by Harlan Coben
Succumb.
Several three-story drab-gray structures formed a courtyard. They led him across it. All windows and doors faced the courtyard, so you couldn’t even view the trees from your room. The courtyard had green grass and wooden benches, again painted in drab gray, and the benches, like the windows, all faced a large statue sitting high atop a pedestal with the word TRUTH written on all sides. The statue was maybe fifteen feet high. It was of a beatific Casper Vartage, his hands raised, half exaltation, half embrace of his flock. That was what you saw from every window—“The Truth” staring you in the face.
There were more women in the courtyard, all uniformed, all wearing headgear of some kind. None spoke. None made a sound. None so much as glanced at this stranger in their midst.
Ash was getting a bad feeling about this.
Guard One unlocked a door and signaled for Ash to enter. The room had polished hardwood floors. On the wall were portraits of three men. The portraits formed a triangle. The Truth aka Casper Vartage was at the top. His two sons—you could see the resemblance—were below him on either side. The Volunteer and the Visitor, Ash assumed. Some folding chairs were stacked in the corner. That was it in terms of decor. If one of the walls was mirrored, you might mistake this for an exercise studio.
Guards One and Two came and stood by the door.
Ash didn’t like this.
“What’s going on?”
They didn’t speak. Guard Two left. He was alone now with a heavily armed Guard One. Guard One grinned at him.
The bad feeling grew.
Ash started mentally prepping. Suppose, as he had already, that the cult had been the ones who hired him. Perhaps the people he killed were all former members of the cult, though on the surface that didn’t seem to add up. Gorse, for example, was a gay tattoo-parlor owner who lived in New Jersey. Gano was married with kids outside Boston. But still, it could be that. Maybe they were Truthers in their youth, and for some reason they needed now to be silenced.
Or maybe there was another motive. It didn’t matter.
What did matter was that Ash had done the job. The money had come through. Ash knew how to get funds and transfer them around so they wouldn’t be found. He’d been paid in full—half on taking each job, half on completion.
But now the cult was done with him. Perhaps. That was one of the things Dee Dee didn’t know yet—why she wanted him to wait. Whoever was hiring him was communicating through her. So perhaps she had come to the Truth Council when he dropped her off. Perhaps the Truth or one of his advisors had said, “No, we are done.”
And suppose they wanted to completely tie up any loose ends.
Ash was professional. He would never talk. That was part of what you got for your money.
But maybe the cult leaders didn’t know that about him.
Maybe they figured that under normal circumstances, they’d be more trusting, but because Ash and Dee Dee knew each other—had a special connection even—the Vartages felt more exposed.
The simplest solution to the problem? The smart play for Vartage and his sons?
Kill Ash. Bury him in the woods. Get rid of his car.
If Ash was the cult leader, that was what he would do.
A door on the other side of the room opened. Guard One lowered his gaze as a woman Ash guessed was in her early fifties entered the room. She was tall and imposing and unlike everyone else he’d seen in the compound, she held her head high, chest out, shoulders back. She wore the gray uniform, but there were red stripes on her sleeves, like something in the military. Against all the drab gray, the stripes stood out like neon lights in the dark.
“Why are you here?” she asked him.
“Just dropping off a friend.”
She glanced over his shoulder at the guard. As if he felt her gaze, he looked up, semi-wincing. This woman wasn’t the Truth or part of their trinity, but whoever she was, she clearly outranked this guy.
Guard One stood at attention. “As I informed you, Mother Adiona.”
“Adiona?”
She turned to Ash. “You recognize the reference?”
He nodded. “Adiona was a Roman goddess.”
“That’s correct.”
He’d loved mythology as a kid. He tried to remember the details. “Adiona was the goddess of returning children home safely or something. She was paired with another goddess.”
“Abeona,” she said. “I’m surprised you know this.”
“Yeah, I’m full of surprises. So you’re named after a myth?”
“Exactly.” She smiled widely. “Do you know why?”
“I bet you’ll tell me.”
“All gods are myths. Norse, Roman, Greek, Indian, Judeo-Christian, pagan, whatever. For centuries people bowed to them, sacrificed for them, spent their lives following them. And it was all lies. How sad, don’t you think? How pathetic. To spend your life deluded like that.”
“Maybe,” Ash said.
“Maybe?”
“If you don’t know any better, maybe it’s okay.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
He said nothing.
“Gods are lies. Only the Truth prevails. Do you know why all religions eventually crash and burn? Because they aren’t the Truth. Unlike these myths, the Truth has always been there.”
Ash tried not to roll his eyes.
“What’s your name?” she asked him.
“Ash.”
“Ash what?”
“Just Ash.”
“How do you know Holly?”
He said nothing.
“You may know her as Dee Dee.”
He still said nothing.
“You pulled up with her, Ash. You dropped her off.”
“Okay.”
“Where were you two?”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
“I already have. I need to see if she is telling the truth.”
