Scared to Death (31 page)

“No problem.” The sketch artist pushes back her chair, flashes them a concerned smile, and slips out of the room.

Detective Gibbs crosses toward them, carrying an open laptop. “I've been on the phone with New York.”

New York…

Marin Quinn is in New York. So is Garvey Quinn.

“I need you to take a look at something I just received,” Detective Gibbs says, almost gently, as he sits across from them, the laptop facing in his direction. “You might want to prepare yourselves. It's going to be a shock.”

Prepare ourselves?
Elsa thinks incredulously.
How are we supposed to prepare ourselves? For what?

He turns the laptop so that they're looking at the screen.

There's a picture on the screen. A photograph of a young man.

Peering closer at it, Elsa is struck by an impossible thought.

No. It can't be.

And yet, Brett gasps. “Is that…?”

“No,” Elsa says sharply. “It isn't.”

Of course not. Brett just wants so badly for it to be him that he's seeing him, just as Elsa did, for all these years.

Always looking at little boys, at teenagers, at young men who were the same age her son would have been. Always searching for that familiar gleam in a pair of big dark eyes, for the quick smile that could light up a room; always searching for Jeremy.

Even after she knew in her heart that he was never coming home again—she never stopped looking for him.

Never.

Not until they told her, last fall, that he was dead.

Detective Gibbs clears his throat and asks, very softly, “Do you recognize him?”

“Yes,” Brett whispers.

“No!” Elsa turns to him. “No, Brett, don't. That isn't him.”

The features are different.

“Elsa—”

“Don't let yourself get caught up in…in hoping, and wishing. It'll only hurt more.”

“But—”

“It's
not him
. It can't be. They told us—”

“Elsa, please, just look at him again. Look at his face.”

“Why? He's dead, Brett. We both know it. He's
dead
.”

“Mrs. Cavalon,” Detective Gibbs cuts in gently, “we have reason to believe that this is your son. He's twenty-two years old, and his name is Jeremy.”

“He's…twenty-two?” Brett's voice is ragged. “He's alive?”

“He's alive. Mrs. Cavalon…?”

Elsa forces herself to look again, to really look this time.

Look at his face.

Look at his eyes.

She does.

And then she knows. She
knows.

She presses her fists against her mouth, tears streaming down her face.

“That's him. It's Jeremy.”

 

“Look at you…you're scared to death, aren't you?”

Yes, Caroline's scared. She's terrified. Terrified of this…this person, this La La, who's clearly insane…

And terrified of Jake, who brought her here.

No, not Jake.

Jeremy.

Her
brother
.

“You know, everyone's afraid of something—like being closed into small spaces…that's called claustrophobia, did you know that?” La La doesn't wait for an answer, rambling on, “Then there's Jeremy—he's afraid of everything. Including me. Aren't you?”

She abruptly whirls to face Jeremy, standing beside Caroline. She sneaks a glance at him and sees that he's fixated on the gun.

He's going to try to grab it, she realizes.

“He's not a man. He's like a little boy. No—like a little
girl
. How about if I lock you away, too?” She pokes the gun at him and he flinches.

She laughs, a sound that sends chills down Caroline's spine.

She's going to kill us.

Oh God. I'm going to die.

She wants her mother so badly that the pain takes her breath away.

Mom
.

Not Daddy.

Mom is the one who's there for her, she realizes. The only one.

There was a time when Caroline was convinced she'd be better off without her mother—and vice versa.

It's not true. I need her. And I'm never going to get the chance to tell her
.

 

Staring at the gun, Jeremy knows he's running out of time. He has to do something.

Any second now, La La is going to kill him, and Caroline, too.

“After all I've done for you…you were going to leave me?”

“What have you done for me?” He looks past her, scanning the living room for some way out, or for a weapon…

“I've done everything you're too weak to do. I've punished them all for what they did to you, and this is the thanks I get?”

“Who?” he asks, his gaze falling on a pair of and-irons beside the hearth, just a few feet away. “Who did you punish?”

“Who do you think?” She laughs again. “Look at you—you're pathetic. You're
nothing
.”

In her eyes, he sees the same streak of mocking cruelty that made him lash out at her all those years ago.

Back then, she was just a mean little girl, and he was a confused, angry, abused little boy.

Now she's a cold-blooded killer…

And I'm…

I'm not pathetic.

I'm not
nothing.

I'm a man.

Looking at her, he sees Papa's face, and he sees the faces of all the others, too, the ones who tortured him before he came to Elsa.

He closes his eyes so he won't have to see, and he claps his hands over his ears, trying to drown out the scornful laughter filling his head.

“What's the matter, Jeremy? Are you scared?”

Scared?

No.

He's not scared. He's been to hell and back, and nothing will ever scare him again.

 

Jeremy's eyes snap open.

He lunges for the gun.

La La presses the trigger.

Jeremy is alive.

Alive
.

And Renny is gone.

Cradling his wife in his arms, Brett tries to grasp the situation—tries to figure out what one unbelievable fact might have to do with the other.

Detective Gibbs seems to be waiting for him and Elsa to absorb the miracle.

“Are you saying…” Brett shakes his head rapidly, starts again. “Is Jeremy connected to the woman who took our daughter?”

“He may be.”

“No,” Elsa says sharply, lifting her head at last. “He wouldn't hurt her.”

“You don't even know him, Elsa,” Brett can't help snapping. Even now, even after all these years, the old
pattern has resumed. Elsa's defense of Jeremy, and Brett's wariness.

“He wouldn't hurt her,” she repeats stubbornly, wrenching herself from his arms and standing to face him.

“How can you even say that? Look what he did to—”

All at once, it hits him.

