Hold Tight

And in that way, it showed they had no secrets, didn’t it?

She thought about that—about secrets and inner thoughts, about our need for them, and as a mother and wife, her fear of them. But there was no time now. She found the number and hit the SEND button.

If Mo had been asleep, he didn’t sound like it.

“Hello?”

“It’s Tia.”

“What’s wrong?”

She could hear the fear in his voice. The man had no wife, no kids. In many ways, he only had Mike. “Have you heard from Mike?”

“Not since about eight thirty.” Then he repeated: “What’s wrong?”

“He was trying to find Adam.”

“I know.”

“We spoke about that around nine, I guess. Haven’t heard a word since.”

“Did you call his cell?”

Tia now knew how Mike had felt when she’d asked him something equally idiotic. “Of course.”

“I’m getting dressed as we speak,” Mo said. “I’ll drive over and check the house. Do you still hide the key in that fake rock by that fence post?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, I’m on my way.”

“Do you think I should call the police?”

“Might as well wait until I get there. Twenty, thirty minutes tops. He might have just fallen asleep in front of the TV or something.”

“You believe that, Mo?”

“No. I’ll call you when I get there.”

He hung up. Tia swung her legs out of the bed. Suddenly the room had lost all appeal. She hated sleeping alone, even in deluxe hotels with high-thread-count sheets. She needed her husband next to her. Always. It was rare they spent nights apart and she missed him more than she wanted to say. Mike wasn’t necessarily a big man, but he was substantial. She liked the warmth of his body next to hers, the way he kissed her forehead whenever he got up, the way he’d rest his strong hand on her sleeping back.

She remembered one night when Mike was a little out of breath. After much prodding, he had admitted to feeling a tightness in his chest. Tia, who wanted to be strong for her man, nearly collapsed when she heard that. It had ended up being bad indigestion, but she had openly wept at just the thought. She pictured her husband clutching his chest and falling to the floor. And she knew. She knew then and there that someday it could very well happen, maybe not for thirty or forty or fifty years, but it would happen, that or something equally horrible, because that was what happens to every couple, happy or not, and that she simply would not survive if it happened to him. Sometimes, late at night, Tia would watch him sleep and whisper to both Mike and the powers that be: “Promise me I’ll go first. Promise me.”

Call the police.

But what would they do? Nothing yet. On TV the FBI rushes out. Tia knew from a recent update on criminal law that an adult over eighteen could not even be declared missing this close in, unless she had serious evidence that he’d been kidnapped or was in physical danger.

She had nothing.

Besides, if she called now, the best-case scenario was that they’d have an officer stop by the house. Mo might be there. There could be some sort of misunderstanding.

So wait the twenty or thirty minutes.

Tia wanted to call Guy Novak’s house and talk to Jill, just to hear her voice. Something to reassure. Damn. Tia had been so happy about this trip and getting into this luxurious room and throwing on the big terry cloth robe and ordering room service and now all she wanted was the familiar. This room had no life, no warmth. The loneliness made her shiver. Tia got up and lowered the air-conditioning.

It was all so damn fragile, that was the thing. Obvious, sure, but for the most part we block—we refuse to think about how easily our lives could be torn asunder, because when we recognize it, we lose our minds. The ones who are fearful all the time, who need to medicate to function? It is because they understand the reality, how thin the line is. It isn’t that they can’t accept the truth—it’s that they can’t block it.

Tia could be that way. She knew it and fought hard to keep it at bay. She suddenly envied her boss, Hester Crimstein, for not having anybody. Maybe that was better. Sure, on a larger scale, it was healthy to have people out there you cared about more than yourself. She knew that. But then there was the abject fear you would lose it. They say possessions own you. Not so. Loved ones own you. You are forever held hostage once you care so much.

The clock wouldn’t move.

Tia waited. She flicked on the television. Infomercials dominated the late-night landscape. Commercials for training and jobs and schools—the only people who watch TV at this crazy hour, she guessed, had none of those things.

The cell phone finally buzzed at nearly four in the morning. Tia snatched it up, saw Mo’s number on the caller ID, answered it.

“Hello?”

“No sign of Mike,” Mo said. “No sign of Adam either.”

LOREN Muse’s door read ESSEX COUNTY CHIEF INVESTIGATOR. She stopped and silently read it every time she opened the door. Her of- fice was in the right-hand corner. Her detectives had desks on the same floor. Loren’s office was windowed and she never closed her door. She wanted to feel one with them and yet above them. When she needed privacy, which was rare, she used one of the interrogation rooms that also lined the station.

Only two other detectives were in when she arrived at six thirty A.M. and both were about to head out when the shift changed at seven. Loren checked the blackboard to make sure that there were no new homicides. There were none. She hoped to get the results from the NCIC on the fingerprints of her Jane Doe, the not-a-whore in the morgue. She checked the computer. Nothing yet.

The Newark police had located a working surveillance camera not far from the Jane Doe murder scene. If the body had been transported to that spot in a car—and there was no reason to think someone carried it—then the vehicle could very well be on the tape. Of course, figuring out which one would be a hell of a task. Probably hundreds of vehicles would be on it and she doubted one would have a sign on the back reading BODY IN TRUNK.

She checked her computer and yep, the stream had been downloaded. The office was quiet, so she figured, well, why not? She was about to hit the PLAY button when someone rapped lightly on her door.

“Got a second, Chief?”

Clarence Morrow stood outside her doorway and leaned his head in. He was nearing sixty, a black man with a coarse gray-white mustache and a face where everything looked a little swollen, as if he’d just gotten into a fight. There was gentleness to him and unlike every other guy in this division, he never swore or drank.