by Lisa Jackson
He’d lit half a dozen fragrant candles, and the tiny flames were the only illumination in the room.
She eyed the rapidly filling tub and clucked her tongue. “Looks like you’re trying to seduce me.”
“Nuh-uh.” He let go of her hand to place both of his on her waist. “You got that backward, lady.”
“Oh.” She laughed. “I’m seducing you?”
He smiled and his eyes glinted devilishly. “How about a fresh start? You and me.”
“I thought that’s what we were doing.”
“No, we agreed to try. Let’s forget the trying part and just do it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m asking you to marry me. Right now. Right here. I want a commitment, Kris, not just a maybe. And don’t tell me that we’re still married. I know.” His deep gaze caught hers. “You know what I mean.”
She thought about it a second and looked at his earnest face, his intense gray eyes, the dark hair that was forever falling over his forehead, the face of the man she loved.
Ross said softly, “No more accusations, no more putting work before time together, no more Jake Marcott.”
She nodded and felt a rush of stupid tears. Dear God, what kind of moron was she? This was her husband and they’d been married a long, long time. This wasn’t a new, untried head rush of first dates.
“Just please don’t make me go through another ceremony.”
“All I want is for you to say yes.”
“Okay. Yes!” She stood on her tiptoes and brushed her lips over his. “Yes, yes, yes!”
He laughed, and shook his head at her enthusiasm.
“Satisfied?”
“Not yet.” He reached for the top button of her blouse and grinned wickedly. “But I have a feeling I will be.”
The killer cut the engine and parked not far from Westmoreland Park, only a few blocks away from her target’s home. She’d been here before, scoped out the place and knew, if she was patient, that she would get her first real opportunity. There was a window that was always cracked and, to ensure that it stayed that way, the killer had slipped inside one day while the bitch was at work and tinkered with the latch so that it would never stick tight again.
Now it was just a matter of raising it, crawling into the house, creeping down a short hallway, and opening the bedroom door, which conveniently had no lock.
Dressed in black, she jogged, as if on an early-morning workout. She was wearing a blond wig and colored contacts, along with a fine set of fake boobs, and beneath the jogging suit, a little extra padding over her ass and waist—a chunky girl trying to shed some extra pounds.
The knife was hidden.
But she encountered no one on this dark morning.
And the house was just ahead.
She ducked into the back alley and caught her breath, but her blood was pumping, as much as from anticipation as the short run.
Finally.
Counting slowly to ten, calming the excitement surging through her veins, she moved through the shadows.
Haylie couldn’t sleep.
Probably because of the damned reunion and the closing of the school and the image of Ian that had started creeping into her dreams again. She’d thought she was over him, that she’d put all those painful thoughts about his death behind her.
It’s not as if she’d pined for him for twenty years, she thought, sitting up and staring at the clock near her bed. She’d tried to move on. She really had.
She made a sound of disgust. Four-damned-thirty in the morning. An indecent time to be awake. She thought she heard a noise outside but dismissed it. Probably the cat. Or raccoons scavenging in the backyard, trying to get at the Japanese goldfish she kept in a small pond near the patio.
Pulling her pack of cigarettes from the bedside table, she then walked outside to her private back patio where, standing in the old T-shirt she used as a nightgown and her fuzzy bunny slippers, she lit up. No raccoons. The pond was undisturbed, water lilies lying softly on the surface, the fish safe for the night.
Good.
One less problem in a world filled with them.
A cool mist was falling, shrouding the night, and for an inexplicable reason, goose bumps rose on the back of her arms. She was jittery, had been for weeks or months or maybe even years. She lived in a small bungalow in Sell-wood, a community in the southeast part of Portland. The house, small to begin with, had been divided into two tiny apartments. Recently the neighbors had moved, leaving the cat she’d reluctantly adopted and a For Rent sign out front.
The cat, a black longhair named Bo, was skulking through the garden now, slinking among the barren pots where petunias and impatiens had thrived in the summer. He’d never shown any interest in the fish, thank God.
“Come here, Bo,” she said. “Kitty, kitty, kitty.”
The cat turned and looked at her, standing beneath the porch light, his green eyes growing round, but he didn’t budge. He was an outside cat and maybe she was lucky that he didn’t want to be an inside one. This way she never had to mess with a litter box.
Closing her eyes for a second, she dragged deep on her cigarette, feeling the warm smoke curl and fill her lungs as the nicotine worked its way through her bloodstream.
She should give up the habit, but it wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried. She’d used the patch, the gum, and even hypnosis. Nothing had worked. Like it or not, she’d have to quit cold turkey.
Before her fortieth birthday.
In the meantime she enjoyed smoking and refused to feel like a criminal just because she liked the buzz. And now, with the reunion looming ahead, with meeting all those people she’d known in high school, with all the talk of Jake Marcott, Ian’s face had again crept into her dreams. No way was she going to give up her pack-a-day habit yet!
