Despite the crummy weather, it seems that a good portion of the metropolitan New York population is headed to the New England coast for the weekend. Thanks to relentless traffic, Elsa’s two-hour trip has taken nearly five.

By the time she reaches Groton, the last two frantic days and virtually sleepless nights have taken their toll. Her shoulder blades are ablaze, her head is pounding, and her eyes desperately want to close. All she can think of is falling into her own bed—with Renny safely tucked between her and Brett—and going to sleep.

She doesn’t give a damn about anything else. As long as the doors are locked and Brett is there—

But as soon as she turns onto their block, she can see that the house is dark, the driveway empty. At this hour?

She pulls over to the curb, thoughts racing.

Maybe he’s taking advantage of their absence and working late.

Maybe he’s on his way to New York after all. Maybe he’s been trying to call her and got worried when she didn’t answer.

That must be it.

Why didn’t she try to reach him? Even if the phones are tapped and the house is bugged, she could have let him know that she and Renny are okay. How could she have been so stupid?

Stupid, scared, deliriously tired…

And now, alone once again.

Even Meg’s house next door appears unusually deserted. Oh, that’s right—she mentioned that her kids are out of town, and she’s working nights.

Ordinarily, Elsa would be glad for the opportunity to have her nosy neighbor MIA. But right now, it might be nice to have someone within earshot, just in case…

In case she needs to scream for help.

Yet no one can be in two places at the same time. Whoever was back in New York prowling around Maman’s apartment isn’t here waiting for them now, inside the house—not unless he read Elsa’s mind and somehow managed to beat her back to Groton.

For now, they’re safe here.

All we have to do is get inside.

Then I can call Brett and tell him where we are.

No—she’d better not do that. Not from the home phone. If it really is tapped, or the house is bugged, Brett wouldn’t be the only one who knows where she and Renny are.

Oh, come on. Do you really believe this guy wouldn’t think to check here sooner or later?

But this isn’t her car. Hers is still in the parking lot of the Sunoco—or, for all she knows—or cares—it’s been towed away by now.

If she parks this rental car, with its Florida plates, around the corner, and doesn’t turn on any lights when they get inside the house, it’ll look like no one is home.

And Meg Warren should be home from work any second now. Elsa can run over and call Brett from her phone. Of course, Meg will want to know why she’s doing that…

I’ll just tell her we’re having trouble with our lines.

Then Meg will want to know why she doesn’t just use her cell phone.

I’ll tell her the battery is dead.

She’ll ask why I don’t just plug it into the charger.

I’ll tell her I lost it, or that the power lines aren’t working either, or…

Something. Anything. Right now, it’s the best she can do. This is the end of the road—not just literally. She’s depleted; far too weary to figure out where else she can possibly go, much less get herself and Renny there. It would be dangerous to keep driving in her condition.

Mind made up, she shifts into drive and passes the house, turns the corner. A little ways down the next block, she parks the car, turns off the engine, and pulls the keys from the ignition.

Renny barely stirs as Elsa picks her up, whispering, “It’s okay, Mommy’s got you.”

The child’s arms wrap around her and her legs straddle Elsa’s hip. Her sleepy head rests on Elsa’s shoulder and she yawns softly, exhaling a whisper of warmth against her bare neck.

She’s too heavy for Elsa to carry her very far…but Meg Warren’s yard is right beyond that stand of trees in a nearby lot. They can cut through and go in the back door at home. If anyone is watching the house from the street…

No. You know they’re not.

But just in case…

The rain has stopped at last, having left the ground spongy beneath Elsa’s feet as she walks through the moonless night, picking her way around tree trunks and shrubs. Around and above her, branches drip steadily and the crickets have taken up their nightly chorus. Her ears strain to pick up other sounds—snapping twigs, footfalls other than her own…

But they’re alone out here tonight. Elsa feels it with just as much conviction as she felt the earlier presence in Maman’s apartment.

As she crosses into the Warrens’ yard, her feet suddenly start to slide out from under her. Managing to keep her hold on Renny and regain her balance, she looks down. Even in the darkness, she can see that she’s mired in a large rectangular patch of mud dotted with seedlings.

