Scared To Death (Live to Tell #2)(80)

At this hour, with hardly another soul on the road, the fifteen-mile trip from downtown Boston will be a breeze.

Nottingshire, here I come…again.



Did I just make a terrible mistake? Elsa wonders as she hangs up the telephone. Lying to Brett about having been asleep when it rang—that was no mistake. Later, when he gets here, and she can explain the whole story, she’ll tell him the truth: that she had been afraid the lines were tapped.

Had been afraid…

Or are you still?

Answering the call in the first place—that might have been her terrible mistake.

Earlier, after Renny’s nightmare, she’d convinced herself that she’d conjured the stalker situation in her paranoid maternal brain.

Paranoid?

Try mentally ill.

But as she lay there in the dark, listening to Renny’s even breathing and the silence of the house that no longer felt familiar, she wasn’t so sure.

Okay. So either she’s crazy, or they’re in danger.

Which is it?

Some choice.

No wonder you can’t decide.

Anyway, when the phone rang, her first instinct was not to take any chances.

A moment later, after it had gone into voice mail, she decided that was ridiculous—particularly when she saw on the caller ID that it had been Brett.

She didn’t even bother to listen to his message, just carried the phone into the next room and called him right back.

It’s a relief to know where Brett is and that he’s on his way home, but…

Did she just broadcast Renny’s whereabouts to a stranger listening in?

So now you’re back to the theory that (A) you’re not crazy and (B) you’re in danger. Terrific.

She paces over to the living room window and peeks through a crack in the curtains, half expecting to see the silhouette of a man watching the house.

But the street is empty…and so, she notices with a frown, is Meg Warren’s driveway.

At this hour?

Maybe Meg really does have a secret love life.

Anything is possible, Elsa tells herself. Anything at all.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN




Not even five A.M., yet the sky above Regis Terrace is already streaked with dawn’s pink glow.

Strolling past one grand brick Colonial after another, Jeremy thinks back six months to the first time he came to Nottingshire. Back then, he’d marveled at how, this far east in mid-December, dusk fell before four o’clock.

He’d come here that day looking for La La Montgomery.

What happened when he found her wasn’t what he’d intended—not at all. He’d only wanted to see her, maybe talk to her for a minute, try to explain…

As if there was any satisfying explanation he could offer for having taken a golf club and shattered her skull.

His emotions, when he came face-to-face with her, were raw. After so many years alone, keeping everything pent up inside him, he’d gotten carried away. He’d known it was wrong, but he couldn’t help it.

Afterward, he’d promised himself it would never happen again.

And now look. Look where you are. Look what you’ve been doing.

He picks up his pace a little, almost as if instinctively trying to outrun the demons that brought him back here on that cold December dusk.

Haven’t you learned by now that you’re never going to escape what happened to you?

Even coming back to his old life, revisiting the scenes of the crimes—his own, and Garvey Quinn’s—can’t help him reconcile the past.

Maybe he does know it’s no use, deep down inside.

It’s not as if he’s going to reclaim his rightful place in Elsa Cavalon’s heart, or in Marin Quinn’s.

And yet…

He can’t walk away, either. Not until it’s over.

It will be. Soon. Today.

He just can’t take it anymore.

Can’t take her. He can’t take seeing her this way, seeing what she’s become, wondering what might have been…

He can’t take the guilt, the waiting, the wondering if there’s a part of her that really does love him…

Just as there’s a part of him that hates her still, even after all these years.



Hearing a car on the street, Elsa peeks through the curtains.

Brett!

Thank God.

She hurries to the front door, opening it just as he turns off the ignition in the driveway. Hesitating just a moment, she weighs the wisdom of leaving Renny alone and asleep in the house for a minute.

But she has no choice. There’s a lot to say to Brett, and she doesn’t dare say it inside the house.

Granted, she’s spent the last few hours combing every room for bugs and found nothing. But she didn’t even know what she was looking for, exactly. What does a listening device look like? Where might it be hidden? The clueless search did little to ease her fear.

Brett is out of the car in a flash, looking worried. “Where’s Renny?”

“Inside.”

“Alone?”

“She’s sleeping.”

Brett sweeps Elsa into a fierce, fleeting hug, releases her quickly, and starts toward the house.

“Brett, no, wait. We need to talk.”

“We can talk inside. Renny won’t hear us if she’s asleep, and—”