Gone for Good

by Harlan Coben

  I moved back toward my chair and picked up the large piece of broken glass. Stepping as gently as possible, fearing that even the slightest weight change could shake the structure, I made my way back behind Katy's chair. I sawed at the rope.

  "What are we going to do?" she whispered.

  "You know a way out of here," I said. "We'll make a run for it."

  "It's getting dark."

  "That's why we do it now."

  "The other guy," she said. "He could be armed."

  "He probably is, but would you rather wait for the Ghost to come back?"

  She shook her head. "How do you know he's not coming back right now?"

  "I don't." The rope cut through. She was free. She rubbed her wrists as I said, "You with me?"

  She looked at me and I thought maybe it was the same way I used to look at Ken, that mixture of hope and awe and confidence. I tried to look brave, but I've never been the hero type. She nodded.

  There was one window in the back. My plan, as it were, was to open it, climb out, and crawl through the woods. We would try to keep quiet as possible, but if he heard us, we would break into a run. I was counting on the fact that the driver was either unarmed or not supposed to wound us too seriously. They'd have to figure that Ken would be careful. They'd want to keep us alive well, me anyway to bait their trap.

  Or maybe not.

  The window was stuck. I pulled and pushed against the frame. Nothing.

  It had been painted over a million years ago. No chance of opening it.

  "Now what?" she asked.

  Cornered. The feeling of a cornered rat. I looked at Katy. I thought about what the Ghost had said, how I had somehow not protected Julie. I would not let that happen again. Not to Katy.

  "Only one way out of here," I said. I looked at the door.

  "He'll see us."

  "Maybe not."

  I pressed my eye against the crack. The sunlight was fading. The shadows had picked up strength. I saw the driver. He sat on a tree stump. I saw the ember from the end of his cigarette, a steady marker in the dark.

  His back was turned.

  I put the broken-glass shiv in my pocket. I signaled with a lowering palm for Katy to bend down. I reached for the knob. It turned easily.

  The door creaked when it opened. I stopped and looked out. The driver was still not looking. I had to risk it. I pushed the door open more.

  The squeak quieted. I stopped the door after only a foot. Enough to squeeze through.

  Katy looked up at me. I nodded. She crawled through the door. I bent down and followed. We were both outside now. We lay flat on the platform. Totally exposed. I closed the door.

  He still had not turned around.

  Okay, next step: how to get off the platform. We couldn't use the ladder. It was too out in the open. I gestured for Katy to follow me.

  We slid on our bellies toward the side. The platform was aluminum.

  That made it easier. No friction or splinters.

  We reached the side of the shack. But when I turned the corner, I heard a noise not unlike a groan. And then something fell. I froze. A beam under the platform had given way. The whole structure swayed.

  The driver said, "What the hell.. . ?"

  We ducked low. I pulled Katy toward me, so that she was on the side of the shack too. He couldn't see us now. He'd heard the noise. He looked. He saw the door closed and the platform seemingly empty.

  He shouted, "What the hell are you two doing in there?"

  We both held our breath. I heard the crunch of leaves. I'd been prepared for this. I already had something of a plan in mind. I braced myself. And then he yelled again.

  "What the hell are you two ?"

  "Nothing," I shouted, pressing my mouth against the side of the shack, hoping my voice sounded muffled, as if it were coming from the inside.

  I had to risk this. If I didn't answer, he would definitely check it out. "This shack is a piece of crap," I said. "It keeps shifting on us."

  Silence.

  We both held our breaths. Katy pressed herself against me. I could feel her shivering. I patted her back. It would be all right. Sure, we were just fine. I strained my ears and tried to pick up the sound of his footsteps. But I heard nothing. I looked at her, urging her to crawl toward the back with my eyes. She hesitated but not for long.

  My new plan, as it were, was to shimmy down the pole in the back corner. She would go first. If he heard her, a seemingly likely event, well, I had a plan of sorts for that too.

  I pointed the way. She nodded, clear-eyed now, and moved toward the pole. She slid off and held on to the pole, firefighter-style. The platform lurched again. I stared helplessly as the platform wobbled some more. There was the groaning noise again, louder now. I saw a screw come loose.

