Faces of Fear (35 page)

"Conrad?" Her stepfather's eyes shifted from the morning paper folded neatly in front of him. "Where's Mom?"

"I think she must have had an early appointment. She was already gone when I came down."

As his eyes returned to the newspaper, Alison glanced toward the kitchen. "Is Maria here?"

"She's not coming in today—something about her mother having to go to Immigration, I think."

Alison cocked her head. "She usually takes me to school if Mom has to work early."

"Not a problem," Conrad said. "I can take you."

Alison went to the sideboard, where a pot of coffee was sitting, then went to the kitchen, found a bowl and cereal, added milk to it, and returned to the table.

Conrad pushed his newspaper aside. "Just the two of us," he said. "Kind of nice, isn't it?" Before she could answer, Conrad spoke again, only now he was looking at her the way he had when she was at Le Chateau, recovering from her surgery. "How are you feeling? No fever? Pain?"

"I'm fine," she said. But instead of going back to his paper, Conrad continued to look at her, and suddenly she wanted to be out of the house.

Something, she was certain, wasn't right.

She glanced at her watch.

"Oh, my God! I'm going to be late," she said, though she still had almost thirty minutes before either her mother or Maria usually drove her down to school. She dug into her bowl of cereal, eating as fast as she could.

"Relax," Conrad told her. "We have all the time in the world."

Alison cast around in her mind for something—anything—she could use as an excuse to go to school early. "I have to go to cheerleader sign-ups this morning," she said. "Maybe I'd better call Tasha and have her pick me up."

"I'll drive you," Conrad replied. He reached for his coffee cup, then pulled his hand away. "Better not have any more of that," he went on, his eyes fixing on Alison. "Big surgery today."

"I'll get my books," she said, finishing the last of her own coffee. "Be back in a minute. Want me to meet you in the garage?"

Conrad hesitated, then smiled. "Perfect."

Alison ran upstairs and threw her books into her backpack. She grabbed her cell phone and clipped it on, then looked in her closet for the green vest she always wore with her jeans and yellow silk tank top.

Not there.

Had Maria taken it to the cleaners?

No—her mom had borrowed it the other day when she went to lunch with Alexis.

Grabbing her backpack, she hurried down the hall to the master suite, went directly to her mother's dressing room and began pulling open drawers until she found the vest. Pulling it on, she was about to turn off the light and head back downstairs when she saw her mother's big Louis Vuitton bag sitting on the dresser next to the vanity.

The bag that her mother never left behind if she was working.

Never left behind, and never forgot.

Suddenly, the house seemed even emptier than when she'd gone into the dining room. A knot of fear began to tighten in her belly.

Where was her mother?

Maybe she'd just forgotten her bag.

But then when she opened the bag and looked inside, she found her mother's cell phone, her appointment book, and her keys.

Without her keys, how had she gone? Could someone have picked her up? Alexis, maybe?

But her mother hadn't said anything last night about an early appointment, and even if she'd had one, she would have come in this morning and said good-bye.

Wouldn't she?

What was going on?

What had happened?

Something
had happened—she was sure of it now.

Suddenly, every dark thought she'd ever had about Conrad came flooding back.

And she remembered the way he'd been looking at her.

And what he'd said:

Just the two of us…. We have all the time in the world.

What was happening? What was he up to?

Out!

She had to get out of the house and get away from Conrad, and she had to do it now.

But where could she go?

Her dad! All she had to do was call her dad and tell him to come and get her.

She turned away from the dressing room and started toward the bedroom door, fishing in her backpack. She was almost at the door when she found the phone, opened it, and speed-dialed her dad's cell phone.

But before it even began to ring, Conrad Dunn was looming in the doorway, blocking her way.

"This isn't the way I wanted this to go," he said softly.

"Where's Mom?" Alison demanded, her voice low. He moved toward her, and she backed away.
"What did you do?"
she yelled.
"What did you do to my mother?"

Reacting to her shouts as if jolted by electricity, Conrad's right arm shot out and his fingers closed on her wrist. He jerked her around, and the phone flew from her hand, hitting the wall four feet away and falling to the floor.

"I'll show you," he whispered, his voice so low and cold, the words filled her with a new terror.

"No!"
she cried out, trying to jerk her arm loose from his grip.
"Get away from me!"

But instead of letting go, Conrad's arms enfolded her in a bear hug that felt as if it would squeeze the breath from her lungs, and no matter how hard she struggled, she couldn't get even one of her hands loose to hit him or scratch him.

He pushed her against the wall, and one of his arms moved up around her neck and she felt the pressure of it.

"You need to go to sleep for a little while," Conrad whispered in her ear. "And when you wake up, you're going to be calm again, and I'm going to show you what's going to happen, and you're going to be beautiful. So beautiful…"

His words echoing in her mind, darkness swirled around the periphery of Alison's vision, and with her terror becoming panic, she willingly gave herself over to the dark swirl.

MICHAEL SHAW WALKED OUT of the boardroom with his ears ringing, which told him his blood pressure was far past the point his doctor would call "critical." Still, he wasn't dead, nor was he about to take a fall for the legal team that had signed off on Tina's special without anticipating the reaction from the TV audience. The reactions ranged from the threat of a lawsuit from a distant relative of one of the victims, who was claiming "severe trauma" due to her third cousin's corpse being shown on television, to the threat of an injunction from the LAPD itself.

By the time the station's owners had gathered in the boardroom, the finger-pointing had begun and the legal team, being lawyers, were already claiming they hadn't signed off on exactly the show that had aired.

