Hold Tight - Страница 3

Доступ к книге ограничен фрагменом по требованию правообладателя.

It was her idea, this surveillance. Tia was a criminal attorney with Burton and Crimstein in Manhattan. One of the cases she’d worked on involved a money launderer named Pale Haley. Haley had been nailed by the FBI when they’d eavesdropped on his Internet correspondences.

Brett, the installer, was the tech guy at Tia’s law firm. Mike stared now at Brett’s dirty fingernails. The fingernails were touching Adam’s keyboard. That’s what Mike kept thinking. This guy with these disgusting nails was in their son’s room and he was having his way with Adam’s most prized possession.

“Be done in a second,” Brett said.

Mike had visited the E-SpyRight Web site and seen the first inducement in big, bold letters:

ARE YOUR CHILDREN BEING APPROACHED

BY CHILD MOLESTERS?

ARE YOUR EMPLOYEES STEALING FROM YOU?

and then, in even bigger and bolder letters, the argument that sold Tia:

YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW!

The site listed testimonials:

“Your product saved my daughter from this parent’s worst nightmare- a sexual predator! Thanks, E-SpyRight!”

Bob- Denver, CO

“I found out my most trusted employee was stealing from our office. I couldn’t have done it without your software!”

Kevin- Boston, MA

Mike had resisted.

“He’s our son,” Tia had said.

“I know that. Don’t you think I know that?”

“Aren’t you concerned?”

“Of course I’m concerned. But.”

“But what? We’re his parents.” And then, as though rereading the ad, she said, “We have the right to know.”

“We have the right to invade his privacy?”

“To protect him? Yes. He’s our son.”

Mike shook his head.

“We not only have the right,” Tia said, stepping closer to him. “We have the responsibility.”

“Did your parents know everything you did?”

“No.”

“How about everything you thought? Every conversation with a friend?”

“No.”

“That’s what we’re talking about here.”

“Think about Spencer Hill’s parents,” she countered.

That stunned him into silence. They looked at each other.

She said, “If they could do it over again, if Betsy and Ron had Spencer back-”

“You can’t do that, Tia.”

“No, listen to me. If they had to do it over again, if Spencer was alive, don’t you think they’d wish they’d kept a closer eye on him?”

Spencer Hill, a classmate of Adam’s, had committed suicide four months ago. It had been devastating, of course, hitting Adam and his classmates hard. Mike reminded Tia of that fact.

“Don’t you think that explains Adam’s behavior?”

“Spencer’s suicide?”

“Of course.”

“To a point, yes. But you know he was already changing. That just sped things up.”

“So maybe if we give him more room…”

“No,” Tia said, her tone cutting off any debate. “That tragedy may make Adam’s behavior more understandable-but it doesn’t make it less dangerous. If anything, it’s just the opposite.”

Mike thought about that. “We should tell him,” he said.

“What?”

“Tell Adam we’re monitoring his online behavior.”

She made a face. “What’s the point in that?”

“So he knows he’s being watched.”

“This isn’t like putting a cop on your tail so you don’t speed.”

“It’s exactly like that.”

“He’ll just do whatever it is he’s doing at a friend’s house or use an Internet café or something.”

“So? You have to let him know. Adam puts his private thoughts on that computer.”

Tia took a step closer to him and put a hand on his chest. Even now, even after all these years, her touch still had an effect on him. “He’s in trouble, Mike,” she said. “Don’t you see that? Your son is in trouble. He might be drinking or doing drugs or who knows what. Stop burying your head in the sand.”

“I’m not burying my head anywhere.”

Her voice was almost a plea. “You want the easy way out. You’re hoping, what, that Adam will just outgrow this?”

“That’s not what I’m saying. But think about it. This is new technology. He puts his secret thoughts and emotions down there. Would you have wanted your parents to know all that about you?”

“It’s a different world now,” Tia said.

“You sure about that?”

“What’s the harm? We’re his parents. We want what’s best for him.”

Mike shook his head again. “You don’t want to know a person’s every thought,” he said. “Some things should remain private.”

She took her hand off him. “You mean, a secret?”

“Yes.”

“Are you saying that a person is entitled to their secrets?”

“Of course they are.”

She looked at him then, in a funny way, and he didn’t much like it.

