Harlan Coben

by Play Dead

  He began to shoot, missing more shots than he could remember missing since he was eight years old. His arm shook. His fingers were no longer nimble. Dared he speak to her? Dared he even look in her direction? After some time had passed, he said, “I’m sorry about your father.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “My father was a troubled man who in the end thought the only way to protect his family was to kill himself.” She swallowed away the lump in her throat. “Nothing can hurt him anymore. I think he is finally at peace.”

  He said nothing.

  “Mark, can I ask you a question?”

  He dribbled the ball away from her voice. “Yes.”

  “What do you know about my husband’s death?”

  Shrug. “Just what I read in the paper. He got caught up in some rough tides and drowned.”

  She leaned forward in her chair. Tears were beginning to form in her eyes. “Not exactly. That’s just what David wanted everyone to think.”

  Mark continued to dribble, his eyes never leaving the floor.

  “We were in Australia on our honeymoon when it happened,” she continued, her eyes staring off with the memory. “We were so in love, so goddamn happy. It was like the whole world had been created just for us. He could make me laugh. He could make me cry.” She stopped. “He could make me feel—you know what I mean?”

  Mark turned his back toward her. “I don’t understand why you’re telling me this.”

  She ignored his statement. “Before he died, David visited my mother at a hotel near the one where we were staying.”

  With her words, Mark’s body spasmed. He still would not turn around.

  “She told him some things he found very upsetting.”

  “Why are you telling—?”

  “But she was wrong.”

  He hunched over as though in pain. His hand reached up toward his face and wiped his eyes, but he still refused to show her anything but his back. He began to dribble mindlessly. “Wrong about what?”

  Laura’s leg began to shake. Waves of emotion kept crashing over her. Her breathing hitched. Her words came quickly. “She had an affair with your father—that part was true—and she did get pregnant—”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking—”

  “—but the baby was aborted.”

  He stopped dribbling. His hand flew up to his mouth as though he were stifling a scream. “What?”

  Laura moved toward him, his back still facing her. “We are not brother and sister.”

  He spun around. His eyes flew open wide. His face crumpled into a mask of confusion. “But … ?” After all this time, after all this suffering … “Not brother and sister?”

  “No, David,” she said. “That baby was aborted. I’m not your sister.”

  He stared at her. His eyes filled with tears. “How … ?” He stopped. His mind felt like it was being torn apart. Reality spun out of control. He tried to steady himself, tried to comprehend what she was saying.

  “Please,” he began in a soft voice, “please, tell me it’s not a dream.”

  She shook her head, her tears flowing freely. “It’s not, David. I swear it’s not.”

  He looked at her. His bleak eyes suddenly flickered with hope. She ran toward him and threw her arms around his body, clinging to him tightly. David held her, his eyes squeezed shut. So many torturous days, so many tears, so many times he dreamed about holding her again …

  “Don’t you ever leave me again,” she whispered.

  “Never,” he uttered. “I promise.”

  They hugged fiercely, not letting go, not daring even to loosen their grips for fear that one of them would slip away and be gone forever. They stayed that way for a very long time, letting the past dissolve away and the healing begin.

  David smiled through his tears. “Do you still want to have children?” he asked.

  She laughed. “What about having rabbits?”

  “Rabbits? Okay, we’ll have both. Rabbits and children.”

  She nodded. “But first things first. Where did you get that awful curly blond hair?”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “You look like a character from Godspell. It has to go.”

  “I’m kinda used to it.”

  “T.C. must have picked it out. He has no taste. And your new face. You know how I hate pretty boys—”

  He stopped her with a kiss. “That’s still the only way to keep you quiet, huh?”

  “Then don’t just stand there, Baskin. Shut me up.”

  New York Times bestselling author

  Harlan Coben

  is back with a brand-new thriller.

  Read on for a preview from

  CAUGHT

  Available in hardcover from Dutton.

  I KNEW opening that red door would destroy my life.

