HARLAN COBEN
Shelter
I was walking to school, lost in feeling sorry for myself—my dad was dead, my mom in rehab, my girlfriend missing—when I saw the Bat Lady for the first time.
I had heard the rumors, of course. The Bat Lady supposedly lived alone in the dilapidated house on the corner of Hobart Gap Road and Pine. You know the one. I stood in front of it now. The worn yellow paint was shedding like an old dog. The once-solid concrete walk was cracked into quarter-size fragments. The uncut lawn had dandelions tall enough for the adult rides at Six Flags.
The Bat Lady was said to be a hundred years old and only came out at night, and if some poor child hadn’t made it home from a playdate or practice at the Little League field before nightfall—if he or she risked walking home in the dark instead of getting a ride, or was maybe crazy enough to cut through her yard—the Bat Lady got you.
What she supposedly did with you was never made clear. No child had vanished from this town in years. Teenagers, like my girlfriend, Ashley, sure, they could be here one day, holding your hand, looking deep into your eyes, making your heart go boom-boom-boom—and be gone the next. But little kids? Nope. They were safe, even from the Bat Lady.
So I was just about to cross to the other side of the street— even I, a mature teenager entering my sophomore year at a brand-new high school, wanted to avoid that spooky house— when the door creaked open.
I froze.
For a moment, nothing happened. The door was all the way open now, but no one was there. I stopped and waited. Maybe I blinked. I can’t be sure.
But when I looked again, the Bat Lady was there.
She could have been a hundred years old. Or maybe two hundred. I had no idea why they called her Bat Lady. She didn’t look like a bat. Her hair was gray and hippie long, hanging down to her waist. It blew in the wind, obscuring her face. She wore a torn white gown that resembled a bridal costume in an old horror movie or heavy-metal video. Her spine was bent like a question mark.
Slowly Bat Lady raised a hand so pale it was more vein-blue than white, and pointed a shaky, bony finger in my direction. I said nothing. She kept pointing until she was sure I was looking. When she saw that I was, Bat Lady’s wrinkled face spread into a smile that sent little icicles down my spine.
“Mickey?”
I had no idea how she knew my name.
“Your father isn’t dead,” Bat Lady said.
Her words sent a jolt that knocked me back a step.
“He is very much alive.”
But standing there, watching her vanish back into her decrepit cave, I knew what she was telling me wasn’t true.
Because I had seen my father die.
Okay, that was weird.
Copyright © 2011 by Harlan Coben
Live Wire
The ugliest truth, a friend once told Myron, is still better than the prettiest of lies.
Myron thought about that now as he looked down at his father in the hospital bed. He flashed back sixteen years, to the last time he had lied to his father, the lie that caused so much heartbreak and devastation, a lie that started a tragic ripple that, finally, disastrously, would end here.
His father’s eyes remained closed, his breathing raspy and uneven. Tubes seemed to snake out from everywhere. Myron stared down at his father’s forearm. He remembered as a child visiting his dad in that Newark warehouse, the way his father sat at his oversized desk, his sleeves rolled up. The forearm had been powerful enough back then to strain the fabric, making the cuff work tourniquet-like against the muscle. Now the muscle looked spongy, deflated by age. The barrel chest that had made Myron feel so safe was still there, but it had grown brittle, as though a hand pressing down could snap the rib cage like dried twigs. His father’s unshaven face had gray splotches instead of his customary five o’clock shadow, the skin around his chin loose, sagging down like a cloak one size too big.
Myron’s mother—Al Bolitar’s wife for the past forty-three years—sat next to the bed. Her hand, shaking with Parkinson’s, held his. She too looked shockingly frail. In her youth, his mother had been an early feminist, burning her bra with Gloria Steinem, wearing T-shirts that read stuff like “A Woman’s Place Is in the House . . . and Senate.” Now, here they both were, Ellen and Al Bolitar (“We’re El-Al,” Mom always joked, “like the Israeli airline”) ravaged by age, hanging on, luckier by far than the vast majority of aging lovers—and yet this was what luck looked like in the end.
God has some sense of humor.
“So,” Mom said to Myron in a low voice. “We agree?”
Myron did not reply. The prettiest of lies versus the ugliest truth. Myron should have learned his lesson back then, sixteen years ago, with that last lie to this great man he loved like no other. But, no, it wasn’t so simple. The ugliest truth could be devastating. It could rock a world.
Or even kill.
So as his father’s eyes fluttered open, as this man Myron treasured like no other looked up at his oldest son with pleading, almost childlike confusion, Myron looked at his mother and slowly nodded. Then he bit back the tears and prepared to tell his father one final lie.
Six days earlier
“Please, Myron, I need your help.”
This was, for Myron, a bit of a fantasy: a shapely, gorgeous damsel in distress sauntering into his office like something out of an old Bogey film—except, well, the saunter was more of a waddle and the shapeliness was coming from the fact that the gorgeous damsel was eight months pregnant, and really, sorry, that kind of killed the whole fantasy effect.
From LIVE WIRE by Harlan Coben. Published by arrangement with Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Copyright © 2011 by Harlan Coben.
First Chapter
"YOU don't know her secret," Win said to me.
"Should I?"
Win shrugged.
"It's bad?" I asked.
"Very," Win said.
"Then maybe I don't want to know."
