Long Lost - By Harlan Coben Page 0,27

button and sat back.

We could see the blond girl clearer now. She was indeed a teenager-maybe sixteen, seventeen years old. She had long blond hair. The vantage point was still from too great a distance to see the features up close, but there was something familiar about her, about the way she held her head up, the way her shoulders stayed back, the perfect posture...

"We ran a preliminary DNA test on that blood sample and the blond hair," Berleand said.

The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. I wrested my eyes away from the screen and looked at him.

"It isn't just his daughter," Berleand said, gesturing toward the blonde on the screen. "It's also Terese Collins's."
Chapter 11

IT took me a while to find my voice.

"You said preliminary."

Berleand nodded. "The final DNA test will take a few more hours."

"So it could be wrong."

"Unlikely."

"But there have been cases?"

"Yes. I had one case where we grabbed a man based on a preliminary like this. It turns out it was his brother. I also know about a paternity case where a woman sued her boyfriend for child custody. He claimed that the baby wasn't his. The preliminary DNA test was a dead match-but when the lab looked closer, it turned out that it was the boyfriend's father."

I thought about it.

"Does Terese Collins have any sisters?" Berleand asked.

"I don't know."

Berleand made a face.

"What?" I said.

"You two really have a special relationship, don't you?"

I ignored the jab. "So what's next?"

"We need you to call Terese Collins," Berleand said. "So we can question her some more."

"Why don't you call her yourself?"

"We did. She won't pick up."

He handed me back my cell phone. I turned it on. One missed call. I didn't click to see who it was from just yet. There was what appeared to be junk mail, the subject reading: When Peggy Lee sang, "Is that all there is?" was she talking about your trouser snake? Your Small Pee-Pee Needs Viagra at 86BR22.com.

Berleand read it over my shoulder. "What does that mean?"

"One of my old girlfriends has been talking out of school."

"Your self-deprecation," Berleand said. "It's very charming."

I hit Terese's number. It rang for a while and then the voice mail picked up. I left her a message and hung up.

"Now what?"

"Do you know anything about tracing cell phone locations?" Berleand asked.

"Yes."

"And you probably know that as long as the phone is on, even if no call is being made, we can triangulate coordinates and know where she is."

"Yes."

"So we weren't worried about following Ms. Collins. We have that technology. But about an hour ago, she turned her phone off."

"Maybe she ran out of battery," I said.

Berleand frowned at me.

"Or maybe she just needed downtime. You know how hard it must have been to tell me about her car accident."

"So she-what?-turned her phone off to get away from it all?"

"Sure."

"Instead of just silencing the ringer or whatever," he went on, "Ms. Collins turned the phone all the way off?"

"You don't buy it?"

"Please. We can still run her call logs-see who called her or whom she called. About an hour ago, Ms. Collins received her only call of the day."

"From?"

"Don't know. The number bounced to some phone in Hungary and then a Web site and then we lost it. The call lasted two minutes. After that, she turned off her phone. At the time she was at the Rodin Museum. Now we have no idea where she is."

I said nothing.

"Do you have any thoughts?"

"About Rodin? I love The Thinker."

"You're killing me, Myron. Really."

"Are you going to hold me?"

"I have your passport. You can go, but please stay in your hotel."

"Where you can listen in," I said.

"Think of it this way," Berleand said. "If you finally get lucky, maybe I can pick up a few pointers."

The processing to release me took about twenty minutes. I started back down the Quai des Orfevres toward the Pont Neuf. I wondered how long it would take. There was a chance, of course, that Berleand already had me under surveillance, but I considered it unlikely.

Up ahead was a car with the license plate 97 CS 33.

The code, of course, couldn't have been simpler. The junk e-mail read 86 BR 22. Just add one to each one. Eight becomes a nine. B becomes a C. As I approached the car a piece of paper dropped out of the driver's-side window. The piece of paper was attached to a coin so it wouldn't blow away.

I sighed. First the overly simple code, now this. Would