Most Likely to Die

by Lisa Jackson

  She’d rather fall asleep still tasting Wyatt’s last kiss, her skin, slightly raw from his razor stubble, still smelling faintly of his aftershave.

  She was about to hang her purse on the knob, strip off her dress, and put on the nightie that hung on the back of the door…

  Then she was struck by something odd.

  The bathroom was dark.

  There was no familiar glow from the night-light she kept plugged into an outlet above the sink and never turned off.

  She had changed the bulb just the other day.

  It couldn’t have burned out again so soon.

  Frowning, she reached for the switch and flicked it.

  The light turned on.

  Huh.

  That was strange.

  Had she flipped it off without thinking yesterday?

  She doubted it; she had never done that before.

  She looked at herself in the mirror, noticing the apprehension in her own expression.

  Okay, don’t get carried away. You’re just being paranoid. Maybe the power went out because of the storm. And maybe that tripped something in the outlet, and the light turned itself off.

  A reach, but she was willing to believe it, because what else could possibly have—

  Lindsay froze.

  Behind her, in the mirror, she could swear she had just seen a human shadow pass along the wall beyond the bathroom door.

  Leo waited until dawn, when he heard his mother moving around in the kitchen.

  Then, after an entirely sleepless night, he quietly sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed.

  Ma always got up early on Sunday mornings.

  By the time Leo and his brother woke up to the scent of frying eggs and bacon, she would have drunk her coffee, read the paper, walked to seven o’clock Mass and back, and mixed the meatballs for the homemade spaghetti sauce they’d have for dinner.

  Never, until this particular Sunday morning, had Leo appreciated the comforting ritual. Nor had he fully appreciated his mother.

  A wave of sentiment swept through him when he spotted her from the kitchen doorway, standing at the sink in her faded pink terry cloth housecoat, filling the old coffee percolator with cold water.

  He had to force his voice past a lump in his throat to say, “Ma?”

  She gasped and jumped, spinning around. “Leo! You scared me!”

  “Sorry, Ma.”

  “What are you doing up? Are you sick?” she asked worriedly.

  “No.”

  He hesitated. He had lain awake all night, shaken to the core and riddled with guilt. Now, he wondered if he had made the right decision.

  But his mother wore an expectant look, and it was too late to change his mind now.

  Anyway, he felt like a frightened little boy who needed his mommy.

  Thank God she’s here for me. Right here, where she’s been all along.

  He took a deep breath and plunged in. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  Her back flattened to the wall, her hand gripping the handle of the knife, she sent up a silent prayer.

  Now there was nothing to do but wait, barely breathing, for her prey to step across the threshold.

  And when you do, you won’t have a chance, she promised, knowing she had the element of surprise in her favor.

  She waited for what seemed like endless hours, holding her breath.

  Then, at last, she poised the knife as she heard movement from the other side of the wall.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a figure move stealthily into view.

  In that instant, she leapt into action, attacking with a vengeance, and blindly. She could feel the knife sinking into flesh, heard the high-pitched cry of pain.

  She saw that the blade had caught her in the side just below her rib cage; blood was pouring from the wound.

  Yet suddenly, shockingly, she somehow found herself on the defensive, fending off a violent retaliatory assault. Her enemy was a force to be reckoned with—now her only thought was getting the hell out of here, hoping she was going to escape with her life.

  They wrestled on the bathroom floor and she struggled to hang on to the knife, to reposition it so that she could use it again. She was enraged now, hell-bent on doing whatever she had to do to survive.

  I can’t die now. Not when everything is coming together for me at last. Please, God…

  They rolled over on the hard tile, rolled over again and she found herself on top. She seized her chance, knowing that if she didn’t, she wouldn’t get another.

  With a primal grunt and a mighty arc of her arm, she shoved the blade as hard as she could.

  Again, it found its target, and she could feel it sink sickeningly into flesh and bone, until it hit something more unforgiving than either.

  Wallboard, she realized…she had just pinned a human hand to the wall like that arrow had, twenty years ago, pinned Jake Marcott to the tree.

  Her ears rang with the terrible howl of agony that erupted, echoing through the tiled bathroom.

  For a moment she was frozen in sheer horror at what had just happened—at what she had just inflicted upon another human being.

  Then she bolted from the apartment, spattered with blood, leaving her assailant pinned to the wall with Wyatt’s Parisian chef’s knife, bestowed upon her as a parting gift.

  “Take it,” he’d said with a smile. “I don’t want to come home next weekend to find that you’ve chopped off a finger with your dull one.”

  She had thanked him, never knowing, as she tucked it into her purse, that it was about to save her life.

  There was no traffic on the FDR Drive at this hour on a Sunday morning. Wyatt would be at JFK Airport with plenty of time to spare before his flight. Too much time.

  Wyatt was wistful as he gazed out the window at a barge on the East River, realizing that he could have lingered at least another fifteen, twenty minutes, with Lindsay.

  Yeah, but so? What’s fifteen minutes? he asked himself, feeling vaguely foolish.

  It’s damned significant, he answered his own question. Particularly when you hadn’t seen someone in twenty years and weren’t going to see her again for an entire week.