Ash stood there. Mother Adiona moved closer to him. She gave him a mischievous smile and said, “Do you know what your Dee Dee is doing right now?”
“No.”
“She’s naked. On all fours. One man behind her. One man in front of her.”
She smiled some more. She wanted him to react. He wouldn’t.
“Well? What do you think of that, Ash?”
“I’m wondering about the third man.”
“Pardon?”
“You know. Truth, Volunteer, Visitor. So if one is having her from behind and the other one is in the front, where is the third?”
She still smiled. “You’ve been played for a fool, Ash.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“She offers her favors to many men. But not you, Ash.”
He made a face. “Did you really just call them ‘favors’?”
“This is wounding you deeply, I know. You love her.”
“Very insightful. Can I go back to my car now?”
“Where were you two?”
“I’m not going to tell you.”
Her nod was barely discernible. But it was enough. Guard One stepped forward. There was a baton in his hand. Two things happened simultaneously. One, Ash recognized that the baton was a cattle prod or stun baton of some kind. Two, the prod touched down on his back.
Then all thought closed down in a tsunami of pain.
Ash collapsed to that hardwood floor, writhing like a fish on a dock. The electricity shooting through him hit everything. It paralyzed the circuitry from his brain. It singed his nerve endings. It made his muscles spasm.
He started foaming at the mouth.
He couldn’t move. He couldn’t even really think.
There was panic in the woman’s voice. “I…What setting did you have that on?”
“Highest.”
“Are you serious? That will kill him.”
“Then we might as well get it over with.”
Ash saw the end of the baton heading for him again. He wanted to move, needed to move, but the electri
city coursing through him had short-circuited any commands involving muscle control.
When the baton touched down again, this time on his chest, Ash felt his heart explode.
Then there was only darkness.
Chapter
Twenty-Three
No change.
Simon was so tired of hearing that. His chair was pulled up right next to Ingrid’s bed. He held her hand. He stared at her face, watching her breathe. Ingrid always slept on her back, just like this, so that coma looked amazingly like sleep, which may seem obvious or perhaps not. You expect a coma to look different, don’t you? Sure there were tubes and noises and Ingrid liked wearing spaghetti-strap silk negligees to bed, which of course he loved too. He loved the coil of her body, the broad shoulders, the prominent collarbone.
No change.
This was purgatory, neither heaven nor hell. There were some who argued that purgatory was the worst—the suspended, the unknown, the wear and tear of the endless wait. Simon understood that sentiment, but for now he was okay with purgatory. If Ingrid’s condition darkened in even the slightest way, he’d lose it completely. He was self-aware enough to realize that he was hanging on by a fraying thread now. If he got bad news, if something more went wrong with Ingrid…
No change.
So block.
Right, pretend she was asleep. He kept staring at her face, the cheekbones so sharp the surgeons down the hall could use them as scalpels, the lips he’d gently kissed before he sat down, hoping to get some kind of reaction out of them because even when Ingrid was deep in sleep, her lips would react instinctively, in some small way at the very least, to his kiss.
But not now.
He flashed back to the last time he’d watched her as she slept—on their honeymoon in Antigua, days after they’d officially tied the knot. Simon had woken up before sunrise, Ingrid sprawled next to him on her back, like right now, like always. Her eyes were closed, of course, her breathing even, and so Simon just stared, marveling at the fact that this was how he’d wake up every day from now—next to this wondrous woman who was now his life partner.
He had watched her like this for only ten, maybe fifteen seconds, when without opening her eyes or moving at all, Ingrid said, “Cut that out, it’s creepy.”
He smiled at the memory, sitting now at her bedside with her still yet warm hand in his. Yes, warm. Alive. Blood flowing through. Ingrid didn’t feel shrunken or sick or dying. She was just asleep and soon she’d wake up.
And the first thing she’d do is ask about Paige.
He had some questions about that too.
Simon had called Elena after leaving Sadie Lowenstein’s and filled her in on Paige’s interest in genetics and ancestry. Elena usually played it close to the vest, but this meant something to her. She’d peppered him with follow-up questions, only some of which he could answer.
When Elena ran out of questions, she asked for Eileen Vaughan’s phone number. Simon gave it to her.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Maybe nothing. But not long before he was killed, Damien Gorse also visited one of those DNA sites.”
“So what does that mean?”
“Let me run down a few things before we get into that. Are you going to the hospital?”
“Yes.”
Elena promised to meet him there and then she hung up.
The children seemed okay. Anya was home with Suzy Fiske, and Simon thought that was probably best for now. Sam had befriended some medical residents who were working the floor—Sam was good at that, always able to make friends quickly—and he was in their lounge right now, trying to study for his upcoming physics exam. He’d always been not only a smart kid but an industrious one. Simon, who’d been a do-enough-to-get-by student, was constantly amazed by his son’s work ethic—up early in the morning, exercising before breakfast, getting his homework done days ahead of time—and unlike most fathers, Simon sometimes worried that he should encourage his son to ease off the gas pedal a bit and smell the roses. Sam was almost too driven.
