Fool Me Once
Too By HARLAN COBEN
Play Dead
Miracle Cure
Bargain Breaker
Driblet Shot
Fade Away
Dorsum Spin
One Fake Move
The Concluding Detail
Darkest Fearfulness
Tell No One
Gone for Good
No Second Chance
Only One Look
The Innocent
Promise Me
The Woods
Hold Tight
Long Lost
Caught
Live Wire
Shelter
Stay Close
Seconds Away
Half-dozen Years
Missing You
Found
The Stranger
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Copyright (c) 2022 by Harlan Coben Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels inventiveness, encourages various voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws past not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any course without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
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Hardcover ISBN 9780525955092
eBook ISBN 9780698404175
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and whatever resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business concern establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For Charlotte:
Doesn't matter how old you lot get, you're all the same my picayune girl
CONTENTS
Also past Harlan Coben
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter one
Affiliate 2
Chapter three
Chapter 4
Affiliate 5
Affiliate vi
Affiliate vii
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Affiliate ten
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter xiii
Affiliate fourteen
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Affiliate 18
Affiliate 19
Affiliate 20
Chapter 21
Affiliate 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Affiliate 1
They buried Joe three days after his murder.
Maya wore black, as befitted a grieving widow. The sun pounded down with an unflagging fury that reminded her of her months in the desert. The family pastor spouted the cliches, but Maya wasn't listening. Her optics drifted to the schoolyard across the street.
Yes, the cemetery disregarded an elementary school.
Maya had driven by here countless times, the graveyard on the left, the elementary schoolhouse on her correct, and withal the strangeness, if non obscenity, of the placement had never actually registered with her earlier. Which came offset, she wondered, the schoolyard or the cemetery? Who'd been the one to decide to build a schoolhouse next to a cemetery--or vice versa? Did it even matter, this life-catastrophe and life-commencement juxtaposition, or was it, in fact, somewhat poignant? Expiry is so close, ever, a breath away, so possibly information technology was wise to introduce children to that concept at an early on historic period.
Maya filled her head with inanities similar this as she watched Joe's casket disappear into the earth. Distract yourself. That was the cardinal. Get through it.
The black dress itched. Over the past decade, Maya had been to a hundred-plus funerals, but this was the get-go time she'd been obligated to habiliment black. She hated it.
To her right, Joe's immediate family--his mother, Judith; his brother Neil; his sister, Caroline--wilted from the combination of high temperatures and deep sorrow. To her left, getting antsy and starting to utilise Maya's arm as a rope swing, was her (and Joe's) two-year-onetime girl, Lily. The parenting platitude states that children practice not come with instruction manuals. That never seemed more truthful than today. What, Maya had wondered, was the proper etiquette for a situation like this? Do you leave your two-year-old daughter at domicile--or do you lot take her to her father's funeral? That was an event that they didn't cover on those know-information technology-all, i-size-fits-all mommy websites. In a fit of compassion-anger, Maya had almost posted that question online: "Hi, Everyone! My husband was recently murdered. Should I bring my 2-year-old daughter to the graveyard or leave her home? Oh, and wear suggestions? Thanks!"
In that location were hundreds of people at the funeral, and in some dimly lit corner of her encephalon, she realized that this would have pleased Joe. Joe liked people. People liked Joe. But of course, popularity alone wouldn't explain the crowd. Mourners had been drawn in by the horrible lure of existence near the tragic: a immature man gunned down in common cold claret, the charming scion of the wealthy Burkett family--and the hubby of a woman mired in an international scandal.
Lily wrapped both arms around her female parent'south leg. Maya bent down and whispered, "Not much longer, sweetheart, okay?"
Lily nodded just held on even tighter.
Maya stood dorsum at attention, smoothing the itchy black wearing apparel she'd borrowed from Eileen with both hands. Joe would not accept wanted her in black. He'd ever preferred her in the armed services formals she'd worn back in the days when she'd been Regular army Captain Maya Stern. When they'd start met at a Burkett family charity gala, Joe had walked straight up to her in his tails, given her the rakish smile (Maya hadn't understood the term "rakish" until she saw that grin), and said, "Wow, I idea the plough-on was supposed to be men in uniform."
It was a lame pickup line, just lame enough to make her laugh, which was all the opening a guy like Joe needed. Man, he was and so damn handsome. The memory, even now, even standing in this stifling humidity with his expressionless torso anxiety away, made her smile. A year later on, Maya and Joe were married. Lily came not long afterward that. And now, equally though someone had fast-forwarded a life-together tape, here she was, burial her husband and the father of her only child.
"All beloved stories," Maya's father had told her many years ago, "end in tragedy."
Maya had shaken her head and said, "God, Dad, that'south grim."
"Yes, but think well-nigh it: Y'all either autumn out of love, or, if y'all're actually i of the lucky ones, yous live long enough to lookout your soul mate die."
Maya could however see her male parent sitting across from her at the kitchen table of yellowing Formica laminate in their Brooklyn boondocks house. Dad wore his customary cardigan sweater (all professions, non just those in the military, wear uniforms of some kind or another), surrounded by the college essays he'd have to grade. He and Mom had died years ago, within months of each other, only in truth, it was still hard for Maya to know which category of tragedy their love story fell into.