Meg must have planted a new garden…

And I’ve gone and trampled right through it. There will be hell to pay when she finds out.

For a moment, the thought strikes her as so ludicrous that Elsa is on the verge of hysterical laughter. Just as quickly, the humor disappears, though the burgeoning hysteria threatens to burst forth as a violent sob instead.

Good Lord, she’s an emotional wreck—and now is not the time to fall apart.

Gingerly, her arms beginning to sag under Renny’s weight, she picks her way across the muddy plot to the grass. Seconds later, she’s unlocking her own back door.

The last thing she wants to do is walk across the threshold without Brett waiting on the other side. But she has no choice.

Opening the door, she whispers to her sleeping daughter, “Everything’s going to be okay now, Renny—we’re home.”

 

Caroline is lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling, when she hears footsteps in the hall and an abrupt knock on her bedroom door.

Startled, she sits up. “Who is it?”

The door jerks open. “Who do you think it is?” Her mother is standing there, still wearing the clothes she had on this morning. But her makeup is smeared around her eyes, and her hair is a mess—like it got wet, and she let it dry without bothering to comb it.

“You were out when I got home.” Looking like that, besides. Sheesh. “Did you find Annie?”

“Yes, I found her.”

“Where is she?”

“Right now, she’s in bed. I just tucked her in.”

Tucked her in? Caroline opens her mouth to point out that her sister isn’t five years old, but sees her mother’s expression and thinks better of it. Clearly, Mom is in a bad mood.

Instead, she asks, “So where was she?”

“In the hospital.”

“What? Is she okay?”

“She will be.”

“What happened to her?”

“You sent her out to run in the park. That’s what happened. In the rain, all alone, with her asthma…”

Uh-oh. Remembering her earlier conversation with Annie, Caroline feels a twinge of guilt—not that she’ll admit it.

“I didn’t send her anywhere!” she tells her mother. “I wasn’t even here.”

“Exactly.”

Caroline frowns. “What does that mean?”

“I asked you to take care of things around here.”

“That’s your job. Not mine. Anyway, where were you? What were you doing in Westchester?”

Her mother’s blue eyes flash. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you, and Annie, and how you could have been so irresponsible to—”

“Stop it!” Caroline bolts from her bed. “Stop blaming me! Not everything is my fault!”

As they stand there glaring at each other, Caroline waits for her mother to soften and offer an apology.

It never comes.

 

Renny barely stirs when Elsa tucks her into bed in the master bedroom, still wearing her clothes. She had considered trying to get her into pajamas, but that would be sure to wake her, and she’d start talking, and that might be dangerous.

She leaves the bedroom door open and tiptoes out.

Well aware that the house might be bugged, Elsa is careful not to make a sound as she walks through the rooms with a small flashlight. Every door and window is securely locked, the shades are down, the lights are off. She casts light into the far corners, making sure no one is lurking, doubting she could even defend herself and Renny if someone were.

Right now, she barely has the energy to stay on her feet, much less fight off an assailant, or flee into the night with her daughter.

In the kitchen, she checks her own wooden knife block. The handles are all there. She stands with her hand poised over it for a moment. Then she pulls out a utility knife and examines the honed blade glinting in the flashlight’s beam.

Are you really capable of using this to harm a human being?

Remembering what happened to Jeremy fifteen years ago when someone violated their own backyard, she knows the answer.

If she had been armed then, and standing guard over her child, she would have killed to protect him. No question about it.

I’d do the same thing now, with Renny.

About to turn away from the counter, she sees a slip of paper with some writing on it. A note from Brett?

She snatches it up.

Mr. and Mrs. Cavalon: I’ll be Renata’s new caseworker…

Elsa’s heart sinks as she reads on. The last thing they need right now is this—this person—snooping around.

The signature is illegible, but there’s a phone number.

She paces, holding the note and the knife, wondering whether Brett called the number on the note, wondering whether she should call him after all.

But if she uses the phone and the line is tapped, all bets are off. She’d have to get Renny out right away.

I just need some time to rest and regroup, figure out what to do.

Brett won’t call here—that much is certain. Why would he? He thinks she’s in New York; he might be headed there himself.

He doesn’t have the keys to Maman’s apartment. What happens when he arrives and no one is there to buzz him up?

