back, he handed her an FN 5.7.

“You had time to think,” he said.

“About?”

“Mother Adiona’s note. First off, who is she?”

“She serves in the chamber. That’s as high up as any woman can go.”

“Do you think she’s loyal to your cult?”

“Don’t call it a cult,” Dee Dee said. “And yes. There is only one other mother, who is known as Mother Abeona. They both were of such pure Truth that they were the ones he chose to create the Visitor and the Volunteer.”

“So Vartage’s kids,” he said, “they’re only half brothers?”

“Yes.”

“And which one is Mother Adiona’s son?”

“The Volunteer.”

“So Mother Adiona is the Volunteer’s mother. And Mother Abeona is the Visitor’s mother.”

“Yes.” They started toward the back of the house. “Why do you care, Ash?”

“I don’t. But I don’t like having someone on the inside working against us, do you?”

“I didn’t really think of it that way.”

“Mother Adiona had someone torture me to find out what we were up to. Then she slipped me a note telling me not to do it. That doesn’t worry you at all?”

“Oh, it worries me,” she said.

Ash checked the surroundings. “Dee Dee?”

“Yes.”

“Why do I think you’re not telling me everything?”

She smiled and faced him full-on. Ash felt his heart pick up the pace. “You felt it, didn’t you? When you were with him.”

“Vartage is charismatic. I’ll give you that.”

“And Truth Haven?”

“It’s peaceful and quiet,” he agreed.

“It’s more than that. It’s serene.”

“So?”

“You remember what I was like before?”

He did. A mess. But it hadn’t been her fault. Too many foster fathers and teachers and guidance counselors and spiritual advisors, especially the most sanctimonious of them, could not keep their hands and impure thoughts away from her.

“I remember,” he said.

“Don’t I seem better, Ash?”

“You do.” The sun was in his eyes, and he wanted to keep looking at her, so he placed his hand on his forehead, half salute, half visor. “But it doesn’t have to be either-or.”

“For me it does.”

“We can run away.” He heard something unfamiliar in his voice now. Desperation. Longing. “I can find us a place. A peaceful place like your haven. Quiet. Serene.”

“We could do that,” she said. “But it wouldn’t stick.”

He started to say more, but she put a silencing finger to his lips. “The real world holds too many temptations for me, Ash. Even being out here now, with you, I need to focus, be disciplined, or I’ll get hooked again. I’ll fall. And I need more.”

“More?”

“Yes.”

“And blindly believing in this truth nonsense gives you more?”

“Oh, I don’t believe in it.”

“Wait, what?”

“Most religious people don’t believe the dogma, Ash. We take from it what we want, we discard what we don’t. We form whatever narrative we like — kind God, vengeful God, active God, laid-back God, whatever. We just make sure we get something out of it. Maybe we get life everlasting while people we resent burn for eternity. Maybe we get something more concrete — money, a job, friends. You just change the narrative.”

“I’m surprised to hear that,” Ash said.

“Really?”

He cupped both hands around the back window so he could peer into the kitchen. Empty. Lights out. More than that, the kitchen table was covered in a long white cloth, the kind of thing you put on when you’re closing up for the season.

Dee Dee said, “When the Truth traveled to Arizona to find that hidden symbol in the desert — the symbol that is the entire basis for our belief in one Truth — do you know what future it foretold?”

Ash turned away from the window.

“When the current embodiment of the Truth dies and ascends to the second level, he would be replaced not by one man, but the Truth would be unified and strengthened by two people representing all of humanity. A man. And joining him, a woman. A special woman.”

Dee Dee grinned.

Ash looked at her. “You.”

She spread her arms to indicate that he was correct.

“And the symbol really foretold this, the stuff about a man and now a woman?”

“No, of course not, Ash.”

He made a face indicating he didn’t understand.

“This is a recent” — Dee Dee made quote marks with her hand — ‘interpretation.’”

“So you know,” Ash said.

“Know what?”

“You know it’s all nonsense.”

“No, Ash, you don’t get it. Like everyone else, I get what I need to out of it. It nourishes me. Knowing it isn’t literal doesn’t make my beliefs a less potent force. It makes them stronger. It puts me in control.”