by Nancy Bush
STALKING MACKENZIE
He followed after her as she headed back in the direction of her lover’s place. How did she know what was in his mind? She was too attuned to him. Eerily so.
Was that why she’d been at the Waystation? Did she know? Did she know?
You approached her, not the other way around.
A cosmic connection, then?
He didn’t know how to stop her. How to keep her from reaching the condo of her lover, the ex-cop. He had to stop her. He had to.
He needed to take her to the lair.
How? What did he have?
He had a pickup full of supplies. He could use something. What?
He had to stop her!
How?
And then he knew. It was mostly blocks of city between River Glen and Laurelton but there was that one stretch of county property with nothing built on it. They were almost there. She was rounding the corner. He pulled the truck up close to her SUV, hugging her bumper as she made that turn.
He punched the accelerator hard and the F-150 jumped forward.
Wham! He smashed his truck into her bumper. The RAV spun on the wet pavement and he hit her again, slamming into the SUV’s side and pushing the vehicle off the road....
Books by Nancy Bush
CANDY APPLE RED
ELECTRIC BLUE
ULTRAVIOLET
WICKED GAME
WICKED LIES
SOMETHING WICKED
WICKED WAYS
UNSEEN
BLIND SPOT
HUSH
NOWHERE TO RUN
NOWHERE TO HIDE
NOWHERE SAFE
SINISTER
I’LL FIND YOU
YOU CAN’T ESCAPE
YOU DON’T KNOW ME
THE KILLING GAME
DANGEROUS BEHAVIOR
OMINOUS
NO TURNING BACK
ONE LAST BREATH
JEALOUSY
BAD THINGS
LAST GIRL STANDING
THE BABYSITTER
THE GOSSIP
Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.
THE GOSSIP
NANCY BUSH
ZEBRA BOOKS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
STALKING MACKENZIE
Also by
Title Page
Copyright Page
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
EPILOGUE
ZEBRA BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2021 by Nancy Bush
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
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ISBN: 978-1-4201-5077-3
ISBN-13: 978-1-4201-5078-0 (eBook)
ISBN-10: 1-4201-5078-2 (eBook)
PROLOGUE
The cat placed her paws carefully into the dewy grass as she crossed the lawn to the glass doors of the building. She sat down on the WELCOME TO RIDGE POINTE mat and casually washed her face with one white-mittened paw. After several minutes passed and no one came to the door, she deigned to lift her paws against the glass panel. It took another minute before she started meowing. Finally, one of the assistants saw her and opened the door. She slipped inside and past him, then trotted down the hall. One of the residents, bent over her walker, looked up, saw the cat, and made kissing noises at her. The cat thought it over and decided to be amenable. She moved to the woman and rubbed against one leg.
“Oh, kitty, kitty,” the woman crooned. She would have let go of the walker if she was able to bend down and pet the cat, but she wasn’t steady enough.
A door opened at the end of the hall.
“I’ll be back after breakfast,” said the younger woman who stepped into the hallway, turning back toward the still open doorway. Her gaze was aimed downward, toward the ground. “Stay. I’ll be right back.”
She straightened, closed the door, and the cat heard muffled barking. The cat knew the dog inside that door. Once it had gotten out and chased after the cat, but the cat had slipped into a narrow alcove, too small for the dog, and hissed at it fiercely as people came and corralled the dog. This woman was one of them. She was fairly careful about letting the dog out. The cat disdained the dog, but she steered clear of it as much as possible.
The younger woman strode up the hallway. “Hi, Darla,” she said to the lady bent over her walker.
“Eh?” said Darla.
“I SAID HI,” the woman responded. “I’m Emma!”
“I know who you are.”
“See you at breakfast,” said Emma as she went on by.
The cat’s nostrils quivered. The food was in the room that Emma had turned into. The cat could not go in there and had learned to wait outside. There was a short hallway where food was brought from one room to another. The cat could not go in that room either with its heat and noise and movement, even though good smells came from that direction, too. The cat had learned to wait patiently in the hallway, which she did now.
And then another smell drifted toward its nostrils; one that she recognized. A different kind of smell. The cat followed the scent and its eyes focused on the person who’d entered the room where the woman with the dog had gone. She stared unblinking at them, nose twitching with the odor. The cat would visit her later.
* * *
Emma Whelan glanced over at the black-and-white cat, sitting in the hallway, its black tail curled around its white toes. It had a tiny white stripe down the middle of its forehead, white whiskers, and the four white toes. Otherwise it was entirely black.
