The Chimera Secret Read Online Free Page A

Lopez. ‘Corruption. I don’t blame her for leaving the force after
what happened.’
    Natalie took a deep breath before speaking.
    ‘Ethan, the last time you went looking for Jo it nearly killed you.’
    Ethan managed a ghost of a smile. ‘That’s why I’m asking you to do it instead.’
    ‘Charmed, I’m sure.’
    ‘I’m not doing any field work this time until I have a solid lead,’ Ethan said. ‘I don’t need much, Nat, just a bit of time in the books seeing if there’s
anything that’s been overlooked. Congress might not know anything but it’s a good place to start. The National Security Agency might know something too.’
    Natalie laughed.
    ‘Sure, no problem. I’ll just march into the most secure agency in the world and ask to borrow some coffee or something.’
    ‘It’s more than I’ll be able to do,’ Ethan replied. ‘I know Congress is about to start an investigation into the intelligence community. Your team will have
unprecedented access to files from the CIA, DIA, NSA and God knows who else.’
    ‘Do Mom and Pop know about this?’
    ‘No,’ Ethan replied quickly, ‘and let’s keep it that way, okay? I don’t want them worrying.’
    Natalie’s eyes flickered with sheet lightning. ‘Like you didn’t want them worrying when you disappeared for four years? Jesus, Ethan.’
    Her words sliced through his shame, but he did not try to avoid it. Like a victim of depression who cuts for the relief the pain brings, he faced it head on, sucked it in and let it settle in
his guts.
    ‘I’m back now,’ he replied, ‘and I’m not going to make the same mistake again, Nat, but I can’t let this go until I know what the hell happened to Joanna. I
need closure.’
    Natalie’s gaze bore into him from across the table.
    ‘You lost her once, Ethan, and it tore you apart. You seem like you’re finally getting over it and now you want to dive straight back in like nothing’s happened. You ever think
that if she’s out there, she might have contacted you by now? You ever think that she might not want to?’
    Ethan felt tiny pricks of pain in the corners of his eyes. ‘Every day.’
    Natalie’s eyes softened.
    ‘I’ll do what I can,’ she said. ‘Just make sure that it’s what you really want, Ethan.’
    She looked down at her menu. Ethan glanced out of the restaurant windows at the bleak surface of the lake and asked himself the same question he’d been asking himself for six months:
Is this really what I want?

4
RIVER FOREST, CHICAGO
    The sound of his labored heart pounded in Ethan’s head as he jogged along the sidewalk of Lathrop, just off Thatcher Woods. He checked his watch as he swerved by reflex
around the occasional dog-walking pedestrian, glancing at perfectly manicured lawns fronting two-story condos worth more than he earned in a decade. Some even had turreted corner plots like
miniature castles.
    Ethan frequently jogged the route, because like almost all people he liked to dream. Nobody who lived alone as he did had any need for five bedrooms, three cars and a bathroom the size of a
small apartment, but all the same it was something prettier to look at than the windy city’s north side. Kind of thing he’d once assumed that he and Joanna would have aspired to: kids,
a dog, big house, the whole nine yards. Instead his life, along with his aspirations, had ground to a halt when she’d disappeared. He’d lost contact with friends, become consumed by
grief and rage, embittered by life’s uncaring twists of fate.
    He shook off the maudlin thoughts and picked his chin up along with his pace.
    The cables of his earphones bounced as he checked over his shoulder and ran across the street, slowing his pace as he passed a large colonial-style house. Pure white clapperboard, broad windows,
high hedges blocking access to the rear. Worth a cool two million. Ethan’s practiced eye picked out a robust-looking drainage chute running down the north wall from the roof, part