Promise Me by Harlan Coben Page A

will I know you got in okay?”
    “I’ll wave.”
    Another car pulled down the street behind them. The headlights hit Myron via the rearview mirror. He shaded his eyes. Odd, he thought, two cars on this road at this time of night.
    Aimee snagged his attention. “Myron?”
    He looked at her.
    “You can’t tell my parents about this. They’ll freak, okay?”
    “I won’t tell.”
    “Things—” She stopped, looked out the window toward the house. “Things aren’t so great with them right now.”
    “With your parents?”
    She nodded.
    “You know that’s normal, right?”
    She nodded again.
    He knew that he had to tread gently here. “Can you tell me more?”
    “Just . . . this will only strain things more. If you tell, I mean. Just don’t, okay?”
    “Okay.”
    “Keep your promise.”
    And with that, Aimee was out the door. She jogged toward the gate leading to the back. She disappeared behind the house. Myron waited. She came back out to the gate. She smiled now and waved that everything was just fine. But there was something there, something in the wave, something that didn’t quite add up.
    Myron was about to get out of the car, but Aimee stopped him with a shake of her head. Then she slipped back into the yard, the night swallowing her whole.

CHAPTER 8
    I n the days that followed, when Myron looked back at that moment, at the way Aimee smiled and waved and vanished into the dark, he would wonder what he’d felt. Had there been a premonition, an uneasy feeling, a twinge at the base of his subconscious, something warning him, something that he just couldn’t shake?
    He didn’t think so. But it was hard to remember.
    He waited another ten minutes on that cul-de-sac. Nothing happened.
    So Myron came up with a plan.
    It took a while to find his way out. Aimee had led him into this suburban thicket, but maybe Myron should have dropped bread crumbs on the way. He worked rat-in-a-maze–style for twenty minutes until he stumbled upon Paramus Road, which led eventually to a main artery, the Garden State Parkway.
    But now, Myron had no plans to return to the apartment in New York.
    It was a Saturday night—well, Sunday morning now—and if he went to the house in Livingston instead, he could play basketball the next morning before heading to the airport for his flight to Miami.
    And, Myron knew, Erik, Aimee’s father, played every Sunday without fail.
    That was Myron’s immediate, if not pathetic, plan.
    So, early in the morning—too early, frankly—Myron rose and put on his shorts and T-shirt, dusted off the old knee brace, and drove over to the gym at Heritage Middle School. Before he headed inside, Myron tried Aimee’s cell phone. It went immediately to her voice mail, hertone so sunny and, again, teenage, complete with a “Like, leave your message.”
    He was about to put the phone down when it buzzed in his hand. He checked the caller ID. Nothing.
    “Hello?”
    “You’re a bastard.” The voice was muffled and low. It sounded like a young man, but it was hard to know. “Do you hear me, Myron? A bastard. And you will pay for what you did.”
    The call disconnected. Myron hit star sixty-nine and waited to hear the number. A mechanical voice gave it to him. Local area code, yes, but otherwise the number was wholly unfamiliar. He stopped the car and jotted it down. He’d check it out later.
    When Myron ducked into his school, it took a second to adjust to the artificial light, but as soon he did, the familiar ghosts popped up. The gym had the stale smell of every other middle school gym. Someone dribbled a ball. A few guys laughed. The sounds were all the same—all tainted by that hollow echo.
    Myron hadn’t played in months because he didn’t like these sort of white-collar pickup games. Basketball, the game itself, still meant so much to him. He loved it. He loved the feel of the ball on his fingertips, the way they would find the grooves on the jump shot, the arch as the ball headed for the