Ian…she thought sadly. She wished she could get over him, give it up, but it was such a damned injustice. Jake Marcott had killed him, pure and simple. Why the cops and everyone who had graduated with her couldn’t see it, she didn’t understand. But Jake Marcott was not the saint everyone pretended he was. No way. He’d been a sinner in life. It was unfair that he’d become a martyr.
A soft footfall sounded.
Haylie twisted her head.
At this hour?
She looked at the fenced yard, but there was no one there, no one lurking in the shadows where the lamplight didn’t touch. The traffic on the street was nonexistent at this hour, and it was even too early for those type-A joggers and bicyclers who were rabid in their need for exercise.
Probably nothing.
She took another drag and looked for the cat again, but he’d disappeared. “Bo?” She didn’t want him to go anywhere near the street, though he did seem to have some brains when it came to avoiding cars and roads. “Kitty?”
Nothing.
Not even a sough of wind in the branches of the single pine tree in the yard.
“Fine, stay outside.”
Another quiet scrape.
The hairs on the back of Haylie’s neck lifted. “Bo?” she said anxiously, turning to go inside. What was it about this night that had her so anxious?
Hisssss!
The cat was at her feet, staring into the night, and Haylie’s heart nearly stopped.
Damn it all to hell. She hadn’t counted on the cat. Quickly, still hidden in the shadows, blond wig and extra padding left beneath the branches of a rhododendron, the killer slid her knife from its sheath. She didn’t have any more time. She was lucky Haylie had stepped outside, unlucky that the cat had sensed her.
She crept forward as stealthily and quickly as the stupid feline who’d betrayed her.
“What is it?” Haylie asked nervously, taking one step toward the back door.
Too late.
Quick as lightning, a dark figure stepped from around the corner of the garage and sprang. A woman. Armed with a butcher knife.
Oh, shit! Haylie, dropping her cigarette, leaped toward the open door. She
wasn’t fast enough. The killer was on her in an instant.
“No way, bitch!”
Fear screamed through Haylie’s body. “No! Don’t!”
The knife gleamed in the pale light.
“Wait! Wait!” Haylie cried. The blade swung in an arc. Cutting downward, flashing in the lamp glow. Slicing through her skin.
Haylie tripped over her own feet. Tried to scream. It was cut off with another searing slice. Her own blood sprayed. She stumbled backward.
Oh, God, was this really happening?
The blade struck again, tearing into her flesh.
Pain exploded in her abdomen.
The killer stabbed again and all the rage, all the pent-up fury of twenty long years, screamed through her brain. Die, you miserable, spoiled brat. Die! Die! Die!
The blade came out of Haylie with a hideous sucking noise. The killer didn’t wait. She plunged the knife into the crumpling body. Again and again, feeling the warm, wet spray of blood and the cold satisfaction that justice, at last, was served. At her hand.
But Haylie was only the first.
She felt the body shudder and let it fall onto the pavement.
Near-lifeless eyes looked up at her.
She stared down into the eyes of her victim.
Haylie was near death, but her lips formed an unspoken “You?”
And then the light in her eyes faded.
Haylie, the first, was dead.
Exhilaration sizzled through the killer’s body as she worked quickly, unzipping and stripping out of her jogging suit. She stuffed it, along with her extra padding, wig, and knife, into the athletic bag. Now she was in skintight neoprene, which she covered with an oversized hiking parka that reached her knees. Her hair, still wound onto her head, was quickly disguised by a Mariners baseball cap. There was still some blood on her black running shoes, but she couldn’t help that. She’d wash them at St. Elizabeth’s in the gym and trash the clothes in an incinerator that was still used occasionally at the school. First things first. She had to make this look like a robbery gone bad.
She saw the cat hiding beneath an azalea and then she left, stomping out the still-smoldering cigarette and knowing that she’d sent Haylie Swanson’s soul straight to hell.
Part Two
LINDSAY
by
Wendy Corsi Staub
Chapter 14
New York City, May 2006
“Mommy?”
Lindsay Farrell bolted from her bed, heart pounding wildly from the shrill middle-of-the-night ringing that had just startled her from a sound sleep. She gripped the phone tightly against her ear.
“Mommy…why did you do it?”
“Who is this?” she demanded, her heart pounding wildly. She strode blindly across the darkened bedroom, stubbing her toe painfully against the footboard of her queen-sized bed, barely noticing.
“It’s me, Mommy.” The voice was strange, high-pitched. It could belong to a child…
But he wouldn’t be a child anymore, she reminded herself.
No, her son would be nineteen now—twenty this coming summer.
He was born right here in New York City, the week before she started her first semester at Fordham University in the Bronx. She’d attended her first day of classes with engorged breasts that throbbed painfully, and a heart that ached even worse.
“Why did you give me away, Mommy?”
“Stop calling me!”
Lindsay disconnected the call and tossed the cordless phone across the room. She heard it fall to the carpet with a dull thud.
It wouldn’t be broken, though.
She’d thrown it even harder last night, against the wall, and she was certain it wouldn’t work when she found it this morning.
