Harlan Coben - Fool Me Once

The truth was so obvious and so deeply painful. If Maya hadn’t made those mistakes in that chopper, Claire would still be alive. She would be standing here, overwhelmed by the beauty and laughter of her children. It was Maya’s fault that she wasn’t. Claire was not here, and somewhere, behind the happy smiles of Daniel and Alexa, was a sadness that would always haunt them.

Lily started to spin her head, looking around. She spotted her mother and waved. Maya swallowed and waved back. Daniel and Alexa waved too and beckoned for Maya to join them.

“Maya?” Eddie said.

She said nothing.

“Go to them.”

Maya shook her head.

“You’re not on guard duty right now,” he said, a little too in her thoughts. “Go and enjoy your daughter.”

But he didn’t get it. She didn’t belong here. She was an outsider, out of her element — even though, ironically, this was the way of life she had fought and risked everything to protect. Yes, this. Right here. This very moment. Yet she couldn’t cross that line and be a part of it, could she? Maybe that was the deal you made. You can participate or you can protect, but you really can’t do both. Her fellow soldiers would understand. Some might force themselves to cross over. They’d smile and go on the carousel and buy the T-shirts, but there would be something behind the eyes, something that couldn’t quite let go, something that kept them scanning the perimeter for approaching danger.

Did that ever go away?

Maybe. But not yet. So Maya stood there, watching, a silent sentinel.

“You go,” Maya said.

Eddie thought about it. “No, I’m good here with you.”

They stayed there and watched.

“Maya?”

She said nothing.

“When you find out who killed Claire, you’ll need to tell me.”

Eddie wanted to be the one to avenge his wife. That wouldn’t happen. “Okay,” she said.

“Promise?”

What was one more lie? “Promise.”

Her mobile phone buzzed. She checked the number. Tom Douglass’s home line. She stepped to the side and brought the phone to her ear.

“Hello?”

“I got your message,” Mrs. Douglass said. “Come by as soon as you can.”

“Let me take Lily home with us,” Eddie said. “The kids will be thrilled.”

It would indeed make things easier. If Maya were to try to pull Lily away from the festivities, she would understandably throw a tantrum worthy of, well, a two-year-old.

“It’s about that Tom Douglass,” she said, even though he hadn’t asked. “He lives in Livingston. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.”

Eddie made a face.

“What?”

“Livingston. That’s Exit 15W on the Turnpike, right?”

“Right, why?”

“The week before Claire was killed,” he said, “her E-Z Pass showed a couple of hits through that toll booth.”

“Was that unusual for her?”

“I never really checked her E-Z Pass before, but yeah, I mean, we don’t go down that far.”

“What do you make of it?”

“There’s some fancy mall down there. I figured maybe that’s where she went.”

Or he didn’t want to look too closely, which was understandable. No matter. Maya hurried back to her car. Her sister had been murdered because she was getting too close to a secret. Maya was sure of it. That secret had to do with Tom Douglass and, by extension, Joe’s brother Andrew Burkett. How Andrew Burkett, who’d been dead almost fifteen years when Maya and Joe met, could possibly have led to Claire’s murder was still a mystery.

She started toward the highway, flipping stations, finding nothing she liked. It wouldn’t do to overanalyze right now. Her daughter was safe with Claire’s family.

She hooked up the playlist on her phone via the Bluetooth and tried to clear her mind. Lykke Li came on singing “No Rest for the Wicked.” Lykke sang that she let her “good one” down and then the killer line: “I let my true love die.” Maya sang along, lost in that small bliss, and when the song was over, she hit the back arrow, played it again, sang it all the way through to the also-killer end stanza: “I had his heart, but I broke it every time.”

Joe had given her this song. Their relationship had been a mad whirlwind, but that had been Maya’s disastrous romantic history. Forty-eight hours after meeting at that charity function, Joe had suggested flying down to Turks and Caicos on the Burketts’ private plane. Maya had swooned and acquiesced. They spent the weekend at a villa at the Amanyara resort.

She had expected this new relationship to follow her normal impetuous pattern: intense, sizzling, over-the-top, maniacal romantic connection — followed in short order by a quick cut to black. Sizzle to fizzle. Love to good-bye. For Maya, everyone she fell for became her Jean-Pierre. For maybe three weeks.

So after week one, when she woke up to find that Joe had made her an online playlist, she listened hard to every song, ciphering out hidden meanings in the lyrics, while lying on her back like a teenager and staring at the ceiling. She loved his taste in music. The songs had done more than speak to her. They had penetrated her defenses, weakened her, left her ripe for, sexist as it might sound, education.

Still, Maya knew it took two to tango. She had relished whirling helplessly in Joe’s vortex — drink, song, travel, sex — but from the start, like with every one of her romantic entanglements, she could see the end in sight. That was okay for her. She had a life in the military. Marriage, kids, Soccer Days — they were not part of the plan. By all rights, Joe should have ended up being another good memory.

Her relationships eventually turned bad. But the memories didn’t.

Except Maya ended up getting pregnant, and in her ensuing confusion about what to do, Joe stepped up big-time. There was the proposal on one knee while violins played. He promised her happiness. He promised her love. He told her that he was proud of her military service and swore to do all he could so that she could achieve her career goals. They would be different, he said, living by their own set of rules. Joe’s passion was a force unto itself. It swept her along, and before she knew it, Captain Maya Stern was a Burkett.

Lykke Li faded away and Oh Wonder’s “White Blood” came on. Why on earth, she asked herself, was she listening to Joe’s heartbreakers? Simple answer: because she liked the songs. In a vacuum, forgetting where it had all gone, these songs still reached inside her and touched her, even this one, even with the gut-wrenching opening lines:

Beautiful but bullshit, Maya thought as she spotted Tom Douglass’s boat by the garage. She was ready to do it alone.

Before Maya could ring the bell, the front door opened. Mrs. Douglass was there. Her face was drawn, the skin pulled tight. She looked left and right, opened the screen door, and said, “Get in.”

Maya stepped inside. Mrs. Douglass closed the door behind her.

“Is someone watching us?” Maya asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Is your husband home?”

“No.”

Maya kept silent. The woman had called her back because she wanted something. Let her say what it was.

“I got your phone message,” Mrs. Douglass said.

Maya barely nodded.

“You said you knew what work my husband was doing for the Burketts.”

This time Mrs. Douglass waited her out. Maya kept it brief.

“That’s not what I said.”

“Oh?”

“I said I knew why the Burketts were paying your husband.”

“I don’t see the difference.”

“I don’t think he did work for them,” Maya said. “Unless accepting a bribe is work.”