Lisa Jackson - Born To Die

He felt his scar pulse as he grabbed his ski mask and pulled it over his head. Then he started his truck and eased out of his parking slot.

He caught sight of the taillights of Acacia’s Ford far ahead, but he wasn’t worried about losing her. The magnetic, splash-proof GPS device he’d installed in her rear wheel well wouldn’t be discovered until she rotated her tires, and maybe not even then.

Which would be too late.

Switching on the tiny monitor, he saw that she’d turned onto the highway, heading west. Toward Grizzly Falls. As expected.

Relaxing slightly, he began to follow at a safe distance. Checking his rearview mirror, he noticed another vehicle pull out of an alley and turn on its headlights. A niggle of apprehension slithered through his brain.

It’s nothing! Another car, another driver, no big deal.

And yet he watched as the headlights behind him, of some kind of sports car, he thought, were steady. Other cars came between them, but for every turn, the sports car behind slowly followed, never catching up, not even at the one stoplight.

Someone going the same direction as you. Nothing more.

But he thought of all the times he’d felt he was being watched, as if he were the prey rather than the hunter.

Even if the car follows onto the main road, heading west, it’s just chance. Happenstance. Another driver going toward Missoula or beyond.

Relax!

But his fingers held the steering wheel in a death grip as he turned onto the highway and watched the traffic behind him. Yep, the gray sedan followed, but that wasn’t the vehicle he was watching…. No, the car he was worried about, a black sports car, maybe a BMW. . didn’t turn onto the highway.

Good.

Exhaling a sigh of relief, he was instantly at ease again and, with one final glance to his rearview, turned his attention back to where it belonged. Hitting the gas, he homed in on Acacia. According to his nifty little device, she was less than two miles ahead.

He planned not only to catch her but to pass her as well.

Trace heard a moan and then a harsh round of rattling coughs from Eli’s room.

Taking the stairs two at a time, he flipped on the lights at the second story and pushed open the door. Eli was on the bed, but his hair was sweaty, his face flushed, and his eyes looked sunken.

“Hey, buddy,” he said, trying to rouse his son. “Eli?” Eli opened a bleary eye. “How ya feelin’?”

“My throat hurts. Bad.” He blinked himself awake and started coughing deep and hard.

“I’m going to take your temp again,” Trace said.

Eli wasn’t very cooperative, but eventually Trace convinced him to slide the thermometer into his mouth. A few minutes later Trace discovered that his temperature had spiked, now showing 105 degrees, way too high for comfort.

Crushing a children’s Tylenol into water, he insisted his son drink the whole glass, then, walking into the hallway, pulled the door to Eli’s room nearly shut. Sliding a cell phone from his pocket, he dialed the number Kacey had left for him, peering through the crack into his son’s room as he counted off the rings.

Answer, he silently thought. He was used to tending to injured or sick animals, had dealt with trying to save calves that were twisted in the birth canal, had fought blackleg and pneumonia, and had even had a favorite mare die of colic. Dogs and cats had lived and died, and he accepted that illness and death were part of life.

But now he was scared.

By the third ring, he was worried that she wouldn’t answer, but then, just when he was certain he’d have to leave a message, she answered. “Hi. Trace?”

He got right down to business. “I got your call earlier. Look, Eli’s temperature is up. A hundred and five and he’s coughing, having trouble sleeping.”

“Bring him down to the clinic,” she said decisively. “I’m on the road and can be there in half an hour. Work for you?”

“It can.”

“Good. I’ll see you there.”

She hung up and Trace wasted no time. He strode into his son’s room and said quietly as he grabbed a jacket and sleeping bag to wrap around his boy, “Let’s go, bud. I’m taking you to see Dr. Lambert.”

Kacey had been lost in thought most of the drive back from Helena. It was dark now, long past the dinner hour, but she wasn’t hungry. The radio had been playing, but she couldn’t name one song that had been aired. She was too caught up in her own thoughts, replaying everything her mother had told her about Gerald Johnson and his family.

She dimmed her lights for an oncoming car. She hadn’t been paying much attention to the other vehicles, driving by rote, her mind swimming in the waters of a murky past. Who the hell were Gerald Johnson and his wife? How had Maribelle played a part in their lives and marriage? Who were their children, her blood relatives, half siblings?

It was almost as if Maribelle was still half in love with Johnson, as if she’d elevated their affair to something that was more romantic, more tragic, as if there was some nostalgic reverence to it.

Maybe Maribelle was losing it.

And what about the man she still thought of as her father? Stanley Collins, a hardworking carpenter. She wondered about the day he’d learned the truth, though, of course, she couldn’t remember it, couldn’t even think of one action that indicated his love for his only child had shifted in the least little bit.

When she reeled back the years of her life, she remembered no incident that would indicate he’d found out the truth. The same held true for her grandparents. If Stanley Collins had ever confided in them, they certainly hadn’t changed their attitude toward her in the slightest.

But she had the bad feeling that she’d just scratched at a hidden scab that was over a long-festering and maybe deadly wound.

She snapped off the radio as a rendition of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” was being warbled by some country star she’d never head of. She needed the ride to be quiet so she could think and sort out what exactly she was going to do. Had Jocelyn Wallis or Shelly Bonaventure or Elle Alexander suspected they had been fathered by the same man? Had their mothers all hooked up with the same local Romeo?

What were the chances?

Bone weary, she tried to clear her head and concentrate on getting home.

Tonight traffic was light, the roads nearly clear of snow, though a few crystals shimmered as the moonlight pierced the thin cloud cover. Watching the play of light, Kacey was thinking about the women who had recently died when she spied a still-open coffee kiosk less than ten miles from the outskirts of Grizzly Falls.

Pulling in, she rolled down her window and ordered a skinny decaffeinated latte from a woman who looked dead on her feet. The Christmas spirit was missing at the kiosk, despite the string of winking colored lights decorating the windows, stencils of snowflakes on the glass, and an advertisement for a Santa’s Cinnamon Blend Latte.

Waiting in her darkened car, she hoped the steaming milk would coat her stomach, and she accepted the hot cup gratefully, leaving a tip. Showing the barest of smiles, the barista shut the window, then turned off the neon open sign.

Kacey tasted the hot drink, hoping to warm herself up from the inside out. No amount of adjusting the temperature in her little SUV had been able to ease the chill that had settled in her soul when she’d learned the truth.

As she was starting to pull out of the gravel, she saw fast-approaching headlights and, holding out her cup from her body, hit the brakes. Her SUV ground to a stop at the edge of the road as a big dark truck sped past. Her coffee slopped a little bit onto her lid.