Six Years

by Harlan Coben

  It read Kraftboro, Vermont.

  Chapter 26

  My world tilted, teetered, rocked, and flipped itself upside down.

  I just stared at the GPS. The full address was listed as 260 VT-14, Kraftboro, Vermont. I knew the address. I had put it in my own GPS not long ago.

  It was the address of the Creative Recharge Colony.

  My best friend had visited the retreat where Natalie had stayed six years ago. He had visited the place where she married Todd. He had visited the place where, most recently, Jed and his gang had tried to kill me.

  For several seconds, maybe longer, I could not move. I sat in the car. The car radio was on, but I couldn't tell you what was playing. It felt as though the world had shut down. It took reality a while to get through my haze, but when it did, it hit me like a surprise left hook.

  I was alone.

  Even my best friend had lied--check that: was still lying--to me.

  Wait, I said to myself. There had to be a reasonable answer.

  Like what? What possible explanation could there be for having that address in Benedict's GPS? What the hell was going on? Who could I trust?

  I only knew the answer to that last question: No one.

  I'm a big guy. I consider myself pretty independent. But right here, right now, I didn't think that I had ever felt so small or such gut-wrenching loneliness.

  I shook my head. Okay, Jake, snap out of it. Enough with the self-pity. Time to act.

  First I checked through the rest of the addresses in Benedict's GPS. There was nothing of interest. I did find his home address, so I set it up to lead me home. I started on my way. I flipped stations on the radio, searching for that ever-elusive perfect song. Never found it. I whistled along with what crappy song came on. It didn't help. The construction sites on Route 95 pounded the hell out of what was left of my psyche.

  I spent most of the ride having imaginary conversations with Benedict. I actually rehearsed how I'd approach him, what I'd say, what he might answer, how I'd counter.

  My grip on the wheel tightened when I pulled onto Benedict's street. I checked the time. He had a seminar for another hour, so he wouldn't be home. Good. I parked by the guest cottage and started toward his house. Again I debated what to do. The truth was, I needed more information. I wasn't ready to interrogate him yet. I didn't know enough. The simple Francis Bacon axiom, one we constantly stressed to our students, applied here: Knowledge is power.

  Benedict hid a spare house key in a fake rock by his garbage can. One may wonder how I know this, so I will tell you: We are best friends. We have no secrets from each other.

  Another voice in my head: Was it all a lie? Was our friendship never real?

  I thought what Cookie had whispered to me in those dark woods: "If you don't stop, you'll kill us all."

  It was not meant to be hyperbole and yet here I was, not stopping, risking in a way I could still not fathom "all" these lives. Who was "all"? Was I always, in a sense, risking them? Was Benedict supposed to, I don't know, keep an eye on me or something?

  Let's not get completely paranoid here.

  Right, okay, a step at a time. There was still the possibility of an innocent explanation for the Vermont address being on his GPS. I was not the most creative fellow. I have a habit of seeing things linearly. Maybe someone else borrowed his car, for example. Maybe someone even stole it. Maybe one of his late-night conquests wanted to visit an organic farm. Maybe I was once again practicing self-delusion.

  I put the key in the lock. Was I really about to cross this line? Was I really going to snoop on my closest friend?

  Bet your ass.

  I entered through the back door. My apartment would kindly be described as functional. Benedict's resembled a third-world prince's harem. The den featured dozens of upscale, brightly hued beanbag chairs. There were vibrant tapestries on the walls. Slim African sculptures stood tall in all four corners. The room was over the top in a thousand ways, but I had always felt comfortable here. The big yellow beanbag was my favorite. I had watched a lot of football on that. I had played a lot of Xbox there.

  The Xbox controllers were lying on it now. I stared down at them, though I didn't really think the controllers would offer up much information. I wondered what I was looking for. A clue, I guess. Something that would tell me why Benedict would have driven up to that farm/retreat/kidnapper-hideout in Kraftboro, Vermont. What that might be, I didn't have the slightest.

