Run Away

by Harlan Coben

  Eileen wore jeans and a dark gray cable-knit sweater with a turtle neck. Her long reddish hair was parted in the middle and hung down behind her shoulders. Her eyes were big and indigo blue and she just reeked of youth and college and possibilities, and it killed him.

  Her voice was hesitant. “It did.”

  “You seem unsure.”

  “Can I ask you something, Mr. Greene?”

  He was going to correct her and tell her to call him Simon, but the formality felt somehow right here. She was his daughter’s friend. He was asking about his daughter.

  “Of course.”

  “Why now?”

  “Pardon?”

  “This was a long time ago. What happened with Paige…I know I agreed to see you, but this wasn’t really easy for me either.”

  “What wasn’t easy?”

  “What happened with Paige. Here, I mean. At Lanford. We had that small room, the two of us, and, I don’t know, we connected. She was my best friend right away. I’m an only child. I don’t want to make too much of this, but Paige was like a sister to me. And then…”

  Eileen had been hurt and she’d recovered and now Simon was ripping open the stitches. He felt bad about that, but Eileen was young, and thirty minutes after he walked out the door, she’d go to a class or one of her roommates would get her for dinner in the Cushman Cafeteria and then they’d study at the Elders Library and probably hit a dorm party—and those “wounds” would be back sealed up tight.

  “What happened?” Simon asked.

  “Paige changed.”

  No hesitation.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He tried to think how to approach this. “When?”

  “It was toward the end of first semester.”

  “After this trip with your car?”

  “Yes. Well, no. Something was off even before then.”

  Simon leaned forward a little, making sure to keep away from her personal space. “How long before?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s hard to remember. It’s just that…”

  He nodded for her to go on.

  “When Paige asked to borrow the car, I remember feeling weird about it. Not just because it was out of character. But because she’d been distant lately.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “No. I was hurt. I was maybe a little angry with her about it.” Eileen looked up. “I should have reached out to her instead, you know? Instead of getting all hurt about it. Making it all about me. Maybe if I had been a good friend—”

  “None of this is on you, Eileen.”

  She didn’t seem convinced.

  “Could Paige have been taking drugs?” Simon asked.

  “You mean before she met Aaron?”

  “One theory is that Paige was doing drugs already—so Aaron might have been a source or something.”

  Eileen considered that. “I don’t think so. For one thing, I know this is a college campus and drugs are supposed to be rampant. But that’s not really how it is here. I wouldn’t even know where to buy anything stronger than weed.”

  “Maybe that was it,” Simon said.

  “What?”

  “Maybe Paige wanted to buy something stronger.”

  “So she went to Aaron?”

  “That’s one theory.”

  Eileen wasn’t buying it. “Paige didn’t even smoke weed. I don’t mean to make her sound like some kind of priss. She drank and stuff, but I never saw her stoned before or high or whatever you want to call it. The first time I saw her like that was after she met Aaron.”

  “So it comes back to the same thing,” Simon said. “Why did Paige borrow your car? Why did she drive to this quiet corner of Connecticut?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

  “You said she was different.”

  “Yes.”

  “How about her other friends?”

  “I think…” Her gaze traveled up and to the left. “Yes, looking back on it, I think Paige just kind of withdrew. From all of us. One of our friends, Judy Zyskind—do you know her?”

  “No.”

  “Judy’s one of my suitemates now. She’s at a lacrosse game at Bowdoin or I’d ask her to explain. Anyway, I don’t think this is it, but Judy thought maybe something had happened to her at a frat party.”

  Simon felt a cold jolt run through him. “What do you mean, ‘happened to her’?”

  “We talk a lot about sexual assault on campus here. A. Lot. I’m not saying too much. We really need it. But I think Judy sort of has it on the brain now. So when someone becomes withdrawn, it’s kinda all we see. I remember one night Judy confronting Paige about it. About some guy who Judy thought was bothering Paige.”

  “What guy?”

  “I don’t know. They didn’t say a name.”

  “And this is before Aaron?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did Paige react?”

  “She said that it had nothing to do with any of that.”

  “Did she say what it did have to do with?”

  Eileen hesitated, turned away.

  “Eileen? Did she say something else?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “I think Paige was just trying to deflect. To get us off her back.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said”—Eileen turned back, met Simon’s eyes—“that there were problems at home.”

  Simon blinked and leaned back, taking the blow. He hadn’t been expecting that. “What kind of problems at home?”

  “Paige wouldn’t elaborate.”

  “No clue at all?”

  “I thought, well, with what happened after, with Aaron and the drugs and everything, I thought maybe you and Dr. Greene were having problems.”

  “We weren’t.”

  “Oh.”

  Simon’s mind swirled.

  Problems at home?

  He tried to piece it together. It wasn’t the marriage—he and Ingrid were good, better than ever, actually. It wasn’t financial—her parents were both at the height of their careers and earning power. How about Paige’s siblings? Nothing strange, nothing that he could remember. There had been a minor drama with Sam’s science teacher, but no, that had been the year before, and that wouldn’t warrant a “problems at home” comment.

