DARKEST FEAR Read Online Free

questioning, but he decided to play it straight. “A little. A friend of mine had leukemia and needed a transplant. They had a marrow drive at the temple. We all went down and got tested.”
    “When you say ‘we all’—”
    “Mom, Dad, my whole family. I think Win went too.”
    She tilted her head. “How is Win?”
    “The same.”
    “Sorry to hear that,” she said. “When we were at Duke, he used to listen to us making love, didn’t he?”
    “Only when we pulled down the shade so he couldn’t watch.”
    She laughed. “He never liked me.”
    “You were his favorite.”
    “Really?”
    “That’s not saying much,” Myron said.
    “He hates women, doesn’t he?”
    Myron thought about it. “As sex objects, they’re fine. But in terms of relationships …”
    “An odd duck.”
    She should only know.
    Emily took a sip. “I’m stalling,” she said.
    “I sorta figured that.”
    “What happened to your friend with leukemia?”
    “He died.”
    Her face went white. “I’m sorry. How old was he?”
    “Thirty-four.”
    Emily took another sip, cradling the mug with both hands. “So you’re listed with the bone marrow national registry?”
    “I guess. I gave blood and they gave me a donor card.”
    She closed her eyes.
    “What?” he asked.
    “Fanconi anemia is fatal. You can treat it for a while with blood transfusions and hormones, but the only cure is a bone marrow transplant.”
    “I don’t understand, Emily. Do you have this disease?”
    “It doesn’t hit adults.” She put down her coffee andlooked up. He was not big on reading eyes, but the pain was neon-obvious. “It hits children.”
    As though on cue, the Starbucks soundtrack changed to something instrumental and somber. Myron waited. It didn’t take her long.
    “My son has it,” she said.
    Myron remembered visiting the house in Franklin Lakes when Greg disappeared, the boy playing in the backyard with his sister. Must have been, what, two, three years ago. The boy was about ten, his sister maybe eight. Greg and Emily were in the midst of a bloody take-no-prisoners custody battle, the two children pinned down in the crossfire, the kind no one walks away from without a serious hit.
    “I’m sorry,” he said.
    “We need to find a bone marrow match.”
    “I thought siblings were an almost automatic match.”
    Her eyes flicked around the room. “One-in-four chance,” she said, stopping abruptly.
    “Oh.”
    “The national registry found only three potential donors. By potential I mean that the initial HLA tests showed them as possibilities. The A and B match, but then they have to do a full blood and tissue workup to see—” She stopped again. “I’m getting technical. I don’t mean to. But when your kid is sick like this, it’s like you live in a snow globe of medical jargon.”
    “I understand.”
    “Anyway, getting past the initial screening is like winning a second-tier lottery ticket. The chance of a match is still slim. The blood center calls in the potential donors and runs a battery of tests, but the odds they’ll be a close enough match to go through with the transplant are pretty low, especially with only three potential donors.”
    Myron nodded, still having no idea why she was telling him any of this.
    “We got lucky,” she said. “One of the three was a match with Jeremy.”
    “Great.”
    “There’s a problem,” she said. Again the crooked smile. “The donor is missing.”
    “What do you mean, missing?”
    “I don’t have the details. The registry is confidential. No one will tell me what’s going on. We seemed to be on the right track, and then all of a sudden, the donor just pulled out. My doctor can’t say anything—like I said, it’s protected.”
    “Maybe the donor just changed his mind.”
    “Then we better change it back,” she said, “or Jeremy dies.”
    The statement was plain enough.
    “So what do you think happened?” Myron asked. “You think he’s missing or something?”
    “He