  "Whatthe..."

  But this time, the driver did not bother calling out. I could hear him moving toward us. Still holding on, Katy looked up at me.

  "Jump down and run!" I shouted.

  She let go and fell to the ground. The fall was not that far. After she landed, she looked back at me, waiting.

  "Run!" I shouted again.

  The man now: "Don't move or I'll shoot."

  "Run, Katy!"

  I threw my legs over the side and let go. My fall was somewhat longer.

  I landed hard. I remembered reading somewhere that you're supposed to land with knees bent and roll. I did that. I rolled into a tree. When I stood, I saw the man coming at us. He was maybe fifteen yards away.

  His face was twisted in rage.

  "You don't stop, you're dead." But he didn't have a gun in his hand.

  "Run!" I shouted to Katy again. "But " she said.

  "I'm right behind you! Go!"

  She knew I was lying. I had accepted this as part of the plan. My job now was to slow down our adversary slow him down enough so that Katy could escape. She hesitated, not liking the idea of my sacrifice.

  He was almost on us.

  "You can get help," I urged. "Go!"

  She finally obeyed, leaping over the roots and high grass. I was already reaching into my pocket when the man leveled me with a tackle.

  The blow was bone-jarring, but I still managed to wrap my arms around him. We tumbled down together. This, too, I had learned someplace.

  Almost every fight ends up on the ground. In the movies, fighters punch and go down. In real life, people lower their heads and grab their opponents and end up in a grapple. I rolled with him, taking some hits, concentrating on the shiv in my hand.

  I gave him a bear hug, squeezing him as tight as I could, though I knew I was not really hurting him. Didn't matter. It would slow him down.

  Every second counted. Katy would need the lead. I held on tight. He struggled. I would not let go.

  That was when he landed the head butt.

  He reared back and struck my face with his forehead. I have never been head-butted before, but it hurts like nothing else. It felt as though a wrecking ball had smashed into my face. My eyes watered up. My grip went slack. I fell away. He wound up for another blow, but something instinctive made me turn away, curl into a ball. He rose to his feet.

  He aimed a kick at my ribs.

  But it was my turn now.

  I prepared myself. I let the kick land and quickly trapped his foot against my stomach with one hand. With the other, I held the broken glass. I jammed it into the fat of his calf. He screamed as the glass sliced deep into his flesh. The sound echoed. Birds scattered. I pulled it out and stabbed again, this time in the hamstring area. I felt the warm gush of blood.

  The man dropped and began to flail, fish-on-the-hook-style.

  I was about to strike again when he said, "Please. Just go."

  I looked at him. His leg hung useless. He would not be a threat to us. Not now anyway. I was not a killer. Not yet. And I was losing time. The Ghost might be back soon. We needed to get away before that.

  So I turned and ran.

  After twenty or thirty yard
s I looked behind me. The man was not pursuing me. He was struggling to a crawl. I started running again when I heard Katy's voice call, "Will, over here!"

  I turned and spotted her.

  "This way," she said.

  We ran the rest of the way. Branches whipped our face. We stumbled on roots, but we never fell. Katy was good to her word. Fifteen minutes later, we headed out of the woods and onto Hobart Gap Road.

  When Will and Katy emerged from the woods, the Ghost was there.

  He watched from a distance. Then he smiled and stepped back into his car. He drove back and began the cleanup. There was blood. He had not expected that. Will Klein continued to surprise and, yes, impress him.

  That was a good thing.

  When he was done, the Ghost drove down South Livingston Avenue. There was no sign of Will or Katy. That was okay. He stopped at the mailbox on Northfield Avenue. He hesitated before dropping the package through the slot.

  It was done.

  The Ghost took Northfield Avenue to Route 280 and then the Garden State Parkway north. It would not be long now. He thought about how this had all begun, and how it should end. He thought about McGuane and Will and Katy and Julie and Ken.

  But most of all, he thought about his vow and why he had come back in the first place.

  Chapter -Seven.

  A lot happened in the next five days.

