Scared To Death (Live to Tell #2)(39)

The Sicilian butcher, in his usual smoking spot—leaning against a globed lamppost in front of the shop—shrugs. “Aches and pains. I’m getting old.”

“Yeah, who isn’t?” Mike figures Joe is about a decade older than he is, probably in his mid-fifties. He likes to complain good-naturedly about his mother, his wife, his kids, his grandkids, all of them sending him to an early grave, he claims. But Mike doesn’t buy a word of it. What he wouldn’t give to have a family. His own parents are both gone, and so is his brother. None of them lived to see Mike get married—or divorced.

“You going somewhere, Mikey?” Joe asks, waving his cigarette like a pointer to indicate the duffel bag over Mike’s shoulder.

“Yeah. The airport.”

“Where you headed? Long weekend? Or a vacation?”

Mumbai. Some vacation.

“Yeah,” he tells Joe again. “Just for a coupla days.”

Joe pushes himself off the lamppost, grinds out the cigarette with his heel. “You take care of yourself.”

“I always do, Joe.” Mike gives him a wave and steps off the curb.

Suddenly, the sound of a revving engine explodes in his ears. Startled, he looks up, and is stunned to see a car roaring toward him. For a split second, the driver is visible through the windshield—looking right at him, Mike realizes in horror. Aiming right at him.

The last thing he hears before it hits is Joe’s horrified “Miiikkee-eeeyyy!”



Elsa stares in horror at the contents of the envelope, spread before her and Brett on the kitchen counter.

Photographs.

Of Renny.

They appear to have been taken with a long-angle lens, and recently.

Renny in the supermarket. Renny at the beach. Renny licking an ice cream cone in their own backyard, the photo snapped through the trees with their house in the background.

Her embroidered tote bag is over her shoulder in most of the shots.

“Whoever took these pictures,” Brett tells Elsa in a low voice, “knew that Renny hardly ever leaves home without that bag. He knew it wouldn’t be long before we stumbled across Spider-Man.”

Elsa nods, unable to speak. She’d been wondering why the toy would have been hidden away in the tote rather than left right out in the open for them to discover more readily.

Now she knows.

Placing the toy in Renny’s bag sends a far more ominous message.

And those pictures…

Someone is watching…again.

She finds her voice at last. “Brett…we have to go to the police.”

“We’ll lose her if we do.”

“I’m afraid that if we don’t…” She swallows hard, forces herself to say it, “We’ll lose her anyway.”



Hurting Mike Fantoni was never part of the plan—not even after it became clear that people would have to die. But it was absolutely necessary. There’s no telling what he knows—and what he might do with the information.

It’s pretty obvious the Cavalons met with the detective last night. Why else would they have driven to Boston and left their car parked for several hours in the North End, just a few blocks from Fantoni’s address?

The moment the GPS registered that the car had stopped in that particular location, it made perfect sense.

Of course, in their time of need, they’d turn to the private detective who’d devoted all those years to their case, and ultimately led them to Jeremy.

Well…not really. Mike Fantoni had led the Cavalons to Jeremy’s trail—a dead end, in the most literal sense.

Or so they believe.

But if anyone could have dug up the truth, it was Mike.

Such a shame to think of him lying in the middle of Hanover Street in a pool of his own blood.

Really, of everyone who’s ever been involved—he’s one of the good guys. And if anyone could have saved Jeremy…

But then he didn’t, did he?

No one saved Jeremy. Not even Mike.

That’s all right. He doesn’t need any of them. Now he knows that there’s only one person in the world he can count on, someone who will never let him down like the others have, one by one, over the years.

Now it’s their turn. One by one, they’re going to pay. All of them.





CHAPTER SEVEN




In good weather, the view from the Gold Star Memorial Bridge high above the Thames River is striking: a picturesque Connecticut shoreline dotted with red brick, gray shingle, or white clapboard buildings; water bobbing with fishing boats, sailboat masts, and the occasional ferry or ship.

Today, however, as Brett drives across the bridge toward the New London train station, the world beyond the windshield is blanketed in dull gray to match his mood. He keeps a close eye on the rearview mirror. There are so few other cars on the rain-splashed road that he’s almost sure no one is trailing them.

Almost.

After seeing those pictures in the mail, Elsa was much too shaken to get behind the wheel herself. Brett wouldn’t have agreed to let her do it anyway. Not now.

As they huddled in the kitchen with the horrifying surveillance photos, they weighed every possible scenario…

But one.

Brett hates that he’s even capable of thinking it; hates the truth even more, but he has to face it.