As the pastor prattled on, Judith Burkett, Joe's mother, took hold of Maya's hand in the decease grip of the grieving.
"This," the erstwhile woman mumbled, "is even worse."
Maya didn't ask for clarification. She didn't have to. This was the second time Judith Burkett had been forced to bury a child, two of her three sons now gone, one supposedly by tragic accident, one by
murder. Maya glanced down at her own child, at the top of Lily's head, and wondered how a mother could live with such pain.
Every bit if she knew what Maya was thinking, the erstwhile woman whispered, "It'll never exist okay," her uncomplicated words cutting through the air like a reaper's scythe. "Never."
"Information technology'due south my fault," Maya said.
She hadn't meant to say information technology. Judith looked up at her.
"I should take . . ."
"At that place was nothing you could have washed," Judith said. But there was still something off in the tone. Maya understood, because others were probably thinking the aforementioned thing. Maya Stern had saved and then many in the past. Why couldn't she have saved her own husband?
"Ashes to ashes . . ."
Wow, did the pastor really trot out that hackneyed anecdote or had Maya imagined information technology? She hadn't been paying attention. She never did at funerals. She had been effectually death too many times not to understand the secret to getting through them: Get numb. Don't focus on anything. Let all sounds and sights blur to the indicate of being unrecognizable.
Joe'due south casket reached bottom with a thud that echoed also long in the nonetheless air. Judith swayed against Maya and let out a low groan. Maya maintained her military begetting--head high, spine straight, shoulders back. She recently had read one of those self-help articles people always emailed around most "ability poses" and how they were supposed to ameliorate functioning. The war machine understood that tidbit of popular psychology way before its time. As a soldier, you lot don't stand at attention because it looks squeamish. You stand up at attention because, on some level, information technology either gives you strength or, but as important, makes you announced stronger to both your comrades and enemies.
For a moment, Maya flashed dorsum to the park--the glint of metallic, the sound of gunshots, Joe falling, Maya's shirt covered in claret, stumbling through the dark, distant streetlights giving off hazy halos of illumination . . .
"Assistance . . . please . . . someone . . . my husband's . . ."
She closed her optics and pushed information technology abroad.
Hang on, she told herself now. Merely get through it.
And she did.
*
Then at that place was the receiving line.
The just two places you stand on receiving lines are funerals and weddings. In that location was probably something poignant in that fact, but Maya couldn't imagine what it could be.
She had no thought how many people walked past her, but information technology took hours. Mourners shuffled forrard similar a scene in some zombie motion-picture show where y'all slay one but more just keep coming at you.
Merely go on it moving.
Near offered a low "Sorry for your loss," which was pretty much the perfect matter to say. Others talked too much. They started in most how tragic it all was, what a waste, how the metropolis was going to hell, how they were almost robbed at gunpoint in one case (rule one: never get in about yourself on a receiving line), how they hoped the police fried the animals who did information technology, how fortunate Maya was, how God must have been looking out for her (the implication beingness, she guessed, that God hadn't cared equally much about Joe), how there is always a plan, how there is a reason for everything (a wonder she didn't dial those people direct in the confront).
Joe's family grew wearied and had to sit midway through. Not Maya. She stood throughout, maintained direct center contact, and greeted each mourner with a firm handshake. She used subtle and not-so-subtle body language to rebuff those who wanted to be more expressive in their grief via hugs or kisses. Inane as their words might accept been, Maya listened attentively, nodded, said, "Cheers for coming" in the same sincere-ish tone, and then greeted the adjacent person in line.
Other hard-and-fast rules of the receiving line at a funeral: Don't talk too much. Short platitudes work well because innocuous is far meliorate than offensive. If you lot feel the need to say more, arrive a dainty, quick memory of the expressionless. Never do, for example, what Joe's aunt Edith did. Never cry hysterically and become the almost theatrical "look at me, I'm suffering" of mourners--and never say something chillingly stupid to the grieving widow similar: "You poor girl, commencement your sister, now your hubby."
The world stopped for a moment when Aunt Edith voiced what so many others were thinking, particularly when Maya's young nephew, Daniel, and younger niece, Alexa, were within earshot. The blood in Maya's veins thrummed, and it took everything she had not to accomplish out, take hold of Aunt Edith's throat, and rip her vocal cords out.
Instead, Maya said in a sincere-ish tone: "Cheers for coming."
Half-dozen of Maya's former platoon mates, including Shane, hung dorsum, keeping a watchful eye on her. That was what they did, similar it or not. Guard duty seemed to never end when they were together. They didn't make it line. They knew better. They were her silent sentinels, always, their presence offering the but true comfort on this horrible 24-hour interval.
Every in one case in a while, Maya idea that she could hear her daughter'due south distant giggle--her oldest friend, Eileen Finn, had taken Lily to the playground at the unproblematic school across the street--but maybe that was simply her imagination. The sound of laughing children felt both obscene and life affirming in such a setting: She longed for information technology and couldn't bear it.
