Lisa Jackson - Born To Die

Hot water pulsed against her skin, and she felt the tension of the day start to ease from her muscles. Lathering, she washed, humming to a song by Katy Perry and forcing her mind away from Trace O’Halleran, where it had wandered whenever she had a free minute to herself, which, today, in the midst of flu season and appointments all day, hadn’t happened often.

In those few minutes, though, she’d found herself wondering about him, about Eli’s mother, and the unknown Miss Wallis, his “girlfriend” according to his son.

“Forget it,” she said aloud, twisting off the tap. He wasn’t even her type. She’d never been one to go for the backwoods, rugged alpha male in battered jeans, a beat-up jacket, who lacked a razor.

Yeah? And what good did that do you? Remember polished, sophisticated Jeffrey Charles Lambert, the heart surgeon whom you fell for? Was he your type? That didn’t turn out so well, now, did it? Face it, Acacia, your track record when it comes to men is pretty dismal.

“Oh, stop!” she muttered under her breath, disgusted with the turn of her thoughts. Maybe she spent too many hours with her own thoughts when she was alone. It could just be time to rethink the issue of owning a dog.

So O’Halleran was the most handsome cowboy she’d met. So he seemed dedicated to his child. So her own biological clock was ticking like crazy, so loudly that she avoided the maternity wing in the hospital. So what?

The old pipes groaned. She heard over the DJ’s chatter on the radio a noise that didn’t seem to belong in the house. Grabbing a towel, she wrapped it around her as she stepped out of the tub, listening hard.

Nothing.

Was someone in the house?

Or was the sound only her imagination?

Still dripping, her heart pounding a little, she toweled off quickly and snagged her robe from its hook on the back of the bathroom door. Shoving her arms down the thick terry sleeves, she strained her ears, hearing nothing. Cinching the robe around her waist, she moved cautiously into the hallway.

Nothing looked or sounded out of the ordinary.

Scraaaape!

Her heart flew to her throat, and she walked stealthily along the hallway toward the noise. It’s nothing…. But she felt the skin on the back of her neck prickle in warning. Peeking around the corner, she saw that everything was just as she had left it. The exercise ball still in the middle of the den, the remote for the television on the carpet nearby.

She rounded the corner and was starting for the kitchen when the sound, a deep grating noise, erupted nearby. She spun around, her eyes wildly searching the darkened dining room, her heart a drum.

Scraaape! Against the glass of the old window. She nearly shrieked when she saw a skeletal hand rake along the pane.

“Oh, God!” She staggered back, a scream rising in her throat just as she recognized the blackened hand for what it was — a weathered, leafless branch of the shrubbery on the east side of the house.

She sank down hard on a kitchen chair, drained, her vivid imagination and her deep-seated fears getting the best of her. She was a doctor, a professional, trained to be calm in emergencies, and yet a stupid tree branch had nearly sent her running for her grandfather’s shotgun. “Get a grip,” she told herself, feeling like a fool. “This is ridiculous.”

Pulling her wits about her, she heated the slices of pizza in the microwave, threw the salad into a bowl, poured herself a glass of red wine from the bottle she’d opened three days earlier, and carried it all to the den, where she clicked on the television again and told herself this was the life she’d always wanted after she’d divorced Jeffrey.

She glanced out the window to the darkness beyond.

There was no one lurking in the shadows, just beyond the veil.

She was safe here. Home at last.

Or so she tried to convince herself as she shuttered all the blinds and refused to look beyond the frosty glass.

But in her heart, deep in the darkest of places only she recalled, she knew that she’d run away. Not only from a cheating husband, a doctor with a God complex, but also from the past, and the one night she tried never to remember.

The problem was, she couldn’t run away.

Wherever she went, the memory of that night chased her down, nipping and snarling at her heels, the pain and terror never quite leaving her alone.

From the knoll, he trained his long-distance binoculars on the cottage, but even with the high magnification, he saw little through the curtain of snow. Yes, there were images of her in her den and kitchen, and the bathroom light came on for a few minutes, but her figure was indistinct, her face completely blurred, and when she finally pulled the shades, he could watch no longer.

He had the audio, of course, tiny microphones hidden in her house, in spots she would never find, but he’d never been able to install a remote camera, and that bothered him for he would have enjoyed watching her surreptitiously, from a distance, learning more about her, about her routine, about what really made her tick.

His fascination was obsessive, he knew, as he stood shivering in the thicket of aspen and spruce that grew at the edge of a field near her house, but he couldn’t help himself.

She was the special one; of all the pretenders, she was the most dangerous. Smart and beautiful, Acacia Collins Lambert, a doctor no less.

Sliding his binoculars into their case, he took off the way he’d come, through the surrounding forest to a back road that he’d taken after following her home from the clinic where she practiced. Telling himself he had to be patient, he broke a trail through the snow.

It wouldn’t be much longer.

“ You’re sooo grounded.” Pescoli glared at her daughter as Bianca slunk through the front door.

“Why?” Bianca asked as she headed to her room and Cisco, who had been sleeping on a pillow on the couch, jumped down and began wagging his tail frantically.

“Are you serious?” Pescoli had had it with her kid. “You skipped school.”

“I told you I didn’t feel good.”

“Well.”

“Whatever.” Yanking off her gloves with her teeth, Bianca deigned to pat the dog on his head, then headed straight for the refrigerator. She tossed her gloves onto the table with the mail and opened the refrigerator, only to stare inside. “Isn’t there anything to drink?”

Pescoli followed after her and slammed the refrigerator door shut with the flat of her hand.

“Hey! Watch out!” Bianca said, stepping back quickly and facing her mother. She was pale, dark circles showing under her eyes as she pulled off her stocking cap and tossed it onto the table next to the gloves. “What’s your problem?”

“Exactly what I was going to ask you.”

“I said I’m sick. Duh!” She glared at her mother as if Pescoli were as dense as tar and certainly not as interesting.

“You didn’t call me, and you didn’t come home.”

“I hung out at Chris’s.”

“Instead of going to school?” Pescoli stepped back, allowing Bianca access to the refrigerator again.

“I was sick .” She pulled out a can of Diet Coke and pulled the tab. Pop. Ssst.

“And when you are sick, the protocol is to phone me and let me know that you need to A”—she held up a finger—“come home, or B. .” She held up a second finger. “Go to the doctor. There are no other options.”

“I could call Dad.” Bianca took a swig from her can.

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“ ’Cuz it wasn’t an option, I guess.” Another swallow of cola.

“Nor was going over to your boyfriend’s house. Were Chris’s parents home?”