  I started going through the drawers. I searched the ones in the kitchen first. Nothing. I took the spare bedroom next. Nothing. I tried the closet and bureau in the den. More nothing. I headed into the bedroom and tried there. Nothing. Benedict had a desk in there with a computer on it. I checked the drawers underneath it. Nothing.

  I found a file drawer. I checked the file cabinet. There were routine bills. There were student papers. There were class schedules. As far as anything truly personal, there was--drum roll, please--nothing.

  Absolutely nothing.

  I thought about that. Who doesn't have anything personal in their house? Then again what would you find in my house? More than this, certainly. There would be some old photographs, a few personal letters, something that indicated my past.

  Benedict had none of that. So what?

  I kept looking. I was hoping to find something that would link Benedict to the Creative Recharge Colony or Vermont or anything really. I tried to sit at his desk. Benedict is a lot smaller than I am, so my knees couldn't fit under the desk. I leaned forward and hit a key on the computer. The screen lit up. Like most people, Benedict had not shut down his computer. I suddenly realized how old-fashioned my house search had been thus far. No one keeps secrets in their drawers anymore.

  We keep them on the computer.

  I opened up his Microsoft Office and looked for the most recent documents. The first listed was a Word document called VBMWXY.doc. Strange name. I clicked on it.

  The file wouldn't open. It was password protected.

  Whoa.

  There was no point in trying to guess the password. I didn't have a clue. I tried to think of another way around that. Nothing came to mind. The rest of the files under "Recent" were student recommendations. Two were for medical schools, two for law schools, one for business school.

  So what was in the password-protected one?

  No idea. I clicked on the Mail icon on the bottom. The mail, too, required a password to enter. I looked around the desk for a slip of paper with a password--lots of people did that--but I found nothing. Another dead end.

  Now what?

  I clicked on his web browser. His Yahoo! news page popped up. Not much to learn here. I clicked the history page and finally hit something approaching pay dirt. Benedict had been on Facebook recently. I clicked the link. A profile for a man named, believe it or not, John Smith, came up. John Smith had no photograph of himself. He had no friends. He had no status reports. His address was listed as New York, NY.

  This computer was signed in to this Facebook under the name John Smith.

  Hmm. I thought about that. It was a fake account. I know a lot of people have them. A friend of mine uses a music service that goes through Facebook, showing all his friends every song he listens to. He didn't like that, so he created a dummy account like this one. Now no one can see what songs he likes.

  The fact that Benedict had a dummy account meant nothing. What was more interesting though, as I typed his name into the search engine, was that Benedict Edwards didn't have a real Facebook account. There were two Benedict Edwardses listed in the Facebook directory. One was a musician from Oklahoma City, the other was a dancer from Tampa, Florida. Neither was my Benedict Edwards.

  Again, so what? A lot of people don't have Facebook accounts. I had one set up, but I've almost never used it. My profile picture was the yearbook photograph. I accepted friends maybe once a week. I probably had about fifty of them. I had originally signed up because people were sending me links to photographs and the like a
nd the only way I could view them was to sign in to a Facebook account. Other than that, social media in general held very little appeal to me.

  So maybe that was what Benedict had done. We were on many of the same e-mail lists. He had probably set up the dummy account so he could view Facebook links.

  When I looked down the history page, that theory immediately imploded. The first listing was for a man on Facebook named Kevin Backus. I clicked the link. For a second, I thought that maybe it was another dummy account for Benedict, that Kevin Backus was merely an online pseudonym. But that wasn't the case. Kevin Backus was just some nondescript guy. He wore sunglasses in his profile picture and posed with his thumb up. I frowned at that.

  I racked my brain. Kevin Backus. Neither his name nor his face was familiar.

  I hit the "about" page. It was blank. It didn't list a home, a school, an occupation, any of that. The only thing that had been filled out was "in a relationship." He was, according to this, in a relationship with a woman named Marie-Anne Cantin.

