Scared To Death (Live to Tell #2)(88)

“I know I did, but I can’t help it. I’m just nervous after everything that’s happened.”

“So am I.” Brett fingers the envelope of pictures. He’s been going over them with a magnifying glass, looking for…

Well, he doesn’t know, exactly. Some kind of clue to when they were taken, maybe?

“Maybe we should call the agency and double-check.”

He looks up at Elsa to find her holding the phone. “I don’t know…you don’t want to rock the boat over there right now, do you? And she had ID.”

Melody offered her credentials the moment he opened the door. Her photo on her agency identification card was unmistakably her, and the card itself was the same as Roxanne and the other employees carried.

Besides, there was something familiar about her. Brett is certain he’s seen her before, probably at the agency.

“Look, chances are everything’s fine.”

“I know, but…” Elsa shakes her head. “I just have this feeling…I’m worried anyway.”

“About the caseworker?”

“About everything.”

“Look, we know who did this.” He waves the envelope of photos. “It wasn’t Melody Johnson. It was Marin Quinn.”

Yet even as he utters her name, Brett feels a twinge of misgiving.

Again, he thinks of Mike Fantoni. If his death had anything to do with their case—and Marin Quinn couldn’t have been in Boston at the time—then there could be someone else out there. Someone who wanted to keep Mike from going to Mumbai. Someone who wants to hurt them.

Hurt Renny.

Why the hell didn’t he think things through more carefully before sending his daughter away with a stranger?

Calm down. Be rational here.

Melody Johnson isn’t really a stranger. She’s familiar, even if they haven’t officially met her before. She’s a social worker. Renny’s social worker.

Anyway, we did the same thing with Roxanne, and with Peggy and Michelle who came before her. We met them, and then we let them meet alone with Renny. It’s fine. This is how the system works. This is how it worked when we adopted Jeremy, too.

Jeremy…

No, don’t think about what happened to Jeremy.

Anyway, he and Elsa really had no choice. A parent who acts rattled by an unannounced home visit or refuses to allow the child out of their earshot is just begging for trouble. At the very least, a closer look at the household—and what would be found, in this case?

Nothing we want anyone there to know about.

Still…his little girl is out there with a woman they’ve never met.

A woman whose first introduction to the case came by way of a Post-it note stuck to the front door. It’s not out of the realm of possibility, given the way the agency operates, but…

“Go ahead,” Brett tells Elsa abruptly. “Call the agency. Just…be careful what you say.”



Caroline has ridden the train before. When Daddy was campaigning, he insisted that they take public transportation sometimes. He said it looked good to the voters.

But it’s different today, sitting here by herself—no Daddy to make things fun, no Mom to put a damper on it, no Annie to get up Caroline’s butt every two seconds, no security guards or campaign aides, no photographers or chatty constituents.

It’s just me.

Caroline expected to find the freedom exhilarating, but instead, it’s kind of…well, lonely, sitting here in a double seat by herself, watching the scenery fly by in a blur. Lonely, and a little scary.

Not because of the high speed, or anything. That doesn’t bother her.

No, she’s just feeling like something is wrong, and she can’t put her finger on it.

For some reason, she keeps thinking about that rat in her bag; remembering how one minute, she was sitting there at the table with Jake and everything was fine; the next, she was screaming bloody murder.

At the table with Jake…

Jake.

She knows he didn’t do it.

If she thought he had, she wouldn’t be going up to Boston to see him, right?

Right. He’s a good guy. You like him. And he likes you, too.

If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have told her to come, right?

Right.

But then again…

Did you really give him much choice? You sort of invited yourself, don’t you think?

Um, sort of?

Face it. You did invite yourself.

But he didn’t say no.

He sounded like he wanted to, for a minute. But then he seemed to think it over, and he got into the idea. He’s even going to meet her at the station.

Everything’s going to be fine. Maybe she’ll stay in Boston with Jake, or they’ll go out to California together or something—someplace where they can surf—and they’ll live happily ever after, and she’ll never have to see her mother or Annie again.

She thinks things like that all the time, yet today, the thought is oddly disquieting.

Okay, so maybe she will see them again.

Who knows? Maybe someday, she’ll even want to.

She pictures herself introducing her mother to Jake, and smiles. Mom would probably like him.



Waiting for her call to be routed through the agency’s automated phone system, Elsa can feel an irrational wave of panic building in the pit of her stomach.