Promise Me by Harlan Coben Read Free Book Online Page A

a car with somebody who’d drank, and here he was, slightly tipsy. He tried to step back and judge his sobriety. He figured that he was okay to drive, but isn’t that what every drinker thinks?
    He debated asking Win, but Win was otherwise preoccupied. Win had also drunk even more, despite the sober façade. Still, he shouldn’t just rush out, should he?
    Good question.
    The fine wooden floors in the corridor had recently been redone. Myron decided quickly to test his sobriety. He walked along one plank as though it were a straight line, as though a cop had pulled him over. He passed, but again Myron was, all modesty aside, pretty damned coordinated. He could probably pass that test whilst wasted.
    Still, what choice did he have here? Even if he found someone else to drive at this hour, how would Aimee react to him showing up with a stranger? He, Myron, had been the one to make her promise to call him if such a situation were to arise. He had been the one who jammed his card with all the phone numbers into her hand. He had been the one, as Aimee had just pointed out, who swore complete confidentiality.
    He had to go himself.
    His car was in a twenty-four-hour lot on Seventieth Street. The gate was closed. Myron rang the bell. The attendant grudgingly pressed the button and the gate ascended.
    Myron was not a big-car guy, and thus he still drove a Ford Taurus, which he dubbed the “Chick Magnet.” A car got him from point A to point B. Period. More important to him than horsepower and V6 was having radio controls on the steering wheel, so he could constantly flip stations.
    He pressed Aimee’s number on the cell phone. She answered in a small voice.
    “Hello?”
    “I’m on my way.”
    Aimee did not reply.
    “Why don’t you stay on the line?” he said. “Just so I know you’re okay.”
    “My battery is almost dead. I want to save the power.”
    “I should be there in ten, fifteen minutes tops,” Myron said.
    “From Livingston?”
    “I was staying in the city.”
    “Oh, that’s good. See you soon.”
    She disconnected the call. Myron checked the car clock: 2:30 a.m. Aimee’s parents must be worried sick. He hoped that she’d already called Claire and Erik. He was tempted to place the call himself, but no, that wasn’t part of how this worked. When she got in the car, he’d encourage her to do it.
    Aimee’s location, he’d been surprised to hear, was midtown Manhattan. She told him that she’d wait on Fifth Avenue by Fifty-fourth. That was pretty much Rockefeller Center. What was strange about that, about an eighteen-year-old girl in the Big Apple imbibing in that area, was that midtown was dead at night. During the week, this place hustled with enterprise. On weekend days, you had the tourist trade. But on a Saturday night, there were few people on the street. New York might be the city that never sleeps, but as he hit Fifth Avenue in the upper Fifties, midtown was taking a serious nap.
    He got caught at a traffic light on Fifth Avenue at Fifty-second Street. The door handle jangled, and then Aimee opened the door and slipped into the back.
    “Thank you,” she said.
    “You okay?”
    From behind him a small voice said, “I’m fine.”
    “I’m not a chauffeur, Aimee. Sit up front.”
    She hesitated, but she did as he asked. When she closed the passenger door, Myron turned to face her. Aimee stared straight out the front window. Like most teens, she’d splattered on too much makeup. The young don’t need makeup, especially that much. Her eyes were red and raccoon-like. She was dressed in something teenage-tight, like a thin wrapping of gauze, the kind of thing that, even if you had the figure, you couldn’t carry past the age of maybe twenty-three.
    She looked so much like her mother had at that age.
    “The light’s green,” Aimee said.
    He started driving. “What happened?”
    “Some people were drinking too much. I didn’t want to drive with them.”
    “Where?”
    “Where