  After our escape, Katy and I naturally contacted the authorities. We led them to the site where we'd been held. No one was there. The shack was empty. A search found traces of blood near where I'd stabbed the guy in the leg. But there were no prints or hairs. No clues at all. Then again, I had not expected there to be. And I was not sure it mattered.

  It was nearly over.

  Philip McGuane was arrested for the murder of an undercover federal officer named Raymond Cromwell and a prominent attorney named Joshua Ford. This time, however, he was held without bail. When I met with Pistillo, he had the satisfied gleam in the eye of a man who had finally conquered his own Everest, unearthed his own special chalice, conquered his toughest personal demon, however you want to put it.

  "It's all falling apart," Pistillo said with a little too much glee.

  "We got McGuane nailed on a murder charge. The whole operation is ripping at the seams."

  I asked him how they finally caught him. Pistillo, for once, was only too happy to share.

  "McGuane made up this phony surveillance tape showing our agent leaving his office. This was supposed to be his alibi, and let me tell you, the tape was flawless. That's not hard to do with digital technology at least, that's what the lab guy told me."

  "So what happened?"

  Pistillo smiled. "We got another tape in the mail. Post marked from Livingston, New Jersey, if you can believe it. The real tape. It shows two guys dragging the body into the private elevator. Both men have already flipped and turned state's evidence. There was a note, too, telling us where we could find the bodies. And to top it off, the package also had the tapes and evidence your brother gathered all those years ago."

  I tried to figure that one out, but nothing came to me. "Do you know who sent it?"

  "Nope," Pistillo said, and he did not seem to care very much.

  "So what happens to John Asselta?" I asked.

  "We have an APB out on him."

  "You've always had an APB out on him."

  He shrugged. "What else can we do?"

  "He killed Julie Miller."

  "Under orders. The Ghost was just hired muscle."

  That was hardly comforting. "You don't think you'll get him, do you?"

  "Look, Will, I'd love to nail the Ghost, but I'll be honest with you.

  It won't be easy. Asselta is out of the country already. We have reports of him overseas. He'll get work with some despot who will protect him. But in the end and it's important to remember this the Ghost is just a weapon. I want the guys who pull the trigger."

  I did not agree but I did not argue either. I asked him what this all meant for Ken. He took a while before answering.

  "You and Katy Miller haven't told us everything, have you?"

  I shifted in my seat. We had told them about the kidnapping, but we decided not to tell them about communicating with Ken. We kept that to ourselves. I said, "Yes, we did."

  Pistillo held my gaze and then shrugged again. "The truth is, I don't know if we need Ken anymore. But he's safe now, Will." He leaned forward. "I know you haven't been in touch with him" and I could see in his face that this time he did not believe that "but if you somehow manage to reach him, tell him to come in from the cold. It's never been safer. And okay, yes, we could use him to verify that old evidence."

  Like I said, an active five days.

  Aside from my meeting with Pistillo, I spent that time with Nora. We talked about her past but not very much. The lingering shadows kept crossing her face. The fear of her ex-husband remained enormous. It enraged me, of course. We would have to deal with this Mr. Cray Spring of Cramden, Missouri. I didn't know how. Not yet. But I would not let Nora live in fear for the rest of her life. No way.

  Nora told me about my brother, how he'd had money stashed away in Switzerland, how he spent his days hiking, how he seemed to seek peace out there and how peace seemed to elude him. Nora talked about Sheila Rogers too, the wounded bird I'd learned so much about, who found nourishment in both the international chase and her daughter. But mostly, Nora told me about my niece, Carly, and when she did, her face lit up. Carly loved to run down hills with her eyes closed. She was a voracious reader and loved to do cartwheels. She had the most infectious laugh. At first, Carly had been lonely and shy with Nora her parents, for obvious reasons, did not let her socialize much but Nora had patiently worked past that. Abandoning the child (abandoning was the word she used, though I thought it was too harsh), taking away the only friend Carly had been allowed to have had been the hardest part for Nora.

