Harlan Coben

by Play Dead

  Like most suburban parents, Marcia had a love-hate relationship with sports. She knew the relative long-term irrelevancy and yet still managed to get caught up in it.

  A half hour of peace to start the day. That was all she needed.

  She finished the first cup, pod-made herself a second, picked up the “Styles” section of the paper. The house remained silent. She padded upstairs and looked over her charges. Ryan slept on his side, his face conveniently facing the door so that his mother could notice the echo of his father.

  Patricia’s room was next. She too was still sleeping.

  “Honey?”

  Patricia stirred, might have made a noise. Her room, like Ryan’s, looked as if someone had strategically placed sticks of dynamite in the drawers, blowing them open. Some clothes sprawled dead on the floor; others lay wounded midway, clinging to the armoire like the fallen on a barricade before the French Revolution.

  “Patricia? You have rehearsal in an hour.”

  “I’m up,” she groaned in a voice that indicated she was anything but. Marcia moved to the next room, Haley’s, and took a quick peek.

  The bed was empty.

  It was also made, but that was no surprise. Unlike her siblings’ abodes, this one was neat, clean, anally organized. It could be a showroom in a furniture store. There were no clothes on this floor, every drawer fully closed. The trophies—and there were many—were perfectly aligned on four shelves. Ted had put in the fourth shelf just recently, after Haley’s team had won the holiday tournament in Franklin Lakes. Haley had painstakingly divided the trophies among the four shelves, not wanting the new one to have only one. Marcia was not sure why exactly. Part of it was because Haley didn’t want it to look like she was just waiting for more to come, but more of it was her general abhorrence of disorganization. She kept each trophy equidistant from the others, moving them closer together as more came in, three inches separating them, then two, then one. Haley was about balance. She was the good girl, and while that was a wonderful thing—a girl who was ambitious, did her homework without being asked, never wanted others to think badly of her, ridiculously competitive—there was a “tightly wound” aspect, a quasi-OCD quality, that worried Marcia.

  Marcia wondered what time Haley had gotten home. Haley didn’t have a curfew anymore because there had simply never been a need. She was responsible and a senior, and never took advantage. Marcia had been tired and gone up to sleep at ten. Ted, in his constant state of “randy,” soon followed her.

  Marcia was about to move on, let it go, when something—she couldn’t say what—made her decide to throw in a load of laundry. She started toward Haley’s bathroom. The younger siblings, Ryan and Patricia, believed that “hamper” was a euphemism for “floor” or really “anyplace but the hamper,” but Haley, of course, dutifully, religiously, and nightly put the clothes she’d worn that day into the hamper. And that was when Marcia started to feel a small rock form in her chest.

  There were no clothes in the hamper.

  The rock in her chest grew when Marcia checked Haley’s toothbrush, then the sink and the shower.

  All bone-dry.

  The rock grew when she called out to Ted, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. It grew when they drove to captain’s practice and found out that Haley had never showed. It grew when she called Haley’s friends while Ted sent out an e-mail blast—and no one knew where Haley was. It grew when they called the local police, who, despite Marcia and Ted’s protestations, believed that Haley was a runaway, a kid blowing off some steam. It grew when, forty-eight hours later, the FBI was brought in. It grew when there was still no sign of Haley after a week.

  It was as if the earth had swallowed her whole.

  A month passed. Nothing. Then two. Still no word. And then finally, during the third month, word came—and the rock that had grown in Marcia’s chest—the one that wouldn’t let her breathe and kept her up nights—stopped growing.

  ALSO BY HARLAN COBEN

  Deal Breaker

  Drop Shot

  Fade Away

  Back Spin

  One False Move

  The Final Detail

  Darkest Fear

  Tell No One

  Gone for Good

  No Second Chance

  Just One Look

  The Innocent

  Promise Me

  The Woods

  Hold Tight

  Long Lost