  Unless something had been going on that Simon didn’t know about.

  But even if that were the case—even if Paige imagined or saw some real problem with something back home with her family—how had that led her to drive to Connecticut and Aaron?

  He asked Eileen that.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Greene. I don’t know.”

  Eileen Vaughan glanced at her mobile phone the way someone older might glance at their watch. She shifted on the couch, her body language suddenly all wrong, and Simon knew that he was losing her.

  “I have a class soon,” she said.

  “Eileen?”

  “Yes?”

  “Aaron’s been murdered.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “Paige has run off.”

  “Run off?”

  “She’s missing. And now I think whoever killed Aaron is after her too.”

  “I don’t understand. Why?”

  “I don’t know. But I think whatever brought them together—whatever made Paige seek Aaron out—is responsible. That’s why I need your help. I need to figure out what happened to her, on this campus, that made her borrow your car and go to Aaron.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I get that. And I get that you just want me to leave. But I’m asking you for your help.”

  “Help how?”

  “Start from the beginning. Tell me everything that happened, no matter how insignificant it might seem. Something made her change. Something made her borrow your car and go find Aaron.”

  * * *

  Paige became a “Try Hard,” Eileen Vaughan told him.

  “A what?”

  “A Try Ha
rd,” Eileen repeated. “You know how during Orientation Week they tell you that you can be all you want to be, that this is your chance to start anew and take advantage of all the opportunities?”

  Simon nodded.

  “Paige took that to heart.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing?”

  “I thought she was overdoing it. She wanted to be in a play. She tried out for two a cappella groups. There’s this club on campus of science nerds who build robots. She joined that. She ran for a freshman judiciary seat and won. She got obsessed with the Family Tree Club, which hooked up with our genetics class, to figure out where you’re from and all that. She also wanted to write a play. Looking back on it, it was all too much. She was driving herself too hard.”

  “Did she have any boyfriends?”

  “No one serious.”

  “The guy your lacrosse roommate mentioned…”

  “I don’t know anything about that. I’ll text Judy, if you like.”

  “Please.”

  Eileen took out her phone, her fingers dancing on the screen. She nodded when it was done.

  “How about her academics?” Simon asked. “What classes was she taking?”

  A father should know that, of course, but before all this, Simon had prided himself on not being one of those helicopter parents. He didn’t know her classes, even in high school. Some parents checked an online program called Skyward every day, to make sure their child did their homework or was keeping up with their grades. Simon didn’t even know how to log on. He had smugly thought back then that that made him a better father.

  Stay out of the way. Trust your child.

  And it had been easy with Paige. She was self-driven. She excelled. Oh, what satisfaction Simon had felt back then, what foolish superiority over those overbearing and overinvolved parents he’d felt, bragging that he didn’t even know his Skyward password like that asshole at the party who brags about not owning a television.

  What arrogance before the fall.

  Eileen wrote down the names of Paige’s classes and the professors who taught them. She handed him the slip of paper and said, “I really have to go now.”

  “Do you mind if I walk with you?”

  She said that would be fine, but she said it grudgingly.

  Simon read the class list as they headed for the door. “Does anything jump out at you?”

  “Not really. Most of the classes were pretty big. I don’t think the professors will really remember her. The only exception would be Professor van de Beek.”

  They started across that bright, green quad.

  “What did van de Beek teach?”

  “That genetics class I told you about.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  Still walking, Eileen pecked something out on her mobile phone. “Here, this is him.”

  She handed him the phone.

  Professor Louis van de Beek was young, probably not yet thirty and—not to be that father—he looked like the kind of professor that made young co-eds swoon. His so-black-it’s-blue hair was a touch too long, his skin a little too waxy. He had good teeth, a nice smile. He wore a tight black T-shirt in the picture, his toned arms folded over his chest.

  What the hell happened to professors with tweed sport coats?

  Under his portrait, it read “Professor of Biological Science.” It also listed his office address at Clark House, his email address, his website, and finally, the classes he taught, including Introduction to Genetics and Genealogy.

  “You said he was an exception.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” Simon asked.

  “For one thing, Genetics and Genealogy was a small class,” she said. “So we got to know the professor pretty well. But for Paige, he was something more.”

  “Like what?”

  “Professor van de Beek ran that Family Tree club I told you she got obsessed with. I know she visited him during office hours. A lot.”

  Simon frowned again. Eileen must have spotted it.

  “Oh no, nothing like that.”

  “Okay.”

  “When Paige got here, she didn’t know what to major in. Like the rest of us. You knew that, right?”

  He nodded. He and Ingrid had encouraged that. No need to lock yourself down, they’d told her. Explore. Try new things. You’ll find your passion.