Melody Johnson…

He knows where he's seen her before. Years ago, and her face is different, but her eyes…those blue eyes…

Even the name…

Melody.

“La La.” Brett turns abruptly to Detective Gibbs. “Her name was—
is
—La La Montgomery.”

 

Numb with horror, Caroline watches Jeremy fall to the floor.

Standing over him with the gun in her hand, La La shakes her head. “I told you you're pathetic.”

It's as if she's forgotten Caroline is there.

I have to get out of here.

She turns her head slightly, checking the pathway behind her. The house, when Jeremy led her through, was a maze. Can she even find her way back to the door?

“Don't try it.”

Startled, she sees that La La is looking at her.
Aiming
at her.

“Come on.” La La calmly sidesteps Jeremy's crumpled, bloody form. “Let's go.”

“Go…” Caroline whispers, paralyzed with fear.

La La jabs the gun into her ribs. “I said, let's go!
Walk!
”

Caroline walks.

 

In the master bedroom, Marin once again stands holding a plastic pill bottle in her hand, poised over the toilet.

This time, though, there's no hesitation. This time, her hand is sure and steady as she dumps the contents into the bowl.

Then she empties another bottle, and another, and when they're all gone, every last pill, she flushes them down the toilet.

Turning away, she sees Annie standing in the doorway.

“Mom,” she says, “the detectives want to talk to you. They said they think they know why Caroline went to Boston.”

 

Moving through the big house, prodded along by La La's gun in her back, Caroline struggles to keep her wits about her.

Where is she taking me?

What is she going to do?

No, she
knows
what La La is going to do.

This is, unmistakably, a death march.

They've reached the kitchen now, and the back door is just a few yards away. Beyond it, through the glass window, Caroline can see leafy trees, and sunshine, and a wide blue sky.

Freedom.

But she doesn't dare run for it, knowing she'll be shot in the back.

La La yanks open a door—a different door, and Caroline sees a steep flight of stairs before her.

“Go!”

Caroline hesitates, knowing beyond a doubt that if
she descends into the shadows, she'll never again see the light of day.

This is her only chance.

“Move!
”

She moves.

But not forward.

No, she flings herself backward, full force, into La La Montgomery.

 

Sitting beside Brett in the back of Detective Gibbs's car, hurtling north up Interstate 95 toward Boston, Elsa closes her eyes, seeing her lost little boy—the boy she'd always known, deep down inside, would never come home again.

And Renny…

“She's going to be okay,” she tells Brett, opening her eyes to see him staring grimly out the window.

He turns to look at her. “How do you know?”

“I just know.”

All those years, her heart had told her that her little boy was lost to her forever. She was right about that.

Jeremy the child is gone forever.

But Jeremy the man is alive.

And he's still her son, no matter what.

 

The wind knocked out of her, La La falls to the kitchen floor with Caroline on top of her.

“Get
off
me!” she snarls, her arms pinned beneath their combined weight, her right hand still clenching the gun.

She can feel Caroline clawing for it.

Keeping her finger tight on the trigger, she summons every bit of strength to heave her upper body
from the floor. The other girl goes flying and La La scrambles to her feet.

“You shouldn't have done that.” She stands over Caroline with the gun in both hands now, straight out in front of her as she takes aim for the girl's chest.

Then she thinks better of it and changes her vantage, aiming instead for Caroline's head. Yes, that's better. This way, her pretty face will be destroyed, just like—

Sensing a whoosh of movement behind her, La La whirls around…

Just in time to see Jeremy, enraged, swinging a golf club toward her head.

No, she realizes in the split second before it hits.

It's not a golf club at all.

It's an andiron.

 

“Oh my God. Jeremy!”

Standing over La La, seeing the blood pooling beneath her head, Jeremy is vaguely aware of Caroline's shocked horror—but well aware of his own, and of the agonizing pain in his arm.

“You…you're bleeding.” Caroline has turned to him.

He looks down, sees the blood running down his hand, covering the andiron.

“No, that's hers.” All at once, his fingers release the weight of it and it thuds to the floor beside her body.

“Yours, too. Let me see.” Caroline touches his arm gently, and her hand comes away red. “She shot you, Jeremy.”

“She…shot me?” He closes his eyes, feeling faint, then forces them open and looks down at his arm.

Caroline is right. He was shot. He was on the floor, in the living room…

“Here, sit down.”

He lets Caroline guide him into a chair.

“I'll call for help,” she's saying.

All he knew, when he was lying on the floor, was that he had to stop La La before she hurt his sister.

And now…

“Don't worry,” Caroline tells him, already dialing 911. “It's going to be all right. Just hang in there, okay?”

Hang in there.

Jeremy leans his head back and smiles faintly.

Hang in there. That, he can do.

He's done it all his life.

 

When her cell phone rings in her hand, Marin literally jumps out of her chair.

“Mom?” Annie is up, too, right beside her. “Is it…?”

Yes. Caroline's number is in the caller ID window.

In the moment before she answers the call, blurting her daughter's name, Marin has a flash of doubt.

The police are certain Caroline is in Boston…with Jeremy.

What if I've lost her—lost them both—for good?

“Mom?”

“Caroline,” she says again, and then her voice breaks.

“Mom…I'm so sorry. I'm sorry.”

Caroline—her stoic, unemotional daughter, so like Garvey—or so Marin has always believed—is crying. Apologizing.

Tears streaming down her face, Marin asks, “Are you all right?”

“I am. We both are.”

“Both?
”

“Jeremy—he's been shot, but the paramedics are here, and he's going to be okay.”

“Jeremy…”

“He saved my life.”

“Jeremy…”