Free The Myron Bolitar Series 7-Book Bundle by Harlan Coben

just want Kathy found.”
    “So you want to tell them,” Myron said.
    “No.”
    He looked at her, confused. “Care to elaborate?”
    Her words came slow, measured, the ideas coming to her even as she spoke. “Kathy has been gone for more than a year now,” she began. “In all that time the cops and the press have come up with zip. Not one thing. She’s just vanished without a trace.”
    “So?”
    “But now we get this magazine. Someone sent it toChristian, which means someone—maybe Kathy, maybe not—is trying to make contact. Think about it. For the first time in over a year there is some form of communication. I don’t want that taken away. I don’t want a lot of attention scaring away whoever is out there. Kathy might disappear again. This”—she held up the magazine—“this thing is disgusting, but it’s also encouraging. It’s something. Don’t get me wrong. I’m shocked by this. But it’s a solid thread—a thread as confusing as all hell, but nonetheless a thread of hope. If the cops and the press are called in, whoever did this might get scared and vanish again. Permanently this time. I can’t risk that. We have to keep this to ourselves.”
    Myron nodded. “Makes sense.”
    “So what’s next?” she asked.
    “We go to the post office in Hoboken. I’ll pick you up early. Say six.”

Chapter 8
    Jessica smelled great.
    They were at Uptown Station in Hoboken. She stood very close to him. Her hair had that freshly washed smell he had tried for four years to forget. Inhaling made him feel light-headed.
    “So this is playing detective,” she said.
    “Exciting, isn’t it?”
    They had been trying to look inconspicuous—no easytask when a man is six-four and a woman is a total knee-knocker—for the better part of an hour, having arrived at the post office at six-thirty in the morning. No one had touched Box 785 yet.
    Boredom set in quickly. Jessica looked over the prices of different mailing containers. Not very interesting. She read the wanted ads, all of them, found them a bit more interesting. Wanted posters in a post office. Like they wanted you to write the guy a letter.
    “You sure know how to show a girl a good time,” she said.
    “That’s why they call me Captain Fun.”
    She laughed. The melodic sound twisted his stomach.
    “Do you like being an agent, Captain Fun?”
    “Very much.”
    “I always thought of agents as a bunch of sleazeballs.”
    “Thank you.”
    “You know what I mean. Leeches. Vipers. Greedy, money-hungry, bloodsucking parasites, swindling naïve jocks, doing lunch at Le Cirque, destroying everything that’s good about sports—”
    “The problems in the Middle East,” he interrupted. “That’s our fault too. And the budget deficit.”
    “Right. But you’re not any of those things.”
    “Not a leech, viper, or parasite. That’s quite a rave.”
    “You know what I mean.”
    He shrugged. “There are plenty of sleazy agents. There are also plenty of sleazy doctors, lawyers—” He stopped, the words sounding familiar. Hadn’t Fred Nickler used the same argument in justifying his magazines? “Agents are a necessary evil,” he continued. “Without them, athletes get taken advantage of.”
    “By whom?”
    “Owners, management. Agents have done some goodfor the athletes. They’ve helped raise their salaries, assure free agency, get them endorsement money.”
    “So what’s the problem?”
    Myron thought a moment. “Two things,” he said. “First of all, some agents are crooks. Plain and simple. They see a young, rich kid, and they take advantage. But as the athletes get more sophisticated, as more stories like what happened to Kareem Abdul-Jabar become known, most of the crooks will be weeded out.”
    “And second?”
    “Agents have to wear too many hats,” he said. “We’re negotiators, accountants, financial planners, hand-holders, travel agents, family counselors, marriage counselors, errand boys, lackeys—whatever it takes to get