Fear the Worst: A Thriller Read Free Page B

wrong hotel,” Veronica said, echoing Carter.
“No,” I said firmly.
Veronica asked for my number and promised to call me if she heard anything. And then she hung up.
On the way home, I went through two red lights and nearly hit a guy in a Toyota Yaris. I had my cell in my hand, phoning Syd’s cell and then home, then her cell again.
When I got back to the house, it was empty.
Syd did not come home that night.
Or the next night.
Or the night after that.
    ONE
    “W E’VE ALSO BEEN LOOKING AT THE M AZDA ,” the woman said. “And we took a—Dell, what was it called? The other one we took out for a test drive?”
    Her husband said, “A Subaru.”
    “That’s right,” the woman said. “A Subaru.”
    The woman, whose name was Lorna, and her husband, whose name was Dell, were sitting across the desk from me in the showroom of Riverside Honda. This was the third time they’d been in to see me since I’d come back to work. There comes a point, even when you’re dealing with the worst crisis of your life, when you find yourself not knowing what else to do but fall back into your routine.
    Lorna had on the desk, in addition to the folder on the Accord, which was what Lorna and Dell had been talking to me about, folders on the Toyota Camry, the Mazda 6, the Subaru Legacy, the Chevrolet Malibu, the Ford Taurus, the Dodge Avenger, and half a dozen others at the bottom of the stack that I couldn’t see.
    “I notice that the Taurus has 263 horsepower with its standard engine, but the Accord only has 177 horsepower,” Lorna said.
    “I think you’ll see,” I said, working hard to stay focused, “that the Taurus engine with that horsepower rating is a V6, while the Accord is a four-cylinder. You’ll find it still gives you plenty of pickup, but uses way less gas.”
    “Oh,” Lorna said, nodding. “What are the cylinders, exactly? I know you told me before, but I don’t think I remember.”
    Dell shook his head slowly from side to side. That was pretty much all Dell did during these visits. He sat there and let Lorna ask all the questions, do all the talking, unless he was asked something specific, and even then he usually just grunted. He appeared to be losing the will to live. I guessed he’d been sitting across the desk of at least a dozen sales associates between Bridgeport and New Haven over the last few weeks. I could see it in his face, that he didn’t give a shit what kind of car they got, just so long as they got something.
    But Lorna believed they must be responsible shoppers, and that meant checking out every car in the class they were looking at, comparing specs, studying warranties. All of which was a good thing, to a point, but now Lorna had so much information that she didn’t know what to do with it. Lorna thought all this research would help them make an informed decision, but instead it had made it impossible for her to make one at all.
    They were in their mid-forties. He was a shoe salesman in the Connecticut Post Mall, and she was a fourth-grade teacher. This was standard teacher behavior. Research your topic, consider all the options, go home and make a chart, car names across the top, features down the side, make check marks in the little boxes.
    Lorna asked about the Accord’s rear legroom compared to the Malibu, which might have been an issue if they had kids, or if she’d given any indication they had any friends. By the time she was on to the Accord’s trunk space versus the Mazda 6, I really wasn’t listening. Finally, I held up a hand.
    “What car do you like?” I asked Lorna.
    “Like?” she said.
    My computer monitor was positioned between us, and the whole time Lorna was talking I was moving the mouse around, tapping the keyboard. Lorna assumed I was on the Honda website, calling up data so I could answer her questions.
    I wasn’t. I was on findsydneyblake.com. I was looking to see whether there’d been any recent hits on the site, whether anyone had emailed me. One of