Nothing to Fear Read Online Free PDF Page B

means they knew he’d be here.”
    “He was staying with Cheryl while Stan and Randi went away for their anniversary. If they were watching this place, they would have known McMillan was here. They took Alec sometime between Tuesday night at eight and Thursday morning at seven forty-five when that e-mail came through. Randi called Tuesday night and talked to Cheryl, told her to say good night to Alec. He doesn’t use the phone.”
    Clay started walking and Ethan followed, stopping on the dock. “Alec’s deaf, right?”
    “Among other things, yes. Alec got meningitis when he was two, barely a month after Randi and Stan got married. He almost died. As it was, it left him deaf and epileptic. He takes medicine to control the epilepsy. Randi says the bottles are gone from the bathroom. Alec had surgery for the deafness three years ago, when he was nine. They gave him a cochlear implant.”
    “Explain,” Clay bit out. “In laymen’s terms, please.”
    “In layman’s terms it’s a device that’s surgically implanted in the bone behind the ear. It gathers sound like a hearing aid, but instead of amplifying, it translates it into signals that the brain can interpret as speech and any other sound. Alec wears a piece behind his ear that does the gathering and translating. I found it in his bedroom closet. Without it, he’s completely deaf.” And unable to find help. Ethan grimaced. He had to stop thinking that.
    Clay gestured at the air. “Where is this thing now, this . . . piece?”
    “Still on the closet floor. I didn’t disturb anything. I thought we’d want to take prints.”
    “Can Alec speak?”
    “No. That was Rickman’s job—teaching him to use the device to learn to listen and speak. Alec isn’t very receptive to the device. He’s used sign language for a long time.” Ethan thought of the e-mails Alec had sent, complaining about the implant. “He said the implant was too loud, that the sound made his head hurt. The doctors told Randi that he’d get used to it. He hasn’t yet. He ran off his last three therapists.”
    “He’s a bad kid?”
    Ethan shook his head. “Stubborn maybe, but not bad. He’s thoughtful. E-mailed Richard every week when we were at the front. E-mailed me when I was in the hospital.” His throat closed and he cleared it harshly. “He calls me Uncle Ethan.”
    “I’m sorry, Ethan. I didn’t realize you two were close.”
    Looking out at the quiet water where he’d spent the best years of his childhood, regret surged, and Ethan sighed. “We should be closer, but when Richard died, everything just seemed to disintegrate, with Alec caught in the fray. We e-mail, but Stan never lets me visit him. I didn’t want to drive a bigger wedge between Stan and Randi, so I didn’t push it. I should have just visited Alec anyway.”
    “Ethan, why does Stan hate you so much?”
    Ethan grunted. “Good question. He says Richard never would have requested Afghanistan if I hadn’t asked him to, that he’d still be alive. But Richard wanted to go. He’d prepared his whole career for it. He spoke Farsi, for God’s sake. We needed him to decode communications. I think Stan hated me a long time before that, though. When we were kids they’d come down for the summers and we were the three musketeers. By the time we were teenagers, Stan’s interests were different from ours. Richard and I were headed for the Academy. Stan bought a motorcycle right out of high school and went cruising. Got into some trouble. A misdemeanor, I think. Nothing too big, but his parents were so disappointed. Stan buckled down in his father’s business and Richard and I went on to the Academy. Nothing was really the same after that. Stan saw me and Richard as his parents’ favorite sons.” Ethan shrugged. “And I wasn’t even his parents’ son.”
    “Alec isn’t, is he?” Clay asked. “He’s not Stan’s biological son.”
    “Not biological,” Ethan answered, again remember back ten years, to