Two days before I learned the secret she'd kept buried for a decade-the seemingly personal secret that would not only devastate the two of us but change the world forever-Terese Collins called me at fi ve AM, pushing me from one quasi-erotic dream into another. She simply said, "Come to Paris."
I had not heard her voice in, what, seven years maybe, and the line had static and she didn't bother with hello or any preamble. I stirred and said, "Terese? Where are you?"
"In a cozy hotel on the Left Bank called d'Aubusson. You'll love it here. There's an Air France flight leaving tonight at seven."
I sat up. Terese Collins. Imagery flooded in-her Class-B-felony bikini, that private island, the sun-kissed beach, her gaze that could melt teeth, her Class-B-felony bikini.
It's worth mentioning the bikini twice.
"I can't," I said.
"Paris," she said.
"I know."
Nearly a decade ago we ran away to an island as two lost souls. I thought that we would never see each other again, but we did. A few years later, she helped save my son's life. And then, poof, she was gone without a trace-until now.
"Think about it," she went on. "The City of Lights. We could make love all night long."
I managed a swallow. "Sure, yeah, but what would we do during the day?"
"If I remember correctly, you'd probably need to rest."
"And vitamin E," I said, smiling in spite of myself. "I can't, Terese. I'm involved."
"With the 9/11 widow?"
I wondered how she knew. "Yeah."
"This wouldn't be about her."
"Sorry, but I think it would."
"Are you in love?" she asked.
"Would it matter if I said yes?"
"Not really."
I switched hands. "What's wrong, Terese?"
"Nothing's wrong. I want to spend a romantic, sensual, fantasy filled weekend with you in Paris."
Another swallow. "I haven't heard from you in, what, seven years?"
"Almost eight."
"I called," I said. "Repeatedly."
"I know."
"I left messages. I wrote letters. I tried to fi nd you."
"I know," she said again.
There was silence. I don't like silence.
"Terese?"
"When you needed me," she said, "really needed me, I was there, wasn't I?"
"Yes."
"Come to Paris, Myron."
"Just like that?"
"Yes."
"Where have you been all this time?"
"I will tell you everything when you get here."
"I can't. I'm involved with someone."
That damn silence again.
"Terese?"
"Do you remember when we met?"
Seconds Away
There are moments in your life that change everything.
I don’t mean little things like, say, what cereal turns out to be your favorite or whether you get into any AP classes or what girl you fall in love with or where you wind up living for the next twenty years. I mean total change. One second your world is one thing, the next—snap!—it is completely altered. All the rules, all the things you accepted about reality, are turned around.
Like, up becomes down. Left becomes right.
Death becomes life.
I stared at the photograph, realizing that we are always just seconds away from life-snapping change. What I was seeing with my own two eyes made no sense, so I blinked a few times and looked again—as if I expected the image to change. It didn’t.
The picture was an old black-and-white. Doing a little quick math in my head, I realized that it had to have been taken nearly seventy years ago.
“This can’t be,” I said.
I wasn’t talking to myself, just in case you think I’m nuts. (Which you will think soon enough.) I was talking to the Bat Lady. She stood a few feet away from me in her white gown and said nothing. Her long gray hair looked as though it were moving even when it was standing still. Her skin was wrinkled and crinkly, like old paper someone had folded and unfolded too many times.
Even if you don’t know this Bat Lady, you know a Bat Lady. She’s the creepy old lady who lives in the creepy old house down the block. Every town has one. You hear tales in the school yard about all the horrible things she’ll do to you if she ever catches you. As a little kid, you stay far away. As a bigger kid—in my case, a sophomore in high school—well, you still stay far away because, even though you know it’s nonsense and you’re too old for that kind of thing, the house still scares you just enough.
Yet here I was, in her inner lair, staring at a photograph that I knew couldn’t be what I thought it was.
“Who is this guy?” I asked her.
Her voice creaked like the old floorboards beneath our feet. “The Butcher of Lodz,” she whispered.
The man in the picture wore a Waffen-SS uniform from World War II. He was, in short, a sadistic Nazi who, according to the Bat Lady, murdered many, including her own father.
“And this picture was taken when?” I asked.
The Bat Lady seemed puzzled by the question. “I’m not sure. Probably around 1942 or 1943.”
I looked at the man in the photograph again. My head spun. Nothing made sense. I tried to ground myself in what I knew for certain: My name, I knew, was Mickey Bolitar. Good start. I’m the son of Brad (deceased) and Kitty (in rehab) Bolitar, and now I’m the ward of my uncle Myron Bolitar (whom I tolerate). I go to Kasselton High School, the new kid trying to fit in, and based on this photograph, I am either delusional or completely insane.
“What’s wrong, Mickey?” Bat Lady asked me.
“What’s wrong?” I repeated. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I don’t understand.”
“This”—I pointed to the photograph—“is the Butcher of Lodz?”
“Yes.”
“And you think he died at the end of World War Two?”
“That’s what I was told,” she said. “Mickey? Do you know something?”
I flashed back to the first time I had seen the Bat Lady. I had been walking to my new school when she suddenly appeared in the doorway of this decrepit house. I almost screamed out loud. She raised a ghostly hand toward me and said five words that struck me in the chest like a body blow: Mickey—I had no idea how she knew my name—your father isn’t dead.
From Seconds Away By Harlan Coben. Published by arrangement with G.P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, a member with Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright © 2012 by Harlan Coben.
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