Lisa Jackson - Most Likely To Die

But Haylie was only the first.

She felt the body shudder and let it fall onto the pavement.

Near-lifeless eyes looked up at her.

She stared down into the eyes of her victim.

Haylie was near death, but her lips formed an unspoken “You?”

And then the light in her eyes faded.

Haylie, the first, was dead.

Exhilaration sizzled through the killer’s body as she worked quickly, unzipping and stripping out of her jogging suit. She stuffed it, along with her extra padding, wig, and knife, into the athletic bag. Now she was in skintight neoprene, which she covered with an oversized hiking parka that reached her knees. Her hair, still wound onto her head, was quickly disguised by a Mariners baseball cap. There was still some blood on her black running shoes, but she couldn’t help that. She’d wash them at St. Elizabeth’s in the gym and trash the clothes in an incinerator that was still used occasionally at the school. First things first. She had to make this look like a robbery gone bad.

She saw the cat hiding beneath an azalea and then she left, stomping out the still-smoldering cigarette and knowing that she’d sent Haylie Swanson’s soul straight to hell.

New York City, May 2006

“Mommy?”

Lindsay Farrell bolted from her bed, heart pounding wildly from the shrill middle-of-the-night ringing that had just startled her from a sound sleep. She gripped the phone tightly against her ear.

“Mommy…why did you do it?”

“Who is this?” she demanded, her heart pounding wildly. She strode blindly across the darkened bedroom, stubbing her toe painfully against the footboard of her queen-sized bed, barely noticing.

“It’s me, Mommy.” The voice was strange, high-pitched. It could belong to a child…

But he wouldn’t be a child anymore, she reminded herself.

No, her son would be nineteen now-twenty this coming summer.

He was born right here in New York City, the week before she started her first semester at Fordham University in the Bronx. She’d attended her first day of classes with engorged breasts that throbbed painfully, and a heart that ached even worse.

“Why did you give me away, Mommy?”

“Stop calling me!”

Lindsay disconnected the call and tossed the cordless phone across the room. She heard it fall to the carpet with a dull thud.

It wouldn’t be broken, though.

She’d thrown it even harder last night, against the wall, and she was certain it wouldn’t work when she found it this morning.

She hoped it wouldn’t…not that she honestly believed a broken telephone receiver would put an end to the eerie wee-hour phone calls. According to her Caller ID box, they were coming from a Private Name, Private Number. Pressing star-sixty-nine on the dial after the calls got her nowhere. Somehow, the number was completely blocked.

Meanwhile, she’d gotten a call just about every other night for the past week or so-always the same voice, always saying the same thing.

Why did you give me away, Mommy?

So somebody knew her secret.

Was it really that surprising?

Of course, she trusted the kindly nuns at Blessed Sacrament, the Queens home for unwed mothers, where she’d arrived that June just after high-school graduation and stayed until she had the baby.

And she trusted Sister Neva, the aging Reverend Mother at St. Elizabeth’s, who’d arranged her referral to the home.

She’d confided her secret to no one else-even to this day.

Did she really believe she’d kept it that well hidden?

At the time, yes.

But in her muddled, distraught state-first because of the pregnancy, then because of Jake’s shocking murder-she really couldn’t be sure of anything.

Looking back, she recalled that she’d bought at least seven home-pregnancy-test kits when she first realized, just before that ill-fated Valentine’s Day dance, that her period was late. She’d bought them at various drugstores and supermarkets, thinking that was wiser than returning to the same place over and over again. And she’d always attempted to camouflage her telltale purchase with several other items. Had she really thought the cashier wouldn’t even notice a pregnancy test nestled among the packs of gum, magazines, panty hose?

Maybe. She was such a wreck back then, even before the tests confirmed her worst suspicion.

Afterward, she remembered trying to conceal her thickening waistline and swelling breasts beneath her ugly, ill-fitting school uniform in those last four months of school. She had always been slender; a few people-especially her mother-commented that she seemed to be “filling out.” Aurora Zephyr even jokingly told her she’d better watch out that she didn’t add the notorious “freshman fifteen” pounds when she got to college.

Had her friends been whispering about her escalating weight-and speculating about the possible cause for the gain-behind her back?

Maybe. Probably. Her group of friends, always tight knit, seemed to splinter after Jake’s death. Even Kristen and Rachel, her closest confidantes, became distant.

If that hadn’t happened-if Jake hadn’t been killed-Lindsay might have confided in them. She might even have told her parents, who would have been disappointed but probably would have stood by her and helped her hide her condition-if only to protect the family name.

But she didn’t share her secret with her parents or her friends.

Instead, she miserably battled round-the-clock morning sickness on her own, hoping no one would overhear her daily vomiting sessions in the school bathroom.

When somebody eventually did, it was the last person with whom she would have expected to share such a scandalous confidence.

Perpetually patrolling the corridors in her black habit, leaning heavily on her wooden cane, the Reverend Mother was an intimidating figure. Never more so than the day Lindsay emerged from a bathroom stall to find Sister Neva standing there, expressionless, obviously having heard every last gag and retch.

“Are you sick, child?” she asked, fixing Lindsay with a level stare.

Lindsay started to stutter, then burst into tears.

To her shock, Sister Neva folded her into a firm embrace-more bolstering than affectionate, but it was what Lindsay needed in that moment.

She found herself being led to the inner sanctum: the Reverend Mother’s office, furnished only with an austere desk, guest chair, file cabinet, and of course the ubiquitous crucifix on the wall.

There, Lindsay confessed her greatest sin-and was met not with disapproval, but stoic support.

With resignation, the aging nun agreed not to tell Lindsay’s parents, on the condition that Lindsay allow her to make arrangements for the baby to be delivered-and adopted-on the East Coast.

There was no question, ever, that she was going to have the baby. She was a devout Catholic.

But Sister Neva stepped in and took all-encompassing control of the situation as if it were her own personal mission to ensure that there would be no other option. She was determined to propel Lindsay through the pregnancy until the baby was safely delivered to deserving Catholic parents.

Until she arrived on the scene, Lindsay hadn’t given much thought to what would happen after she gave birth.

Which seemed hard to believe now, from an adult perspective. As a high-powered Manhattan event planner, her entire career was based on intricate short-and long-term calendar organization.

But back then, she was more concerned with the immediate future-her own-than the long-range repercussions of her condition on herself or anyone else. Even the baby.

So it was a relief to defer that monumental decision to somebody with infinitely more wisdom and connections. The nun cleverly arranged for her to take a summer class at Fordham University so that her parents wouldn’t question her early departure for college. Not that they would have anyway, after all she had been through.