  There were plenty of things he could have told Lindsay in fifteen minutes.

  Yeah, and you probably would have regretted all of them the second you left.

  Wyatt Goddard was no stranger to morning-after ardor. It had led to his moving in with Allison and making doomed commitments to a couple of other women in the past.

  Maybe it was better that their good-bye had been so hurried.

  He’d kissed her, at least, and given her that chef’s knife she had coveted in his kitchen.

  Someday soon, I’ll take her to Paris and buy her a whole set, he vowed—then shook his head.

  Morning-after ardor again. Making plans, making promises. Good thing they were only to himself this time.

  It was a good thing he was going to be an ocean away from Lindsay for the next six days.

  That would keep him from saying or doing anything rash, would give him enough space to figure out whether his feelings for Lindsay were rekindled infatuation…or something more enduring.

  “Stay back,” the burly NYPD officer cautioned Lindsay as he and his partner, guns at the ready, prepared to enter her apartment with the key they’d quickly retrieved from Bob, the building super.

  The door had swung shut and locked after her when she bolted. Ten minutes, perhaps fifteen, had passed since the ordeal in her bathroom, but her heart was still racing, every breath painful in a constricted chest.

  She had insisted on coming back up here with the cops, needing to face her incapacitated attacker.

  I have to get a glimpse of her face.

  That it had been a woman had caught her entirely off guard, but there had been no mistaking the feminine pitch of the voice as it screeched in agony.

  The sound still echoed chillingly in Lindsay’s head.

  This wasn’t
a typical crime. She knew that, even before she had seen the passing expressions of surprise on the officers’ faces when she told them.

  They asked if she was positive that it hadn’t been a man lying in wait for her in the darkened apartment. She knew what they were thinking: that the notorious masked East Side rapist had ventured a dozen or so blocks south, into new territory.

  She assured the police that she was a hundred percent certain it had been a woman.

  She could tell they weren’t convinced, even now.

  Weapons poised, they crept into the apartment as Lindsay and Bob hung back a safe distance down the hall.

  Lindsay hugged her aching rib cage, still trying to catch her breath, beginning to feel the physical evidence of the struggle. Her head throbbed where it had slammed against the tile floor, her elbows stung where the skin had been scraped away, and she suspected that her face, which felt raw, was covered with scratches. But she’d survived.

  Thanks to Wyatt.

  From inside the apartment, she heard one of the police officers curse loudly.

  They reappeared in the hall moments later.

  “What is it?” Lindsay asked, but she already knew. It was obvious from their disheartened expressions.

  “There was blood all over the bathroom, and on the wall where you said you left him—I mean, her. But whoever it was got away.”

  “Are you upset with me, Mom?”

  Betty Cellamino looked up at Leo, startled, as though she had been lost in thought. She had spoken very little as he spilled his story, and her expression had been impossible to read.

  “Am I upset with you?” She leaned across the kitchen table and pulled Leo close to her, stroking his head as she held it against the soft terry cloth of her robe. “Oh, honey, no. I just can’t believe you didn’t tell me what was going on. When I think of what could have happened—”

  “I’m fine,” he pointed out quickly. “No harm done.”

  “We should call the police.”

  “I knew you were going to say that.” He shook his head. “No, Ma.”

  “This woman might go after somebody else—and who knows what’s going to happen then? Maybe the next person won’t be as lucky.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know how the police would find her anyway. It’s not like I had a license plate for the car or anything. And I didn’t even get a good look at her face. Plus she was wearing a disguise.”

  “What about the phone number you called? And the e-mail? She can be tracked that way.”

  “No,” he said, realizing he had done something stupid. Really stupid. “When I got home yesterday I deleted the number from my phone’s incoming calls log, and I deleted her e-mails, too. I was just so…disgusted with myself.”

  “Don’t be disgusted with yourself. Be disgusted with her. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I was trying to meet my biological mother behind your back. And father, too.”

  “I know, but I don’t blame you. Maybe we shouldn’t have kept you in the dark about all that for as long as we did. Maybe we should have been more open about it.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it isn’t.” She took a deep breath, sipped her coffee. Then she said, “Listen, I’m going to help you find your birth parents if that’s what you want.”

  Was it?

  He wasn’t so sure now.

  “Can I think about it?” he asked.

  “Sure you can.” She looked at the clock. “I’ve got to go get ready for church.”

  “Mind if I go with you?” he asked, and she looked at him in surprise. “I owe someone up there a big thank-you,” he explained.

  His mother grinned, leaned over, and kissed him on the head.

  He found himself inhaling her familiar scent: coffee and talcum powder and…

  Her.

  That was what it was.

  Just her. His mom.

  She might not have given birth to him, but she had been there for everything else. Everything that mattered most.

  “I’m making extra sauce tonight,” she said, patting his arm, “if you wanted to invite anyone over for dinner.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Did you see the message I left for you the other day? From someone named Sarah Rose?”

  He had seen it—and ignored it, too caught up in everything else in his life.

  Now he grinned.

  “Maybe I will invite someone over for dinner. Thanks, Ma.”

  “And what can I get for you, ma’am?” asked the flight attendant, smiling as she looked right through the passenger in seat 15F.

