Harlan Coben: Fool Me Once

Someone had leaked to Corey Rudzinski what had started off as a rescue mission. Four soldiers, including three Maya knew and loved, had been killed in an ambush in Al Qa’im, not far from the Syrian-Iraqi border. Two were still alive but pinned down by enemy fire. A black SUV was moving in for the kill. Maya and Shane, flying at full speed in a Boeing MH-6 Little Bird light helicopter gunship, had heard the terrified calls for help from the two surviving soldiers. They both sounded so young, so damned young, and she knew the four already dead would have sounded exactly the same.

Once they had the target in view, they waited for confirmation, but while everyone thinks military gear is infallible, the radio signal from Joint Operations Command at Al Asad kept coming in and out. Not so with the two soldiers who were begging to be saved. Maya and Shane waited. Both were cursing through the radio, demanding a reply from JOC, when they heard the two survivors scream.

That was when Maya’s MH-6 took out the black SUV with an AGM-114 Hellfire Missile. The SUV blew up high into the air. The infantry moved in and rescued the soldiers. Both had been hit, but both survived.

At the time, it had all seemed pretty righteous.

Maya’s cell phone rang. She closed the web browser quickly, as though she’d been caught watching porn. She saw the caller ID read “FARNWOOD,” the name of the Burkett family estate.

“Hello?”

“Maya, it’s Judith.”

Joe’s mom. It had been more than a week since Joe’s death, but the tone still had that same heaviness, as though every word was a task, a struggle, painful.

“Oh, hi, Judith.”

“I wanted to know how you and Lily are faring.”

“That was thoughtful. We’re as well as can be expected.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Judith said. “I’m also calling to remind you that tomorrow Heather Howell will read Joe’s will in Farnwood Library at nine A.M. sharp.”

The rich even name their rooms.

“I’ll be there, thank you.”

“Would you like us to send a car?”

“No, I’ll be okay.”

“Why not bring Lily? We would love to see her.”

“Let’s play that by ear, okay?”

“Of course. I... I really miss seeing her. She looks so much like... Well, we’ll see you tomorrow.”

Judith held back the tears long enough to hang up.

Maya sat there for a moment. Maybe she would bring Lily. Isabella too. That reminded her that she should check the nanny cam’s SD card. Maya hadn’t watched it in two days, but then again, so what? She was feeling tired. It could wait for the morning.

Maya washed up. There was a big chair in the bedroom — Joe’s chair — and she sat in it now and opened her book. It was a new Wright brothers biography. She tried to focus, but her mind wouldn’t settle.

Corey Rudzinski was back in the United States. Was that a coincidence?

“You’re going to try to do this on your own, aren’t you?”

She felt the warning signs coming on. Maya closed the book and quickly slipped into bed. She turned off the lights and waited.

First came the sweats, then the visions — but it was the sounds that always battered her. The sounds. The ceaseless noises, the constant cacophony of the helicopter rotors, the static voices on the radio, the gunfire — and, of course, the human sounds, the laughter, the ridicule, the panic, the screams.

Maya pulled her pillow tight around her ears, but that just made it worse. All those sounds didn’t just surround her. They didn’t just echo and reverberate. They tore through her head. They ripped through her brain tissue, shredding her dreams and thoughts and wants like hot shrapnel.

Maya bit back a scream. Tonight would be bad. She would need help.

Maya opened the drawer in her night table. She pulled out the bottle and downed two Klonopins.

The pills didn’t stop the sounds, but eventually, after she rode it out a little longer, they muffled the noise enough to let her sleep.

First thought when Maya woke up: Check out the nanny cam video.

Maya always woke up at exactly 4:58 A.M. Some claimed that she had one of those internal alarm clocks, but if she did, it could only be set for 4:58 A.M. and it couldn’t be turned off, even on nights she stayed up late and craved a few extra minutes of sleep, and if she tried to “set” the internal alarm even a few minutes earlier or later, it switched back to the default setting of 4:58 A.M.

This had started during basic training. Her drill sergeant had a wake-up time of 5:00 A.M., and while most of her fellow recruits would groan or struggle, Maya had already been awake a full two minutes and was ready for the drill sergeant’s imminent and rarely pleasant arrival.

Once Maya had fallen asleep (read: passed out) the night before, she had slept soundly. Oddly enough, whatever demons possessed her, they rarely came out in her sleep — no nightmares, no twisting of the sheets, no waking up in a cold sweat. Maya never remembered her dreams, which could mean that she slept peacefully or that whatever happened in those dreams, her unconscious was merciful enough to let her forget them.

She grabbed her hair band from the night table and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. Joe had liked the ponytail. “I love your bone structure,” he would say. “I want to see as much of your face as possible.” He also liked to play with the ponytail and even, on some occasions, gently pull it, but that was another matter altogether.

Her face flushed at the memory.

Maya checked her phone for messages. Nothing important. She swung her legs out of bed and padded down the hallway. Lily was still sleeping. No surprise there. In the genetic internal alarm department, Lily was more like her father: Sleep until you absolutely have to rise.

It was still dark outside. The kitchen smelled of baking, obviously the handiwork of Isabella. Maya didn’t cook, bake, or otherwise engage in culinary activities unless forced to. Many of her friends were big-time into cooking, which Maya found amusing, since for generations, and indeed throughout pretty much the entire existence of mankind, cooking was considered a tedious and grueling chore one tried to avoid. In history books, you rarely read about monarchs or lords or anyone the slightest bit elite enjoying spending time in the kitchen. Eating? Sure. Fine dining and wine? Of course. But preparing the meals? That was a menial task given to lowly servants.

Maya debated scrambling herself some eggs with a side of bacon, but the act of merely pouring milk atop cold cereal called out to her. She sat at the table and tried not to think about the reading of Joe’s will that day. She didn’t think that there would be any surprises. Maya had signed a prenup (Joe: “It’s a family thing — if any of us Burketts don’t sign, we get disinherited”), and once Lily was born, Joe had set it up so that, in the event of his death, all his holdings would go into a trust for their daughter. Maya was happy enough with that.

There was no cold cereal in the cabinet. Dang. Isabella had been complaining about the sugar content in them, but had she gone so far as to toss them? Maya headed to the fridge and then stopped.

Isabella.

The nanny cam.

She had woken up thinking about it, which was odd. Sure, she checked it most days, but not all. It never felt urgent to her. Nothing even the slightest bit questionable ever occurred. Maya normally kept the fast-forward button pressed down. On camera, Isabella was always sunny and happy, which was a bit troubling because that wasn’t Isabella’s default state. She did light up around Lily, but Isabella had a face like a totem pole. She wasn’t big on smiling.

Yet she always smiled on the nanny cam. She was the perfect nanny all the time, and let’s face it, no one is that. No one. We all have our moments, don’t we?