Run Away

by Harlan Coben

  “Two libraries, Simon,” his father had said with a shake of his head. “What better symbol of learning?”

  Odd thought to conjure up right now, but it was keeping Simon from allowing a bigger, uglier one to consume him: Even if he could figure out what was going on with these half brothers and adoptions, how could that help him find Paige?

  Elena came back on the line. “Simon?”

  A man hurried past him on the steps on his way, no doubt, to the Alma Mater statue. Simon recognized the face from his online profile—Professor Louis van de Beek. With the phone still against his ear, Simon stood to follow.

  “Yeah, what’s up?” he said.

  “Gotta go. Alison Mayflower wants to meet.”

  Chapter

  Thirty

  Ash parked the car behind the house. You couldn’t see the car from the road, but Dee Dee still stood guard, just in case someone made the turn into the long driveway. Ash checked the back of the car. The bags were all there. He unzipped them and laid the weapons across the backseat.

  All present and accounted for.

  He grabbed what he needed, put the other weapons back in the bag, and whistled with two fingers. When Dee Dee came back, he handed her an FN 5.7.

  “You had time to think,” he said.

  “About?”

  “Mother Adiona’s note. First off, who is she?”

  “She serves in the chamber. That’s as high up as any woman can go.”

  “Do you think she’s loyal to your cult?”

  “Don’t call it a cult,” Dee Dee said. “And yes. There is only one other mother, who is known as Mother Abeona. They both were of such pure Truth that they were the ones he chose to create the Visitor and the Volunteer.”

  “So Vartage’s kids,” he said, “they’re only half brothers?”

  “Yes.”

  “And which one is Mother Adiona’s son?”

  “The Volunteer.”

  “So Mother Adiona is the Volunteer’s mother. And Mother Abeona is the Visitor’s mother.”

  “Yes.” They started toward the back of the house. “Why do you care, Ash?”

  “I don’t. But I don’t like having someone on the inside working against us, do you?”

  “I didn’t really think of it that way.”

  “Mother Adiona had someone torture me to find out what we were up to. Then she slipped me a note telling me not to do it. That doesn’t worry you at all?”

  “Oh, it worries me,” she said.

  Ash checked the surroundings. “Dee Dee?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do I think you’re not telling me everything?”

  She smiled and faced him full-on. Ash felt his heart pick up the pace. “You felt it, didn’t you? When you were with him.”

  “Vartage is charismatic. I’ll give you that.”

  “And Truth Haven?”

  “It’s peaceful and quiet,” he agreed.

  “It’s more than that. It’s serene.”

  “So?”

  “You remember what I was like before?”

  He did. A mess. But it hadn’t been her fault. Too many foster fathers and teachers and guidance counselors and spiritual advisors, especially the most sanctimonious of them, could not keep their hands and impure thoughts away from her.

  “I remember,” he said.

  “Don’t I seem better, Ash?”

  “You do.” The sun was in his eyes, and he wanted to keep looking at her, so he placed his hand on his forehead, half salute, half visor. “But it doesn’t have to be either-or.”

  “For me it does.”

  “We can run away.” He heard something unfamiliar in his voice now. Desperation. Longing. “I can find us a place. A peaceful place like your haven. Quiet. Serene.”

  “We could do that,” she said. “But it wouldn’t stick.”

  He started to say more, but she put a silencing finger to his lips. “The real world holds too many temptations for me, Ash. Even being out here now, with you, I need to focus, be disciplined, or I’ll get hooked again. I’ll fall. And I need more.”

  “More?”

  “Yes.”

  “And blindly believing in this truth nonsense gives you more?”

  “Oh, I don’t believe in it.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “Most religious people don’t believe the dogma, Ash. We take from it what we want, we discard what we don’t. We form whatever narrative we like—kind God, vengeful God, active God, laid-back God, whatever. We just make sure we get something out of it. Maybe we get life everlasting while people we resent burn for eternity. Maybe we get something more concrete—money, a job, friends. You just change the narrative.”

  “I’m surprised to hear that,” Ash said.

  “Really?”

  He cupped both hands around the back window so he could peer into the kitchen. Empty. Lights out. More than that, the kitchen table was covered in a long white cloth, the kind of thing you put on when you’re closing up for the season.

  Dee Dee said, “When the Truth traveled to Arizona to find that hidden symbol in the desert—the symbol that is the entire basis for our belief in one Truth—do you know what future it foretold?”

  Ash turned away from the window.

  “When the current embodiment of the Truth dies and ascends to the second level, he would be replaced not by one man, but the Truth would be unified and strengthened by two people representing all of humanity. A man. And joining him, a woman. A special woman.”

  Dee Dee grinned.

  Ash looked at her. “You.”

  She spread her arms to indicate that he was correct.

  “And the symbol really foretold this, the stuff about a man and now a woman?”

  “No, of course not, Ash.”

  He made a face indicating he didn’t understand.

  “This is a recent”—Dee Dee made quote marks with her hand—‘interpretation.’”

  “So you know,” Ash said.