  “I’ll have a ginger ale, please.”

  Her stomach was still roiling from this morning’s ordeal, but nausea was the least of it.

  Thank God the wound in her side had been superficial, nothing more than an agonizingly deep cut. Another fraction of an inch over, and she’d have been in serious trouble.

  The same was true with her hand. The blade had stabbed through the fleshy skin and tendon between her thumb and forefinger, and it hurt like hell. It was all she could do not to pass out on the spot when she pulled out the blade, but she managed to keep her cool.

  And she got away.

  Bloodied, disheveled, in terrible pain…

  But she got away.

  “Here you go, ma’am.” The flight attendant handed over a clear plastic cup filled with ice and soda, still not making eye contact.

  She accepted it with her right hand, keeping her wounded left carefully concealed at her side.

  “Enjoy the flight.”

  She smiled. “Oh, I definitely will.”

  In a little over five hours, she would land in Portland, where she’d be able to get medical attention for the wounds she’d temporarily cleaned and bandaged herself.

  There, nobody would connect her to the seemingly random Manhattan attack.

  There, she could get on with her plans.

  But I haven’t forgotten you, she told Lindsay Farrell silently. Not for a second. And I’ll see you in Portland at the reunion.

  Part Three

  RACHEL

  by

  Beverly Barton

  Chapter 23

  Huntsville, Alabama, May 2006

  Her partner lay bleeding to death at her feet. As she radioed for help, she tried to protect him as best she could by dragging him into a protected corner of the alley. Rapid fire from a semiautomatic bombarded her. Dear God, where was the backup she had ordered at least ten minutes ago? With her heartbeat racing and adrenaline rushing through her body at breakneck speed, Sergeant Rachel Alsace realized she was caught in a life-or-death battle with an escaped killer.

  Suddenly, without warning, as she got off several quick, well-aimed shots, return fire caught her in the shoulder, the bullet searing through her flesh like a white-hot branding iron. Somehow, she managed to pull the trigger of her Glock two more times. Then reality blurred as agony enveloped her and darkness descended, a smoky gray fog of fear and pain dragging her down, deeper and deeper into unconsciousness.

  Sweat coated her body, drenched her oversized cotton T-shirt emblazoned with the words Roll Tide and the famous Alabama elephant, and dampened the cotton sheets on her queen-size bed.

  Rachel woke with a start. She tossed the light covers aside, jerked straight up into a sitting position, and took several deep, calming breaths. Since coming home from the hospital three days ago, she had been plagued by nightmares of the day her partner had been killed and she had been severely wounded. Twenty-seven-year-old Officer Bobby Joe Poole had left behind a wife and two young children. For about the hundredth time since that horrific day, Rachel had wondered why a man with so much to live for had died and why she, a divorced, childless woman just two years shy of forty, had been spared. Luck of the draw? Fate? Divine providence?

  As she turned around and slid off the bed, Rachel felt an overwhelming sense of guilt and an equal measure of relief. Guilt that she was alive and her partner dead. Rel
ief to still be alive, to have a second chance to find some sort of personal fulfillment beyond her job as a police officer on the Huntsville, Alabama, police force.

  She looked at the lighted digital bedside clock. Five-ten. Only twenty minutes earlier than her normal wake-up. At least five-thirty had been her regular get-up time before she’d been forced to take an extended leave of absence. Medical leave. She probably wouldn’t be reinstated to active duty for another couple of months. Recovering from a near-fatal bullet wound, as well as the battery of psychological tests, would take some time. Not to mention the internal investigation already underway, looking into the death of the man she had killed—Randy Grimmer—who had murdered a convenience store clerk and two customers in a bold daytime robbery before shooting her partner and her.

  Rachel padded barefoot into the bathroom, turned on the sink faucet, and splashed cold water onto her face. After drying off, she flipped on the light switch that flooded the small room with illumination from three sixty-watt bulbs over the vanity. Momentarily shutting her eyes against the offending brightness, she lifted her good arm—the right one—and rubbed the back of her neck. Slowly, cautiously, she opened her eyes and stared at her reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror. Lord, she looked a sight, her short blond hair sticking out in every direction. Using her fingers, she combed through the rats’ nest of curls as she made her way out of the bathroom.

  While walking through her bedroom and into the hallway, she thanked God for air-conditioning. Springtime in the South was usually warm, but hot weather had arrived early, just in time for Mother’s Day, and seemed intent on sticking around for a while.

  Rachel dismissed thoughts of her own mother, missing her more with each passing year. If not for a few close friends and a scattering of cousins, she would be all alone in the world. Her father had died years ago, back in his hometown of Portland, Oregon, and her mother had passed away six years ago. Rachel had buried her mother alongside her relatives in her hometown cemetery in Chattanooga, Tennessee. That had been a horrific year. She had suffered a miscarriage, lost her mother to cancer, and finally admitted that her six-year marriage to Hamilton County, Tennessee, sheriff’s deputy Allen Turner was over. Three losses in the span of ten months had forced Rachel to reevaluate her life. By year’s end, she had moved to Huntsville and joined the police department, after having served eleven years with the Chattanooga P.D.