Харлан Кобен - Run Away

Simon’s head spun. “Hold up, you were in rehab right before I saw you in the park?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand. How did you find this retreat?”

Paige looked toward the bed.

Simon couldn’t believe it. “Your mother?”

“She took me.”

Simon looked toward Ingrid too, as if maybe she would wake up right now and explain.

“I came to her,” Paige said. “My one last hope. She knew this place. She’d been there before, years ago. They do things differently, she told me. So I tried it. And it was working. Or maybe it wasn’t. It’s easy to blame someone else, but maybe...”

Simon took the blows from these new revelations, trying to focus on what was important.

His daughter was back. His daughter was back, and she was clean.

He asked the next question as gently as possible. “Why didn’t Mom tell me she was helping you?”

“I told her not to. That was part of the deal.”

“Why didn’t you want me to know?”

Paige turned to him. He looked into his baby’s pained eyes and wondered how long it had been since he looked at her, really looked at her, like this. “Your face,” she said.

“What?”

“When I failed before, when I let you down, your face, the look of disappointment...” She stopped, shook her head as though to clear it. “If I failed again and saw your face, I thought maybe I’d kill myself.”

Simon put his hand back to his mouth. “Oh, honey.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Please? I’m sorry if I ever made you feel that way.”

Paige started nervously scratching at her arms. Simon could see the needle marks, though they seemed to be fading.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“I need to get back now.”

“I’ll drive you.”

They stopped by the apartment on the way. Paige woke up her two siblings. Simon used his iPhone and filmed the ecstatic tears as his three children briefly but intensely reunited. He’d play the video for Ingrid. It didn’t matter whether she heard it through the coma or not. He would play it for her and himself over and over.

The drive back up north was a long one. He didn’t mind. For the first hours, Paige slept.

That left Simon alone with his own thoughts.

So many emotions ricocheted through him. He felt joy and relief at seeing Paige — clean Paige! — again. That was the overriding emotion. He rode that wave and tried to ignore the others — the worry about what would come next, the sorrow that he’d made Paige feel such dread about his reaction, the confusion about why Ingrid kept this huge secret from him.

How could she?

How could Ingrid have not told him about taking Paige to rehab? How could she have not said anything about it after he’d seen her in the park and had that confrontation with Aaron? It was one thing to keep your promise to your child. He got that. But that wasn’t how they operated as a couple.

They told each other everything.

Or so he thought.

Simon was just remembering what Rocco said, about how Luther shot Ingrid, when Paige woke up and reached for the water bottle.

“How are you feeling?” he asked her.

“Okay. This is such a long ride, Dad. I could have just taken the bus back.”

“Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.”

Simon shot her a weary smile. She didn’t return it.

“You can’t visit me at the retreat,” Paige said. “Not for another month. No visitors.”

“Okay.”

“They let me come down because I didn’t want you to worry.”

“Thank you.”

He drove some more.

“So how did it work?” he asked her.

“How did what work?”

“When your first month was up, this retreat let you contact us?”

“Yes.”

“You read about what happened?”

Paige nodded. “My counselor at the clinic had seen a news report. She told me about it.”

“When?”

“Last night.”

“So your counselor knew and kept it from you?”

“Yes. It was my only chance, Dad. Total isolation. Please understand.”

“I do.” Simon changed lanes. “You know we became friends with your old landlord Cornelius.”

Paige turned toward him.

“He saved your mother’s life.”

“How?”

He filled her in on their visit to the Bronx — the whole story of how they’d gone to her apartment and met Cornelius and gone to Rocco’s place in that basement.

“Cornelius was really nice to me,” Paige said when he finished.

“He also told us you ran out with blood on your face two days before Aaron was killed.”

Paige turned away from him and looked out her side window.

“Did Aaron beat you?”

“Just that once.”

“Badly?”

“Yes.”

“So you ran away. And then, according to the police, that hit man killed him.”

Paige’s tone was off when she said, “I guess.”

And he could hear the lie in his daughter’s voice.

Simon knew there was something wrong with the police’s theory on Aaron Corval’s murder. On the one hand, it made perfect sense, it was simple, it fit. Sort of. The cult was killing the boys who were illegally adopted. Aaron Corval was one of those babies, ergo he’d been one of their targets. Ash and Dee Dee had returned to the scene because they needed to kill Simon.

But how could they have known Simon would be there?

Simon had scoured through all the information. He’d seen the E-ZPass records and noted that Ash and Dee’s car had never gone near the hospital. So they couldn’t have followed him.

Then something else caught Simon’s eye.

A witness, Cornelius’s tenant Enrique Boaz, claimed to have seen Dee Dee on the third floor right before the shooting on the second floor in Cornelius’s apartment.

Why? Why would she be on the third floor?

To the police this had been a small anomaly, no big deal: Every case has inconsistencies like this. But it niggled at the back of Simon’s brain. So Simon went back. With Cornelius by his side, he questioned Enrique and uncovered a possible clue:

Dee Dee had been standing right in front of Aaron and Paige’s room.

Again: Why? If you already killed Aaron, why would you go back to his room? Why would you, as Cornelius had noticed after the cops left, kick down the door to get in?

It didn’t add up.

Unless you hadn’t been there before.

“Paige?”

“Yes?”

“What did you do after Aaron beat you?”

“I ran.”

“Where?”

“I... I went to get a fix.”

Then he just asked it. “You didn’t call Mom?”

Silence.

“Paige?”

“Please let this go.”

“Did you call Mom?”

“Yes.”

“And what did she say?”

“I...” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I told her what I did. I told her I had to run away.”

“What else did you say, Paige?”

“Dad. Please. Please let this go.”

“Not until we both tell the truth. And Paige? The truth never leaves this car. Never. Aaron was scum. His death wasn’t murder — it was self-defense. He was killing you every day. Poisoning you. And when you tried to break free, he went back and poisoned you again. Do you understand?”

His daughter nodded.

“So what happened?”

“Aaron beat me that day, Dad. With his fists.”

Simon felt that rage engulf him again.

“I couldn’t take it anymore. But I knew I could pull out of it — I could be free — if he was just...”

“Gone,” Simon said, finishing the thought for her.

“Remember what you saw in the park? The way I looked?”

He nodded.

“I had to break his hold on me.”

Simon waited. Paige stared straight out the windshield in front of them.

“So yeah, Dad, I killed him. I killed him and made it all bloody. Then I ran away.”