“Do you have secrets?” she asked him.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Do you have secrets from me?” Tia asked again.

“No. But I don’t want you to know my every thought either.”

“And I don’t want you to know mine.”

They both stopped, on that line, before she stepped back.

“But if it’s a choice of protecting my son or giving him his privacy,” Tia said, “I’m going to protect him.”

The discussion-Mike didn’t want to classify it as an argument- lasted for a month. Mike tried to coax his son back to them. He invited Adam to the mall, the arcade, concerts even. Adam refused. He stayed out of the house until all hours, curfews be damned. He stopped coming down to eat dinner. His grades slipped. They managed to get him to visit a therapist once. The therapist thought that there might be depression issues. He suggested perhaps medication, but he wanted to see Adam again first. Adam pointedly refused.

When they insisted that he go back to the therapist, Adam ran away for two days. He wouldn’t answer his mobile phone. Mike and Tia were frantic. It ended up that he’d just been hiding at a friend’s house.

“We’re losing him,” Tia had argued again.

And Mike said nothing.

“In the end, we’re just their caretakers, Mike. We get them for a little while and then they live their lives. I just want him to stay alive and healthy until we let him go. The rest will be up to him.”

Mike nodded. “Okay, then.”

“You sure?” she said.

“No.”

“Neither am I. But I keep thinking about Spencer Hill.”

He nodded again.

“Mike?”

He looked at her. She gave him the crooked smile, the one he’d first seen on a cold autumn day at Dartmouth. That smile had cork-screwed into his heart and stayed there.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you too.”

And with that they agreed to spy on their oldest child.

3

THERE had been no truly damaging or insightful instant message or e-mail at first. But that changed in a big way three weeks later.

The intercom in Tia’s cubicle buzzed.

A brash voice said, “My office now.”

It was Hester Crimstein, the big boss at her law firm. Hester always buzzed her underlings herself, never had her assistant do it. And she always sounded a little pissed off, as though you should have already known that she wanted to see you and magically materialized without her having to waste time with the intercom.

Six months ago, Tia had gone back to work as an attorney for the law firm of Burton and Crimstein. Burton had died years ago. Crimstein, the famed and much-feared lawyer Hester Crimstein, was very much alive and in charge. She was known internationally as an expert on all things criminal and even hosted her own show on truTV with the clever moniker Crimstein on Crime.

Hester Crimstein snapped-her voice was always a snap-through the intercom, “Tia?”

“I’m on my way.”

She jammed the E-SpyRight report into her top drawer and started down the row with the glass-enclosed offices on one side, the ones for the senior partners with the bright sunshine, and the airless cubicles on the other. Burton and Crimstein had a total caste system with one ruling entity. There were senior partners, sure, but Hester Crimstein would not allow any of them to add their name to the masthead.

Tia reached the spacious corner office suite. Hester’s assistant barely glanced up when she walked by. Hester’s door was open. It usually was. Tia stopped and knocked on the wall next to the door.

Hester walked back and forth. She was a small woman, but she didn’t look small. She looked compact and powerful and sort of dangerous. She didn’t pace, Tia thought, so much as stalk. She gave off heat, a sense of power.

“I need you to take a deposition in Boston on Saturday,” she said without preamble.

Tia stepped into the room. Hester’s hair was always frizzy, a sort of bottled off-blond. She somehow gave you the sense that she was harried and yet totally together. Some people command your atten- tion-Hester Crimstein actually seemed to take you by the lapels and shake you and make you stare into her eyes.

“Sure, no problem,” Tia said. “Which case?”

“Beck.”

Tia knew it.

“Here’s the file. Bring that computer expert with you. The guy with the awful posture and the nightmare-inducing tattoos.”

“Brett,” Tia said.

“Right, him. I want to go through the guy’s personal computer.”

Hester handed it to her and resumed her pacing.

Tia glanced at it. “This is the witness at the bar, right?”

“Exactly. Fly up tomorrow. Go home and study.”

“Okay, no problem.”

Hester stopped pacing. “Tia?”

Tia had been paging through the file. She was trying to keep her mind on the case, on Beck and this deposition and the chance to go to Boston. But that damn E-SpyRight report kept barging in. She looked at her boss.