Scared to Death (30 page)

“Yeah,” she hears herself say. “I made it.”

“Great. Come on. I'm going to take you over to the place where I'm staying, down in Nottingshire.”

 

Unbelievable.

He's with
her
.

It's not as if La La thinks anything romantic is going to happen between the two of them. She's his
sister
, for God's sake.

She doesn't know that yet, of course. But Jeremy's going to tell her. He promised.

“Bring her back here and we'll tell her together,” La La instructed him.

He didn't think that was such a good idea.

“Who helped you find her in the first place?” she
reminded him. “I'm the one who kept an eye out for her the other day, and followed her to Starbucks and told you where she was so you could meet her, remember?”

What Jeremy doesn't know, of course, was that La La had also been the one who planted that rat in Caroline's bag just before he arrived.

As she sat there, drinking coffee and watching the two of them getting to know each other, she found herself feeling more and more jealous.

Just like now.

But she'll do something about it. They should be here soon.

Then Caroline can join Renny, already entombed in the soundproof basement studio Daddy built all those years ago, where no one will ever hear their screams.

So nice that it came in handy for something, La La thinks. She tries the studio door one more time to be sure it's locked, then goes back up to the first floor to wait for Jeremy.

 

“You're sure you don't know where your sister might be?” one of the cops asks Annie, who's sitting beside Marin, stroking her hand.

“No. Her bedroom door was closed when I got up. I thought she was in there.”

Marin raises the water glass to her lips, taking another sip. The medication is still in her system, but she's coming out of it now. At least she can focus on what's going on.

Caroline is out somewhere…

But that's not why the police are here.

They're here because Elsa Cavalon's daughter is missing, and for some reason, they thought Marin might have had something to do with it.

They still might think that, judging by the way they're watching her every move.

But they're definitely concerned about Caroline's absence. Maybe because they're wondering if Marin has something to do with that, too.

She told them about the argument they had last night. “Just normal mother-daughter stuff,” she'd called it.

They didn't seem convinced.

They've called Caroline's friends. None of them are even in town, and none has heard from Caroline in the last twenty-four hours.

Marin sets down the half-empty water glass, shaking so badly that droplets slosh over the rim. Annie reaches for her hand and squeezes it.

“Annie…” Marin leans her head on her daughter's surprisingly sturdy shoulder. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For being here with me.
For
me. You…you're the only one I can count on. Ever.”

Annie strokes her mother's hair in silence.

It should be the other way around, Marin thinks. Mother comforting daughter. No matter what happens—
no matter what
—things are going to change around here.

She's
going to change.

I know what I have to do to make that happen.

Right now, before I lose my nerve.

She starts to rise, thinking only of the pill bottles in her bedside drawer.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“Wait. There is one thing…”

Marin sits again. “What is it?”

“I don't want to get into trouble.” She glances anxiously at the police officers who are watching and lis
tening with interest. “You have to swear you won't tell Caroline.”

“Tell her what?”

“I'll be right back.” Annie gets up quickly and disappears down the hall.

Marin and the cops wait in strained silence, but not for long.

Annie returns clutching something in her hand. “I was kind of…looking through Caroline's room…I do that sometimes…”

Marin closes her eyes. How many times has her older daughter accused her kid sister of snooping?

I always stuck up for Annie.

But Caroline was right.

“I found this in her drawer.”

“I'll take it.” The cop closest to her stretches out his hand. She looks at Marin, who nods slightly.

Annie hands him what looks like a crumpled napkin.

He inspects it. “Whose phone number is this?”

“I don't know. But maybe it has something to do with where she went.”

 

Caroline hasn't said much since Jeremy met her at the train station, and he wonders what's wrong with her.

Is she having second thoughts about being here?

He's
having second thoughts about it, that's for sure. Maybe he isn't ready to tell her the truth yet. Or maybe it's just that he doesn't want La La here when he tells her.

Maybe?

Hell, he doesn't want La La around anywhere. She's smothering him. He can't take it anymore.

Guilt brought him here in the first place; guilt has kept him coming back.

But he's had enough. He was going to tell La La that this morning—tell her it's over.

She was gone, though, when he woke up, and then Caroline called, and now…

Now everything's a mess.

He turns on to Regis Terrace, thinking again of the first time he came here, last fall.

La La had made the first move that night, but he hadn't fought her off very hard.

Oh hell, he hadn't fought her off at all. She was a beautiful woman, and despite all he'd been through with Papa, he was a red-blooded man. Women had been drawn to him ever since he ventured out the front door of Papa's house and made his way to Texas.

He'd known it would be wrong to get too close to any of them, though. As much as he craved love and acceptance, he was nowhere near ready for a real relationship. Not after what he'd been through.

But it was different with La La Montgomery—or so he'd tried to convince himself just before he got carried away and fell into bed with her. Different because she wasn't really a stranger, and because she wasn't like the carefree young girls he'd met in bars. La La had been through her share of pain; she was, in many ways, older than her years, with a nurturing quality that enveloped him, made him feel momentarily safe and warm.

And yet, after he left her that first night, he'd promised himself it would never happen again, just as he had with the others who'd come before her.

La La might understand him better than anyone, but he still wasn't capable of a relationship, and they both had too much baggage, and anyway, there was something about her—about the intensity of her gaze—that made him uneasy.

He would never have gone back if not for the hysterical phone call from La La the next morning, saying she'd just found her mother, tragically killed in a drunken fall down the stairs.

“Please, Jeremy—please come. I need you.”