They claimed there had been changes made.

Michael finally called a ten-minute break, if for no other reason than to let his blood pressure settle down a little. He needed fresh air, fresh coffee—the hell with his blood pressure—and a fresh shot at getting Tina Wong herself into the boardroom. Maybe between them they could convince the suits that the ratings would be worth the trouble, and the increased advertising rates would more than make up for the cost of defending against the third cousin, whoever she was.

"Coffee, please, Jane," he said as he passed his assistant's desk on the way to his office.

"Scott is on line one for you."

"Got it. And find Tina Wong and tell her to be here in ten minutes.
Ten,
not eleven. And I'm telling her, not asking her."

He collapsed into the squeaky old chair that should have collapsed years ago but wouldn't quite give up the ghost, took a deep breath, and picked up the phone. "Hi," he said.

"How's it going?"

He took another deep breath. "Don't ask—it's a nightmare around here. What's up?"

"Risa was supposed to show a house to a couple of my friends this morning, and she stood them up."

Michael frowned. "
Risa
stood them up? Impossible."

"That's what I told them, but they say she didn't show. And she's not answering her cell phone, either. Any idea what might be going on?"

"Risa's never missed an appointment in her life. And she doesn't get sick, so they must have gotten the time or the place wrong."

"She confirmed with them yesterday afternoon," Scott said.

"And she's not answering her phone? That's not good." He sipped at the coffee. "Let me check into it."

"Okay. Sorry to add more to your load this morning."

"It's okay. I'll call you back."

Michael hung up and immediately dialed Risa's cell, but it rang through to her voice mail. "Risa, it's Michael. It's eight-forty on Monday morning. Please call me as soon as you can."

Jane brought in a fresh cup of coffee, and he tried to get his mind back to the problem in the boardroom. Somewhere on his desk there was a sign-off from the lawyer who had seen the final edit of the show, and he intended to find it. He began searching through the clutter, hoping he hadn't given it to someone to file. If he had, they'd never find it.

He picked up his cell phone to flip through the pile of papers underneath it and noticed that he'd missed a call.

Risa?

No. It was from Alison's phone, and she hadn't left a message. And that was as strange as Risa missing an appointment, because Alison always left messages—it had become a game with them over the years, and they often had long, involved, convoluted—and generally very funny—conversations back and forth via voice mail.

There was no way Alison would call him and not leave a message, even if it was only some kind of fake gibberish he wouldn't be able to understand but would spend hours trying to decipher. He speed-dialed her phone, knowing she'd be in class and most likely had turned it off.

Sure enough, her voice mail came on. "It's me, cupcake," he said. "Call me at the office as soon as you can, okay? Call me between classes. It's important." He hung up, but the ringing in his ears told him his blood pressure was not better, and it was now accompanied by a nervous feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He spotted the sign-off from the lawyer pinned to the cork board on the wall next to his desk and pulled it down. But now his mind was no longer on the meeting in the boardroom.

Alison had called but left no message.

Risa failed to show up for an appointment.

Something was wrong.

He hit the intercom button. "Jane, get me the Wilson Academy."

A moment later Jane's voice came over the intercom. "It's ringing on line two."

"Good morning, Wilson Academy," an efficient female voice answered on the third ring.

"Hello—this is Michael Shaw, Alison Shaw's father. I have an urgent situation and need to speak with her as soon as possible."

"Just a moment," the voice said. "Let me see where she is right now." There was a long pause, then the voice came back on the line: "Mr. Shaw? Alison isn't here today. Nor have we received a notice of an excused absence." Michael read the careful phrasing very clearly: they thought Alison was cutting school.

Another thing she simply wouldn't do.

"All right, thank you," he said, and hung up. Now the meeting in the boardroom was forgotten. He grabbed his cell phone and the memo, handing the memo to Jane on his way out. "I've got a family emergency," he said. "Give that to Tina and tell her to take it into the boardroom. That should let the lawyers know the ball's in their court. I'll call you when I can."

Jane looked at him in shock. "You're leaving? Just like that? They're all in there waiting for you!"

Michael shook his head, already heading toward the elevator. "Something's going on with Alison—I've gotta go."

As soon as he pulled out of the parking lot and into traffic, he called Scott. "Something's haywire—I can't find Risa, and now I can't find Alison, either. I'm on my way up to Risa and Conrad's place."

"What do you mean, you can't find Alison? Isn't she at school?"

"Not as far as they know," Michael said. "I'll call you when I get there."

"Be careful."

"I will," Michael said.

Closing his phone, he stepped on the accelerator.

* * *

COLD.

Freezing cold.

Alison's teeth chattered as she struggled to reach the blanket at the end of her bed, but she couldn't get to it.

Indeed, she couldn't move her arms at all.

What was wrong?

The blackness that had surrounded her only a moment ago began to recede, and as her mind rose through the layers of unconsciousness toward the gathering light, she felt a terrible tiredness overwhelm her.

If she could just sink back down into her bed and retreat into the soft, warm escape of sleep…

But she was too cold.

And there were noises in her room.

Noises she'd never heard before.

Strange, gurgling noises.

Alison opened her eyes and found herself staring straight up into an enormous overhead light. She reflexively closed her eyes against the painful glare, then turned her head and opened her eyes again, more slowly this time.

This wasn't her bedroom, this was…

A dream?

It had to be. She was dreaming that she was back in Conrad's operating room at Le Chateau.

But this time she didn't want the surgery.