Last to Die by Tess Gerritsen Read Free Book Online

his school’s accelerated program. Yes, he did have problems making friends and fitting in, but he had at least a dozen IQ points over his peers.”
    Jane thought of the books she’d seen in Teddy’s bedroom, and the wide range of esoteric subjects they covered. Greek history. Ethnobotany. Cryptozoology. Subjects that she doubted most fourteen-year-olds were even acquainted with. “Asperger’s syndrome,” she said.
    Moore nodded. “That’s what the neighbor said. The Clocks had Teddy evaluated, and the doctor told them Teddy is high functioning, but he misses certain emotional cues. Which is why it’s hard for him to make friends.”
    “And now he’s left with no one,” said Jane. She thought of how he had clung to her in the neighbor’s solarium. She could still feel his silky hair against her cheek and remembered the sleepy-boy scent of his pajamas. She wondered how he was adjusting to the emergency foster family where Social Services had placed him. Last night, before going home to her own daughter, she’d driven to Teddy’s new home and brought him his glasses. He was now staying with an older couple, seasoned foster parents who had years of experience nurturing children in crisis.
    But the look Teddy had given Jane as she’d walked out the door after that visit could break any mother’s heart. As if she were the only person who could save him, and she was abandoning him to strangers.
    Moore reached into his folder and took out a print of a Christmas card photo with the caption: HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM THE CLOCKS ! “This is the last correspondence the neighbor received from the Clocks. It’s an e-card, sent about a month after the family left Providence. They pulled their three kids out of school, put their house on the market, and the whole family set off to sail around the world.”
    “On a seventy-five-foot yacht? They had money,” said Frost. “What did they do for a living?”
    “Annabelle was a homemaker. Nicholas was a financial consultant for some company in Providence. The neighbor didn’t remember the name.”
    Crowe laughed. “Yeah, a title like
financial consultant
does sound like money.”
    “It’s kind of a radical move isn’t it?” said Frost. “To suddenly pull up roots like that? Leave everything behind and drag your family onto a sailboat.”
    “The neighbor certainly thought so,” said Moore. “And it happened abruptly. Annabelle never even mentioned it until the day just before they left. It makes you wonder.”
    “About what?” said Crowe.
    “Was the family running from something? Scared of something? Maybe there
is
a link between these two attacks on Teddy.”
    “Two years apart?” Crowe shook his head. “As far as we know, the Clocks and the Ackermans didn’t even know each other. All they had in common was the boy.”
    “It just troubles me. That’s all.”
    It troubled Jane as well. She looked at the Christmas photo, perhaps the last one that existed of the Clock family. Annabelle Clock’s chestnut hair was upswept and casually elegant, reflecting hints of gold. Her face, like sculpted ivory with delicately arching brows, could have adorned a medieval painter’s canvas.
    Nicholas was blond and athletic looking, his impressive shoulders filling out a lemon-yellow polo shirt. With his square jaw, his direct gaze, he looked like a man built to protect his family from any threat. On the day this photo was taken, when he stood smiling with one muscular arm draped around his wife, he could not have imagined the horrors that lay ahead. A watery grave for himself. The slaughter of his wife and two of their children. At that instant the camera captured a family with no reason to fear the future; their optimism shone brightly in their eyes and smiles, and in the Christmas decorations they had hung on the tree behind them. Even Teddy looked ebullient as he stood beside his younger sisters, three angelic-looking children with matching light brown hair and wide blue