  “Know what?”

  “You know it’s all nonsense.”

  “No, Ash, you don’t get it. Like everyone else, I get what I need to out of it. It nourishes me. Knowing it isn’t literal doesn’t make my beliefs a less potent force. It makes them stronger. It puts me in control.”

  “Or in other words,” Ash said, “you figured an angle to become ruler.”

  “That’s your perspective. You’re entitled to it.” Dee Dee checked the time. “Come on. It’s almost time.”

  She started up the hill. Ash followed.

  “These jobs of ours,” he said. “They encouraged the Truth to form his new, uh, interpretation in your favor, didn’t they?”

  Dee Dee kept walking. “God isn’t the only one who works in mysterious ways.”

  * * *

  Simon said, “Professor van de Beek?”

  “Please call me Louis.”

  Van de Beek looked like his bio page—young, pretty-boyish, waxy, toned. He wore the tight black T-shirt too, just as he had in the online photograph. His gaze flitted away as they shook hands, but he flashed a smile anyway, one—Simon couldn’t help but think uncharitably—that worked on wooing your co-eds. Like his daughter maybe. Or was such a thought sexist?

  “I’m really sorry about Paige,” van de Beek said.

  “In what way?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You said you were sorry. Sorry about what?”

  “Didn’t you say on the phone she was missing?”

  “And that’s what you’re sorry about, Louis?”

  The man cringed at the tone, and Simon cursed himself for being too aggressive.

  “My apologies,” Simon said in a far more genteel voice. “It’s just…my wife’s been shot. Paige’s mother.”

  “What? Oh, that’s awful. Is she…?”

  “In a coma.”

  The color ebbed from his face.

  “Hi, Louis!”

  Two students—both male, for the record—had spotted him on thei
r way up the Low Library steps. They stopped to be acknowledged, but their greeting hadn’t registered.

  The other student said, “Louis?”

  Simon hated when people called professors by their first name.

  Van de Beek snapped out of whatever trance he’d put him into. “Oh hi, Jeremy, hi, Darryl.”

  He smiled at them, but the bright bulb behind it was seriously flickering. The students sheepishly continued on their way.

  “You wanted to tell me something?” Simon prompted.

  “What? No, you left me messages.”

  “Yes, and when you called back, it was clear you had something you wanted to say.”

  Van de Beek started gnawing on his lower lip.

  Simon added, “You were Paige’s favorite professor. She trusted you.”

  This was, at best, third-hand information, but it was probably accurate and at the very least, flattering.

  “Paige was a wonderful student,” he said. “The kind that we professors think about when we grow up wanting to teach.”

  It felt like a line he’d said plenty of times in the past, but it also sounded like he meant it.

  “So what happened?” Simon asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I sent you a bright, inquisitive young woman. It was her first time on her own, away from the only home and family she’d ever known.” Simon felt something rise in him, something he couldn’t quite describe—a blend of rage, sadness, regret, paternal love. “I trusted you to watch out for her.”

  “We try, Mr. Greene.”

  “And failed.”

  “You don’t know that. But if you’re here to spread blame—”

  “I’m not. I’m here because I need to find her. Please.”

  “I don’t know where she is.”

  “Tell me what you remember.”

  He looked down from their perch above the commons.

  “Let’s walk,” van de Beek said. “It’s too weird just standing on these steps like this.”

  He started down them. Simon stayed by his side.

  “Like I said, Paige was a good student,” he began. “Super engaged. A lot of kids come in that way, of course. They’re almost too fired up. They want to take advantage of every opportunity, and they start burning the candle at both ends. Do you remember your undergraduate years?”

  Simon nodded. “I do.”

  “Where did you go, if I can ask?”

  “Here.”

  “Columbia?” They crossed over College Walk toward Butler Library. “Did you know what you wanted to be when you arrived?”

  “Not a clue. I started off in engineering.”

  “People say college opens the world to you. In some ways, of course, that’s true. But for the most part, it does the opposite. You come in thinking you can do anything when you leave. Your options are endless. Point of fact though, your options dwindle every day you’re here. By the time you graduate, again, reality has splash-landed.”

  “What does this have to do with Paige?” he asked.

  He stared off, a smile on his lips. “She did all that quickly. But in the best way. She found her calling. Genetics. She wanted to be a doctor. A healer like her mother. She knew that within weeks. She started coming to office hours as often as I’d let her. She wanted to know what track to take to become my TA. I thought she was doing really well. And then something changed.”

  “What?”

  He kept walking. “There are rules, Mr. Greene. I need you to understand that. About what we can tell parents of students. If a student asks for confidentiality, we have to give it to them—up to a limit. Are you familiar with the campus rules on Title IX?”