Is Tom the doorman still on duty?

Is he even a doorman?

He’s the one who helped Renny, remember? He could have hurt her, and he didn’t. He wasn’t the one stalking us in the apartment.

But why did he think he’d seen Maman in the lobby?

Was she really there?

I can’t even call her to see what the hell is going on. Not from here, anyway.

Peering through a crack in the shade, Elsa sees that Meg Warren’s driveway is still empty; the house still dark.

She should be home from work by now. She must have gone out afterward. Of all the nights for someone who frequently complains of having no social life to depart from her regular routine…

Oh well. She can’t stay out all night—can she?

Her kids are away. Maybe she has a secret lover, and she’s spending the night.

No. Meg has made the Cavalons privy to every detail about her life. If she had a lover, Elsa would know about it.

She’ll be home soon. When she gets here, Elsa will go over—with Renny, of course—and use her phone.

For now, there’s nothing to do but sit on the couch, clutching the knife, and wait.

 

Still shaking from the confrontation with Caroline, Marin jerks open the drawer on her bedside table and grabs an orange prescription bottle. It takes her a few tries to open the childproof cap. She dumps a couple of pills into her hand and steps into the bathroom to wash them down with a palmful of tap water.

She turns off the faucet and catches her reflection in the mirror above the sink.

“What’s happened to you?” she asks the haggard woman in the mirror, who stares back at her with haunted eyes.

She’s a mess; utterly depleted. When was the last time she ate anything, or actually even sat down, other than in the cab home from Lenox Hill?

Marin turns away from the mirror and goes back to the bedroom. For a moment, she stands looking at the door she slammed closed a few minutes earlier—after storming out of Caroline’s room and slamming her door closed as well.

Should she go apologize?

Maybe.

You shouldn’t have lashed out at her like that. She’s your daughter.

But so is Annie. When Marin thinks of what might have happened to her, lying on the ground in Central Park, all alone, struggling to breathe…

Awash in fresh fury, she turns away from the door and climbs into her big, empty bed to wait for sleep to overtake her.

 

Brett pauses to read the sign posted just off the elevator outside the ICU.

ABSOLUTELY NO CELL PHONE USE

“They mean it,” advises a grumpy-looking woman who just stepped off the elevator with him. “Electromagnetic interference messes with the equipment.”

Brett frowns, wondering if that’s even true.

“You need to turn off your phone,” the woman orders him. “My husband is in there on a ventilator, and the last thing I need is for some jackass to kill him by not following the rules.”

Jackass?

Jesus.

But Brett can’t really blame her. Like everyone else in this unit, the poor woman is under terrible pressure.

Reluctantly, he removes his phone from his pocket. He really doesn’t want to turn it off now, in case Elsa tries to reach him, or Joan does.

But what if it’s true about the electromagnetic interference?

“Off,” the woman repeats, all but folding her arms and tapping her foot.

Brett presses the button and holds it up to show her that it’s powering down. She gives a satisfied nod and walks briskly into the unit.

He stays close on her heels. He’s gotten this far without incident, but security has to be much tighter up here on the ICU floor.

Luck is with him: the staff is just changing shifts. He sticks close to the woman from the elevator, acts as though he belongs here just as much as she does, and miraculously, no one stops either of them.

Mike’s name is scrawled beside a half-open door at the end of the hall.

Brett stops and stares at the unrecognizably battered and bandaged comatose man in the bed.

“You here for Mike?”

He turns to see that the room has one other occupant: a gruff-sounding, burly guy who seems ill at ease in a small bedside chair.

“Yes. I’m Brett Cavalon. You must be Joe.”

The man nods, getting to his feet, and they shake hands. Brett can smell cigarette smoke on his clothes.

“How the hell did you get here?” he asks.

“I walked.”

“All the way from Connecticut?” Joe returns his faint grin.

“No, all the way from the parking lot. I tried to call and tell you I was going to drive up, but your phone went into voice mail.”

“Yeah, they make you turn it off in here.”

“So I hear.”

“Have a seat.” Joe gestures at the chair.

“That’s okay. It’s yours.”

“Nah, I’ve been sitting for hours. I don’t want to leave the poor guy lying here alone.”