She hoped it wouldn’t…not that she honestly believed a broken telephone receiver would put an end to the eerie wee-hour phone calls. According to her Caller ID box, they were coming from a Private Name, Private Number. Pressing star-sixty-nine on the dial after the calls got her nowhere. Somehow, the number was completely blocked.
Meanwhile, she’d gotten a call just about every other night for the past week or so—always the same voice, always saying the same thing.
Why did you give me away, Mommy?
So somebody knew her secret.
Was it really that surprising?
Of course, she trusted the kindly nuns at Blessed Sacrament, the Queens home for unwed mothers, where she’d arrived that June just after high-school graduation and stayed until she had the baby.
And she trusted Sister Neva, the aging Reverend Mother at St. Elizabeth’s, who’d arranged her referral to the home.
She’d confided her secret to no one else—even to this day.
Did she really believe she’d kept it that well hidden?
At the time, yes.
But in her muddled, distraught state—first because of the pregnancy, then because of Jake’s shocking murder—she really couldn’t be sure of anything.
Looking back, she recalled that she’d bought at least seven home-pregnancy-test kits when she first realized, just before that illfated Valentine’s Day dance, that her period was late. She’d bought them at various drugstores and supermarkets, thinking that was wiser than returning to the same place over and over again. And she’d always attempted to camouflage her telltale purchase with several other items. Had she really thought the cashier wouldn’t even notice a pregnancy test nestled among the packs of gum, magazines, panty hose?
Maybe. She was such a wreck back then, even before the tests confirmed her worst suspicion.
Afterward, she remembered trying to conceal her thickening waistline and swelling breasts beneath her ugly, ill-fitting school uniform in those last four months of school. She had always been slender; a few people—especially her mother—commented that she seemed to be “filling out.” Aurora Zephyr even jokingly told her she’d better watch out that she didn’t add the notorious “freshman fifteen” pounds when she got to college.
Had her friends been whispering about her escalating weight—and speculating about the possible cause for the gain—behind her back?
Maybe. Probably. Her group of friends, always tight knit, seemed to splinter after Jake’s death. Even Kristen and Rachel, her closest confidantes, became distant.
If that hadn’t happened—if Jake hadn’t been killed—Lindsay might have confided in them. She might even have told her parents, who would have been disappointed but probably would have stood by her and helped her hide her condition—if only to protect the family name.
But she didn’t share her secret with her parents or her friends.
Instead, she miserably battled round-the-clock morning sickness on her own, hoping no one would overhear her daily vomiting sessions in the school bathroom.
When somebody eventually did, it was the last person with whom she would have expected to share such a scandalous confidence.
Perpetually patrolling the corridors in her black habit, leaning heavily on her wooden cane, the Reverend Mother was an intimidating figure. Never more so than the day Lindsay emerged from a bathroom stall to find Sister Neva standing there, expressionless, obviously having heard every last gag and retch.
“Are you sick, child?” she asked, fixing Lindsay with a level stare.
Lindsay started to stutter, then burst into tears.
To her shock, Sister Neva folded her into a firm embrace—more bolstering than affectionate, but it was what Lindsay needed in that moment.
She found herself being led to the inner sanctum: the Reverend Mother’s office, furnished only with an austere desk, guest chair, file cabinet, and of course the ubiquitous crucifix on the wall.
There, Lindsay confessed her greatest sin—and was met not with disapproval, but stoic support.
With resignation, the aging nun agreed not to tell Lindsay’s parents, on the condition that Lindsay allow her to make arrangements for the baby to be delivered—and adopted—on the East Coast.
T
here was no question, ever, that she was going to have the baby. She was a devout Catholic.
But Sister Neva stepped in and took all-encompassing control of the situation as if it were her own personal mission to ensure that there would be no other option. She was determined to propel Lindsay through the pregnancy until the baby was safely delivered to deserving Catholic parents.
Until she arrived on the scene, Lindsay hadn’t given much thought to what would happen after she gave birth.
Which seemed hard to believe now, from an adult perspective. As a high-powered Manhattan event planner, her entire career was based on intricate short-and long-term calendar organization.
But back then, she was more concerned with the immediate future—her own—than the long-range repercussions of her condition on herself or anyone else. Even the baby.
So it was a relief to defer that monumental decision to somebody with infinitely more wisdom and connections. The nun cleverly arranged for her to take a summer class at Fordham University so that her parents wouldn’t question her early departure for college. Not that they would have anyway, after all she had been through.
They tiptoed around her for months after Jake died, attributing her withdrawn behavior entirely to the fact that her longtime boyfriend had been brutally slain and she had found his body.
They seemed relieved when Lindsay announced she was leaving two months early for college, and they didn’t bat an eye when she said the campus dorms were unavailable until the fall semester. No, they never suspected that her temporary summer address was a diocesan-run home for unwed mothers.
Lindsay left the details in Sister Neva’s capable hands without a second thought…until it came time to hand over her son to the waiting adoption official.
That was her first moment of regret—and far from her last.
But by then, it was too late.
In a matter of seconds, the baby was gone, whisked from her life and into another, presumably with a pair of loving parents, a stable home, and a brighter future than an unwed, unemployed college freshman could provide.