  I rubbed my chin. Marie-Anne Cantin. That name didn't ring a bell either. So, why had Benedict been on this Kevin Backus's page? I didn't know, but I suspected it was hugely important. I could start googling him. I looked again at the name Marie-Anne Cantin. It was typed in blue, meaning that she also had a profile. I only had to click on her name.

  That was what I did.

  When her page came up--when I saw Marie-Anne Cantin's profile photograph--I recognized the face almost immediately.

  Benedict carried her picture in his wallet.

  Oh man. I swallowed, sat back, caught my breath. Now I got it. I could almost feel Benedict's pain. I had lost the great love of my life. Benedict, it seemed, had done the same. Marie-Anne Cantin was indeed a stunning woman. I would describe her as high-cheekboned, regal, African American except, as I looked closer at her profile, that last part would be inaccurate.

  She wasn't African American. She was, well, African. Marie-Anne Cantin, according to her Facebook page, lived in Ghana.

  This fact was, I guess, interesting, albeit in a not-my-business way. Somewhere along the way, Benedict had met this woman. He had fallen in love with her. He carried a torch for her. What that could possibly have to do with his visiting Kraftboro, Vermont . . .

  Hold the phone.

  Hadn't I, too, fallen in love with a woman? I, too, still carried a torch for her. And I, too, had been up in Kraftboro, Vermont.

  Was Kevin Backus Benedict's very own Todd Sanderson?

  I frowned. That felt like a stretch. And wrong. Still, wrong as it felt, I needed to investigate this. Marie-Anne Cantin was the only lead I had right now. I clicked her "about" link. It was impressive. She had studied economics at Oxford University and had received a law degree at Harvard. She was legal counsel for the United Nations. She both lived in and was from Accra, the capital of Ghana. She was, as I already knew, "in a relationship" with Kevin Backus.

  Now what?

  I clicked on her pictures, but they were set on private. No way to view them. An idea came to me. I hit the back arrow until I was on Kevin Backus's page again. His photographs were not set on private. I could see them all. Okay, good. I started clicking through them. I don't know why. I don't know what I expected to find.

  Kevin Backus had his photographs in various albums. I started with the one simply titled "Happy Times." There were twenty, twenty-five pictures of either my boy Kevin with his main squeeze, Marie-Anne, or just Marie-Anne alone, obviously snapped by Kevin. They looked happy. Check that. She looked happy. He looked deliriously happy. I pictured Benedict sitting here, clicking through these photographs of the woman he loved with this Kevin guy. I could see the glass of scotch in his hand. I could see the room growing dark. I could see the blue light of the screen bouncing off Benedict's oversize Ant-Man glasses. I could see a lone tear running down his cheek.

  Too much?

  Facebook loved to torture ex-loves by keeping them front and center. You couldn't escape your exes anymore. Their lives were right here for you to see. Man, that sucked. So this was what Benedict did at night--tormented himself. I didn't know any of this for certain, of course, but I was pretty sure that was how it played out. I remembered that drunken night in the bar, the way he carefully took out the well-creased photograph of Marie-Anne. I could still hear the agony in his slurred words:

  "The only girl I'll ever love."

  Benedict, you poor bastard.

  Poor bastard perhaps, but I still didn't have a clue what this meant or how it related to Benedict's recent visit to Vermont. I clicked through some more albums. There was one titled "Family." Kevin had two brothers and a sister. His mother appeared in a number of photographs. I didn't see any sign of a father. There was an album called "Kintampo Falls" and another for "Mole National Park." Most of the photographs there were shots of wildlife and natural wonders.

  The last album was called "Oxford Graduation." Curious. That was where Marie-Anne Cantin had studied economics. Could Kevin and Marie-Anne have attended together? Could they be college sweethearts? I doubted it. It seemed like a long time to be "in a relationship," but, hey, who knew?

  The photographs in this album were considerably older. Judging by the hairstyles, clothing, and Kevin's face, I would say at least fifteen, maybe twenty years earlier. I would bet that these photographs predated digital cameras. Kevin had probably scanned them into his computer. I skimmed through the thumbs, not expecting to see anything of interest, when a photograph in the second row made me pull up.

