Scared To Death (Live to Tell #2)(79)

When the time comes…

Please, please, please let the time come.

Let my girls be all right.

It must be a good sign, though, that the phone rang a few times before going into voice mail. It means the battery is no longer dead, right? So she must have charged it. Maybe—

Wait a minute.

You’ve reached the Cavalons…

That wasn’t her cell phone’s outgoing message.

He really must have hit the wrong button that time, pressing the speed dial number for their home phone, not Elsa’s cell.

No sooner does he realize that than his own phone, which landed on the floor in front of the passenger’s seat, begins to ring.



“If you could talk, you’d probably beg me to put you out of your misery, wouldn’t you?” asks the person looming over Mike, terrifyingly close. “Guess what? It’s your lucky day.”

Helpless, gripped by fear, Mike senses a swift, furtive movement beside him.

“There. All set. This should be quick.”

Quick…?

What should be quick?

Oh…

Oh God.

Oh no.

He’s suffocating.

Horror seeps in, saturating his body as if to replace the precious oxygen that’s been deliberately cut off.

“It’s okay…Just let it happen.”

Just…let…it…happen…

The voice seems far away now, fading.

Mike has always wondered what it would be like to die—whether it would hurt, whether the end would come quickly…

Now you know.

Funny, he thinks as he plummets into the darkness, that death is an even greater paradox than life.

Death—his death—is excruciating yet painless, agonizingly drawn out even as it happens in a flash…



It’s over.

Another one bites the dust.

Ah…that was the title of an oldie but goodie, and the perfect addition to life’s little soundtrack.

Mike Fantoni looks so peaceful, lying there with his eyes closed. No different, really, than he did a minute ago, when he was alive.

I really did do him a favor. Euthanasia. No need to feel bad about this one.

It’s what lies ahead that remains a bit troubling.

Taking the life of a healthy child isn’t exactly doing anyone any favors.

But it’s no less necessary, and there’s some comfort knowing that it will be done out of love.

In the end, as far as Jeremy is concerned, that’s all that’s really going to matter.



Straining to keep one hand on the wheel and an eye on the road, Brett struggles to reach the ringing phone on the floor in front of the passenger’s seat. At last his fingers close around it.

“Elsa?”

“Brett!”

“Thank God you’re all right!”

“How did you know where we were?”

“I—” He’s so relieved to hear her voice that it takes him a minute to grasp the question. “What do you mean? Where are you?”

“Didn’t you just call me?”

“I just called—wait, are you home?”

“You didn’t know?”

“No, I meant to call your cell, but…Is everything okay there?”

She hesitates long enough that he realizes she isn’t telling the whole truth when she answers that it is.

“Elsa—are you sure?”

“Yes, I was just asleep when the phone rang and by the time I got to it, it had gone into voice mail.”

“But why aren’t you at your mother’s?”

“It’s a long story. Where are you, by the way? I thought I’d find you here when we got back.”

“Another long story,” he tells Elsa. “But I’m on my way home. Are the doors locked?”

“The doors, the windows…trust me, we’re fine. Just hurry home. We have to figure out what’s going on…if anything even is.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know…I’m starting to wonder if I might not just be…paranoid.”

Paranoid?

It’s not the right word, he knows. But it’s the only one she can bring herself to say.

“I love you,” he says simply, relieved that she at least grasps the possibility that she’s suffering from a relapse. Now they can work together to get her the help she needs.

Hanging up, Brett makes a U-turn back toward the highway.



Was it really just six hours ago that you were about to climb into bed in a hotel in Times Square, exhausted?

It seems like a month has passed since the GPS alert that Brett Cavalon was on the move. Interesting how the human body responds to stress. Just when you think you’re too exhausted to even reach over and turn off the bedside lamp, you somehow find the energy to grab a cab to the airport, hop a flight, rent a car, and carry out yet another unfortunate but necessary death sentence.

Adrenaline is a wonderful thing.

But now…

It’s time to get some sleep at last.

At least this time, it won’t be in a cold, impersonal hotel room. Not when there’s a huge, vacant house with beds dressed in the finest European linens Montgomery money could buy.