Free Gone for Good by Harlan Coben Page B

studios. Total silence, save heavy breathing. It looked like a movie set. Gorgeous people I don't know how Squares found so many gorgeous people packed side by side in warrior pose, faces serenely blank, legs spread, hands out, front knees at a ninety-degree angle.
    The office Wanda shared with Squares was on the right. She lowered herself onto a chair as though it were made of Styrofoam and crossed her legs into a lotus. I sat across from her in a more conventional style. She didn't speak for a few moments. Her eyes closed and I could see her willing herself to relax. I waited.
    "I didn't tell you this," she said.
    "Okay."
    "I'm pregnant."
    "Hey, that's great." I started to rise to offer up a congratulatory hug.
    "Squares isn't handling it well."
    I stopped. "What do you mean?"
    "He's freaking out."
    "How?"
    "You didn't know, right?"
    "Right."
    "He tells you everything, Will. He's known for a week." I saw her point.
    "He probably didn't want to say anything," I said, "what with my mother and all."
    She looked at me hard and said, "Don't do that."
    "Yeah, sorry."
    Her eyes skittered away from mine. The cool facade. There were cracks there now. "I expected him to be happy."
    "He wasn't?"
    "I think he wants me to" she seemed out of words "end it."
    That knocked me back a step. "He said that?"
    "He hasn't said anything. He's working the van extra nights. He's taking on more classes."
    "He's avoiding you."
    "Yes."
    The office door opened without knocking. Squares leaned his unshaven mug into the doorway. He gave Wanda a cursory smile. She turned away. Squares gave me the thumb. "Let's rock and roll."
    We didn't speak until we were safely ensconced in the van.
    Squares said, "She told you."
    It was a statement, not a question, so I didn't bother confirming or denying.
    He put the key in the ignition. "We're not talking about it," he said.
    Another statement that required no response.
    The Covenant House van heads straight into the bowels. Many of our kids come to our doors. Many others are rescued in this van. The job of outreach is to connect with the community's seedy underbelly meet the runaway kids, the street urchins, the ones too often referred to as the "throwaways." A kid living on the street is a bit like and please pardon the analogy here a weed. The longer he's on the street, the harder it is to pull him out by the root.
    We lose a lot of these kids. More than we save. And forget the weed analogy. It's stupid because it implies that we're getting rid of something bad and preserving something good. In fact, it's just the opposite. Try this instead: The street is more like a cancer. Early screening and preventive treatment is the key to long-term survival.
    Not much better, but you get the gist.
    "The feds exaggerated," Squares said.
    "How so?"
    "Sheila's record."
    "Goon."
    "The arrests. They were all a long time ago. You want to hear this?"
    "Yes."
    We started driving deep into the gloom. The city's hooker hangouts are fluid. Often you'll find them near the Lincoln Tunnel or Javits Center, but lately the cops have been cracking down. More cleanup. So the hookers flowed south to the meat-packing district on 18tt Street and the far west side. Tonight the hookers were out in force.
    Squares gestured with his head. "Sheila could have been any one of them."
    "She worked the street?"
    "A runaway from the Midwest. Got off the bus and straight into the life."
    I'd seen it too many times to shock me. But this wasn't a stranger or street kid at the end of her rope. This was the most amazing woman I had ever known.
    "A long time ago," Squares said as though reading my thoughts. "Her first arrest was age sixteen."
    "Prostitution?"
    He nodded. "Three more like that in the next eighteen months, working, according to her file, for a pimp named Louis Castman. Last time she was carrying two ounces and a knife. They tried to bust her for both dealing and armed robbery, but it got kicked."
    I looked out the window. The night had turned