Harlan Coben Read Online Free Page A

smile.
    â€œSeriously,” Lenny said, “you shouldn’t be alone in that house.”
    â€œI’ll be fine.”
    â€œCheryl cooked you some dinners. She put them in the freezer.”
    â€œThat was nice of her.”
    â€œShe’s still the world’s most godawful cook,” Lenny said.
    â€œI didn’t say I was going to eat them.”
    Lenny looked away, busying himself with the already packed bag. I watched him. We have known each other a long time, since Mrs. Roberts’s first-grade class, so it probably did not surprise him when I said, “You want to tell me what’s up?”
    He’d been waiting for the opening and thus quickly exploited it. “Look, I’m your lawyer, right?”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œSo I want to give you some legal advice.”
    â€œI’m listening.”
    â€œI should have said something earlier. But I knew you wouldn’t listen. Now, well, now it’s a different story, I think.”
    â€œLenny?”
    â€œYeah?’
    â€œWhat are you talking about?”
    Despite his physical enhancements, I still saw Lenny as a kid. It made it hard to take his advice too seriously. Don’t get me wrong. I knew that he was smart. I had celebrated with him when he got his acceptance to Princeton and then Columbia Law. We took the SATs together and were in the same AP chemistry class our junior year. But the Lenny I saw was the one I desperately cruised with on muggy Friday and Saturday nights. We used his dad’s wood-paneled station wagon—not exactly a “babe trawler”—and tried to hit the parties. We were always let in but never really welcome, members of that high school majority I call the Great Unseen. We would stand in corners, holding a beer, bopping our heads to the music, trying hard to be noticed. We never were. Most nights we ended up eating a grilled cheese at the Heritage Diner or, better, at the soccer field behind Benjamin Franklin Middle School, lying on our backs, checking out the stars. It was easier to talk, even with your best friend, when you were looking at the stars.
    â€œOkay,” Lenny said, overgesturing as was his custom, “it’s like this: I don’t want you talking to the cops anymore without my being present.”
    I frowned. “For real?”
    â€œMaybe it’s nothing, but I’ve seen cases like this. Not like this, but you know what I mean. The first suspect is always family.”
    â€œMeaning my sister.”
    â€œNo, meaning close family. Or clos er family, if possible.”
    â€œAre you saying the police suspect me?”
    â€œI don’t know, I really don’t.” He paused but not for very long. “Okay, yeah, probably.”
    â€œBut I was shot, remember? My kid was the one taken.”
    â€œRight, and that cuts both ways.”
    â€œHow do you figure that?”
    â€œAs the days pass, they’re going to start suspecting you more and more.”
    â€œWhy?” I asked.
    â€œI don’t know. That’s just how it works. Look, the FBI handles kidnappings. You know that, right? Once a child is gone twenty-four hours, they assume it’s interstate and the case is theirs.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œSo for the first, what, ten days or so, they had a ton of agents here. They monitored your phones and waited for the ransom call, that kinda thing. But the other day, they pretty much pulled up stakes. That’s normal, of course. They can’t wait indefinitely, so they scale back to an agent or two. And their thinking shifted too. Tara became less a possible kidnapping-for-ransom and more a straight-on abduction. But my guess is, they still have the taps on the phones. I haven’t asked yet, but I will. They’ll claim they’re leaving them there in case a ransom demand is eventually made. But they’ll also be hoping to hear you say something incriminating.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œSo be