  Yes, that sounds melodramatic and full of foreboding, and I’m not big on either, and true, there was nothing menacing about the red door. In fact, the door was beyond ordinary, wood and four paneled—the kind of door you see standing guard in front of three out of every four suburban homes, with faded paint and a knocker no one ever used at chest level and a faux-brass knob.

  But as I walked toward it, a distant streetlight barely illuminating my way, the dark opening yawning like a mouth ready to gobble me whole, the feeling of doom was unshakable. Each step forward took great effort as if I were walking not along a somewhat cracked walk but through still-wet cement. My body displayed all the classic symptoms of impending menace: chill down my spine? Check. Hairs standing up on my arms? Yep. Prickle at the base of the neck? Present. Tingle in the scalp? Right there.

  The house was dark, not a single light on. Chynna warned me that would be the case. The dwelling somehow seemed a little too cookie-cutter, a little too nondescript. That bothered me for some reason. This house was also isolated at the tippy end of the cul-de-sac, hunkering down in the darkness as though fending off intruders.

  I didn’t like it.

  I didn’t like anything about this, but this is what I do. When Chynna called I had just finished coaching the inner-city fourth-grade Newark Biddy basketball team. My team—all kids who, like me, were products of foster care (we call ourselves the NoRents, which is short for No Parents—gallows humor)—had managed to blow a six-point lead with two minutes left. On the court as in life, the NoRents aren’t great under pressure.

  Chynna called as I was gathering my young hoopsters for my postgame pep talk, which usually consisted of giving my charges some life-altering insight like “Good effort,” “We’ll get them next time,” or “Don’t forget we have a game next Thursday,” always ending with “Hands in” and then we yell, “Defense,” choosing to chant that word, I suppose, because we play none.

  “Dan?”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Chynna. Please come.”

  Her voice trembled, so I dismissed my team, jumped in my car, and now I was here. I hadn’t even had time to shower. The smell of gym sweat mixed now with the smell of fear sweat. I slowed my pace.

  What was wrong with me?

  I probably should have showered, for one thing. I’m not good without a shower. Never have been. But Chynna had been adamant. Now, she had begged. Before anyone got home. So here I was, my gray T-shirt darkened with perspiration and clinging to my chest, heading to that door.

  Like most youngsters I work with, Chynna was seriously troubled, and maybe that was what was setting off the warning bells. I hadn’t liked her voice on the phone, hadn’t really warmed to this whole setup. Taking a deep breath, I glanced behind me. In the distance, I could see some signs of life on this suburban night—house lights, a flickering television or maybe computer monitor, an open garage door—but in this cul-de-sac, there was nothing, not a sound or movement, just a hush in the dark.

  My cell phone vibrated, nearly making me jump out of my skin. I figured that it was Chynna, but no, it was Jenna, my ex-wife. I hit ANDWER and said, “Hey.”

  “Can
I ask a favor?” she asked.

  “I’m a little busy right now.”

  “I just need someone to babysit tomorrow night. You can bring Shelly if you want.”

  “Shelly and I are, uh, having trouble,” I said.

  “Again? But she’s great for you.”

  “I have trouble holding on to great women.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  Jenna, my lovely ex, has been remarried for eight years. Her new husband is a well-respected surgeon named Noel Wheeler. Noel does volunteer work for me at the teen center. I like Noel and he likes me. He had a daughter by a previous marriage, and he and Jenna have a six-year-old girl named Kari. I’m Kari’s godfather, and both kids call me Uncle Dan. I’m the family go-to babysitter.

  I know this all sounds very civilized and Pollyanna, and I suppose it is. In my case, it could be simply a matter of necessity. I have no one else—no parents, no siblings—ergo, the closest thing I have to family is my ex-wife. The kids I work with—the ones I advocate for and try to help and defend—are my life, and in the end I’m not sure I do the slightest bit of good.

  Jenna said, “Earth to Dan?”

  “I’ll be there,” I said to her.

  “Six-thirty. You’re the best.”

