Found (22 page)

Ten minutes later,
I walked into another dark room.

After I said his name, my father ran to me. I wrapped my arms around him and just collapsed. But my dad held me up. He held me up for a very long time. Pain is a funny thing. It can’t endure in the face of hope. Even as my father held me, even as I knew that we weren’t out of the woods yet, I could feel so much of my old pain subside. I could feel my wounds closing up as though something divine had touched me.

Maybe it had. What really is more divine than a parent’s love?

My father was alive.

For a long time I wouldn’t let myself believe it. I held on, afraid to let him go. I just held on tighter and tighter. See, I had been here before, in dreams. I would see my father in my sleep and I would hold him like this, tighter and tighter, and then the dream would start to end and I would shout, “No, please don’t go!” but slowly, as I awoke, he would fade.

I’d wake up alone.

Not this time. I held on. And when I finally let go, my father didn’t go anywhere.

“Oh my God,” Myron shouted, running toward us. The two brothers hugged so hard that they both fell on the floor. Myron cried. We all did. We cried. Then we laughed. Then we cried again. Eventually Myron let my dad go. Then Uncle Myron picked up his cell phone and called my grandparents.

Boy, did that lead to more crying.

My father, Brad Bolitar, had been down in that secret room alone, in the dark, for nearly eight months. But he would be fine. Luther was still out there. But capturing him would wait for another day.

When I met again with Spoon, Ema, and Rachel—when I told them about this amazing discovery—we celebrated. But not for long. Because we also knew the truth.

It wasn’t over for the four of us.

We had more questions to answer. We had more children to rescue.

But all of that could wait.

Right now, as my father and I faced each other in that tunnel, there was something that mattered much more to me.

“We have to go,” I said to him.

Dad nodded. I think somehow he understood.

• • •

So now we were walking into another dark room. He stayed in the doorway, out of sight. I moved toward her bed.

“Mom?”

My mother looked up and saw the expression on my face. “What is it, sweetheart? What’s wrong?”

I choked back the tears. “Remember I said the next time I came back, I was bringing Dad?”

“What? I don’t understand . . .”

And then my father stepped away from the doorway and came toward us.

Credit: Claudio Marinesco

HARLAN COBEN
is the #1
New York Times
bestselling author of numerous adult novels and the young adult novels
Shelter
and
Seconds Away
. He has won the Edgar Award, Shamus Award, and Anthony Award—the first author to receive all three. His books are published in forty-one languages—with over 50 million copies in print worldwide—and have been #1 bestsellers in over a dozen countries. Harlan lives in New Jersey.

Visit Harlan at
www.harlancoben.com
www.mickeybolitar.com