Scared to Death (23 page)

“No, she isn't!”

“What?”

“I'm
at home. I just got back. Where is she, Caroline?”

“I have no idea. She was there when I left.”

“When did you leave?”

“Umm…I guess around eleven-thirty.”

Her mother starts going on and on, freaking out about Annie. Shaking her head, Caroline holds the phone out away from her ear again.

“Don't mind her,” she whispers to Jake. “She's kind of nuts. But then, I guess, aren't they all?”

“What?”

“Mothers. You know—they're all crazy.”

Jake doesn't reply.

“Well, mine is, anyway,” she mutters, wondering if he gets along great with his own mother or something. Whatever. His mother probably isn't dealing with half of the crap that's going on with Mom. No wonder she's ranting and raving on the phone…not that Caroline can make out a word of it with the phone held at arm's length from her ear.

“She sounds really upset,” Jake tells her. “Maybe you should go home and make sure everything's all right.”

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.

Now she'll probably never see him again.

Oh well. His loss.

Mine, too
, she thinks wistfully, watching Jake sling his backpack over his shoulder and walk away.

 

Sick with fear, Marin paces the apartment clutching both the cordless and her cell phone.

How can this be happening?

Her younger daughter is missing, her older daughter doesn't give a damn, and…

My son is dead.

And Lauren was wrong. I'm not strong enough to deal with all this.

Her hands are trembling so violently that it takes her a couple of tries to dial Annie's cell phone number again. As before, it goes straight into voice mail.

“Annie, it's Mom again. Where are you? I'm home, and you're not, and I'm worried, and…”

She trails off and hangs up, swallowing over the painful lump in her throat.

Should she call the police again?

When she called the first time, the desk sergeant transferred her to a female officer who asked a few questions—including Marin's full name, which didn't seem to strike a chord—and wanted to know whether she had reason to believe her daughter might be in danger.

“Of course she might be in danger! She's out there somewhere alone! And—oh God—yesterday, someone put a live rat into her sister's purse.”

There's a pause. “Excuse me? What was that?”

Even as Marin hurriedly explained about the rat and the text message, she could tell it wasn't making much sense to the officer.

“And this happened to your daughter just yesterday?”

“To my other daughter. Her sister. We thought it was a prank.”

“It sounds like one. Getting back to today—are you sure your daughter didn't just go for a walk, or to a friend's house, or maybe out with a boyfriend…?”

“She doesn't even have a boyfriend!” Marin shrieked into the phone.

“Ma'am, please, I'm trying to assess the situation.”

She managed to control herself long enough to answer several other frustrating questions, all of which allowed the officer to conclude that this isn't an emergency.

“You don't think a missing child is an emergency?” Marin asked incredulously, certain she was being regarded as an incoherent, overreaching maternal lunatic.

“At this juncture, we—”

“You have to do something!”

“Ma'am, please,” the officer said again, all but sighing. “You're welcome to come down to the precinct with a recent photograph of your daughter and a description of what she was wearing—”

“I have to come down
there
? How can I leave here when she might show up any second? You can't send someone here?”

“At this stage, no. As you said, she'll probably turn up safe and sound any second, but—”

“That isn't what I said!”

“Ma'am, please—”

That was when Marin banged the phone down in frustration.

The woman has no idea. No idea who Annie is, or what their family has been through, or why they don't take missing children lightly.

Marin should have told her.

Why didn't she tell her?

What the hell is wrong with me?

God, I wish Garvey were here.

It isn't the first time she's missed him, but it's the first time she's
needed
him. For all his faults, at least he'd know what to do. He always did. He was the one in control, the one who took care of things—of
her
; the one who—

Her phone rings in her hand, startling her. She answers with a breathless “Hello?”

“Is this Marin Quinn?” an unfamiliar voice asks.

“Yes…”

“I'm calling from Lenox Hill Hospital. It's about your daughter Anne.”

 

According to the GPS planted in Brett Cavalon's car, he's on the move again.

Surely he's not on his way to rescue his wife and daughter—unless he thinks they're somewhere up north, toward Boston.

Are
they?

That's highly unlikely. They're probably holed up in a hotel somewhere here in New York. Who knows? Maybe even this one.

It doesn't really matter where they are, though.

I'm finished with them for tonight. They've had enough, and so have I.

It's been such a long day—so tempting just to stay in Manhattan for tonight, as planned, and let Brett go wherever he's going.

But then, Elsa's husband might be dangerous, left to
his own devices. More dangerous than Elsa herself, for the time being.

So much for a reprieve.

Might as well hop a shuttle to Logan and see what he's up to.

One quick phone call, a cursory check of the room, and it's time to go.

Downstairs, the Times Square hotel is teeming with weekend tourists checking in, bellhops pushing luggage carts, and locals grabbing pre-theater cocktails at the posh lobby bar.

A doorman opens the door with a friendly tip of his hat. “Do you need a cab?”

Yes. But I'm not going to let you get one for me.

“No, thank you.” It wouldn't be a good idea to draw any extra attention. That would only increase the risk of being remembered later, should anything go wrong and investigators find their way to the hotel.

“All right, then. Have a good night.”

“Same to you.”

Down the block, across Seventh, down another block, around the corner onto Sixth. It's much quieter over here; flagging a taxi is surprisingly easy on this rainy evening.

“La Guardia airport, please.”

The cabbie nods and hits the meter. “You want me to take the bridge, or the tunnel?”

“The bridge, please. I'm claustrophobic.”

The cabbie mutters disinterestedly, “Oh yeah?”

No
.

But I know someone who is. And she's got a big, big day ahead of her tomorrow.

 

Marin doesn't give a damn who recognizes her as she races to the nursing station; doesn't care who over-
hears her frantic “My daughter is here. Her name is Annie—Anne. Quinn. It's Anne Quinn, and I don't know what happened, but I got a call—”

“All right, let me see here…” With maddening precision, one of the women behind the desk types something on a computer keyboard.

At least she didn't say,
Ma'am, please
, like the female cop had, over and over. At least she's not looking at Marin like she's some kind of nutcase. She's not looking at Marin at all.

“And you spell that—”

“With an E.”

“Q-U-I-N-N-E…”

“No! We spell Anne with an E! There's no E on the end of Quinn!”

She goes back to typing as Marin grips the edge of the counter, fearful that her legs are going to give out. The lights seem garish and she closes her eyes, praying that she won't faint right here.

“All right, come with me,” someone is saying, and Marin's eyes snap open to see a scrubs-clad nurse with a clipboard.

Somehow, Marin's feet carry her down the hall to a curtained-off area, and then…

There she is.

“Annie!” She rushes to the bed, swept by a massive wave of relief at finding her daughter lying there, physically intact, with her eyes open.

“Hi, Mom.” Annie smiles wanly behind the oxygen tubing that snakes up her nostrils.

“Oh, Annie—” Her voice breaks. She clears her throat, turns to the nurse. “What happened?”

“She was running in the park and she had a severe asthma attack. She collapsed, and luckily, someone called 911.”