  Jenna made a smooching noise into the mouthpiece and hung up. I looked at the phone for a moment, remembered our own wedding day. It had been a mistake for me to get married. It is a mistake for me to get too close to people, and yet I can’t help it. Someone cue the violins so I can wax philosophical about how it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I don’t think that applies to me. It is in humans’ DNA to repeat the same mistakes, even after we know better. So here I am, the poor orphan who scraped his way up to the top of his class at an elite Ivy League school but never really scraped off who he was. Corny, but I want someone in my life. Alas, that is not destiny. I am a loner who isn’t meant to be alone.

  “We are evolution’s refuse, Dan… .”

  My favorite foster “dad” taught me that. He was a college professor who loved to get into philosophical debates.

  “Think about it, Dan. Throughout mankind, the strongest and brightest did what? They fought in wars. That only stopped this past century. Before that, we sent our absolute best to fight on the frontlines. So who stayed home and reproduced while our finest died on distant battlefields? The lame, the sick, the weak, the crooked, the cowardly—in short, the least of us. That’s what we are the genetic by-product of, Dan—millennia of weeding out the premium and keeping the flotsam. That’s why we are all garbage—the worst leftovers from centuries of bad breeding.”

  I forwent the knocker, and rapped on the door lightly with my knuckles. The door creaked open a crack. I hadn’t realized that it was ajar.

  I didn’t like that either. A lot I didn’t like here.

  As a kid, I watched a lot of horror movies, which was strange because I hated them. I hated things jumping out at me. And I really couldn’t stand movie gore. But I would still watch them and revel in the predictably moronic behavior of the heroines, and right now those scenes were replaying in my head, the ones where said moronic heroine knocks on a door and it opens a little and you scream, “Run, you scantily clad bimbo!” and she wouldn’t, and you couldn’t understand it, and two minutes later, the killer would be scooping out her skull and munching on her brain.

  I should go right now.

  In fact, I will. But then I flashed back to Chynna’s call, to the words she’d said, the trembling in her voice. I sighed, leaned my face toward the opening, peered into the foyer.

  Darkness.

  Enough with the cloak and dagger.

  “Chynna?”

  My voice echoed. I expected silence. That would be the next step, right? No reply. I slip the door open a little, take a tentative step forward… .

  “Dan? I’m in the back. Come in.”

  The voice was muffled, distant. Again I didn’t like this, but there was no way I was backing out now. Backing out had cost me too much throughout my life. My hesitation was gone. I knew what had to be done now.

  I opened the door, stepped inside, and closed the door behind me.

  Others in my position would have brought a gun or some kind of weapon. I had thought about it. But that just doesn’t work for me. No time to worry about that now. No one was home. Chynna had told me that. And if they were, well, I would handle that when the moment came.

  “Chynna?”

  “Go to the den. I’ll be there in a second.”

  The voice sounded … off. I saw a light at the end of the hall and moved toward it. There was a noise now. I stopped and listened. Sounded like water running. A shower maybe.

  “Chynna?”

  “Just changing. Out in a second.”

  I moved into the low-lit den. I saw one of those dimmer-switch knobs and debated turning it up, but in the end I chose to leave it alone. My eyes adjusted pretty quickly. The room had cheesy wood paneling that looked as if it were made from something far closer to vinyl than anything in the timber family. There were two portraits of sad clowns with huge flowers on their lapels, the kind of paintings you might pick up at a particularly tacky motel’s garage sale. There was a giant open bottle of noname vodka on the bar.

  I thought I heard somebody whisper.

  “Chynna?” I called out.

  No answer. I stood, listened for more whispering. Nothing.

  I started toward the back, toward where I heard the shower running.

  “I’ll be right out,” I heard the voice say. I pulled up, felt a chill. Because now I was closer to the voice, I could hear it better. And here was the thing I found particularly strange about it.

  It didn’t sound at all like Chynna.

