Calmer now, she fingered the cold blade once more.
Get it together. There is still time.
You know what you have to do.
You know who is next.
She licked her lips. Envisioned another victim. This one with surly blue eyes, full lips, and a face framed by long blond hair.
Go now.
She’s waiting.
Chapter 13
They talked to the police. For several hours. In Ross’s condominium. With the panoramic view of the city lights reflecting off the Willamette River, Ross, Lissa, and Kristen all gave statements about the events of the evening, but the cops were skeptical. The only crimes were a supposed break-in and the stealing of a butcher knife and box of ancient schoolgirl memorabilia. The two cops took down the information and agreed that the special invitations were weird, someone’s sick idea of a joke. Same with the tape and letter left in Kristen’s car.
Before they left they promised to have someone go over to the house in the daylight and take a look around. They advised Kristen to get an alarm system and a big dog. Forget the wimpy-looking orange cat. Clearly, though they were doing their duty, they felt the perpetrator’s actions were more pranklike than a serious threat.
But Kristen was beginning to put more stock in Haylie’s theories and hadn’t forgotten that someone had killed Jake Marcott, someone who had escaped justice.
Kristen checked the time. It was late. She wanted to call Lindsay and Rachel but decided to wait to learn if they, too, had received tampered-with invitations. If they had, then Haylie’s twisted hypothesis might be proven true.
Kristen walked down the short hallway to the second bedroom, where Lissa was asleep on the daybed, the television still flickering blue, the sound hushed. How peaceful their daughter appeared, Kristen thought as she leaned a shoulder on the doorjamb. As if Lissa didn’t have a care in the world. Kristen couldn’t help but wonder how much of her daughter’s teenage rebellion was the normal part of being a kid stretching her wings and how much was because of the deterioration of her parents’ marriage.
Guilt dug at her heart, but she pushed it aside. The past was over. It was time to move on.
She didn’t hear Ross approach but felt his arm slip around her waist. Pressing warm lips to her ear, he said, “She’s fine. I think it’s time you and I called it a day.”
She felt a secret stirring in her blood as he pulled the door shut, took her hand, and led her farther down the hall to the master suite. A king-sized bed took up one wall and faced the windows. He closed the door, then pulled her through the spacious room to the master bath, where an oversized tub was filling with hot water. Steam rose toward the ceiling, fogging windows that also faced the city lights.
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.