  Katy Miller kept her distance. She had gone away she didn't tell me where and I didn't push it but she called almost every day. She knew the truth now, but in the end, I don't think it helped much. With the Ghost still out there, there would be no closure. With the Ghost still out there, we both looked over our shoulders more than we should.

  We were all living in fear, I guess.

  But for me, closure was drawing near. I just needed to see my brother, maybe now more than ever. I thought about his lonely years. I thought about those long hikes of his. That was not Ken. Ken would never be happy like that. Ken was in your face. Ken was not one for hiding in shadows.

  I wanted to see my brother again for all the old reasons. I wanted to go to a ball game with him. I wanted to play one-on-one. I wanted to stay up late and watch old movies with him. But, of course, now there were new reasons too.

  I mentioned earlier that Katy and I kept our contact with Ken a secret.

  That was so Ken and I could keep our lines of communication open. What we eventually arranged was an Internet newsgroup switch. I told Ken not to let death scare him, hoping he'd pick up the clue. He did.

  Again it harks back to our childhood. Don't Fear Death aka Ken's favorite song, Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper." We found a board that posted information on the old heavy metal band. There were not many posts, but we managed to set up times to IM each other.

  Ken was still being cautious, but he wanted this to end too. I still had Dad and Melissa, and I had spent the last eleven years with our mother. I missed Ken like mad, but I think that maybe he missed us more.

  Anyway, it took some preparation, but eventually Ken and I set up a reunion.

  When I was twelve and Ken was fourteen, we went to a summer camp in Marshfield, Massachusetts, named Camp Millstone. The camp was advertised as being "On Cape Cod!" which, if true, made the cape take up nearly half the state. The cabins were all named for colleges. Ken bunked in Yale. I bunked in Duke. We loved our summer there. We played basketball and softball and participated in blue-gray color wars. We ate crappy fo
od and that appealingly dubbed camp succor "bug juice." Our counselors were both fun and sadistic. Knowing what I know now, I would never in a million years send a kid of my own to sleep-away camp. But I loved it.

  Does that make sense?

  I took Squares to see Camp Millstone four years ago. The camp was in foreclosure, so Squares bought the property and turned it into an upscale yoga retreat. He built himself a farmhouse on what had been Camp Millstone's soccer field. There was only one path in and out, and the farmhouse was in the middle of the field, so you could see anyone approaching.

  We agreed that it would be the perfect reunion spot.

  Melissa flew in from Seattle. Because we were extra-paranoid, we had her land in Philadelphia. She, my father, and I met at the Vince Lombardi Rest Stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. The three of us drove up together. No one else knew about the reunion, except Nora, Katy, and Squares. The three of them were traveling up separately. They'd meet with us tomorrow because they, too, had an interest in closure.

  But tonight, the first night, would be for the immediate family only.

  I handled the driving duties. Dad sat in the passenger seat next to me. Melissa was in the back. No one did much talking. The tension pressed against our chests mine, I think, most of all. I had learned not to assume anything. Until I saw Ken with my own eyes, until I hugged him and heard him speak, I would not let myself believe that it was finally okay.

  I thought about Sheila and Nora. I thought about the Ghost and the high school class leader Philip McGuane and what he had become. It should have surprised me, but I'm not sure it did. We are always "shocked" when we hear about violence in the suburbs, as though a well-watered lawn, a split-level construction, Little League and soccer moms, piano lessons, Four Squares courts, and parent-teacher conferences, all worked as some sort of wolfsbane, warding off evil. If the Ghost and McGuane grew up just nine miles from Livingston again, that was how far the heart of Newark was no one would be "stunned" and "dismayed" by what they'd become.

  I put in a CD of Springsteen's Summer 2000 concert in Madison Square Garden. It helped pass the time but not a lot. There was construction on Route 95 again, try to find a time when there isn't and the ride took an agonizing five hours. We pulled up to the red farmhouse complete with fake silo. There were no other cars. That was to be expected. We were supposed to arrive first. Ken would follow.

  Melissa got out of the car first. The sound of her door echoed across the field. When I stepped out, I could still visualize the old soccer field. The garage sat right where one goalpost used to be. The driveway ran across where the benches once were. I looked over at my father. He looked away.