Scared To Death (Live to Tell #2)(71)

Go home? Is he trying to get rid of her?

Or is he just trying to be helpful?

Or maybe he just thinks she’s a terrible person, not talking to her own mother.

Quickly, she puts the receiver back up to her ear. “Hey, Mom, listen, you need to chill. I’m sure she’s okay.”

“I can’t believe you left her!” Mom’s voice is shrill. “I asked you to keep an eye on her!”

“It’s not like she needs a babysitter. She’s thirteen.”

“She’s gone, Caroline. Oh my God. She’s gone.”



There’s only one therapist named Joan in the area—and her phone goes into voice mail.

“Hi—this is Brett Cavalon. My wife, Elsa, is a patient of yours and…I’d like to talk to you, as soon as possible.”

He left his cell phone number, and ended the call asking Joan to please not mention to Elsa that he’d gotten in touch.

He has no idea whether she’ll be willing—or even able—to heed that request, or to call him back. He can only hope.

After changing into jeans and a polo shirt, he tries again to reach Elsa.

Her phone bounces straight into voice mail again.

“Elsa, it’s me. I’m getting worried. Why aren’t you picking up? Is your battery dead? That’s probably it. Call me on my cell when you get this message. I’m…”

Wait a minute. He’d better not say he’s going to Boston, because she’ll wonder why, and he can’t tell her about Mike. Certainly not in a voice mail.

Nor does he want to mention he’ll be back tonight, because he might not be. He should probably stick around Mike’s bedside, in case he regains consciousness.

After all, the guy was working Brett’s case. He wasn’t going off to Mumbai on the spur of the moment without a good reason. Brett needs to find out what it is—and what it has to do with his family.

If it gets late, he can grab a room someplace—not last night’s fleabag motel, though. Just someplace where he can get some rest without having to keep one eye open in case someone comes prowling around.

Not that he’s afraid to sleep here at home.

No, of course not.

“Just get a good night’s sleep, you and Renny,” he finishes the message to Elsa. “I love you both. Hug her for me.”

After hanging up the phone, he opens the desk drawer where his wife keeps her phone charger. Sure enough, there it is.

Okay, at least he knows why she’s not picking up. Hopefully she’ll figure out that the battery has died and that she’s forgotten her charger, and she’ll get herself to a store to buy a new one. But that might not happen until tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, she’ll probably try to reach him from her mother’s phone. When she doesn’t get him at home, she’ll call his cell.

Okay. So he’s good to go…

As soon as I figure out what the heck I did with my keys.

They aren’t in any of the usual spots: on the kitchen counters or dangling from the hooks beside the door.

But there’s the suit coat he wore today, draped over the back of a chair. The keys are in his pocket—and so is the note from Renny’s new social worker. He rereads it.

He can’t call. Not just yet. Elsa doesn’t even know that the case has been handed off yet again, and Renny’s not even in town.

No, she’s across state lines without permission. That’ll go over well with the agency.

It’s not a good idea to ignore caseworker requests, but…no one even knows he got it for sure. The Post-it could have fallen off the door and blown away, right? Or the ink could have smeared in the rain so that the whole thing was illegible, and not just the signature.

Frustrated, Brett tosses the note onto the kitchen counter. He’ll deal with it later. Right now, he’s got to get to Boston.



“So as you probably figured out, my idiot sister is missing,” Caroline informs Jake as she hangs up the phone—with a slight twinge of guilt over her choice of words.

Okay, so maybe Annie’s not a total idiot. Not all the time.

What if something terrible actually happened to her?

“She’s missing?”

“Yeah, and my mom is a basket case. I guess she thinks she’s going to have to, like, put up missing kid posters all over town or something.”

She means it as a joke, of course—but seeing the look in Jake’s dark eyes, she realizes he doesn’t find it the least bit funny. Maybe he just doesn’t get black humor.

“I wouldn’t say that if I didn’t think Annie was okay,” she tells him hastily, but the damage seems to be done.

He pushes back his chair. “You should go help find your sister.”

“I’m sure she just—”

“It sounds like your mother needs you. Anyway, I have to go to—uh, class.”

No, he doesn’t. She can tell he’s lying. It’s just an excuse to get away from her.

“Okay…I guess I’ll see you around?”

“Sure.”

But he doesn’t say he’ll call her.

Too bad, because there was something about him—a real connection, the kind you usually don’t feel with a stranger. And she’d been pretty sure he was into her, as well.