Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(94)

But there are so many things wrong with that plan. He might be watching for her and see her coming. And even if he’s not, he isn’t going to have the kids out in full view of anyone who happens to glance into the house.

The dumpy white Cape with the puke green shutters.

How does she even know he really lives there, though? How does she even know such a house exists?

Lauren’s mind is spinning.

Maybe she should call the police.

But what if he’s watching her? He said he would be. If he’s living in her backyard, that wouldn’t be difficult.

As Lauren wrestles with the decision, the ringing telephone shatters the silence. The house phone, not her cell.

When she looks at it, she sees Sam’s number in the caller ID window.

Maybe she was wrong about him.

Maybe he’s calling her back because she asked him to.

Maybe…

“Hello?” she says breathlessly.

“Ah, you made it home,” the strange, guttural voice tells her—still disguised, but now she knows, and her heart sinks.

She was right. Sam. He’s the one. And to think she’d been hoping he might ask her out.

The thought of it makes her sick.

“Listen carefully, Lauren. Your daughter has a pink stuffed dog your husband took from the lost and found a few weeks ago. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“Yes.” Lauren’s eyes go automatically to Sadie’s dresser, where she keeps the dog. Bewildered, she wonders what it has to do with anything.

“It’s mine, and I need it back.”

“You can have—” Stunned, Lauren sees that the dog is no longer there.



“Thank you for being here. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate your support, Congressman Quinn.”

“It’s a pleasure, Father.” Garvey smiles, shaking hands with the priest. “And this is my wife, Marin.”

“So nice to meet you, Mrs. Quinn.”

“I’m glad to be here, Father.” Marin is the model of decorum, a modern-day Jackie Kennedy to Garvey’s charismatic JFK.

We can do this, he reminds himself as they take their seats at the banquet table. We can do anything, as long as we hold it together and protect our secret.

What did Marin mean, back there in the elevator? The cryptic statement has his stomach in knots.

Who can possibly know what they did?

Hell, even Marin doesn’t know the worst of it. Not by a long shot.

Maybe he should come clean with her.

After all, Garvey wasn’t the only one willing to do whatever it took to spare their child’s life.

Caroline needed a hematopoietic stem cell transplant. The chance of finding a nonrelated donor was next to nothing; the waiting list was impossibly long. Caroline didn’t have that kind of time.

But she did have a brother out there somewhere.

The adoption records had been sealed at Garvey and Marin’s request. A court order could potentially open them—but that would risk making public the fact that they had borne a baby out of wedlock. It could also take months—and there were no guarantees.

Garvey had promised Marin he would begin the process, even at the risk of destroying his political career.

“But in the meantime,” he told her, “we have to consider other options.”

She knew what he was talking about, of course.

A savior sibling was Caroline’s only chance. What parent wouldn’t seize it?

Together, Garvey and Marin made the decision to conceive another child, regardless of the heated moral and religious controversy surrounding the issue. They were planning to add on to their family anyway…someday.

No one would ever have to know they had accelerated the plan…or why they had done it.

And so they conceived Annie.

She was meant to save her dying sister. Doctors and geneticists assured the Quinns that the odds were in their favor.

But in utero testing showed that the baby wasn’t a donor match.

Garvey was beside himself. He wanted Marin to terminate the pregnancy.

“I’ve already lost one child and I might be about to lose another,” she told him. “I’m not going to destroy a third.”

“But we can try again, right away. The next baby might be a match.”

“What about this one? Are we just going to discard it like some science experiment gone wrong?”

“It isn’t like that, Marin. I’m talking about saving our child’s life.”

“So am I,” Marin told him, arms wrapped protectively around her still-flat stomach.

She did what she had to do.

So did Garvey.



Lauren Walsh is out of her mind, frantic.

It’s so very easy to picture her pale, terrified face on the other end of the phone line. It would be easy, too, to feel sorry for her—and, of course, for her children.

But that would be a terrible mistake.

Sympathy got the best of you once, fourteen years ago. You don’t dare let it happen again. This time, Garvey would find out for sure, and if that happens…

No. That can’t happen.

His instructions were clear. Do what has to be done; no outside help this time. No hiring a professional, like the one who so efficiently disposed of Byron Gregson and that Rodriguez kid.