  My hand was shaking. I grabbed the mouse, managed to move the cursor so that it hovered over the image, and clicked. The photograph grew bigger. It was a group photograph. Eight people, all in black graduation gowns, stood with big smiles on their faces. I recognized Kevin Backus. He stood on the far right next to a woman I didn't know. Their body language suggested that they were a couple. In fact, as I looked closer, it appeared that I was looking at four couples on their graduation day. I couldn't be sure, of course. It could have been that they were just lined up boy-girl, but I didn't think that was all.

  My eye was immediately drawn to the woman on the left. It was Marie-Anne Cantin. She wore a killer smile, absolutely devastating. It was a smile that could twist a man's heart. A man could fall in love just being on the receiving end of that smile. A man would want to see the smile every day and be the one who could make it appear. He would want it all to himself.

  Man, I got it, Benedict. I really, truly got it.

  Marie-Anne was gazing lovingly at a man I didn't recognize.

  At least, not at first.

  He, too, was African or African American. His head was shaved. He had no facial hair. He did not wear glasses. That was why I didn't recognize him at first. That was why, even when I looked hard, I couldn't be sure. Except it was the only thing that made sense.

  Benedict.

  There were only two problems. One, Benedict hadn't graduated from Oxford University. Two, the name underneath the picture didn't read Benedict Edwards. It read Jamal W. Langston.

  Huh?

  Maybe it wasn't Benedict. Maybe Jamal W. Langston just looked like Benedict.

  I frowned. Yeah, right, sure, that made sense. And maybe Benedict just happened to be carrying a torch for a woman who had long ago dated a man who looked just like him!

  Dopey theory.

  So what other theory did I have? The obvious: Benedict Edwards was really Jamal W. Langston.

  I didn't get it. Or maybe I did. Maybe the pieces were finally, if not coming together, all on the same table. I googled Jamal W. Langston. The first link came from a newspaper called the Statesman. It was, according to the link, "Ghana's oldest mainstream newspaper--Founded in 1949."

  I clicked the article. When I saw what it was--when I read the headline--I nearly screamed out loud, and yet, at the same time, some of those puzzle pieces were starting to come together.

  It was Jamal W. Langston's obituary.

  How could that be .
. . ? I started reading, my eyes growing wide as a few of the puzzle pieces finally started to click into place.

  From behind me, a tired voice sent a chill straight down my spine: "Man, I wish you hadn't seen that."

  I slowly turned toward Benedict. He had a gun in his hand.

  Chapter 27

  If I'd been ranking the many surreal moments I'd been experiencing in recent days, having my best friend point a gun at me would have just elbowed its way into the top spot. I shook my head. How had I not seen it or sensed anything? His eyeglasses and their frames were beyond ridiculous. The haircut almost dared me to question his sanity or personal space-time continuum.

  Benedict stood there wearing a green turtleneck, beige corduroys, and a tweed jacket--with a gun in his hand. Part of me wanted to laugh out loud. I had a million questions for him, but I started with the one I had been asking repeatedly from the beginning.

  "Where's Natalie?"

  If he was surprised by what I'd asked, his face didn't show it. "I don't know."

  I pointed at the gun in his hand. "Are you going to shoot me?"

  "I took an oath," he said. "I made a promise."

  "To shoot me?"

  "To kill anyone who learned my secret."

  "Even your maybe best friend?"

  "Even him."

  I nodded. "I get it, you know."

  "Get what?"

  "Jamal W. Langston," I said, gesturing toward the screen. "He was a crusading prosecutor. He took on the deadly drug cartels of Ghana without worry about his own safety. He brought them down when no one else could. The man died a hero."

  I waited for him to say something. He didn't.

  "Brave guy," I said.

  "Foolish guy," Benedict corrected.

  "The cartels swore vengeance on him--and if the article is to be believed, they got it. Jamal W. Langston was burned alive. But he wasn't, was he?"

  "Depends."

  "Depends on what?"