Scared To Death (Live to Tell #2)(30)

But no one even knows we’re here.

Swiftly, she strips off the yellow dress she’s been wearing all day and gingerly drapes it over the lone chair in the room. Then she pulls on the polyester blend T-shirt she picked up at Walgreens.

About to climb into the double bed with Brett, she thinks better of it.

Instead, she slips beneath the flimsy, satiny quilted bedspread of the other bed. Careful not to wake Renny, she wraps a firm arm around her, not entirely convinced she’s safe anywhere—not even here.



That was nothing, Mrs. Quinn. Stay tuned.

Lying awake in the California king she once shared with Garvey, Marin can almost hear the words in her head, spoken in a menacing, disembodied voice.

Spooked, she saved the text message on her phone, along with the other one—the emoticon that really does, as Annie pointed out, look like a rat.

Marin made her promise not to say anything to Caroline about it, though. “It’ll only make her more upset if she thinks someone did it on purpose.”

“Is that even possible, Mom?”

“That someone put a rat into her bag?”

“No—that she can get more upset,” Annie said dryly, and they both listened for a moment to Caroline still carrying on loudly in her room, on the phone with her friend.

“Just don’t talk to her about it, okay, Annie? She’s having a hard time.”

“I know. Don’t worry. I get it, Mom.”

God, I love Annie, she thinks now, staring at the shadowy ceiling.

She loves Caroline, too, of course.

Equally.

If that’s the case, why do you always seem to be reminding yourself of that lately? Is it because Caroline reminds you so much of Garvey? Is it because she has that cold, sarcastic side to her that makes you wonder about things that run in the family, and what she might be capable of?

No! Of course not.

Marin will not allow herself to go there. Not tonight. Not when she’s worried that someone out there wanted—or wants—to hurt Caroline.

She could have very easily chalked up the first message to a stray text sent to the wrong address—a text containing a bunch of symbols that just happened to look like a rat…

Although not to me.

Not at first, anyway, and certainly not at a glance.

It took Annie to point that out because Marin, apparently, is too old and out of touch to have even realized the message was a—what was it called? An emoticon.

Does that mean it was sent by a kid, then?

That concept is much more comforting than her initial reaction to the second message.

That was nothing, Mrs. Quinn. Stay tuned.

It seemed sinister.

And the use of her name—clearly, the text messages didn’t go astray; they were meant for her. She just isn’t sure if they were sent after the fact—by a witness who had recognized Caroline and thought it would be fun to further torment the Quinns—or if they were sent by someone who had planned and executed the whole ordeal, targeting Caroline in the first place.

That’s why she had gone into Caroline’s room earlier. To see if her daughter had noticed anything strange lately, maybe even to give her a heads-up to be extra careful.

Instead, she succeeded only in scaring a kid whose steely veneer, until now, has been largely impenetrable.

Nice going there, Mom. While you’re at it, you might as well put Annie on a starvation diet.

She rolls over, restless, wondering if she should take a sleeping pill now, or wait another hour or two. They only knock her out for a short window of time. It would be nice to sleep past dawn for a change.

Again, she finds herself thinking of Elsa Cavalon.

It would be healthy to have one less piece of unfinished business hanging over her head. After all, this summer is supposed to be all about healing and moving on.

She knows how to contact Elsa. Presumably, Elsa could figure out how to get in touch with her, too.

But she hasn’t.

I wouldn’t blame her if she doesn’t want to have anything to do with me.

Still…despite Marin’s connection to Garvey, despite what he did…

Maybe Elsa is waiting for Marin to make the first move.

Tomorrow, she tells herself, as she sits up in bed and reaches for the orange prescription bottle on the nightstand. Tomorrow, I’ll call her.



Three floors above the Italian butcher shop on Hanover Street, Mike Fantoni paces across the ancient hardwoods, Elsa Cavalon’s words ringing in his head.

There’s only one way anyone would link Spider-Man to Jeremy…and that’s by having been there when he disappeared fifteen years ago.

The only witness to Jeremy’s kidnapping—the person who snatched him from his own backyard—has been dead for almost a year. Jeremy himself has been dead for fifteen.

Who, then?

Mike stops at the refrigerator and yanks open the door.

Empty.

And you were expecting…what? A nice tray of leftover homemade lasagna? Tiramisu?

It’s been years since he’s tasted homemade anything.

It’s been years since he lost Tanya, who loved to cook, and loved to eat, and loved him…or so she claimed when she married him.

Mike closes the fridge. It’s even more disconcerting to open the one at home and find it empty—his real home, the one he shared with her. He doesn’t spend much time there anymore. Instead he stays here, in the city, in a dumpy apartment that was meant to be simply a place where he could run his business.