Emma wasn’t sure what she thought of the cat. It was Ridge Pointe’s resident mascot and it seemed nice enough, but Emma’s dog, Duchess, did not approve of the cat and loudly complained about it.
“Ah . . . Twinkletoes.”
Old Darla had finally worked her way into the breakfast room and she caught Emma’s stare at the
cat.
Twinkletoes was not the cat’s name. Twinkletoes was a dumb name. Emma said succinctly, “The cat doesn’t have a name.”
“Just don’t have her come to your room,” Darla singsonged, turning away.
Emma would have responded but Old Darla didn’t hear well. Instead, Emma glanced one more time at the cat, who was meandering away. The cat sometimes sneaked into residents’ rooms and curled into bed with them. Sometimes those residents died in their sleep.
Emma had seated herself at a table several over from where Old Darla was settling into a chair with a heavy sigh. She was the youngest member of Ridge Pointe by far and had become a resident the year before. Often Emma ate alone, which she didn’t mind at all, but today Jewell Caldwell hurried in and plopped herself down across from her.
“Sara Throckmorton is a gossip, pure and simple,” Jewell said in a lowered voice, looking over her shoulder as Mrs. Throckmorton walked in. Mrs. Throckmorton had steel-gray hair, a faint hunch on her back, and a slightly confused look on her face. Her brow cleared as she spied Old Darla and she lurched over to her table. “Don’t tell Sara anything if you don’t want it spread around everywhere,” Jewell went on, waving her arm to include the whole room as Emma gazed around at the mostly empty tables. A lot of people preferred to eat in their rooms. Mrs. Throckmorton was leaning close to Old Darla and talking loudly about the menu.
“You gossip, too,” said Emma.
Jewell looked affronted and shook her head. “I just relate the news! You know I do. Sara talks about one of the girls who used to work here all the time, but then that girl’s a little hot pants, you know.”
“Hot pants?” Emma cocked her head.
“Oh, your generation doesn’t use that term.” Her mouth pursed. “Let me put it this way. She doesn’t discriminate with her bedmates. She knows a lot of men.”
“You mean she’s a whore.”
Jewell barked out a little laugh. “Well . . . yes. You could say that. Rayne’s had lots of boys. Never made any move to walk down the aisle with any of ’em, though Lord knows she can’t apparently pick marriage material, even though I’m sure she lives with them.” She turned a bright, birdlike eye on Emma. “Sara saw Rayne with her grandson—the one with the long hair?—outside, under the portico. They were kissing and there was no daylight between them, if you know what I mean. About gave her a heart attack. Right out in the portico, in front of God and everyone! But he must’ve gotten what he wanted because he hasn’t been around much since.”
“The boy with the long hair . . . is Mrs. Throckmorton’s grandson?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“But Rayne’s gone, too. She’s been gone awhile.”
“Well, obviously this was before she was told to leave,” said Jewell with a sniff.
Emma had heard some of this from Jewell before, about the girl who’d left Ridge Pointe about the same time Emma moved in. When Jewell didn’t have something to say, she seemed to go back to Rayne. Emma actually kind of liked boys with long hair, and she’d met Sara’s grandson and she didn’t remember he had long hair. It was a little confusing.
She opened her mouth to say as much, but Jewell ran right on. “Sara told me she doesn’t know how many boys Rayne shacked up with, but somewhere along the way she and one of them got matching tattoos. Tattoos! I hear those are very painful to take off.” She clucked her tongue. “Oh, I know you’re young and think that’s okay. Her going from one man to another and another . . . getting tattoos . . . In my day, there was a name for girls like that.”
“Hot pants.”
Jewell pressed her lips together and allowed, “Whore is closer. And Rayne . . . well, she’s pretty enough, I suppose. But you don’t give the milk away before buying the cow, you know.” Jewell gave Emma a softer look. “Emma, I know you have trouble . . . understanding things like the rest of us. It’s not your fault. But believe me, there are good people and bad people, and I’m afraid this girl falls into the bad category.”
The waitress girl came by and told them the special was spaghetti and meatballs, then waited for their order. Emma liked pasta . . . well, she used to more than she did now, but she still really liked it so she picked the special. Jewell turned up her nose and said she would have the chicken salad.
As the waitress girl moved off, Emma decided she needed to set the record straight and so she said, “I know about good people and bad people.” Her brain might not be the same as before she was hurt, but she knew things, too. She did know about good people and bad people. She understood she had “cognitive problems” and was more at peace with her own limitations these days. She didn’t know Rayne, but she wasn’t sure that Rayne was a bad person. She just sounded like she wanted to be with someone.