“What about his family?”

“Mikey don’t have family as far as I know. He’s divorced, no kids.”

“Parents?”

“Dead.”

“That’s sad.”

“Yeah.”

The two of them stand somberly watching Mike breathe, assisted by the machines.

“Has he said anything at all?”

“No.” After a moment, Joe adds, “But the nurse said he might be able to hear.”

Brett tries to imagine what it would be like for Mike to be helplessly trapped somewhere inside that broken body. It’s probably better for him if he’s completely unconscious.

But it’s better for me if he can hear.

He can’t help wishing—somewhat guiltily—that Joe would leave so that he might try to ask Mike about Mumbai.

 

I hate her.

She ruins everything. Daddy’s life, her own life…

But she’s not going to ruin mine.

Pacing her room like a caged animal, Caroline knows she can’t stay here. Not for long, anyway—maybe not even for the rest of the night.

But she can’t leave until she has someplace to go—and she won’t until she works up her nerve to make the phone call.

She keeps finding reasons not to—the most convincing one being that it’s too late—yet it probably isn’t, and the more she stalls, the later it gets. Pretty soon, it really will be too late—even for a college guy.

Frustrated, Caroline pulls his phone number from her pocket as she has countless times since her mother slammed her bedroom door and stormed away.

This time, though, she actually dials.

After a few rings, she hears, “Hello?”

“Jake? It’s Caroline. What are you doing?”

“Now?” There’s a pause. “Why?”

“I was just wondering if you wanted to get together.”

“Now?” he says again.

“If you’re not busy.”

“I’m…ah, I was just about to go to bed.”

She thinks about making some kind of suggestive comment, but decides against it. That’s his department—if he’s interested in her.

But all he says is “Yeah. It’s been a long day.”

Tell me about it.

The thing is, he doesn’t sound all that tired. He sounds wide awake.

“Okay. I just thought…you know…” Trailing off awkwardly, knowing she must seem desperate, she wishes she’d never called.

Then Jake surprises her.

“How about tomorrow?” he asks.

“You mean…getting together?”

“Sure.”

“Really?”

“Why not? I’ll call you, okay?”

“Okay. When?”

“As soon as possible.”

“Great. So, uh, have a good sleep.”

“Yeah.” He yawns loudly. Maybe he really is tired. “You too.”

“I definitely will,” Caroline assures him, and hangs up the phone.

Tomorrow isn’t ideal, but it’s better than nothing.

 

With a silent curse, Jeremy hangs up the phone.

Caroline’s call caught him off guard. He didn’t know what to do, what to say.

So you told her you’ll get together with her tomorrow?

He was nervous. It just popped out somehow.

Maybe he should call her back now and tell her the truth.

Not the whole truth, of course. Just that he’s been called out of town, to Boston, and won’t be around tomorrow.

Then again, maybe he should see her. Maybe it’s time to come clean. Tell Caroline that his name isn’t really Jake.

He plucked that from thin air that day in Starbucks. Jake…as in Jacobson…as in the surgeon who’d given him a fresh start. It seemed fitting.

Still does.

No. Jeremy puts his phone back into his pocket. He won’t call Caroline back tonight. Better to wait and see what tomorrow brings.

Sleep tight, sis.

 

The night drags on past midnight, into morning, and still, there’s been no change in Mike Fantoni’s condition.

Doctors and nurses check the patient, requiring the visitors to leave the room for a bit. So far, no one has asked Brett who he is or how he got in here. The staff seems too sympathetic, or maybe just too busy, to worry about rules.

“This is torture,” Joe comments, rolling a pen back and forth between his right thumb and forefinger and looking at the clock. It’s almost two in the morning now.

“I’ll stay here with him if you want to go get something to eat, or grab a few hours’ sleep,” Brett offers, realizing Joe is probably desperate for a cigarette.

“You don’t mind?”

“Not at all.”

Brett doesn’t have to volunteer twice.

Left alone in the room, he sits for a long time in the uncomfortable chair, watching Mike.

Finally, he goes over to the bed. “I don’t know if you can hear me. It’s Brett Cavalon. I’m so sorry this happened to you.” He pauses to clear his throat. “I know you were looking into what happened down in Groton yesterday, and I know you were heading to Mumbai. If you—”

“Excuse me!”

