Hold Tight Read Free Page B

son or giving him his privacy,” Tia said, “I’m going to protect him.”
    The discussion-Mike didn’t want to classify it as an argument- lasted for a month. Mike tried to coax his son back to them. He invited Adam to the mall, the arcade, concerts even. Adam refused. He stayed out of the house until all hours, curfews be damned. He stopped coming down to eat dinner. His grades slipped. They managed to get him to visit a therapist once. The therapist thought that there might be depression issues. He suggested perhaps medication, but he wanted to see Adam again first. Adam pointedly refused.
    When they insisted that he go back to the therapist, Adam ran away for two days. He wouldn’t answer his mobile phone. Mike and Tia were frantic. It ended up that he’d just been hiding at a friend’s house.
    “We’re losing him,” Tia had argued again.
    And Mike said nothing.
    “In the end, we’re just their caretakers, Mike. We get them for a little while and then they live their lives. I just want him to stay alive and healthy until we let him go. The rest will be up to him.”
    Mike nodded. “Okay, then.”
    “You sure?” she said.
    “No.”
    “Neither am I. But I keep thinking about Spencer Hill.”
    He nodded again.
    “Mike?”
    He looked at her. She gave him the crooked smile, the one he’d first seen on a cold autumn day at Dartmouth. That smile had cork-screwed into his heart and stayed there.
    “I love you,” she said.
    “I love you too.”
    And with that they agreed to spy on their oldest child.

3
    THERE had been no truly damaging or insightful instant message or e-mail at first. But that changed in a big way three weeks later.
    The intercom in Tia’s cubicle buzzed.
    A brash voice said, “My office now.”
    It was Hester Crimstein, the big boss at her law firm. Hester always buzzed her underlings herself, never had her assistant do it. And she always sounded a little pissed off, as though you should have already known that she wanted to see you and magically materialized without her having to waste time with the intercom.
    Six months ago, Tia had gone back to work as an attorney for the law firm of Burton and Crimstein. Burton had died years ago. Crimstein, the famed and much-feared lawyer Hester Crimstein, was very much alive and in charge. She was known internationally as an expert on all things criminal and even hosted her own show on truTV with the clever moniker
Crimstein
on Crime
.
    Hester Crimstein snapped-her voice was always a snap-through the intercom, “Tia?”
    “I’m on my way.”
    She jammed the E-SpyRight report into her top drawer and started down the row with the glass-enclosed offices on one side, the ones for the senior partners with the bright sunshine, and the airless cubicles on the other. Burton and Crimstein had a total caste system with one ruling entity. There were senior partners, sure, but Hester Crimstein would not allow any of them to add their name to the masthead.
    Tia reached the spacious corner office suite. Hester’s assistant barely glanced up when she walked by. Hester’s door was open. It usually was. Tia stopped and knocked on the wall next to the door.
    Hester walked back and forth. She was a small woman, but she didn’t look small. She looked compact and powerful and sort of dangerous. She didn’t pace, Tia thought, so much as stalk. She gave off heat, a sense of power.
    “I need you to take a deposition in Boston on Saturday,” she said without preamble.
    Tia stepped into the room. Hester’s hair was always frizzy, a sort of bottled off-blond. She somehow gave you the sense that she was harried and yet totally together. Some people command your atten- tion-Hester Crimstein actually seemed to take you by the lapels and shake you and make you stare into her eyes.
    “Sure, no problem,” Tia said. “Which case?”
    “Beck.”
    Tia knew it.
    “Here’s the file. Bring that computer expert with you. The guy with the awful posture and the