Харлан Кобен - Found

No one else walked, so we got a few odd looks. Rachel, of course, got a few lingering glances, but she was used to that.

“How did it go with your father?” I asked.

“It’ll be okay,” she said.

“Are you mad at me?”

“For telling me about my mother?”

I nodded.

“No. I get it. My father thinks it was the wrong move. He thinks I’ll feel guilty for the rest of my life.”

“Is he right?”

Rachel shrugged. “I feel guilty now. I don’t know how I’ll feel tomorrow. But your uncle was right: I’d rather live with the guilt than the lie.” She pointed up the hill. “We take that left.”

When we did, we entered a whole different part of the island. If the island were also a ferry, we were now on the lower deck. Rather than lush trees, row houses now lined both sides of the streets. The plain brick and cookie-cutter architecture indicated that we were no longer among the hoity-toity. That was the thing with fancy islands for the rich. Someone had to work the electric and the water and the cable. Someone had to mow the expansive lawns and teach the tennis and clean the pools.

This eyesore of a street, tucked away where no one could really see it, was where these workers and all-year inhabitants lived.

“Are you sure we’re on the right street?” I asked.

“I am,” Rachel said. She pointed at one of the brick buildings. “It’s that one — third on the left.”

I shook my head. “Jared goes to an expensive prep school. That fits with this island.”

“But it doesn’t fit with this street,” Rachel said.

“He plays basketball,” I said. “It looks like he’s very good.”

“A scholarship kid?”

“Makes sense.” We reached a cracked walkway made of concrete and started toward the door. “Now what?” I asked.

“We knock,” Rachel said.

So we did — and Jared Lowell answered.

He was tall and good-looking, just like in the photographs. He wore a flannel shirt, jeans, and work boots. He looked at me first, then at Rachel. His eyes stayed on Rachel.

Big surprise.

A smile came to his lips.

“Can I help you?”

Rachel asked, “Are you Jared Lowell?”

“That’s right. Who are you?”

“This is Mickey Bolitar,” she said. He turned and gave me a brief though polite nod. “My name is Rachel Caldwell.”

The names clearly didn’t mean anything to him. From inside the house, I heard a woman’s voice shout, “Jared? Who’s there?”

“I got it, Ma.”

“I didn’t ask if you got it. I asked who’s there.”

Jared looked at us as though waiting for the answer. I said, “We’re here on behalf of Ema Beaumont.”

I wasn’t sure what to suspect. The most likely answer to all of this remained the most obvious one: Ema had been catfished. This guy, this Jared, had no idea who she was or what we were talking about. Still, this visit would confirm that fact, and we could be on our way.

In another sense, our mission was over the moment Jared Lowell opened that door. Jared Lowell wasn’t missing. We had found him. He was safe. The rest — whether he was the guy who’d befriended Ema online or not — was irrelevant.

So I expected him to say, “Who?” or “I don’t know any Ema Beaumont” or something along those lines. But that was not what happened. Instead his face drained of all color.

“Jared?”

It was his mom again.

“Just some friends from town,” he shouted back. “Everything’s fine.”

He stepped outside and closed the door behind him. He hurried down the cracked-concrete path. Rachel and I caught up to him.

“What are you doing here?” Jared asked.

“We’re friends of Ema’s,” I said.

“So?”

“You know who she is, right?”

He didn’t reply.

“Jared?”

“Yeah, I know who she is. So what?”

Jared looked at his front door as though expecting it to open. He picked up the pace. We kept up with him. When we reached the corner, he stopped abruptly.

“What’s this about?” Jared asked me. “I got to get to work at the club soon.”

Now that I had him in front of me, listening, I wasn’t sure how to put it. “You, uh, had a relationship with her,” I began.

“With Ema, you mean?”

“Yes.”

He shrugged. “We communicated online, I guess.”

“Just communicated?”

Jared looked over at Rachel, then back at me. “Why is this your business?”

Fair question.

Rachel said, “She’s worried about you.”

“Who?”

“Who do you think?” I snapped. “Ema.”

“And how does any of this concern you two?”

“You were ‘communicating’” — I made quote marks in the air — “online, right?”

“What if I was?”

“Well, Jared, you just stopped cold. Why?”

He shook his head slowly. “What’s your name again? Never mind. This is really none of your business.” He turned toward Rachel and his face softened. “No offense to you, Rachel, but I’m not sure it’s your business either.”

“Didn’t forget her name,” I mumbled.

“What?”

I stepped up to him. “You don’t do that to a person,” I said.

“Do what?”

“You don’t just stop communicating with someone like that. You don’t just disappear and not tell the other person. You don’t just leave them hanging like that. It’s mean.”

“‘It’s mean’?” he repeated, turning toward Rachel. “Is he for real?”

“I agree with him,” Rachel said.

That made him swallow. “Wait, I did send her an e-mail. Maybe, I don’t know, maybe it got stuck in her spam folder or something.”

“Yeah,” I said in a voice dripping with sarcasm, “that seems likely.”

There was a sound that drew his attention. I looked behind me to see what it was. The front door opened. A woman I assumed was his mother was standing in the doorway. “Everything okay, Jared?”

“Fine, Ma.” Then in a quieter voice to us: “I have to go.”

I stepped in his path. I didn’t exactly block him, but the move definitely had some force behind it. “Wait a second,” I said. “The two of us came a long way.”

“For what?” he asked.

I looked at Rachel. She looked at me. I didn’t have an answer. Jared Lowell wasn’t missing. He wasn’t in danger. He was, it seemed, a jerk, but that didn’t make him in need of rescue.

“Why did you stop communicating with Ema?” I asked again.

“None of your business.”

Again his eyes drifted toward Rachel, and when they did, a cold realization entered my brain.

“Oh man,” I said.

“What?”

“When did you first see a picture of Ema?”

“What?”

A small seed of anger began to grow in my chest. “When did you first see what Ema looked like, Jared?”

He shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

“No?” I said. “So maybe — wild guess here — it was around the time you decided not to talk to her anymore?”

“I told you. We never talked.”

“E-mailed, texted, whatever. You know what I mean. Is that when you first saw her picture?”

But I saw something churning behind his eyes. “Yeah? So what of it?” He grabbed my arm and pulled me away from Rachel. He spoke in a soft voice.

“Dude, do you really blame me? I mean, look at the girl you’re with.”

I was actually cocking my fist when I remembered that his mom was still at the front door.

“Jared?” she called out.

“I’ll be there in a second, Ma.” He leaned close to me and kept his voice low. “Look, okay, maybe I should have told her better. Maybe I should have made it clearer, but really, it wasn’t a big thing.”

“It was to her.”

“That’s not my problem.”