Jewell watched the waitress girl head over to Mrs. Throckmorton and Old Darla’s table. As Mrs. Throckmorton switched her attention from Old Darla to the waitress girl, Jewell whispered again, “Sara Throckmorton’s such a gossip.”
Do not argue with Jewell, Emma reminded herself. It was hard advice to follow but Emma managed to keep her lip zipped as she recalled how Jewell had gossiped about her once after an argument about Emma’s disability. You just couldn’t trust Jewell.
The waitress girl brought Emma her spaghetti and Jewell her salad. Jewell made a face at the scoop of chicken atop the lettuce leaf. “They don’t make anything good here,” said Jewell.
“My lip is zipped,” said Emma.
* * *
The cat strolled back to its station beside the dining room door and zeroed in again on the woman with the odor, ignoring the others who were drifting in and taking their seats. But then the cat heard the pffft sound that meant someone was getting her a treat. She whipped around toward the room with all the noise and saw the bowl of fluffy white coming her way.
“Your favorite, huh?” the man who smelled like skunk said as he set the bowl down. “I like whipped cream, too, and when no one’s around, I give myself a hit. Squirt it right in my mouth from the can.”
The cat ignored him as she delicately licked at the peaks of white.
“Who ya gonna hop in bed with next, huh?” he asked, leaning down toward her and speaking softly. “Let me know and I’ll call the ambulance.”
He patted her head a little hard and the cat shied away. When he left she got down to the business of eating.
CHAPTER ONE
Rayne Sealy stood in line at Miller’s Market behind several mostly elderly women. One was definitely a Q-tip, her white hair glowing like a beacon beneath the grocery store’s overhead lighting and she was really taking her time.
Rayne sighed and checked her phone again. Almost five. She was chasing daylight. It would be gone soon on this breezy March day if things didn’t get moving and then all her plans would be over.
Hurry UP, lady!
Q-tip was pulling money out of a change purse, taking so long Rayne could have written a love poem to Chas—no, a full-on novel, thousands of pages long—in the time it took that woman to dig inside and drag out some carefully folded bills.
She hiked up the gray Hobo bag on her shoulder and checked her phone again. 4:55.
How long would Chas wait for her? They were supposed to be hiking along the trail that wound up to Percy’s Peak, a small mountain that was really just a big hill, but it was a highlight around River Glen. Chas had said there was a lookout along the trail that was known for being where couples went to get engaged. OMG! Was Chas going to ask her to marry him today? Why not? So, theirs had been a whirlwind romance. So what? There was no limit on how fast two people could fall in love. Sometimes it happened in an instant. Across a crowded room, like Romeo and Juliet.
Rayne inhaled a calming breath. Take it easy. Just a few more minutes.
She’d teamed her red silk blouse with her black Athleta capris, the good ones that hugged her butt in a way that made her look skinnier, and her black sneakers just in case. Not exactly hiking gear, but who cared. This could be a monumental day and
she wanted to look fantastic.
“Can I go in front of you?” Rayne blurted out to the woman with steel gray hair behind Q-tip who’d just loaded up the moving counter with groceries. “I’m really late.”
“Honey, I’ve only got some produce,” the woman threw over her shoulder. Didn’t even bother looking her way.
Bitch.
Chas and her romance wasn’t quite like Romeo and Juliet’s, but it had been fast. Well . . . depending on how you looked at it. They’d known each other for years, but back in school she’d thought he was really nerdy and weird. The kind of guy who built radios or zapped bugs with electrified wires or something. She’d simply dismissed him. In high school she’d had her eye on Ryan Buck Ramsey, who’d played basketball and had unfairly thick lashes and an adorable, goofy smile. Every other girl in school felt the same way. But now, years later, it was sad to say, Buck had run to fat. He worked for his dad, who owned a business complex over in Laurelton, but he lived in an apartment and split custody of his daughter with his ex-wife, Anna, who’d been in Rayne’s grade and was one of those girls who’d had it all.
Rayne smiled to herself. She was kind of glad Anna had gotten stuck with Buck.
But Chas . . .
He’d changed his name, changed his looks, changed everything about himself. She hadn’t even recognized him at first. Whereas Buck had gone to seed, Chas had developed.
“Don’t tell anyone about us,” he’d whispered in her ear as he’d made excruciatingly slooowww love to her that first time.
“I won’t,” she’d gasped, holding back a scream of ecstasy, her fists clutched into the bedsheets.
“Our secret . . .”
She’d been too close to climax to suggest maybe she could tell her best friend, Bibi. There would be time for that later. As she’d floated down from ecstasy, he’d whispered, “I’ve always wanted you. I dreamed about you. We’re made for each other.”