Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(2)

He takes the stairs beneath the balcony back down to the lower level, and then ducks into a doorway leading to an empty track.

Panting, huddled in the shadows against the wall, he turns the stuffed animal over and over, looking for the most unobtrusive spot.

There.

With his index finger, he probes at a seam in the synthetic fur. The toy is well made; it takes a few moments before the stitching gives way. He creates a small tear just wide enough.

Then he takes the memory stick from his wallet and shoves it into the hole until it disappears into the stuffing.

Swiftly examining the toy, he convinces himself no one could possibly discover the gap in the seam unless he was looking for it.

He tucks the animal under his arm again and scurries back out into the station and down a short corridor to the lost and found.

“Can I help you, sir?” asks the middle-aged woman at the service window, looking up from sorting through a labeled bin marked “February: Mittens and Gloves.”

Winded, he holds up the stuffed animal. “I just found this.”

She reaches for a pen. “Where? On a train?”

“No…on the floor.”

“Where on the floor?”

“By the clock,” he improvises.

She doesn’t ask which clock. In this terminal, “the clock” means the antique timepiece with four luminescent opal faces that sits atop the information booth, a meeting spot for thousands of New Yorkers every day.

“All right—” She reaches for a form. “If you can fill this out and—”

“Sorry,” he cuts in, “but if I don’t catch the 4:39, my wife is going to kill me.”

“It’s only—”

He’s already out the door.

He takes the stairs back up to the main concourse two at a time. Nearby, at the base of the escalators leading up to the MetLife building, a transit cop scans the crowd while speaking into a radio.

A moment later, the cop spots him, and he knows it’s over.

For now.





CHAPTER ONE




Glenhaven Park, New York

MOMMY, HEEEEELLLLLLLLLPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Startled by her daughter’s scream, Lauren Walsh drops the apple she was about to peel and bolts from the kitchen, taking the paring knife with her, just in case.

Sadie is in the living room—in one piece, thank God, and sitting on the couch in front of the television, right where Lauren left her about two minutes ago. Tears stream down her face.

“What’s wrong, sweetie? What happened?”

“Fred! Fred’s gone!”

She immediately grasps the situation, seeing the contents of Sadie’s little Vera Bradley tote dumped on the couch beside her: a sticker album and stickers, a couple of Mardi Gras necklaces, a feather boa, and the pack of Juicy Fruit Lauren bought her at Hudson News right before they got on the train.

So there’s no intruder to fight off with a paring knife. She loosens her grasp on the handle, the notion of using it as a weapon suddenly seeming laughable.

Almost laughable, anyway.

Lauren has never been the kind of woman who checked the closets and under the bed. She spent dauntless years on her own, single in the city, before she met Nick.

But this is different. Living alone with a preschooler in a sprawling Victorian while the older kids are gone at sleepaway camp and their dad is—well, gone—has bred a certain degree of paranoia, no doubt about it.

“Mommy, find Fred!” Sadie’s cherubic face is stricken, her green eyes filled with tears.

Before Nick moved out last winter, Fred was just another stuffed animal on Sadie’s shelf. Someone brought it to the hospital back when Sadie was born, with a Mylar “It’s a Girl” balloon tied to its wrist.

When Nick left, all three of the kids developed strange new habits. Ryan took to biting his nails. Lucy pulled out her eyelashes. Poor little Sadie, already a notoriously fussy eater, now lives on white bread, peanut butter, and the occasional sliced apple. She also regressed to thumb sucking and pants wetting, and started dragging the pink plush rabbit, newly christened Fred, everywhere she went.

Which wasn’t much of anywhere until recently, because Lauren couldn’t bring herself to leave the house most days. She felt as if the whole town was talking about her husband leaving her for another woman.

Probably because they really were talking about it. In a tiny suburban hamlet like Glenhaven Park, the gossip mill runs as efficiently as the commuter train line.

“Mommy.”

“It’s okay, Sadie. Where’s Chauncey? Maybe he took Fred.” God knows their border collie has been known to steal a fuzzy slipper or two—which is why he hasn’t been allowed upstairs in the bedrooms in years.

“No, Fred wasn’t in my bag. He didn’t come into the house with me.”

“Okay, so he’s probably in the car.”

“Go look! Please!”

Lauren is already headed for the kitchen to exchange the paring knife for her keys, biting her tongue. It’s probably not good parenting to say, “I told you so” to a four-year-old.

But she did tell Sadie not to bring Fred with them to the city today. And when she insisted, Lauren wanted to carry the stuffed rabbit herself, worried Sadie would lose it.

Sadie protested so vehemently that it was simply easier to give in. More bad parenting.