by Harlan Coben
Our request is simple. We believe that the truth will set you free. For that reason, we want you to turn over the tapes you have on Rusty Eggers to us. All of them, especially the oldest. There will be no negotiating on this. The stakes are too high.
Please follow these Instructions exactly.
On the bottom of this email is a link to an anonymous drop box which works through what is commonly known as the Dark Web via several VPNs. The link is not active yet.
At exactly 4PM, click the link and upload all videos that you have on Rusty Eggers per the prompts.
You will see a special folder set aside for the truly damaging tape. We know the tape exists, so please do not pretend otherwise. The link will be useless again at exactly 5PM.
If we don’t get what we want, your son will face the consequences.
That was it. On the bottom was indeed a hyperlink with lots of jumbled numbers, letters, and symbols of all sorts.
Hester read the message several more times. Wilde watched her and waited. Eventually Hester handed the phone back to Dash. Both of their hands were shaking.
“You want my advice?” Hester asked.
“Of course.”
“Contact the FBI.”
“No,” Delia said.
“You read the message,” Dash added. “No law enforcement.”
“I get that, but in my view, contacting the professionals gives you your best chance. Only the four of us have seen this email, am I correct?”
They both nodded.
“So Wilde leaves now. We know people at the FBI. Good people who will keep it quiet. Wilde tells one of those people what’s what—”
“No,” Dash said. “No way.”
“Delia?” Hester said.
“I agree with my husband. For now, we do this on our own.”
They were not going to change their minds, not yet anyway, so Wilde shifted gears. “According to the time stamp, the email was sent a little more than an hour ago. What time did you first see it?”
Dash made a face. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Delia replied, “Pretty much right away.”
“That’s when you called me?” Hester asked.
“Yes.”
Hester saw where Wilde was going with this. “And may we make an observation?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“You didn’t tell your chief of security about it.”
Dash let loose a sigh. “I wanted to.”
“Yes, but your wife didn’t.” Hester faced Delia. “Because you see what I see.”
“And what do both of you ladies see that I can’t?” Dash asked with a hint of irritation.
“Gavin Chambers works for Rusty Eggers. His loyalty is to him, not you. I didn’t send him out of the room just because he could be legally compelled to talk. I wanted him out because you aren’t his first priority. Protecting Rusty Eggers is. Do you understand?”
“I do,” Dash said, “but even if I agree with that, our interests here are the same.”
Hester tilted her head. “Are you sure about that? I mean, let’s say hypothetically that the choice is your son dies or all your tapes are released to the public. Which side do you think Rusty Eggers is going to take?”
Silence.
“And I want you to consider something else,” Hester went on. “If this really is a kidnapping, who would be your most likely suspect?”
“Radicals,” Dash said.
“Well, that’s pretty vague, but let’s go with that. Let’s say it was radicals. So these radicals figured a way to get your son to go out on his own into the woods and then, what, they nabbed him on your own property and dragged him off at, I don’t know, gunpoint or whatever?” Hester rubbed her chin. “Does that seem likely?”
“So what are you saying?” Delia asked.
“Nothing yet. I’m spitballing. Honestly. That’s all. It could be, for example, that your son concocted all of this.”
Delia looked skeptical. “I don’t think so.”
“Maybe Crash just ran away. Maybe he’s fine and safe and hiding. Maybe he sent this email.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. Spitballing, remember? But that’s a possibility, right? Another possibility is that Naomi Pine is involved. We know she ran away already. Did she give him the idea? Are they together? We know that Crash and Naomi were classmates. So maybe the two of them are in this together. I don’t know, but that’s another possibility. Are you with me so far?”
Dash frowned, but Delia said, “I think so.”
“So now let’s suppose the kidnapping is on the up-and-up. I don’t mean to sound cold and analytical, but for now, let’s try to keep emotion out of our thinking, okay? Let’s say someone found a way to lure your son out into the woods and grab him. One possibility is that, yes, it’s just as it appears. Many, uh, radicals want Rusty Eggers to go down. So a team of experts—CIA or military trained—carried out this operation. Doubtful but okay, maybe. Which leads me to the one last possibility I can’t get out of my head.”
Delia said, “We’re listening.”
“Gavin Chambers is behind this,” Hester said. “He is the complete insider. He knows the CCTV setup. He knows everything. He told your son to come meet him out in the woods. And he took him.”
Dash made a scoffing noise. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Motive?” Delia asked, ignoring her husband’s reaction.
“Maybe Rusty told him to do it. Maybe Rusty wants to flush out any secrets you might have.” Hester thought that maybe she scored on that one—with Delia at least. She took a step closer. “Listen, Delia, you felt something, didn’t you? That’s why you didn’t tell Gavin Chambers. Something about him made you hesitate.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Delia said.
“Then—”
“I just…he works for Rusty Eggers. Like you said. I acted out of an abundance of caution, not because I really suspect he’d take our child.”
Hester turned to Wilde and caught the look on his face. “You have something to add?”
“A few things odd in the ransom email,” Wilde said.