He looks up and is startled to see a scrubs-clad stranger in the doorway.

“Who are you?” So much for the kindly nurses who looked the other way. This one clearly isn’t thrilled to find him here.

Brett takes a step back from the bed. “I’m a friend of Mike’s.”

“You’ll have to leave. No one is supposed to be in here right now.”

Judging by the no-nonsense expression, Brett figures it’s no use arguing—and, considering the patient’s condition, no use staying.

He leans over Mike one last time, again whispering, “I’m so sorry. Hang in there. I’ll be back when I can.”

 

“Mommy!”

Renny!

Elsa’s eyes snap open.

She sits up in bed.

No—she’s not in bed. It’s dark, but she’s…

Where am I? What’s going on?

Disoriented, she knows only that Renny is calling her. She gets her feet onto the floor, takes a step, and bumps into something.

“Ouch!”

The coffee table? What is she doing in the living room? Why—?

Then the memories hit like a barrage of bullets and she rushes toward her daughter’s bedroom, her heart pounding.

“I’m coming, Renny!” she calls out, remembering but not caring that the house might be bugged.

The door is closed. No, no, no…they never close Renny’s door. Something is wrong.

She jerks the knob, bursts through the door, and flips on the light.

The bed is empty.

She’s too late.

Reeling, Elsa flattens a palm against the wall to stay on her feet.

How could she have let this happen? How could she have fallen asleep knowing that someone out there wants to hurt her daughter?

Oh God. Please, God, no.

He can’t have taken Renny very far. But if he’s armed—

“Mommy!”

She lets out a whimper of relief as Renny’s voice hits her, along with the recollection that she’s not sleeping in her own bed tonight.

Elsa races back to the master bedroom, terrified of what she might find there.

Renny looks small and defenseless in the king-sized bed—and as disoriented as Elsa herself was just moments ago. A quick glance reveals that the room is empty—apparently so, anyway.

“What’s the matter?” She gathers Renny into her arms.

“The monster.”

Elsa’s heart stops. “He’s here?”

Renny nods and buries her head against Elsa’s breast.

“Where? Where is he, Renny?”

“I don’t know. I saw him…” A tremendous yawn overtakes her.

Elsa casts another wary look around. “Are you sure you saw him?”

“Mmm hmm,” Renny says sleepily.

But there’s no evidence of him, and nothing seems to have been disturbed. Was it another of Renny’s usual nightmares? Or was the monster sighting as real as everything else that’s been going on?

Awash in uncertainty, Elsa strokes her daughter’s hair.

Is any of it real?

Or was it her own imagination—that someone was stalking her around her mother’s apartment, that the doorman had taken Renny hostage, that someone had planted a Spider-Man toy that had once belonged to her dead son.

But what about those pictures that came in the mail? Brett saw them, too.

Unless her mind—fed by her own worst nightmares, and Renny’s wee-hour monster ones—conjured that, like everything else?

It happens. It happened to Renny’s birth mother.

But she was mentally ill.

Yet Elsa herself was unbalanced enough, at one point, to have completely lost touch with reality. She’d even tried to take her own life, convinced it was the only way to end the pain.

But that means nothing. Sane people commit suicide.

So do insane people.

Dear God.

Who’s to say Elsa isn’t suffering from acute stress disorder all over again? She wouldn’t know it if she were. She certainly didn’t realize it when it was happening to her last time around.

Is she suffering the final vestiges of a breakdown that began fifteen years ago, with Jeremy’s disappearance?

Is it any wonder?

She lost a child. She’s terrified of losing another. The human mind, under duress, is capable of playing all kinds of terrible tricks.

Somehow, right here, right now, in her own familiar house in the middle of the night, it’s easier to believe that she’s delusional than it is that the whole nightmare—her own, and Renny’s—ever happened at all.

 

Wait! Brett! Don’t leave!

The silent scream that seizes Mike’s body obliterates everything else—the pain, the fear, the sounds and sensation of movement around him.

It’s no use.

Brett is gone.

And even if the staff hadn’t come along to kick him out, Mike couldn’t have warned him anyway. He can’t communicate, dammit; can’t even bat an eyelash to let anyone know that he’s alive in here, like an undetected disaster survivor entombed in wreckage.