She's always telling him how much she needs him, how much she loves him, how he's all she has…

That much is true. La La lives in complete isolation, alone now in the brick mansion she inherited along with her parents' fortune.

He knows she graduated from college, that she had vague plans of moving away and finding a career of some kind.

“But then I found you instead,” she likes to tell him.

As he pulls into the driveway, Caroline speaks at last.

“Whose house is this?”

What do I even tell her? Do I explain here, in the car? Or wait until we get inside?

“Jake?”

Maybe La La won't be here after all. Maybe she's…out somewhere. Or sleeping—she couldn't have gotten much sleep…

Thoughts racing, Jeremy reaches for the garage door opener.

“Jake!”

Oh. Right. He's supposed to be Jake, and Caroline is waiting for him to answer her question.

“It's a friend's house.”

The door opens and he pulls into the garage.

No luck. La La's Mercedes is parked there. He'd known it would be, and yet he feels sick at the sight of it.

He turns off the car, closes the garage door behind them, and gets out.

Caroline hasn't moved.

“Coming?” he leans in to ask her, and she turns to him.

“Is this your girlfriend's house, Jake?”

The question catches him off guard. Her dark eyes are narrowed—eyes that are so like his own that sometimes he feels as though he's looking into a mirror.

How can she not know? Doesn't she realize that we have some kind of connection? Doesn't she sense that the same blood runs through our veins?

“Jake…I asked you a question.”

“Yeah. The thing is…she's not going to be my girlfriend for much longer. It's over.”

 

“Mrs. Quinn?”

Caught up in a wistful reverie, she's startled by a male voice beside her. She looks up to see the cop who left the room a short time ago with the telephone number Annie had found in Caroline's room.

“Two things. Your credit card was used this morning at an electronic kiosk in Penn Station to purchase a one-way ticket to Boston on the Acela.”

“What?
”

“Also, we've checked your daughter's phone records, and she called this number last night and again this morning.”

“Whose phone is it?”

“We traced it to a twenty-two-year-old named Jeremy Smith from California.”

Jeremy
.

 

“La La?”

Standing with her back to the doorway, she hears her name spoken behind her, but it doesn't register.

Nothing has registered, other than the words that floated to her ears from the garage, when she opened the door to greet Jeremy.

She's not going to be my girlfriend for much longer. It's over.

La La chews her lip, tasting blood.

Really?

Really, Jeremy?

You're going to leave me, after what you did to me?

Arms folded, she stares at a photograph on the mantel. In it, she's with her father, sitting on his lap. He's grinning, and her mouth is wide open. She's probably singing. She was always singing.

Then Jeremy came along.

“There you are.”

Slowly, she turns.

There he is.

Not Jeremy the way he used to be—a dark-haired imp with troubled eyes. Not the Jeremy who beat her beyond recognition. Not on the outside, anyway.

This Jeremy looks different.

His hair is blond now.

He had plastic surgery to repair the damage to his face, as did she. But his was more recent: surgery to repair the scars and bruises and broken bones inflicted by the man he called Papa.

Her own scars, bruises, broken bones—her broken voice, her broken heart—were inflicted by Jeremy.

This
Jeremy. He's still the same person, deep down inside. The person who destroyed her.

“La La! What are you doing?”

She blinks.

He isn't alone.

She recognizes the girl.

“This is Caroline. Caroline, this is La La.”

Looking hesitant—so different from the cocky girl
La La followed in New York the other day—Caroline cautiously takes a step toward her. “Hi, Lila.”

“It's La La! Not Lila. You stupid bitch.”

“Hey!” Jeremy steps in front of Caroline, almost as if he's protecting her.
Her
—not La La. That's rich.

La La strides toward the two of them.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm just telling your little sister that she got my name wrong.”

“Jesus, La La, shut
up
!”

“Oh, and I think she has your name wrong, too. She thinks you're Jake. Isn't that funny, Jeremy?”

Beside him, Caroline Quinn has gone pale, her mouth gaping open as she absorbs La La's words.

Jeremy turns toward her, touches her arm. “Caroline…”

“Sister?
”

He shakes his head, and La La grins.

Caroline touches the door frame, as if she's going to faint. “You're—”

“No, Caroline, I—”

“What is she talking about?”

“She's crazy.” He glares at La La.

Rage flares inside her. “It's the truth and you know it.”

“Who
are
you?” Caroline takes a step back from Jeremy, shaking her head in disbelief.

“I'm—your parents are—”

Obviously, he can't even bring himself to say the words.

La La does it for him. “Your parents are
his
parents, get it? He's your brother. The one everyone thinks is dead. Surprise!”

Caroline looks from Jeremy to La La and back again. “How—how can…You're
alive
?”

“Don't worry,” La La can't resist saying as she
reaches into her pocket for the gun. “He won't be, for long. And neither will you.”

 

“Mr. and Mrs. Cavalon…”

Elsa looks up to see Detective Gibbs in the doorway of the kitchen, where she and Brett are seated at the table with Lisa, the police sketch artist working on a composite drawing of Melody Johnson. Brett keeps saying he's seen the woman somewhere before, but he can't remember where, and it's driving him crazy.

“We've had a development.”

Elsa's heart stops.

No. Please, no.

She braces herself for the worst news.

Brett grabs her hand and squeezes it, asking Detective Gibbs, “Is Renny…?”

“No,” he says hastily, “it's not about her. No. We're still working on a couple of leads, but…Lisa, would you mind giving us a few moments' privacy?”