Not now, of course. Now it would hopefully be a nice distraction.
No change.
So block—though right now, he was blocking on more than Ingrid’s condition.
Simon didn’t consider himself to be an overly imaginative guy, but whatever imagination he had, it had shifted into overdrive after hearing about the DNA test, careening him down this dark, ugly road, one with barbed wire and land mines, one he’d never wanted to travel, but there seemed to be no other choice at the moment.
Eileen Vaughan’s words kept echoing: “Problems at home.”
Yvonne slipped into the room. “Hey,” she said.
“Is there any chance Paige isn’t my child?”
Boom. Just like that.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
Simon turned toward her. Yvonne was pale, shaking.
“Is there any chance I’m not Paige’s biological father?”
“My God, no.”
“I just need to know the truth.”
“What the hell, Simon?”
“Could she have slept with someone else?”
“Ingrid?”
“Who else would I be talking about?”
“I don’t know. This is all such crazy talk.”
“So there’s zero chance.”
“Zero.”
He turned back toward his wife.
“Simon, what’s going on?”
“You can’t say for sure,” he said.
“Simon.”
“No one can say for sure.”
“No, of course no one can say for sure.” A hint of impatience had crept into Yvonne’s voice. “I can’t say for sure you haven’t fathered any other children either.”
“You know how much I love her.”
“I do, yes. And she loves you just as much.”
“But I don’t know the whole story, do I?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yeah, you do. There’s a part of her that’s hidden. Even from me.”
“There’s part of everybody that’s hidden.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Then I don’t get what you do mean.”
“Yeah, Yvonne, you do.”
“Where is this coming from?”
“It’s coming from my search for Paige.”
“And now you think, what, that you’re not her father?”
Simon swung his body now, faced her full. “I know everything about you, Yvonne.”
“You really think so?”
“Yes.”
Yvonne said nothing. Simon looked back at Ingrid in the bed.
“I love her. I love her with all my heart. But there are parts of her I don’t know.”
She still said nothing.
“Yvonne?”
“What do you want me to say? Ingrid has an air of mystery, I’ll grant you that. Guys went gaga over it. And hey, let’s be honest. It’s one of the things that drew you to her.”
He nodded. “At first.”
“You love her deeply.”
“I do.”
“And yet you’re wondering if she betrayed you in the worst way possible.”
“Did she?”
“No.”
“But there’s something.”
“It has nothing to do with Paige—”
“What does it have to do with?”
“—or her getting shot.”
“But there are secrets?”
“There’s a past, sure.” Yvonne raised her hands, more in frustration now than confusion. “Everyone has one.”
“I don’t. You don’t.”
“Stop it.”
“What kind of past does she have?”
“A past, Simon.” Her tone was impatient. “Just that. She had a life way before you—school, travel, relationships, jobs.”
“But that’s not what you mean. You mean something out of the ordinary.”
&n
bsp; She frowned, shook her head. “It isn’t my place to say.”
“Too late for that, Yvonne.”
“No, it’s not. You have to trust me.”
“I do trust you.”
“Good. We’re talking about ancient history.”
Simon shook his head. “Whatever’s happening here—whatever changed Paige and led to all this destruction—I think it started a long time ago.”
“How can that be?”
“I don’t know.”
Yvonne moved closer to the bed. “Let me ask you this, Simon.”
“Go ahead.”
“Best-case scenario: Ingrid comes out of this okay. You find Paige. Paige is okay. She gets clean. I mean, totally clean. Puts this whole ugly chapter behind her.”
“Okay.”
“Then Paige decides to move away. Get a fresh start. She meets a guy. A wonderful guy. A guy who puts her up on a pedestal, who loves her beyond anything she can imagine. They build a great life together, this guy and Paige, and Paige never wants this wonderful guy to know that at one time, she was a junkie and maybe worse, living in some crack den, doing God knows what with God knows who to get a fix.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, I’m serious. Paige loves this guy. She doesn’t want to see the light in his eyes dim. Can’t you understand that?”
Simon’s voice, when he finally found it, was barely a whisper. “My God, what is she hiding?”
“It doesn’t matter—”
“Like hell it doesn’t.”
“—just like Paige’s drug past wouldn’t matter.”
“Yvonne?”
“What?”
“Do you really think this secret would change how I feel about Ingrid?”
She didn’t reply.
“Because if that’s the case, then our love is pretty weak.”
“It’s not.”
“But?”
“But it would change the way you see her.”
“The dim in the eyes?”
“Yes.”
“You’re wrong. I’d still love her just as much.”
Yvonne nodded slowly. “I believe you would.”
“So?”
“So her distant past has nothing to do with this.” Yvonne held up her hand to stop his protest. “And no matter what you say, I promised. It’s not my secret to tell. You have to let it go.”
