One False Move

The seventh installment in Harlan Coben's Myron Bolitar series opens with a flash-forward. Sports agent Myron Bolitar stands at an unmarked grave in a cemetery overlooking a schoolyard. When footsteps approach, he says, "You killed her." The figure confirms the murder, but the identities of killer and victim remain concealed. The novel jumps back two weeks.

On August 30, Norm Zuckerman, the aging CEO of Zoom sportswear and financial backer of the fledgling WPBA (Women's Professional Basketball Association), asks Myron to bodyguard the league's star player, Brenda Slaughter, and to sign her as a client. Brenda's father, Horace Slaughter, has vanished, and Brenda has been receiving death threats. Rather than deceive her, Myron tells Brenda the truth, and she agrees on strict conditions. They share a history: Horace mentored Myron on Newark's basketball courts when Myron was a teenager. Brenda reveals that one caller told her to "call her mother," a baffling instruction since her mother, Anita Slaughter, abandoned the family when Brenda was five and has not been seen in twenty years. Brenda asks Myron to find Horace.

At Horace's ransacked Newark apartment, his suitcase and clothes are missing, suggesting he fled voluntarily. Letters Anita sent Brenda have been stolen from her old room. Esperanza Diaz, Myron's assistant at his sports agency, MB SportsReps, reports that Horace cleared $11,000 from his bank account and has not used any credit cards, confirming a planned disappearance.

Myron visits Horace's older sister, Mabel Edwards, a warm, matronly woman in West Orange. She reveals that two men, one large and one thin with a snake tattoo, came looking for Horace and assaulted her. She discloses that Anita called sporadically over the years asking about Brenda and mentions that she and Anita once worked as maids at the Bradford estate in Livingston, New Jersey. The Bradford patriarch was a former governor; his son Arthur Bradford is running for the same office.

The Bradford connection proves central. Myron's research reveals that Arthur's wife, Elizabeth, died in March 1978, nine months before Anita disappeared, after supposedly falling from a third-floor balcony. Police ruled it accidental. The maid who discovered the body was Anita Slaughter. Meanwhile, TruPro, a mob-controlled sports agency secretly launching a rival women's league, threatens Myron for interfering with their designs on Brenda.

More leads emerge from Horace's locker at St. Barnabas Hospital, where he worked as a security guard. Myron and Brenda find a warning letter from attorney Thomas Kincaid about Horace's persistent inquiries and a bloodstained shirt suggesting Horace was beaten. Phone records show Horace called Kincaid's office and Arthur's campaign headquarters repeatedly. Brenda recognizes Kincaid as the attorney who administered her first scholarship at age twelve; a different attorney handles her current medical school scholarship. Myron suspects the scholarships were designed to funnel anonymous money to Brenda.

Surveillance on Brenda proves extensive: tapped phones and planted microphones reveal that someone with significant resources has been monitoring the Slaughter family for years. Myron moves Brenda to the secure apartment of his best friend and partner, Win (Windsor Horne Lockwood III). Esperanza demands a partnership stake in MB SportsReps within one week, or she will leave the firm.

Myron and Win visit Arthur and his brother Chance at Bradford Farms, the family's gated estate. Both brothers feign ignorance about Anita, but their body language betrays recognition. Officer Francine Neagly, Myron's former classmate on the Livingston police force, locates the old case file on Elizabeth's death, which notes that Anita bore abrasions from an earlier assault when she found the body. The file is subsequently stolen from the records room.

Win traces Horace's last credit card charge to the Holiday Inn in Livingston, where Brenda experiences a vague childhood memory of being at the hotel with her mother. Myron theorizes that Horace was searching for Anita: He called the Bradford campaign, contacted the scholarship lawyers, and visited the Holiday Inn, possibly the last place Anita was seen.

The case turns devastating when detectives reveal that Horace has been found shot in the back of the head at close range. They attempt to coax a confession from Brenda, but Myron notices premortem bruises on Horace's face that the police withheld and shuts down the interrogation.

As the investigation deepens, Myron and Brenda grow closer. After a barbecue at his parents' house, they share a passionate kiss, though Myron pulls back because of his girlfriend, Jessica Culver, a novelist. Myron confronts Arthur Bradford, who claims Elizabeth had a severe mental health condition and committed suicide; the family bribed police to rule it accidental. Bradford's thug Sam, the thin man with the snake tattoo, tells Myron to ask his father about the Bradfords. Myron's father reveals that Sam once left pruning shears on young Myron's bed as a threat, the same tool Sam used on youths who harassed Brenda at a scrimmage.

On the night of the WPBA season opener, Brenda vanishes. A .38-caliber revolver matching the weapon used to kill Horace is found under her dorm mattress, wiped clean of fingerprints. Myron races to the lake cabin of retired Detective Eli Wickner, the Livingston officer who originally investigated Elizabeth Bradford's death, who has already killed his former partner to prevent being silenced. Wickner confesses that he covered up Elizabeth's suicide for the Bradfords. Nine months later, he helped seal off a Holiday Inn corridor while Sam carried an unconscious Anita from a room. Chance Bradford was in the car when Sam drove away. Wickner then takes his own life.

Myron confronts Arthur and Chance at Bradford Farms with Win hidden in the trunk. He reveals that Arthur had a love affair with Anita; Elizabeth discovered them, attacked Anita, and later committed suicide. The anonymous scholarships, funneled through the Cayman Islands, were Arthur's way of supporting Brenda, who is Arthur's biological daughter, confirmed by comparing blood types. Arthur, weeping, confirms the affair and his love for Anita. Chance confesses he went to the Holiday Inn to stop Anita but claims she was already dead when he arrived; Sam disposed of the body. Anita has been dead for twenty years. Arthur shoots Chance in the knee and kills Sam. Win covers Myron's escape.

Win soon receives a phone call, and his expression tells Myron everything. In Cedar Grove, New Jersey, searchers found a woman's body in the woods. Brenda Slaughter was shot twice in the back of the head, dead less than twenty-four hours.

Myron drives through the night. He stops at Esperanza's apartment and offers her the partnership, a leap of faith she accepts. At four in the morning, he goes to Mabel Edwards's house, puts a gun to her forehead, and accuses her of killing Anita, Horace, and Brenda. Mabel confesses. Twenty years ago, she went to the Holiday Inn, threatened Anita, and shot her. She destroyed Anita's goodbye note, which revealed Brenda was not Horace's child, and forged a replacement. Her motives included the $14,000 Anita had taken and the need to protect Horace from the truth about Brenda's paternity. When Horace later traced Anita's trail and confronted Mabel, she killed him too. She killed Brenda because Myron had mentioned Brenda was recovering memories of the Holiday Inn, making her a threat. Mabel lured Brenda from practice by claiming to have found her mother, shot her, and planted the weapon. Mabel notes that Myron cannot prove any of it. He holds the gun to her head but cannot pull the trigger.

The epilogue resolves the prologue's mystery. Arthur Bradford approaches Brenda's grave and tells Myron he made sure Mabel Edwards died slowly. Arthur announces he is quitting the governor's race. Myron walks to his car and finds Jessica standing there. He tells her he does not want to hurt her. She says she knows. He drives away, watching her figure shrink in the rearview mirror, growing smaller but never completely vanishing.