Lisa Jackson - Most Likely To Die

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.