The Empty Chair

him?
    Will stepped outside and opened his umbrella. He held it up for both of them to use.
    Lara recalled another rule of urban protection: Never feel too embarrassed or proud to ask for help.
    And yet as Lara was about to ask Will Randolph to walk her to her car after they got the snapshots she had a thought: If the kid in the van really was a threat, wasn’t it selfish of her to ask him to endanger himself? Here he was, a husband and new father, with other people to depend on him. It seemed unfair to—
    “Something wrong?” Will asked.
    “Not really.”
    “You sure?” he persisted.
    “Well, I think somebody followed me here to the restaurant. Some kid.”
    Will looked around. “You see him?”
    “Not now.”
    He asked, “You have that Web site, right? About how women can protect themselves.”
    “That’s right.”
    “You think he knows about it? Maybe he’s harassing you.”
    “Could be. You’d be surprised at the hate mail I get.”
    He reached for his cell phone. “You want to call the police?”
    She debated.
    Never feel too embarrassed or proud to ask for help.
    “No, no. Just . . . would you mind, after we get the pictures, walking me to my car?”
    Will smiled. “Of course not. I don’t exactly know karate but I can yell for help with the best of them.”
    She laughed. “Thanks.”
    They walked along the sidewalk in front of the restaurant and she checked out the cars. As in every parking lot in Silicon Valley there were dozens of Saabs, BMWs and Lexuses. No vans, though. No kids. No bloody smears.
    Will nodded toward where he’d parked, in the back lot. He said, “You see him?”
    “No.”
    They walked past a stand of juniper and toward his car, a spotless silver Jaguar.
    Jesus, did everybody in Silicon Valley have money except her?
    He dug the keys out of his pocket. They walked to the trunk. “I only took two rolls at the wedding. But some of them are pretty good.” He opened the trunk and paused and then looked around the parking lot. She did too. It was completely deserted. His was the only car there.
    Will glanced at her. “You were probably wondering about the dreads.”
    “Dreads?”
    “Yeah,” he said. “The dreadlocks.” His voice was different, flatter, distracted. He was still smiling but his face was different now. It seemed hungry.
    “What do you mean?” she asked calmly but fear was detonating inside her. She noticed a chain was blocking the entrance to the back parking lot. And she knew he’d hooked it after he’d pulled in—to make sure nobody else could park there.
    “It was a wig.”
    Oh, Jesus, my Lord, thought Lara Gibson, who hadn’t prayed in twenty years.
    He looked into her eyes, recording her fear. “I parked the Jag here a while ago then stole the van and followed you from home. With the combat jacket and wig on. You know, just so you’d get edgy and paranoid and want me to stay close. . . . I know all your rules—that urban protection stuff. Never go into a deserted parking lot with a man. Married men with children are safer than single men. And my family portrait? In my wallet? I hacked it together from a picture in Parents magazine.”
    She whispered hopelessly, “You’re not . . . ?”
    “Sandy’s cousin? Don’t even know him. I picked Will Randolph because he’s somebody you sort of know, who sort of looks like me. I mean, there’s no way in the world I could’ve gotten you out here alone if you hadn’t known me—or thought you did. Oh, you can take your hand out of your purse.” He held up her canister of pepper spray. “I got it when we were walking outside.”
    “But . . .” Sobbing now, shoulders slumped in hopelessness. “Who are you? You don’t even know me. . . .”
    “Not true, Lara,” he whispered, studying her anguish the way an imperious chess master examines his defeated opponent’s face. “I know everything about you. Everything in the world.”

A LSO BY J EFFERY D EAVER
    Carte Blanche
    Edge
    The Burning Wire*
    Best American Mystery Stories 2009 (Editor)
    The Watch List ( The Copper Bracelet and
    The Chopin Manuscript ) (Contributor)
    Roadside Crosses**
    The Bodies Left Behind
    The Broken Window*
    The Sleeping Doll**
    More Twisted: Collected Stories, Volume Two
    The Cold Moon*/**
    The Twelfth Card*
    Garden of Beasts
    Twisted: Collected Stories
    The Vanished Man*
    The Stone Monkey*
    The Blue Nowhere
    The Empty Chair*
    Speaking in Tongues
    The Devil’s Teardrop
    The Coffin Dancer*
    The