Fear the Worst: A Thriller by Linwood Barclay Read Free Book Online Page A

“And I’m not belittling your concerns. If you think someone’s watching the house, I believe you.”
    “That’s not all,” she said. “Things have been disappearing. Bob bought me a Longines watch, and I don’t know what happened to it. I’m sure—”
    Bob said, “Honey, you just misplaced it, I’m sure.”
    “And what about the money?” she asked him. “That cash? It was nearly a hundred dollars.” She looked at me. “In my purse.”
    “Has there been a break-in?” I asked.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “But something’s going on.”
    The back door on the Hummer’s driver’s side opened. I hadn’t realized anyone else was in the car. Evan—Bob had been married twice before, and if I’d ever known which wife he made this kid with I’d since forgotten—slithered out of the back seat like a piece of boneless chicken.
    “Could you like turn on the car so I could put the AC on?” he asked. He had a handful of scratch-and-win lottery tickets—what Sydney and I call “scratch-and-lose” tickets—with panels already rubbed off. He had a penny pinched between the thumb and index finger of his other hand. “It’s roasting in there.”
    “In a sec, Evan,” his father said. I’d only met Evan three or four times—just once since Syd had disappeared—and I don’t think he’d said more than ten words to me on all those occasions put together. Nineteen, out of high school—I didn’t know whether he’d left with a diploma or not—and not planning to go anywhere in the fall, so far as I knew. Since Bob had brought him into Susanne’s house, he’d been doing little more than hanging around there and a few odd jobs on one of Bob’s lots. He was tall like his father, with dark locks of hair hanging sheepdog-like over his eyes.
    “Are we getting some food on the way back?” he asked. He hadn’t even looked at me.
    “Hold on, for Christ’s sake,” Bob said, rolling his eyes, and for a moment there, you had to wonder whether he was thinking the wrong kid went missing.
    “I need to go inside for a minute,” Susanne said. She started hobbling toward the front door, putting a lot of weight on the cane.
    “You okay?” I asked.
    “I just… I need to go in and sit down for a moment,” she said. “My hip’s really throbbing today.”
    I tried to catch Bob’s eye, give him my “Nice boat driving” look, but he looked away.
    “The house is locked,” I said, handing her my set of keys. She might still have had a key to the house on her key ring, but I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t had the locks changed since our split. It wasn’t as if I expected her to sneak back and make off with the furniture. Anything decent we still had after the divorce went to her place. It looked as though, ultimately, it would end up at Bob’s.
    “You said we were going to stop and get something to eat,” Evan said, waving the scratched lottery tickets in the air to blow off the leftover debris.
    “Just get in the car,” Bob said. “Open the doors if you need some air.”
    Once Susanne was in the house, I said to Bob, “How is she?”
    He looked down at the ground. “She’s fine, she’s good. Getting better every day.”
    “What were you doing, anyway?” I asked. “Watching teenage girls sunbathing on the beach while Suze got dragged behind the boat?”
    He glared.
    “Any of them look like future models? I know how you’re always on the lookout for prospects.”
    He shook his head in exasperation. “For fuck’s sake, Tim, let it go. I told you, weeks ago, that was a totally innocent comment. Okay, maybe it was inappropriate, I get that now. But for Christ’s sake, can we move on?” He stopped the head shake, lowered his voice. “Don’t you think there are bigger things to worry about right now?”
    “Of course,” I said, keeping my voice even.
    “Susanne, she’s on the phone night and day. Calling shelters across the state. Police departments. Faxing pictures.” He shook his head