He can only pray that Brett and Elsa will figure it out somehow, before it’s too late. Or that he’ll have a miraculous recovery and be able to tell them himself. It doesn’t seem likely, but…

Anything is possible. Anything at all.

Isn’t that what he’d told himself when he suspected that Jeremy Cavalon might actually be alive?

Yes—and that was his fatal mistake.

Almost fatal, anyway.

After all, he’s not dead. He—

A sudden sound reaches his ears. The slightest sound, barely there—a whisper of movement somewhere nearby.

Startled, Mike realizes he’s not alone after all.

Someone is in the room.

It must be a doctor, or a nurse.

He waits.

All is still. Wouldn’t the medical staff be bustling about their business?

Whoever it is seems to be just…here.

Maybe it’s clergy, come to pray over him, or maybe Brett snuck back in, or—

“You should have minded your own business,” a voice hisses, its proximity as startling as the ominous words.

 

Caught up in thoughts of Mike, Brett doesn’t remember to turn on his phone until he’s in the car, heading back toward the highway.

He must have countless voice mails from Elsa. She’s probably worried sick. And with any luck, there will be one from Joan, as well.

Working his phone with one hand while he steers over the unfamiliar road with the other, he sees that his voice mail box is empty.

That can’t be. He must have hit the wrong button. They’re so small, and his fingers are clumsy.

He fumbles with the phone, trying to find the right one as he merges onto the highway.

Nope…that was the right button. There are no messages.

It’s understandable that Joan wouldn’t check her voice mail after hours, or that she wouldn’t call him back even if she’d gotten the message, but…

Surely, Elsa would have found a way to charge the battery before now. Or she would have realized hers was dead and called him from her mother’s house.

He gropes the buttons and blindly dials her cell.

Unlike earlier, it doesn’t bounce right into voice mail. This time, it rings a few times, getting Brett’s hopes up. Then Elsa’s voice comes on the line.

“You’ve reached the Cavalons. We can’t come to the phone right now…”

Brett lets out a frustrated curse and tosses the phone aside.

“Where are you, Elsa?” he mutters.

Clenching the wheel hard, he runs through one terrifying scenario after another until a blaring horn jerks his attention back to the road. He swerves just in time to avoid hitting the concrete median and pulls off at the next exit, shaken.

He needs to call someone.

But without Mike, he’s at a loss.

It’s time to involve the police. There’s nothing else he can do. He’ll just have to pray that when the time comes, the agency will understand and let the adoption go through.

When the time comes…

Please, please, please let the time come.

Let my girls be all right.

It must be a good sign, though, that the phone rang a few times before going into voice mail. It means the battery is no longer dead, right? So she must have charged it. Maybe—

Wait a minute.

You’ve reached the Cavalons…

That wasn’t her cell phone’s outgoing message.

He really must have hit the wrong button that time, pressing the speed dial number for their home phone, not Elsa’s cell.

No sooner does he realize that than his own phone, which landed on the floor in front of the passenger’s seat, begins to ring.

 

“If you could talk, you’d probably beg me to put you out of your misery, wouldn’t you?” asks the person looming over Mike, terrifyingly close. “Guess what? It’s your lucky day.”

Helpless, gripped by fear, Mike senses a swift, furtive movement beside him.

“There. All set. This should be quick.”

Quick…?

What should be quick?

Oh…

Oh God.

Oh no.

He’s suffocating.

Horror seeps in, saturating his body as if to replace the precious oxygen that’s been deliberately cut off.

“It’s okay…Just let it happen.”

Just…let…it…happen…

The voice seems far away now, fading.

Mike has always wondered what it would be like to die—whether it would hurt, whether the end would come quickly…

Now you know.

Funny, he thinks as he plummets into the darkness, that death is an even greater paradox than life.

Death—his death—is excruciating yet painless, agonizingly drawn out even as it happens in a flash…

 

It’s over.

Another one bites the dust.

Ah…that was the title of an oldie but goodie, and the perfect addition to life’s little soundtrack.

Mike Fantoni looks so peaceful, lying there with his eyes closed. No different, really, than he did a minute ago, when he was alive.

