Next to the shoe lay the scalpel that Conrad Dunn had clutched only a moment ago, and without hesitation, Michael picked it up.
With a quick glance up at Scott Lawrence, who still gripped Conrad’s hair in both his hands, Michael’s rage suddenly came into tight focus.
His eyes fixed on the wide expanse of Conrad Dunn’s throat.
Without making any conscious decision at all—without even thinking—he slashed the blade upward, its razor-sharp blade cutting deep into Conrad Dunn’s exposed flesh.
A gush of blood spurted from the artery the scalpel opened, pouring down Conrad’s surgical gown to mix with the green gel that covered the operating room floor.
“Are you okay?” he heard Scott ask.
He nodded quickly, then: “What about Alison? Did he cut her?”
The ensuing silence seemed to go on for an eternity, then he heard his partner say, “He was just beginning. I think she’s fine.”
As the sirens in the background abruptly fell silent and he heard voices shouting in the distance, Michael took a deep breath, chasing away the last dark cobwebs of unconsciousness.
The voices came closer, growing louder.
He heard the squawk of a radio.
At last he stood up, battling the weakness in his legs and the wrenching pain in his back. With Scott’s hand steadying him, he moved through the shattered glass wall into the laboratory.
He limped over to Risa’s still form and knelt next to her, then gently pulled the sheet away from her face. Laying a gentle hand on her cheek, he felt a terrible wave of grief wash away the last of his energy.
“She’s safe,” he whispered to Risa, gathering her body into his arms. “Our little girl is safe.”
EPILOGUE
One Year Later
ALISON DUG HER TOES INTO THE WARM SAND AND LAY BACK ON HER beach towel. It was the kind of perfect day in Santa Monica that had always made her love living there; not too hot, but far from cool, with the breeze off the ocean keeping the smog well back from the coast.
Not like Bel Air at all, or at least not like she remembered it. In fact, she was already forgetting a lot about those weeks when she’d lived up in the hills above Westwood Village and gone to Wilson Academy and lost not only her mother, but even herself and all her real friends as well.
The memory of her mother’s death still caused her a pain that was almost physical, and thinking about what had happened up in Conrad Dunn’s house seemed to make the sunlight dim, as if a cloud had drifted over it. But when she looked up into the sky, it was as clear as it had been a few minutes ago.
So much of it was like a bad dream, and sometimes when she woke up in the middle of the night, she still had the awful feeling that she was back up there in the hills in Conrad Dunn’s mansion instead of in her bedroom in the house her father and Scott had bought—and insisted on moving into even before they’d sold Scott’s house above Hollywood. The new house was perfect—an easy walk to Santa Monica High, and an even shorter one to Cindy Kearns’s house.
On an identical towel next to her own, Cindy rolled over, propped herself up on an elbow and looked at Alison, her expression serious. “I have to tell you something.”
Alison reached into the cooler for a bottle of water while she tried to decide what Cindy’s look meant. With Cindy, of course, it could mean almost anything, since Cindy not only liked to surprise her, but was a good enough actress that she could almost always do it.
And her expression now didn’t give anything away.
Still, she looked serious enough that it might be bad news. Maybe boyfriend problems? “You’re going to break up with Justin Rhodes?”
Cindy rolled her eyes. “Not until the end of summer—guess again.”
Alison cocked her head quizzically. “You already tell me everything as soon as it happens. So what is there I don’t already know?” She handed Cindy the bottle, then grabbed two more and handed them to her dad and Scott, who were sprawled out next to them in their canvas beach chairs, both of them buried in books.
“I got my letter.”
My letter. In the spring of their senior year, that could only mean one thing: college. They’d both applied to half a dozen schools, and Alison’s acceptance at Stanford—her first choice—had arrived two weeks ago. Now she tried to analyze Cindy’s expression—and her tone—one more time. Cindy wasn’t even looking at her anymore, and Alison thought she saw a tear glistening in the corner of her eye.
But it wasn’t fair—it seemed like it had only been a few weeks since they’d put their friendship back together again, and—
“I got in!” Cindy shouted. “I got into Stanford!”
“Shut up!” Alison looked squarely at her friend. Was she kidding? She had to be kidding. But if she was, Cindy was an even better actress than she thought.
Cindy shook her head. “Don’t have to shut up—it’s true!”
“No way. Really?” Alison sat up. “I didn’t even know you applied.”
