The secret room that had been sealed off all those years-it was soundproof. That was what Dylan Shaykes had told me. But he also said it had huge food supplies and a shower and a toilet. It had plumbing.
And if you had plumbing, there were pipes.
You couldn’t make those soundproof. Sound could always find its way through pipes, no matter how distant and faint.
The dead never speak to me, Bat Lady had said.
Could she be right? Oh please, please, let her be right…
I found the hidden door to the sealed secret room. There was no way I was going to bust it open, even with the axe. The door was thick steel. Instead I took the axe and started pounding the dirt just outside the door frame.
I thought about Luther and little Ricky trapped in this room all those years ago.
I thought about him in there watching the only person he ever loved slowly suffer and die.
He blamed my father for that.
What better revenge, I thought, than to lock my father down there alone for the rest of his life?
Uncle Myron was down the ladder now. “What is this place?”
I could hear the awe in his voice. I didn’t answer. Seeing what I was doing, Myron ran down the corridor and found a metal bar. He started working on the other side of the frame. I swung the axe until exhaustion. Then I kept going. When I needed one short break, Myron took over.
I pounded on the door. “Hello?”
No reply.
Was I wrong?
I took the axe back. Myron worked with the metal bar.
Finally, after half an hour, I felt the door budge just the slightest bit. That propelled me. Or worse. I may have lost my mind at that stage. I don’t know. But I started wielding the axe harder and harder, tears running down my face, my muscles so far beyond exhaustion, I didn’t know what would happen next.
“Please,” I cried. “Please…”
In the corner of my eye I could see Myron watching me, wondering what to do, whether he should grab me and stop my frenzy.
He looked as though he was about to do just that when the heavy door finally gave way.
It fell into the darkened space with a great thud. For a moment, no one moved. Nothing happened. There was no light in the room. I stopped breathing. I dropped my axe, reached into my pocket, and pulled out my phone.
As I switched on the light, I saw a figure rise before me in silhouette.
I lifted the beam toward a familiar face.
My heart stopped.
The face was drawn and bearded, but I recognized it even before I heard Myron gasp out loud.
With my legs shaking, I stepped into the room and managed to say just one word.
“Dad.”
EPILOGUE
Ten minutes later, I walked into another dark room.
After I said his name, my father ran to me. I wrapped my arms around him and just collapsed. But my dad held me up. He held me up for a very long time. Pain is a funny thing. It can’t endure in the face of hope. Even as my father held me, even as I knew that we weren’t out of the woods yet, I could feel so much of my old pain subside. I could feel my wounds closing up as though something divine had touched me.
Maybe it had. What really is more divine than a parent’s love?
My father was alive.
For a long time I wouldn’t let myself believe it. I held on, afraid to let him go. I just held on tighter and tighter. See, I had been here before, in dreams. I would see my father in my sleep and I would hold him like this, tighter and tighter, and then the dream would start to end and I would shout, “No, please don’t go!” but slowly, as I awoke, he would fade.
I’d wake up alone.
Not this time. I held on. And when I finally let go, my father didn’t go anywhere.
“Oh my God,” Myron shouted, running toward us. The two brothers hugged so hard that they both fell on the floor. Myron cried. We all did. We cried. Then we laughed. Then we cried again. Eventually Myron let my dad go. Then Uncle Myron picked up his cell phone and called my grandparents.
Boy, did that lead to more crying.
My father, Brad Bolitar, had been down in that secret room alone, in the dark, for nearly eight months. But he would be fine. Luther was still out there. But capturing him would wait for another day.
When I met again with Spoon, Ema, and Rachel-when I told them about this amazing discovery-we celebrated. But not for long. Because we also knew the truth.
It wasn’t over for the four of us.
We had more questions to answer. We had more children to rescue.
But all of that could wait.
Right now, as my father and I faced each other in that tunnel, there was something that mattered much more to me.
“We have to go,” I said to him.
Dad nodded. I think somehow he understood.
• • •
So now we were walking into another dark room. He stayed in the doorway, out of sight. I moved toward her bed.
“Mom?”
My mother looked up and saw the expression on my face. “What is it, sweetheart? What’s wrong?”
I choked back the tears. “Remember I said the next time I came back, I was bringing Dad?”
“What? I don’t understand…”
And then my father stepped away from the doorway and came toward us.
Harlan Coben
Credit: Claudio Marinesco
HARLAN COBEN is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of numerous adult novels and the young adult novels Shelter and Seconds Away. He has won the Edgar Award, Shamus Award, and Anthony Award-the first author to receive all three. His books are published in forty-one languages-with over 50 million copies in print worldwide-and have been #1 bestsellers in over a dozen countries. Harlan lives in New Jersey.
Visit Harlan at
www.harlancoben.com
www.mickeybolitar.com
