Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(27)

“You have potted plants?” he’d asked her, thinking it odd that a woman like Mina had a green thumb.

She shook her head slyly. “Pot plants.”

Right.

Mina’s not away now, but—to put it delicately—she works nights. She’ll have no idea he’s crashed at her place in her absence, and if she does happen to come home before dawn, well…he’ll just have to tell her what’s going on.

Not in detail, of course. He’ll just say he needs a place to crash for a night or two, until…

Until who knows when?

Byron hesitates on the street, trying to decide whether to head over to Times Square to take the A or E train downtown, or to Grand Central to take the Lexington Avenue line.

Grand Central.

Maybe he’ll run into JT and shake him up a little. He’d been so sure the kid was going to come through for him. The least he could have done was put in an appearance to collect his kill fee and tell Byron he couldn’t get what he needed.

That’s hard to believe.

Freakin’ kid has keys to the whole damned station, the way he described it.

Rounding the corner onto Madison, Byron sees that the next cross street is blocked off. Cops on walkietalkies, and big blue police barricades.

A movie shoot?

Nope. Glancing down the block, over by the plywood construction tunnel, he sees an ambulance, yellow crime scene tape, and a crowd of onlookers.

Early in his career, Byron was a beat reporter. He recognizes the signs.

Somebody’s dead.

There was a mugging, or a cab jumped the curb and hit a pedestrian, or maybe a crane dropped from the construction site overhead.

All in a day’s work for the press, and the cops, and the jaded New Yorkers who stand by, watching.

No skin off Byron’s nose, either. He can just as easily access Grand Central from the next block.

Again, his thoughts turn to JT and the failed attempt to get his hands on the name of whoever has that stupid toy in his possession.

Now what?

Now…who knows?

Maybe he had one too many beers to care right now.

I’ll just get a good night’s sleep and worry about it tomorrow.

Byron Gregson walks on toward Grand Central, never thinking to look over his shoulder.

Not here.

Not on the subway.

And not on the deserted block of Ludlow Street where his luck runs out at last.



Left alone again in her room, Sadie listens to her mother’s footsteps retreating down the hall and tries hard to keep the hot tears in her eyes from spilling over.

Big girls don’t cry.

That’s what Lucy told her today at the playground, when she fell. Lucy had been pushing her on the swing, but then she started talking to some boy, and she stopped pushing, and Sadie tried to make the swing go again by pumping her dangling legs, and she slipped off and fell into the wood chips.

“You’ll be okay,” Lucy told her, and she hugged her.

Lately, people are always telling Sadie that she’ll be okay. Her sister, her brother, her parents…

But she doesn’t believe any of them.

Why should she? They all leave her. Everyone but Mommy.

Mommy promised her all summer that Lucy and Ryan would come home soon, and they finally did.

But she didn’t say that about Daddy. Sadie knows that he’s never coming home again. Not to this house. Not to her.

And Fred—Fred is gone, too.

Sadie’s gaze falls on the stupid pink dog on the dresser across the room, sitting there between her My Little Pony lamp and her Tinker Bell music box. His black eyes are looking right back at her, like he’s trying to tell her something.

Something like, See? I belong here.

“I don’t want you,” she reminds him, and turns away, wiping her eyes on the sheet.

Lucy was wrong.

Big girls do cry.





CHAPTER SIX




Standing on the wooden deck off the master bedroom, Nick stares at the eastern horizon, where the first streaks of light are beginning to appear.

He hasn’t slept at all, and he isn’t sure why.

Exhausted by his evening ocean swim and a rigorous bout of lovemaking, he had expected to drift right off to sleep. Beth had, snuggled against him, their limbs entangled in each other and the sheet. A warm sea breeze from the open window stirred strands of her hair to tickle his bare chest, but he didn’t want to move and disturb her.

No, he wanted to stay just like that, arms wrapped around Beth, her head against his heart, forever.

But eventually she rolled away. Nick was left restlessly listening to the distant waves, wishing they could soothe him to sleep as they had every other night of this vacation.

It didn’t happen, and now it’s much too late. The alarm clock will go off any time now, and it will be time for him and Beth to go back to the real world.

His kids are the only thing Nick misses about that—but not as much, he guiltily admits to himself, as he’d expected to. They no longer need him the way they used to. Lucy and Ryan because they’re older and more self-sufficient, and Sadie because…

Well, he’s not sure why, exactly. All he knows is that he can’t quite connect with his youngest child. It’s always been that way.

Maybe he didn’t take enough time to bond with her as a newborn, too caught up in his career.