Scared To Death (Live to Tell #2)(78)

Elsa casts another wary look around. “Are you sure you saw him?”

“Mmm hmm,” Renny says sleepily.

But there’s no evidence of him, and nothing seems to have been disturbed. Was it another of Renny’s usual nightmares? Or was the monster sighting as real as everything else that’s been going on?

Awash in uncertainty, Elsa strokes her daughter’s hair.

Is any of it real?

Or was it her own imagination—that someone was stalking her around her mother’s apartment, that the doorman had taken Renny hostage, that someone had planted a Spider-Man toy that had once belonged to her dead son.

But what about those pictures that came in the mail? Brett saw them, too.

Unless her mind—fed by her own worst nightmares, and Renny’s wee-hour monster ones—conjured that, like everything else?

It happens. It happened to Renny’s birth mother.

But she was mentally ill.

Yet Elsa herself was unbalanced enough, at one point, to have completely lost touch with reality. She’d even tried to take her own life, convinced it was the only way to end the pain.

But that means nothing. Sane people commit suicide.

So do insane people.

Dear God.

Who’s to say Elsa isn’t suffering from acute stress disorder all over again? She wouldn’t know it if she were. She certainly didn’t realize it when it was happening to her last time around.

Is she suffering the final vestiges of a breakdown that began fifteen years ago, with Jeremy’s disappearance?

Is it any wonder?

She lost a child. She’s terrified of losing another. The human mind, under duress, is capable of playing all kinds of terrible tricks.

Somehow, right here, right now, in her own familiar house in the middle of the night, it’s easier to believe that she’s delusional than it is that the whole nightmare—her own, and Renny’s—ever happened at all.



Wait! Brett! Don’t leave!

The silent scream that seizes Mike’s body obliterates everything else—the pain, the fear, the sounds and sensation of movement around him.

It’s no use.

Brett is gone.

And even if the staff hadn’t come along to kick him out, Mike couldn’t have warned him anyway. He can’t communicate, dammit; can’t even bat an eyelash to let anyone know that he’s alive in here, like an undetected disaster survivor entombed in wreckage.

He can only pray that Brett and Elsa will figure it out somehow, before it’s too late. Or that he’ll have a miraculous recovery and be able to tell them himself. It doesn’t seem likely, but…

Anything is possible. Anything at all.

Isn’t that what he’d told himself when he suspected that Jeremy Cavalon might actually be alive?

Yes—and that was his fatal mistake.

Almost fatal, anyway.

After all, he’s not dead. He—

A sudden sound reaches his ears. The slightest sound, barely there—a whisper of movement somewhere nearby.

Startled, Mike realizes he’s not alone after all.

Someone is in the room.

It must be a doctor, or a nurse.

He waits.

All is still. Wouldn’t the medical staff be bustling about their business?

Whoever it is seems to be just…here.

Maybe it’s clergy, come to pray over him, or maybe Brett snuck back in, or—

“You should have minded your own business,” a voice hisses, its proximity as startling as the ominous words.



Caught up in thoughts of Mike, Brett doesn’t remember to turn on his phone until he’s in the car, heading back toward the highway.

He must have countless voice mails from Elsa. She’s probably worried sick. And with any luck, there will be one from Joan, as well.

Working his phone with one hand while he steers over the unfamiliar road with the other, he sees that his voice mail box is empty.

That can’t be. He must have hit the wrong button. They’re so small, and his fingers are clumsy.

He fumbles with the phone, trying to find the right one as he merges onto the highway.

Nope…that was the right button. There are no messages.

It’s understandable that Joan wouldn’t check her voice mail after hours, or that she wouldn’t call him back even if she’d gotten the message, but…

Surely, Elsa would have found a way to charge the battery before now. Or she would have realized hers was dead and called him from her mother’s house.

He gropes the buttons and blindly dials her cell.

Unlike earlier, it doesn’t bounce right into voice mail. This time, it rings a few times, getting Brett’s hopes up. Then Elsa’s voice comes on the line.

“You’ve reached the Cavalons. We can’t come to the phone right now…”

Brett lets out a frustrated curse and tosses the phone aside.

“Where are you, Elsa?” he mutters.

Clenching the wheel hard, he runs through one terrifying scenario after another until a blaring horn jerks his attention back to the road. He swerves just in time to avoid hitting the concrete median and pulls off at the next exit, shaken.

He needs to call someone.

But without Mike, he’s at a loss.

It’s time to involve the police. There’s nothing else he can do. He’ll just have to pray that when the time comes, the agency will understand and let the adoption go through.