“I didn’t think I had a chance, so I didn’t want to tell you, but I went ahead and applied anyway. And I got in!”
“We’ll be roommates!” Alison shrieked, grabbing Cindy in a bear hug.
“Hey, watch those boobs,” Cindy said. “Those ought to be registered as lethal weapons.”
Alison’s grin faded and she adjusted her bikini top.
“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” Cindy said, her eyes tearing. “How could I say something that stupid?”
“It’s okay,” Alison sighed. “I’m just still not over it all.” She took a quick glance at her dad, and was almost certain he was pretending he hadn’t heard. Scott, however, made no such pretense.
“It’s just going to take time—after my mother died, I was a wreck for two years.” Scott said.
“But you’re a big sissy,” Michael said, finally putting down his book. “And you were five years older than Alison, too, which is really pathetic.”
“It wasn’t pathetic,” Scott began. “It was very tragic. Alison has a right—”
Alison suddenly found herself laughing. “Will you two stop it? Yes, I really miss Mom, but I’m okay. But let’s be honest,” she added, looking down at her breasts. “Cindy’s not that far wrong. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t, but at least Conrad gave me good ones. So let’s talk about something else, okay? Like Stanford.”
“Well, I didn’t get a scholarship like you did,” Cindy said, “so I’ll have to find a job.”
Alison brightened. “Oooh, I’ll get one, too, and then we can live off campus.”
“Slow down, amigos,” Michael said. “I think you can both live in the dorm, at least for the first year.”
“I say we celebrate with a frozen yogurt,” Scott said. “Ladies? What’s your pleasure?”
“Vanilla,” Alison said, lying back down on her towel as Cindy ordered chocolate. Typical—best friends and total opposites.
With Cindy on one side and her two fathers on the other, and with the warm Santa Monica sun shining down on her from above, Alison felt some of the weight of her grief for her mother lift.
Scott was right—it was going to take time. But she had time, and for the first time in a year, she was starting to see that in spite of everything that had happened, she still had the future stretched out ahead of her.
If only her mother could be here to be part of it…
“Hey, Mom,” she whispered. “Did you hear that? Cindy and I are going to be roommates at Stanford.” Then, realizing she’d actually spoken the words out loud, she opened her eyes and found her father smiling at her. “I’m going to make Mom proud of me,” she said. “I really am.”
“She already is, cupcake,” Michael said. “She always was.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Faces of Fear is JOHN SAUL’s thirty-fifth novel. His first novel, Suffer the Children, published in 1977, was an immediate million-copy bestseller. His other bestselling suspense novels include In the Dark of the Night, Perfect Nightmare, Blac
k Creek Crossing, Midnight Voices, The Manhattan Hunt Club, Nightshade, The Right Hand of Evil, The Presence, Black Lightning, The Homing, and Guardian. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling serial thriller The Blackstone Chronicles, initially published in six installments but now available in one complete volume. Saul divides his time between Seattle, Washington, and Hawaii.
ALSO BY JOHN SAUL
Suffer the Children
Punish the Sinners
Cry for the Strangers
Comes the Blind Fury
When the Wind Blows
The God Project
Nathaniel
Brainchild
Hellfire
The Unwanted
The Unloved
Creature
Second Child
Sleepwalk
Darkness
Shadows
Guardian
The Homing
Black Lightning
THE BLACKSTONE CHRONICLES
PART I: An Eye for an Eye: The Doll
PART 2: Twist of Fate: The Locket
PART 3: Ashes to Ashes: The Dragon’s Flame
PART 4: In the Shadow of Evil: The Handkerchief
PART 5: Day of Reckoning: The Stereoscope
PART 6: Asylum
The Presence
The Right Hand of Evil
Nightshade
The Manhattan Hunt Club
Midnight Voices
Black Creek Crossing
Perfect Nightmare
In the Dark of the Night
The Devil’s Labyrinth
Faces of Fear is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by John Saul
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Saul, John.
Faces of fear: a novel / John Saul.
p. cm.
1. Plastic surgeons—Fiction. 2. Stepfathers—Fiction. 3. Stepdaughters—Fiction. 4. Face—Surgery—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3569.A787F33 2008
813'.54—dc22
2008016616
www.ballantinebooks.com
eISBN: 978-0-345-50722-8
v3.0
John Saul, Faces of Fear
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