Page 110 of Think Twice

“She just arrived. She’s pretty upset. She says it’s urgent she talk to you.”

No doubt this was about her son Bo. “I’m on my way.”

He called his father’s phone on the way. No answer. He was tempted to call his mom, but Dad had made it clear that was not what he wanted. He didn’t like the idea of keeping the truth from her. When he was growing up, Mom had always seemed the stronger of the two, a force of nature, the one who argued and stood up for you and gave anyone in her way an earful. But Myron also got what his father was saying. There was a fragility there now, one both obvious from her Parkinson’s and one that seemed vaguer to him, something to do with aging and fear and perhaps seeing her own mortality. Either way, Myron was not about to go against his father’s wishes.

When he arrived at the apartment, Emily opened the door. Myron waited for her customary quip, but she looked at him with concern etched on her face. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, why?”

She put her hand on his arm. “Tell me what happened.”

Seemed it wasn’t just his mother who could read him like a book. “No time now. It’s all okay.” He spotted Jeremy standing behind her, so he politely pushed past her. His son offered him a handshake. Myron took it and resisted the urge to pull him in close, settling for an awkward slap on the shoulder.

Grace Konners had her smartphone pressed against her ear. She turned away from them and kept her voice low. Myron looked a question at Jeremy.

“She’s staying at a hotel down the street under a pseudonym,” Jeremy said.

“And you’ve already met her?”

“Yes. I told you. They visited me when I was in Kuwait.”

Myron looked over at Emily. He remembered how concerned Emily had been, how she didn’t want to get Jeremy’s hopes up before they knew for certain Greg was alive. But he’d known. Jeremy had known for years. Emily met Myron’s eyes and gave a half shrug.

Grace hung up the phone, stood, and moved toward Myron. “Let’s you and me take a walk.”

“Don’t bother,” Emily said, her hand already on the doorknob. “I’ll take the walk. You guys stay.”

She didn’t wait for a reply. She headed out and closed the door behind her.

“You lying son of a bitch,” Grace said. “You sold out my son.”

“That’s not what happened, but we’ll have time for assigning blame later. Right now, we need to contact Joe Turant’s people.”

“That was Bo on the phone,” she said.

That took Myron by surprise. “Is he okay?”

“They haven’t hurt him, if that’s what you mean.”

“Where is he?”

“They’re taking him back to Vegas.”

“But they let him contact you?”

Grace nodded. “They didn’t want me calling the police.”

That made sense, Myron thought.

“And they wanted to assure me that they had no intention of harming Bo.”

“How did he sound?”

“How do you think he sounded?”

“What can I do to help?” Myron asked.

Grace half chuckled at that. She looked over at Jeremy. “Now I know where you get it from.”