Page 76 of Close Your Eyes and Count to 10

The bell rang, and Coral stood up, shoved her quiz in her tattered denim pack. “Let’s go find out what he’s doing.”

“You mean…follow him?” asked Violet, rising. Next to her friend, Violet looked like a boy, in torn jeans, Converse sneakers, and the tattered sweatshirt that used to belong to her dad.

Coral leaned in close. “Why should that little turd be the only one who gets the afternoon off?”

Cutting class. That was a new low for Violet. Her mom would flip.

But what else could she do?

She didn’t want Blake to get in trouble. She just wanted to throttle him with her own bare hands. And she wanted to—no, needed to—find out whothe frackhe was with.

Meanwhile, the game was starting in a few hours.

Violet and Coral didn’t speak another word to each other, just marched toward the side door and exited into the bright afternoon sun.

26

AGENT COBEN

It wasn’t a hunch. Coben didn’t believe in that. What he believed in was patterns, the way seemingly disparate pieces of information were connected. When they were, there was a kind of vibration that he perceived. Lies had a certain kind of energy, something high-pitched and chaotic. So did the truth, low and somber.

He sat in the souped-up Crown Victoria and sipped from a truly terrible cup of coffee he’d picked up at a local diner. There was no excuse for coffee this bad—weak, bitter, in the pot too long so that it had that burnt note. The lady who’d served him had what seemed to be a permanent scowl, as if it had etched deep lines in her face. His mother, who’d worked too hard at too many low-level jobs to support him and his brothers, had taught him to respect people in thankless service positions. But that woman had made being polite a chore. And the coffee she’d given him tasted like the attitude with which it had been served. He took another sip, then finally slipped the cup into the holder in the center console.Forget it. He didn’t need the caffeine that bad.

He stretched his back: he was too tall, too big through the shoulders to sit this long. But sitting was part of the job. Tanglewood was every concrete educational facility in the Eastern United States, low and dull, this one surrounded by sports fields and, beyond, woods painted in their autumnal fire show.

He’d followed the kids from the house this morning. Violet Crane dropped her brother off at the lower school car line, then parked her mother’s white Kia in the back lot, walking in through the doors just minutes before the starting bell rang.

From where his car was parked, at the head of a small rural road, he had a good vantage point. And so far, he hadn’t been clocked by any helpful passersby. Because everyone loved to see a single man lurking in an older car, watching the local high school. If he was noticed, he could expect interference, a hassle, his position blown. He waited. It was a breezy day, sunshiny.

The Miller Crane assignment was a punishment. Well, not a punishment exactly. But the kind of assignment one gets when one has pissed off the wrong people. Coben, luckily, was used to being in trouble. In fact, he was more accustomed to it than he was to any other type of treatment.Son, you could try the patience of a saint, his tired mother said often with exasperation but not without love. In school, he was often on the bad side of teachers for asking too many questions. With women for not asking enough questions, or not the right questions, or fornot picking up on cues, as his most recent ex had complained via text. At Quantico, one gun instructor had accused him of resting on his natural talent and not pushing himself to do better, just scraping by. If you peeked at his file, you’d see things likebad attitude,insubordinate,arrogant. But he was good at things, physically capable, a sharpshooter with fast reflexes, a gift for making connections.

After training, he was assigned to white-collar crimes, which was the last the thing he wanted. Definitely not the fantasy he’d had when he’d been recruited out of college because of his computer skills.He knew it was a message from the powers that be that if he didn’t get his act together, his career in the FBI would consist of sifting through data, following up on cold cases, and long hours in the basement file room (not that he minded the file room so much—endless reading, a sea of facts to connect). Miller Crane was the case no one wanted. A flubbed bust that had let him escape the net and five years on the run, which was no small feat considering modern technology being what it was. It was almost impossible for the average person to disappear. It took cash, connections, a network of people with private transportation—yachts and jets. A capture would see Miller facing a slew of charges from embezzlement to fraud and, if convicted, a trip to the federal pen where he’d stay for a good, long time. If Agent Coben found him, it might save his career. But it wasn’t that fact which drove him. There were far too many people getting away with far too much in the world. It was disgusting. So for the last six months, Coben had been like a dog with a bone.

He knew more about Miller Crane than anyone.

But the Tampa sighting was just luck. Or so he thought at first. That Miller Crane had come back to the US and had just happened to be on a street that had FBI surveillance by a camera that just happened to be running facial-recognition software. Due to its large, busy port, the local FBI office downtown, and MacDill Air Force Base in proximity, Tampa had more surveillance than one might expect of a small city. So the guy had just screwed up. Finally. Or had he?

And more than that, when he brought the grainy and unclear image to Adele Crane, she’d recognized it. Coben saw it in the little twitch of the right corner of her mouth. A smile. There and gone.

Then the next thing he knew, Adele Crane was off to an island in the middle of the Atlantic to play some game. She was leaving her kids alone. Coben had figured that if Miller was going to approach her,it would be at one of those Tough Be-atch competitions she participated in. So far, nothing. But they had eyes on her in Falcão Island.

If she thought she was meeting Miller there and then taking off with him to parts unknown, she had another think coming.

But he didn’t think that was the plan. That would be an anomaly in the pattern.

Because he knew Adele Crane even better than he did Miller.

In five years, she hadn’t dated a single person. She’d never been in touch with Miller. She’d fully cooperated with the FBI. She’d got a job, a degree. She’d never missed a parent conference or a school event. Coben followed her on WeWatch. There were eyes on the footage of every competition, every broadcast, analyzed at the bureau. Adele was clean.

If anything, this was the moment when Miller Crane would come for his kids. If Coben was watching Adele, so, he bet, was her husband.

So since Violet Crane had dropped her mother at Newark Liberty Airport, he’d been watching her.

The coffee had given him heartburn, an acidic discomfort climbing up his gullet. The other day, Coben’s boss had told him that Coben was givinghimheartburn.

Man, if you’d just check your ego at the door, you’d be a great agent. Coben didn’t get it. Weren’t you supposed to believe in yourself? How could you do this work if you didn’t?

Coben heard the high tone of the bell inside the school. It reminded him how much he’d hated high school. All the arbitrary rules and pointless information. He’d spent a lot of time in the principal’s office.

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