“Go on.”
“First, what do they mean by ‘especially the oldest’ tape?”
“I’m not sure,” Dash said, “but I assume they mean outtakes from season one.”
Wilde waited a beat. Give them a pool of silence. People often dove in. Dash and Delia did not.
After a few more seconds passed, Hester said, “What else, Wilde?”
“If the kidnappers just want the truth out there, why not demand that you release the tapes to the media or post them on a public forum? Why would the kidnappers ask you to send them to their private drop first?”
“I’m not following,” Dash said.
“It could be nothing,” Wilde said. “Or it could be that the kidnappers want to control the information for themselves, not release it.”
The four of them stood there for a few long moments. A lawn mower shattered the silence. Then another.
“But there’s nothing on the tapes,” Dash said. “That’s the key thing. We don’t have any dirt.”
Delia nodded. “At worst, what we have is slightly embarrassing to Rusty. That’s all.”
Wilde listened to them both and reached a simple conclusion.
They were lying.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
They had almost six hours until the link was active.
Wilde knew a few basic rules about negotiating with kidnappers. Rule One: Don’t ever agree to the first offer. A life may be at stake, but every negotiation is about power and control. The kidnapper had most of it, but you, the victim’s family, are the only buyer in the market for the particular “product” they are selling. So you have some power too. Open a dialogue. All the other rules—keep emotion out of it, start low, be patient, demand proof of life—flow from this basic premise.
There was only one problem.
Wil
de had no way to reach the kidnappers.
There were no emails, no mobile numbers, nothing. Wilde tried hitting reply to the ransom email, but the message bounced back.
The clock was ticking, so they divided up the chores. Dash would prepare the videos in case they decided to upload some or all of them. Delia would contact Crash’s closest friends to see whether any of them saw Crash recently or knew where he might be.
“Keep it low-key,” Hester suggested to Delia. “You’re a nervous mom not sure where your kid spent the night, that’s all.”
Wilde would continue searching for Naomi because the early theory remained the best one: There was a connection between Naomi’s disappearance and Crash’s. In short, if you find Naomi Pine, you most likely find Crash Maynard.
There was yet another matter Wilde had to handle. He spotted Gavin Chambers standing by the tennis court smoking a cigarette.
“I’m surprised you smoke,” Wilde said.
“The bad guy always smokes.” Chambers threw the butt on the ground and stomped it with his heel. “And he litters.” He squinted up at the sun. “Your idea to move the meeting outside?”
Wilde saw no reason to reply.
“The library isn’t bugged. You can have a guy sweep the place.”
“Okay.”
“So you officially throwing me out?”
“No,” Wilde said.
“Then you want to fill me in on what’s going on?”
“As much as I can.”
“Hey, Wilde?”
Wilde looked up at him.
“Don’t insult me with your bullshit, okay? I know Hester isn’t just worried about privilege. I’m viewed as Rusty Eggers’s man.”
“Hmm. Sure you weren’t listening in?”
Gavin liked that one. “Even Captain Obvious could have figured that one out. Rusty was the one who brought me in, so someone feels that’s where my loyalty will be.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Would it do me any good to say no?”
“Probably not.”
“Either way, I just want to find the kid. So what’s the plan?”
“Most of the guards here were employed before you came on board.”
“Right. I brought in three men with me, including Bryce.”
“Bryce?”
“The blond guy you keep tangling with.”
“Okay. So Bryce and the other two are out.”
“Leaving you with Maynard’s untrained rent-a-cops?”
“I’ll bring in a few of my own people,” Wilde said.
“Ah, I see.” Gavin Chambers smiled. “From your old agency?”
He had already called Rola, who was more than game. She was, in fact, on her way with a crew in hand. “Yes.”
“You guys ever handle a kidnapping?” Gavin asked. “Because—no offense—you’ll screw it up.”
“Funny.”
“What?”
“Before you seemed pretty certain Crash was a runaway, not a kidnapping.”
“Yeah, that was before the Maynards called Hester Crimstein and tossed me out. And that was before I walked into that library and saw their faces. They were trying to hold it together—that’s what Dash and Delia do—but they were clearly coming undone.” Chambers reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pair of sunglasses. “By the way, did you tell them?”
Wilde waited. When Chambers didn’t say anything more, Wilde said, “Okay, I’ll bite. Tell them what?”
“That you met with Saul Strauss at the Sheraton bar.”
Wilde shouldn’t have been caught off guard, but he was. He was also more than a little upset with himself that he hadn’t spotted their tail. Had his heart-to-heart with Laila really thrown him off that much? “Impressive.”
“Not really.”
“Question: If your men were following me, then you knew I wasn’t at my capsule this morning. You also knew I didn’t take the boy.”
“That’s a question?”
“Why the big show of force in the woods, if you knew I wasn’t there?”
“We didn’t know.”
“You just said you were following—”
“Not you, Wilde. We weren’t following you.”
Strauss. They were following Strauss.
“Saul Strauss is a loon—and a threat,” Gavin said. “You can see that.”