  “Paige talked a lot about her mom and her job.” Then she quickly added, “Not that she didn’t talk about you too, Mr. Greene. I mean, I think she found your job interesting too.”

  “It’s okay, Eileen.”

  “Anyway, I think she sort of hero-worshipped her mom. Professor van de Beek is also the freshman counselor for students who want to go into medicine.”

  Simon swallowed. “Paige wanted to be a physician?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  The revelation crushed him anew. Paige had wanted to be a doctor. Like her mother.

  “Anyway,” Eileen continued, “I don’t think this has anything to do with her meeting Aaron, but Professor van de Beek was a big part of her life here.”

  They crossed in front of Ratner dormitory, where Paige and Eileen had lived freshman year, walking right across the spot where Simon had hugged his daughter goodbye a lifetime ago.

  The painful hits just kept coming.

  When Eileen spotted some friends in front of the Isherwood building, she told Simon that her class was inside and bid him a quick goodbye. He waved as she left and then headed over to Clark House. When he entered the front foyer, an older woman with a face that had seen it all before the Eisenhower administration sat behind the desk and scowled at him.

  A small nameplate read MRS. DINSMORE. No first name.

  “May I help you?” Mrs. Dinsmore said in a voice that indicated any help would come very reluctantly.

  “I’m looking for Professor van de Beek.”

  “You won’t find him.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Professor van de Beek is on sabbatical.”

  “Since when?”

  “I’m not at liberty to answer any additional questions on the matter.”

  “Is he around or is he traveling?”

  Mrs. Dinsmore had a pair of glasses on a chain around her neck. She put them on now and frowned with even more disapproval. “What part of ‘not at liberty to answer’ did you find confusing?”

  Simon had Louis van de Beek’s email from that web directory. That seemed the more prudent way to go. “You’ve been a delight, thank you.”

  “I aim to please,” Mrs. Dinsmore replied, head down, writing something down.

  Simon headed back toward his car. He called Yvonne and heard yet again how nothing with Ingrid’s condition had changed. He wanted to ask a million questions, but an odd memory came to him. Early in his relationship with Ingrid, Simon worried about the overseas markets and political upheaval and upcoming earnings reports—anything that could affect his clients’ portfolios. That was natural enough, part of the job on the surface, but it actually made him a less focused and less effective financial analyst.

  “The serenity prayer,” Ingrid had told him one night. She’d been sitting at the computer, wearing one of his dress shirts, her back to him.

  “What?”

  He came up behind her and rested his hands on his beautiful wife’s shoulders. The printer whirred. She reached for a sheet of paper and handed it to him.

  “Put this on your desk,” she said.

  He should have been familiar with the prayer, of course, but he wasn’t. He read it, and odd as this sounds, it changed his life almost immediately:

  God, grant me the SERENITY to accept the things I cannot change,

  The COURAGE to change the things I can,

  The WISDOM to know the difference.

  No, Simon wasn’t religious in the least and the prayer was short and obvious. Yet it resonated. And more than that, it resonated with Ingrid. He couldn’t change Ingrid’s condition. She was comatose in a hospital, the pain of that
constant and ripping, but he had to let it go because it was foolhardy to think he could change that fact now.

  He couldn’t.

  So accept that. Let it go. Change the things that he could.

  Like finding his daughter.

  When Simon reached his car, he called Elena Ramirez.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  “You first.”

  “Paige came to Aaron, not the other way around. I always thought that they met near Lanford College. But she sought him out.”

  “So she knew him before?”

  “Somehow.”

  “Probably met online. A dating app or something.”

  “Why would she have been on a dating app?”

  “Why is anyone?”

  “She’s a college freshman, all caught up in her studies and new friends. And that’s not my Dad goggles talking.”

  “Dad goggles?”

  “You know. Bias. Seeing your kids through Dad goggles.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “This was what Paige was like, according to her roommate, not me. Did you talk to the guy at the tattoo parlor yet?”

  “Damien Gorse. Stick with me first, Simon. Is there anything else you think I should know?”

  “Just something really weird about Aaron’s upbringing. Or his parentage anyway.”

  “Tell me.”

  So Simon filled her in on the story Enid told him about Aaron and Wiley’s tale of a dead Italian mother. When he finished, there was silence on the other end of the phone. Then he heard her tapping on a keyboard.

  “Elena?”

  “I’m trying to Google photographs of Aaron and his father.”

  “Why?”

  There was a pause.

  “I don’t see any. I see some of the father at the inn. Wiley.”

  “Why, what’s up?”

  “This is going to sound weird,” she began.

  “But?”

  “But you’ve seen both Aaron and Wiley in person.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think they are father and son? I mean, biologically.”

  “No.” Simon said it that fast, without really processing his response. “I mean…look, I don’t know. Something is off. Why?”

  “It might be nothing.”

  “But?”

  “But Henry Thorpe was adopted,” Elena said. “So was Damien Gorse.”

  Simon felt a chill, but he still said, “You’re reaching.”