Daniel and Alexa, Claire'south kids, were the last 2 in line. Maya swept them into her arms, wanting, equally always, to protect them from anything else bad happening to them. Eddie, her brother-in-law . . . Is that what he was? What practise you call the homo who was married to your sis before she was murdered? "Ex-blood brother-in-constabulary" seemed like something more for a divorce. Do yous say "one-time brother-in-police"? Do you lot just stick with "brother-in-law"?
More inanity designed to distract.
Eddie approached more tentatively. There were tufts of hair on his face where he'd missed with the razor. Eddie kissed Maya'southward cheek. The olfactory property of mouthwash and mints was strong plenty to drown out any else might exist in that location, but then again, wasn't that the point?
"I'm going to miss Joe," Eddie mumbled.
"I know you volition. He liked y'all a lot, Eddie."
"If in that location's anything we tin do . . ."
Yous can take improve intendance of your kids, Maya thought, but her normal anger with him was gone now, leaked away like a raft with a pinhole.
"We're fine, cheers."
Eddie went silent, as if he as well could read her heed, which in this example he probably could.
"Distressing I missed your last game," Maya said to Alexa, "simply I'll be in that location tomorrow."
All 3 of them suddenly looked uneasy.
"Oh, you don't have to do that," Eddie said.
"It'southward okay. Information technology'll exist a dainty distraction."
Eddie nodded, gathered up Daniel and Alexa, and headed to the car. Alexa looked back at her equally she walked away. Maya gave her the reassuring smile. Zilch has inverse, the grin said. I will withal ever be there for yous, just as I promised your mother.
Maya watched Claire'southward family get into the car. Daniel, the approachable fourteen-year-old, took the front end seat. Alexa, who was but twelve, saturday alone in the back. Since her mother'southward death, she seemed to always be wincing as though preparing for the next blow. Eddie waved, gave Maya a tired grin, and slipped into the commuter's seat.
Maya waited, watching the motorcar drive slowly abroad. When it did, she noticed NYPD homicide detective Roger Kierce standing in the distance, leaning against a tree. Fifty-fifty today. Even now. She was tempted to walk over and face up him, need some answers, but Judith took her manus once again.
"I'd like you and Lily to come back to Farnwood with u.s.a.."
The Burketts ever referred to their house by its name. That probably should have been clue one of what would become of her if she married into such a family.
"Thank yous," Maya said, "simply I think Lily needs to exist home."
"She needs to be with family. Yous both practice."
"I appreciate that."
"I mean it. Lily volition always be our granddaughter. And you'll always exist our daughter."
Judith gave her hand an extra squeeze to emphasize the sentiment. It was sweet of Judith to say, like something she was reading off a teleprompter at one of her charity galas, merely it was besides untrue--at least the part about Maya. No one who married a Burkett was an
ything but a tolerated outsider.
"Another fourth dimension," Maya said. "I'm sure y'all empathize."
Judith nodded and gave her a perfunctory hug. So did Joe's blood brother and sis. She watched their devastated faces every bit they stumbled toward the stretch limos that would accept them to the Burkett estate.
Her former platoon mates were all the same there. She met Shane's eyes and gave him a small nod. They got it. They didn't and so much "fall out" as quietly fade away, being certain not to disturb annihilation in their wake. Well-nigh of them were nonetheless enlisted. After what happened near the Syrian-Iraqi border, Maya had been "encouraged" to have an honorable discharge. Seeing no other real choice, she did. So now, instead of commanding or at to the lowest degree didactics the new recruits, retired Captain Maya Stern, for a short time the face of the new Ground forces, gave flying lessons at Teterboro Drome in northern New Jersey. Some days information technology was okay. Nearly days she missed the service more than she'd have e'er imagined.
Maya finally stood lonely by the mound of dirt that would soon comprehend her husband.
"Ah, Joe," she said out loud.
She tried to feel a presence. She had tried this before, in countless mourning situations, seeing if she could sense any sort of life strength after death, but there was ever nothing. Some believed that there had to exist at to the lowest degree a small life force--that free energy and move never die completely, that the soul is eternal, that you can't destroy matter permanently, all that. Perhaps that was true, but the more than of the dead Maya hung effectually, the more it felt every bit though nothing, absolutely nothing, was left behind.
She stayed by the gravesite until Eileen came back from the playground with Lily.
"Ready?" Eileen asked.
Maya took another look at the hole in the basis. She wanted to say something profound to Joe, something that might give them both--ugh--closure, just no words came to her.
Eileen drove them habitation. Lily fell asleep in a car seat that looked like something designed past NASA. Maya sabbatum in the front rider seat and stared out the window. When they got to the house--Joe had actually wanted to name it too, but Maya had put her foot down--Maya somehow managed to release the complicated strapping machinery and eased Lily out of the backseat. She cradled Lily'southward caput so as not to wake her.
"Thanks for the ride," Maya whispered.
Eileen turned off the motorcar. "Do you mind if I come up in for a second?"
"We'll be fine."
"No doubt." Eileen unbuckled her seat belt. "But I've been meaning to requite yous something. It'll just take 2 minutes."
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