  Three things tugged at me. One, panic. This wasn’t Chynna. Get out of the house. Two, curiosity. If it wasn’t Chynna, who the hell was it and what was going on? Three, panic again. It had been Chynna on the phone—so what had happened to her?

  I couldn’t just run out now.

  I took one step toward where I’d come in, and that was when it all happened. A spotlight snapped on in my face, blinding me. I stumbled back, hand coming up to my face.

  “Dan Mercer?”

  I blinked. Female voice. Professional. Deep tone. Sounded oddly familiar.

  “Who’s there?”

  Suddenly there were other people in the room. A man with a camera. Another with what look liked a boom mike. And the female with the familiar voice, a stunning woman with chestnut brown hair and a business suit.

  “Wendy Tynes, Eyewitness News. Why are you here, Dan?”

  I opened my mouth, nothing came out. I recognized the woman from that TV newsmagazine …

  “Why have you been conversing online in a sexual manner with a twelve-year-old girl, Dan? We have your communications with her.”

  … the one that sets up and catches pedophiles on camera for all the world to see.

  “Are you here to have sex with a twelve-year-old girl?”

  The truth of what was going on here hits me, freezing my bones. Other people flooded the room. Producers maybe. Another cameraman. Two cops. The cameras come in closer. The lights get brighter. Beads of sweat pop up on my brow. I start to stammer, start to deny.

  But it’s over.

  Two days later, the show airs. The world sees.

  And the life of Dan Mercer, just as I somehow knew when I approached that door, is destroyed.

  WHEN Marcia McWaid first saw her daughter’s empty bed, panic did not set in. That would come later.

  She had woken up at six a.m., early for Saturday morning, feeling pretty terrific. Ted, her husband of twenty years, slept in the bed next to her. He lay on his stomach, his arm around her waist. Ted liked to sleep with a shirt on and no pants. None. Nude from the waist down. “Gives my man down there room to roam,” he would say with a smirk. And Marcia, imitating her daughter’s teenage singsong tone, would say, “T-M-I”—Too Much Infor
mation.

  Marcia slipped out of his grip and padded down to the kitchen. She made herself a cup of coffee with the new Keurig pod machine. Ted loved gadgets—boys and their toys—but this one actually got some use. You take the pod, you stick it in the machine—presto, coffee. No video screens, no touchpad, no wireless connectivity. Marcia loved it.

  They’d recently finished an addition on the house—one extra bedroom, one bathroom, the kitchen knocked out a bit with a glassed-in nook. The kitchen nook offered oodles of morning sun and had thus become Marcia’s favorite spot in the house. She took her coffee and the newspaper and set herself on the duvet, folding her feet beneath her.

  A small slice of heaven.

  She let herself read the paper and sip her coffee. In a few minutes she would have to check the schedule. Ryan, her third grader, had the early Hoops Basketball game at eight a.m. Ted coached. His team was winless for the second straight season.

  “Why do your teams never win?” Marcia had asked him.

  “I draft the kids based on two criteria.”

  “That being?”

  “How nice the father—and how hot the mom.”

  She had slapped at him playfully and maybe Marcia would have been somewhat concerned if she hadn’t seen the moms on the sideline and knew, for certain, that he had to be joking. Ted was actually a great coach, not in terms of strategy but in terms of handling the boys. They all loved him and his lack of competiveness so that even the untalented players—the ones who were usually discouraged and quit during the season—showed up every week. Ted even took the Bon Jovi song and turned it around, “You give losing a good name.” The kids would laugh and cheer every basket, and when you’re in third grade, that’s how it should be.

  Marcia’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Patricia, had rehearsal for the freshman play, an abridged version of the musical Les Misérables. She had several small parts, but that didn’t seem to affect the workload. And her oldest child, Haley, the high school senior, was running a “captain’s practice” for the girls’ lacrosse team. Captain’s practices were unofficial, a way to sneak in early practices under the guidelines issued by high school sports. In short, no coaches, nothing official, just a casual gathering, glorified pickup games if you will, run by the captains.