Scared To Death (Live to Tell #2)(32)

CHAPTER SIX




Watching his wife cringe as she steps out of the grungy shower onto the Kleenex-thin bathmat, Brett shakes his head. Room 103 is even more depressing in the first morning light—especially on a rainy summer day.

As Elsa attempts to wrap herself in a flimsy bath towel that’s more the size of a hand towel, he sighs. “I can’t believe it’s come to this. Hiding out in a cheap motel—”

“Shh…” She reaches past him and pulls the bathroom door shut. Renny is still sound asleep in the next room, and they’re not planning to wake her until they’re ready to get out of here.

“She’s still out cold, Elsa. She’ll never hear us.”

“I know, but still…” Elsa watches him pick up the travel-sized tube of Crest. “Do you think we jumped to conclusions yesterday?”

Holding it poised over his new toothbrush, he looks at her in surprise, wondering if she’s suddenly come to her senses. “Do you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was kind of alarmist, going to see Mike. Maybe the whole thing was a huge coincidence…”

“Spider-Man?”

“And the branch, and the footprint…” She frowns. “Wait—what am I talking about? Why am I trying to convince myself it was nothing?”

Because somewhere in the back of your mind, you’re aware that you imagined it in the first place.

No. He can’t say that. He can never let her know he doubts her stability.

“You’re trying,” he says instead, “because you don’t want to believe it. I don’t, either.”

“But you do, don’t you?”

Brett hesitates, then admits, “I don’t know.”

He waits for her to lash out and accuse him of not taking her seriously, but she doesn’t. Wearing a contemplative expression, she says only, “Mike seemed to believe it.”

“I know.”

“He said we shouldn’t go home.”

“I’ve been thinking about that.” Brett squeezes the toothpaste, and turns on the water to dampen his toothbrush. He raises his voice above the groan of old pipes. “Your mother’s apartment is sitting empty in New York.”

“I thought of that, too.”

“Maybe you and Renny should go stay there for a few days. Through the weekend, at least.”

“That’s what I was thinking. What about you?”

“I’ve got a job to go to, Elsa.”

“It’s Friday. You can just—”

“Lew needs me on the project. You know that.”

“I can’t understand how at a time like this you can be thinking about—”

“If I don’t go to work, I lose my job, and we lose Renny. What don’t you understand about that?”

For a moment, she just looks at him with those big eyes of hers; eyes that now seem enormous, thanks to her smudged makeup.

Paulette Almeida—Renny’s mentally ill birth mother—always had smudged eye makeup, Brett remembers—and hates himself for it.

Elsa says—as if it’s just that simple—“Take some personal days.”

“I’ve used them all up.”

“You have some vacation days coming.”

“I’m taking a week off for Disney. I can’t just decide to use those days now, at the last minute.”

“Not even in an emergency?”

“You want me to tell Lew that I can’t be there because I’m running scared?”

“Why do you have to tell him anything?”

Exasperated, Brett doesn’t bother to respond. She just doesn’t get that he’s accountable to someone other than his family.

He brushes his teeth vigorously and rinses using his hand as a cup, rather than even touch the smudged motel drinking glass beside the sink.

“The drain is clogged,” he observes, turning off the water.

“This place is disgusting.”

“Let’s get out of here. We’ll go home first to pack up some things for you and Renny, and then I’ll drive you to the city.”

“I’ll drive us. You should go to work if you have to,” she adds pointedly. “But…”

“What?”

“We’re not supposed to cross state lines with Renny without getting permission.”

She’s right. Brett forgot all about that rule. “We already have,” he points out. “We’re in Massachusetts, remember?”

“I know. I didn’t even think of it yesterday. But—”

“Look, no one from the agency is ever going to find out she’s here or in New York without permission. It’s not like she’s got on some kind of homing device that goes off if she crosses a border.”

“I know.”

“Anyway, they’re so short staffed over there, they do things in a half-assed way themselves half the time.”

“But that wouldn’t stop them from taking her away from us, and you know it.”

“I do—but out of all the risks involved in this situation, not getting permission to take Renny to New York is the least threatening, don’t you think?”

She nods. “What about you, though?”