“I can,” Wilde said.
“So what did he want with you?”
Wilde considered how to answer this.
“I’m not going away,” Gavin Chambers said. “We can either work together like we said before—I know more about Crash, you know more about Naomi—or I can just bulldoze my way into representing Rusty’s interest without your cooperation.”
Wilde wasn’t certain of the right move here, but the old proverb about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer echoed in his head.
“Strauss knew Naomi was missing,” Wilde said.
“How?”
“I don’t know. But he knew there was a connection between Naomi and Crash.”
“Why the hell would Saul Strauss care about Naomi Pine?” Chambers asked.
Something else surfaced in Wilde’s head, one of the first things Saul Strauss had said to him: “I hear you had a run-in with the Maynard kid today.”
Saul Strauss had known that Wilde had been at the school.
How had he known that?
There were witnesses in the parking lot, of course, but the only other person who might know more than that, the only other person who could really say what had gone on in that art room, was Ava O’Brien.
But no. How would Ava be involved in this?
She couldn’t be. She was just a part-time art teacher.
Wilde said, “You have a relationship with him, right?”
“Saul Strauss? We served together. I saw him yesterday when he protested by the Maynards’ office.”
“So maybe the first step is to find him,” Wilde said.
“You don’t think I thought of that already?”
“So—”
“Remember how he walked out of the Sheraton hotel?”
Wilde nodded. “He walked toward the back exit.”
“Maybe,” Gavin said.
“What do you mean?”
“My men saw Strauss go in. They never saw him go out. We lost him.”
* * *
The Maynards had given Wilde a Lexus GS to use. As he slipped behind the driver’s seat, he called Ava O’Brien. The call went into her voicemail. No one he knew ever checked voicemail, so he sent Ava a quick text:
Need to talk ASAP.
No immediate reply, no dancing dots. He wasn’t sure what he would ask her anyway. If Ava O’Brien was somehow aligned with Saul Strauss…no, that made no sense.
Speaking of Strauss.
As Wilde pulled into Bernard Pine’s driveway, he took out the business card Saul Strauss had given him and dialed the number. It went straight to voicemail.
“It’s Wilde. You told me to call if I had any information. I do. You’ll want to hear it.”
He didn’t know whether that was strictly true, but he figured that that message might get Strauss’s attention. Wilde thought about Ava. He thought about Strauss. He thought about Gavin and Crash and yes, of course, Naomi.
He was missing something.
Bernard Pine, Naomi’s father, opened his front door before Wilde could ring the bell.
“Do you know a man named Saul Strauss?” Wilde asked.
“Who?”
“Saul Strauss. He’s on TV sometimes. Maybe Naomi has mentioned him.”
Pine shook his head. “Never heard of him. Have you found anything new?”
“Have you?”
“No. I’m going to the police again. But I don’t think they’ll listen.”
“Do you know if Naomi’s passport is still here?”
“I can take a look,” Pine said. “Come on in.” He stepped back and let Wilde inside. The foyer smelled stale. Wilde spot
ted the half-full glass and half-full bottle of bourbon on the coffee table. Bernard spotted him spotting it.
“Taking a personal day,” Bernard said.
Wilde saw no reason to reply.
“Why do you need her passport?”
“Any chance Naomi is with her mother?”
Something skittered across his face. “Why do you ask that?”
“We called her.”
“You called Pia?”
No reason to clarify that the call was made by Hester’s office. “Last time we called, your ex-wife straight-up told us that Naomi wasn’t with her. This time she wouldn’t reply. We also have a report your ex is overseas.”
“Which is why you asked me about her passport.” Pine led Wilde to a home office in the back of the house. Standard stuff—desk, computer, printer, file cabinet. Wilde spotted an electric bill and something from the cable company on the right. The checkbook was out. The screensaver was a generic ocean shot, probably one of the computer default screens. The paperweight was a Lucite-block award with Bernard’s name on it, some kind of “salesman of the month” type thing. There was a classic photograph of a golf foursome at a pro-am outing, Bernard beaming on the far right as he held his driver.
There were no photographs of his daughter.
Bernard Pine rummaged through the drawer, ducking his head for a better look. “Here.”
He pulled out the passport. Wilde held out his hand. Bernard hesitated and handed Naomi’s passport over. There was only one foreign stamp—Heathrow Airport in London three years ago.
“Naomi is not with my ex,” Pine said.
There was no doubt in his tone.
“Can I show you something?”
Wilde nodded.
“I don’t want you to think I’m weird or anything.” Bernard Pine turned around to the file cabinet. He fumbled for a key, unlocked it, opened the bottom drawer. He reached into the back and pulled out a magazine in protective wrap. The magazine was called SportsGlobe. The publication date was from two decades ago. On the cover was a swimsuit model.
There was a yellow Post-it marking a page. Pine carefully turned to it.
“Pia,” he said, with a longing that made even Wilde pull up. “Gorgeous, right?”
Wilde looked down at the model in the floss bikini.
