WIN, Coben, Harlan [ebook and pdf reader .txt] 📗

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2021 by Harlan Coben

Cover design by Jonathan Bush

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Cover copyright © 2021 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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First Edition: March 2021

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Coben, Harlan, author.

Title: Win / Harlan Coben.

Description: First Edition. | New York : Grand Central Publishing, 2021.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020042925 | ISBN 9781538748213 (hardcover) | ISBN

         9781538737408 (signed edition) | ISBN 9781538737415 (special signed edition) |

         ISBN 9781538748268 (ebook)

Subjects: GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3553.O225 W56 2021 | DDC 813/.54—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042925

ISBN: 978-1-5387-4821-3 (hardcover), 978-1-5387-4826-8 (ebook), 978-1-5387-3740-8 (signed edition), 978-1-5387-3741-5 (special signed edition), 978-1-5387-5496-2 (international mass market), 978-1-5387-0641-1 (large print)

E3-20210129-DA-PC-ORI

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

Discover More

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Harlan Coben

To Diane and Michael Discepolo

With love and gratitude

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CHAPTER 1

The shot that will decide the championship is slowly arching its way toward the basket.

I do not care.

Everyone else in Indianapolis’s Lucas Oil Stadium stares at the ball with mouth open.

I do not.

I stare across the court. At him.

My seat is courtside, of course, near the center line. An A-list Marvel-Superhero actor sporting a tourniquet-tight, show-biceps black tee sits on my left, you know him, and the celebrated rapper-mogul Swagg Daddy, whose private jet I bought three years ago, dons his own brand of sunglasses to my right. I like Sheldon (that’s Swagg Daddy’s real name), both the man and his music, but he cheers and glad-hands past the point of sycophantic, and it makes me cringe.

As for me, I sport a Savile Row hand-tailored suit of pinstripe azure, a pair of Bedfordshire bespoke Bordeaux-hued shoes created by Basil, the master craftsman at G. J. Cleverley’s, a limited-edition Lilly Pulitzer silk tie of pink and green, and a specially created Hermès pocket square, which flares out from the left breast pocket with celestial precision.

I am quite the rake.

I am also, for those missing the subtext, rich.

The ball traveling in the air will decide the outcome of the college basketball phenomenon known as March Madness. Odd that, when you think about it. All the blood and sweat and tears, all the strategizing and scouting and coaching, all the countless hours of shooting alone in your driveway, of dribbling drills, of the three-man weave, of lifting weights, of doing wind sprints until you hurl, all those years in stale gyms on every level—Biddy basketball, CYO travel all-stars, AAU tournaments, high school, you get the point—all of that boils down to the simple physics of a rudimentary orange sphere back-spinning toward a metallic cylinder at this exact moment.

Either the shot will miss and Duke University will win—or it will go in and South State University and their fans will rush the court in celebration. The A-list Marvel hero attended South State. Swagg Daddy, like yours truly, attended Duke. They both tense up. The raucous crowd falls into a hush. Time has slowed.

Again, even though it’s my alma mater, I don’t care. I don’t get fandom in general. I never care who wins a contest in which I (or someone dear to me) am not an active participant. Why, I often wonder, would anyone?

I use the time to focus on him.

His name is Teddy Lyons. He is one of the too-many assistant coaches on the South State bench. He is six foot eight and beefy, a big slab of aw-shucks farm boy. Big T—that’s what he likes to be called—is thirty-three years old, and this is his fourth college coaching job. From what I understand, he is a decent tactician but excels at recruiting talent.

I hear the buzzer go off. Time is out, though the outcome of the contest is still very much in doubt.

The arena is so hushed that I can actually hear the ball hit the rim.

Swagg grabs my leg. Mr. Marvel A-List swings a muscled tricep across my chest as he spreads his arms in anticipation. The ball hits the rim once, twice, then a third time, as though this inanimate object is teasing the crowd before deciding for itself who lives and who dies.

I still watch Big T.

When the ball rolls all the way off the rim and then drops toward the ground—a definite miss—the Blue Devil section in the arena explodes. In my periphery, I see everyone on the South State bench deflate. I don’t care for the word “crestfallen”—it’s an odd word—but here it is apropos. They deflate and appear crestfallen. Several collapse in devastation and tears as the reality of the loss sinks