  Simon’s blood froze. Eileen Vaughan had said something when he’d visited her at Lanford, something about how Paige and Eileen’s mutual friend Judy Zyskind suspected Paige had been the victim of a sexual assault at a frat party. Simon had sort of blocked on that because one, it was too awful to even consider, but two, more importantly, Paige had dismissed it when Judy confronted her about it. That was the part that had stuck with Simon. Judy had pushed Paige, and according to Eileen, Paige had not only denied it but finally ended the conversation:

  “She said there were problems at home…”

  They veered off the path and reached the glass-enclosed structure called Lerner Hall. There was a café on the bottom floor. Van de Beek reached for the door, but Simon grabbed hold of his elbow.

  “Was my daughter sexually assaulted?” he asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Think so?”

  “Paige came to me in confidence. She was distraught. There had been an incident at a campus party.”

  Simon felt his hands tighten into fists. “She told you about it?”

  “She started to, yes.”

  “What does that mean, ‘started to’?”

  “The first thing I did, before I let her go into details, was to inform her that I’d have to follow the Title IX guidelines.”

  “What guidelines?”

  “Mandatory reporting,” he said.

  “Meaning?”

  “If a student tells me about an incident of sexual assault, no matter what that student wants, I have to report it to the Title IX coordinator.”

  “Even if the victim doesn’t want you to?”

  “Even if, that’s right. Frankly I don’t love this rule. I get it. I understand the reasoning. But I think it makes some students less likely to confide in a teacher because they know, like it or not, that the teacher will have to report it. So they clam up. And that was what happened here.”

  “Paige wouldn’t talk to you?”

  “She more or less stormed out. I tried to follow, but she ran away. I called. I texted. I emailed. I stopped by her room once. She wouldn’t talk to me.”

  Simon felt his fingers tighten up a little more. “And you didn’t think to tell her parents?”

  “I thought about it, sure. But again there are rules about such things. I also checked with the Title IX coordinator.”

  “What did she say?”

  “It was a he.”

  For real? “What did he say?”

  “He talked to Paige. She denied anything happened.”

  “And you still didn’t think to call her parents?”

  “That’s right, Mr. Greene.”

  “So instead my daughter, who was possibly raped, just suffered in silence.”

  “There are guidelines. We have to follow them.”

  That was crap and when this was all over, Simon would do what he could to get payback, but right now he had to focus on the task at hand. He didn’t want to. He wanted to collapse and cry for his daughter.

  “So is that when Paige started to spiral?”

  Van de Beek thought it over. His answer surprised him. “No, not really. I know how that sounds, but the next time I saw her—”

  “Which was when?”

  “A few days later. Paige showed up in class. She seemed better. I remember standing behind the lectern and looking at her, a little surprised to see her, and she gave me this nod like ‘I’m okay, don’t worry about it.’ A few days later, she started coming to office hours again. I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to see her. I tried to raise the topic, but she said it was no big deal, that she overreacted. I’m not saying she was totally fine. I could see that she was trying to block. I urged her to get help, to talk to someone. One of the hardest parts is that the girls are still on the same campus as their alleged attacker.”

  “Rapist.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t call him an alleged attacker. Call him a rapist.”

  “I don’t know what he was.”

  “But you do know who, right?”

  He stood there.

  “You do, don’t you?”

  “She didn’t tell me.”

  “But you know the name of the boy.”

  He looked off. “I have a guess. At least I do now.”

  “What does that mean
?”

  Van de Beek put his hand through his thick hair and let loose a long breath. “This is where the story takes a bizarre turn, Mr. Greene.”

  Like it hasn’t already? Simon thought.

  “I don’t know the order,” van de Beek continued. “I’m not sure what came first—Paige’s deterioration or…” He stopped.

  “Or what?”

  “There was another”—he paused, looked up as though searching for the right word—“incident on campus.”

  “Incident,” Simon repeated.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mean rape?”

  Van de Beek winced. “Paige didn’t use the word ‘rape.’ Never. Just for the record.”

  Now, Simon knew, was not the time to get into a semantics debate. “Was there another assault?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it done by the same boy?”

  He shook his head. “Just the opposite.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The boy I believe may have assaulted Paige,” van de Beek said, his words coming more measured now. “He was the victim this time.”

  He met Simon’s gaze. Simon did not blink.

  “His name is Doug Mulzer, a sophomore econ major from Pittsburgh. He was beaten with a baseball bat after a frat party on campus. Broken legs. And then, the smaller end of the bat, it was…” He started to stammer. “Well, that part of the attack was never made public. The family didn’t want it known, but the rumors spread around campus. He’s still convalescing in Pittsburgh.”

  Simon could feel the chill work its way up his spine. “And you think Paige had something to do with this?”

  He opened his mouth, closed it, tried again. Simon could see that he was straining to be careful with his words. “I can’t say for sure.”

  “But?”

  “But in class the next day, Paige just kept smiling. Everyone else was upset over what had happened. But Paige kept staring at me and grinning in this weird way, and I could see for the first time that she was glassy eyed. Like she was on something. Like she was high.”

  “So your evidence is that she got high and smiled?” Simon asked. “Maybe she got high to numb the pain.”

  Van de Beek said nothing.

  “I don’t care what she was on,” Simon said, picturing the sickening assault in his head. “Paige wouldn’t do something like that.”