I really did do him a favor. Euthanasia. No need to feel bad about this one.

It’s what lies ahead that remains a bit troubling.

Taking the life of a healthy child isn’t exactly doing anyone any favors.

But it’s no less necessary, and there’s some comfort knowing that it will be done out of love.

In the end, as far as Jeremy is concerned, that’s all that’s really going to matter.

 

Straining to keep one hand on the wheel and an eye on the road, Brett struggles to reach the ringing phone on the floor in front of the passenger’s seat. At last his fingers close around it.

“Elsa?”

“Brett!”

“Thank God you’re all right!”

“How did you know where we were?”

“I—” He’s so relieved to hear her voice that it takes him a minute to grasp the question. “What do you mean? Where are you?”

“Didn’t you just call me?”

“I just called—wait, are you home?”

“You didn’t know?”

“No, I meant to call your cell, but…Is everything okay there?”

She hesitates long enough that he realizes she isn’t telling the whole truth when she answers that it is.

“Elsa—are you sure?”

“Yes, I was just asleep when the phone rang and by the time I got to it, it had gone into voice mail.”

“But why aren’t you at your mother’s?”

“It’s a long story. Where are you, by the way? I thought I’d find you here when we got back.”

“Another long story,” he tells Elsa. “But I’m on my way home. Are the doors locked?”

“The doors, the windows…trust me, we’re fine. Just hurry home. We have to figure out what’s going on…if anything even is.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know…I’m starting to wonder if I might not just be…paranoid.”

Paranoid?

It’s not the right word, he knows. But it’s the only one she can bring herself to say.

“I love you,” he says simply, relieved that she at least grasps the possibility that she’s suffering from a relapse. Now they can work together to get her the help she needs.

Hanging up, Brett makes a U-turn back toward the highway.

 

Was it really just six hours ago that you were about to climb into bed in a hotel in Times Square, exhausted?

It seems like a month has passed since the GPS alert that Brett Cavalon was on the move. Interesting how the human body responds to stress. Just when you think you’re too exhausted to even reach over and turn off the bedside lamp, you somehow find the energy to grab a cab to the airport, hop a flight, rent a car, and carry out yet another unfortunate but necessary death sentence.

Adrenaline is a wonderful thing.

But now…

It’s time to get some sleep at last.

At least this time, it won’t be in a cold, impersonal hotel room. Not when there’s a huge, vacant house with beds dressed in the finest European linens Montgomery money could buy.

At this hour, with hardly another soul on the road, the fifteen-mile trip from downtown Boston will be a breeze.

Nottingshire, here I come…again.

 

Did I just make a terrible mistake? Elsa wonders as she hangs up the telephone. Lying to Brett about having been asleep when it rang—that was no mistake. Later, when he gets here, and she can explain the whole story, she’ll tell him the truth: that she had been afraid the lines were tapped.

Had been afraid…

Or are you still?

Answering the call in the first place—that might have been her terrible mistake.

Earlier, after Renny’s nightmare, she’d convinced herself that she’d conjured the stalker situation in her paranoid maternal brain.

Paranoid?

Try mentally ill.

But as she lay there in the dark, listening to Renny’s even breathing and the silence of the house that no longer felt familiar, she wasn’t so sure.

Okay. So either she’s crazy, or they’re in danger.

Which is it?

Some choice.

No wonder you can’t decide.

Anyway, when the phone rang, her first instinct was not to take any chances.

A moment later, after it had gone into voice mail, she decided that was ridiculous—particularly when she saw on the caller ID that it had been Brett.

She didn’t even bother to listen to his message, just carried the phone into the next room and called him right back.

It’s a relief to know where Brett is and that he’s on his way home, but…

Did she just broadcast Renny’s whereabouts to a stranger listening in?

So now you’re back to the theory that (A) you’re not crazy and (B) you’re in danger. Terrific.

She paces over to the living room window and peeks through a crack in the curtains, half expecting to see the silhouette of a man watching the house.

But the street is empty…and so, she notices with a frown, is Meg Warren’s driveway.

At this hour?

Maybe Meg really does have a secret love life.

Anything is possible, Elsa tells herself. Anything at all.