Free Stay Close by Harlan Coben

definitely preferred the sinners to the saints—but there was just an aura of trust and goodness about them. Harry was one of those people.
     
    “Hello, Cassie,” Harry said.
     
    His voice was stiff. He shifted in his chair.
     
    “How’ve you been, Harry?”
     
    His clear blue eyes looked at her in a funny way. This wasn’t like him, but it had been nearly two decades. People change. She started to wonder if coming here had been a mistake.
     
    “Fine, thank you.”
     
    “Fine, thank you?”
     
    Harry nodded, biting down on his lip.
     
    “What’s going on, Harry?”
     
    His eyes suddenly brimmed with tears.
     
    “Harry?”
     
    “Damn,” he said.
     
    “What?”
     
    “I promised I’d keep it together. I’m such a wuss sometimes.”
     
    She said nothing, waited.
     
    “It’s just that… I thought you were dead.”
     
    She smiled, feeling relief that, yes, he was the same overly emotional guy she remembered. “Harry…”
     
    He waved it away. “The cops came here after you vanished with that guy.”
     
    “I didn’t vanish with that guy.”
     
    “You just vanished on your own?”
     
    “Sort of.”
     
    “Well, the cops wanted to talk to you. They still do.”
     
    “I know,” Megan said. “That’s why I’m back. I need your help.”
     
    W HEN T AWNY A LLURE FIRST SAW the smiling young couple standing near her doorway, she sighed and shook her head.
    Tawny’s real name was Alice. She had used it at first, going by the stage moniker “Alice in Wonderland,” but her given name made it easier for those from her past to recognize her. Right now, with work behind her, she wore a loose, can’t-tell-implants sweatshirt. She’d traded in her stiletto heels for low-top tennis shoes. She had scrubbed off the spackle-thick makeup and thrown on a pair of celebrity-in-hiding-size sunglasses. She did not, she thought, look anything like the exotic dancer she was.
     
    The smiling couple looked as though they’d just wandered away from a Bible study. Tawny frowned. She knew the type. Do-gooders. They wanted to give her pamphlets and save her. They would have some corny catchphrase like “lose the G-string and find Jesus,” and she would respond, “Does Jesus tip well?”
     
    The smiling blond girl was young and pretty in a wholesome way. Her hair was tied back in a cheerleader-bouncing ponytail. She wore a turtleneck and a skirt that would normally work at the clubfor a school-girl fantasy number, complete with bobby socks. Who wore that in real life?
     
    The cute guy with her had the wavy hair of a politician on a sailboat. He sported khakis, a blue button-down, and had a sweater tied around his neck.
     
    Tawny was not in the mood. Her finger throbbed and ached. She felt weak, beaten, defeated. She wanted to get inside and feed Ralphie. Her mind was still on that cop Broome’s visit and, of course, the missing Carlton Flynn. The first time she met Carlton he wore a tight black T-shirt that read “I’m Not a Gynecologist, But I’ll Take a Look.” Talk about a big-time “Keep Away” sign. But stupid Tawny had giggled when she read it. Sad when she thought about it now. Tawny had some decent attributes, but her asshole-dar was always off when it came to men.
     
    Sometimes—most times—Tawny felt as if bad luck walked two steps behind her, catching up every once in a while, tapping her on the shoulder, reminding her that he was there, her constant companion.
     
    It hadn’t started that way. She had loved her job at La Crème in the beginning. It had been fun and exciting and a dance party every night. And, no, Tawny hadn’t been sexually abused as a child or any of that, thank you very much, but she did have another quality you often found in people who go into her line of work.
     
    Tawny was, she could admit to herself, inherently lazy and easily bored.
     
    People always talk about how the girls are damaged or lacked self-esteem, and, yeah, that was true, but the big