Lisa Jackson - Most Likely To Die

“Look, I don’t blame you, Lindsay. Nobody wants to compete with my long-lost first love.”

And that, Lindsay thought, was precisely the reason she herself might never meet someone and get married after all. Because she couldn’t let go of her long-lost first love. She didn’t want to let go.

“Sorry,” Isaac said, shifting gears, “this was a bad idea. I just thought maybe we could still be friends, like you said.”

That’s right, she had. Wasn’t it what you said when you broke up with someone?

Let’s still be friends.

Along with those other old standbys, There’s nobody else and It’s not you, it’s me.

She’d used all of those lines, many times, with different men, in her adult life.

But she’d never had a chance to say those lines to him, twenty years ago-even if she had been so inclined.

To him, she’d said nothing at all.

She’d just pretended it never happened, and so had he.

And nobody ever knew there had been something between them that rainy long-ago New Year’s Eve, or that Lindsay had borne his child the following summer.

Mommy…why did you give me away?

No. She was wrong.

Somebody knew about the baby.

That meant they might know about him, as well.

Maybe it was time for her to revisit the past after all, before her closet doors opened wide and all her skeletons came tumbling out.

“Lindsay?” Isaac said, startling her back to the present. “I’ll let you go. I’m sorry I bothered you at work. I just wanted to touch base.”

“I’m glad you did. And…I’d love to have a drink some night after work. You know, just to catch up. Okay?”

“Okay.” He sounded surprised. “How about, um, next Tuesday?”

“I can’t…I have a cooking class Tuesday nights.”

“Cooking?”

She could hear the smile in his voice. He knew she was useless in the kitchen.

“I thought I should learn.”

“Good for you. How are you doing so far?”

“Great.” She felt obligated to add, “Then again, we’re still on prep work-you know, easy stuff like chopping and dicing. But I’m an ace with a Bermuda onion, let me tell you.”

He laughed. “Your Nana would be proud. All right, then…if you can’t do Tuesday, how about a week from this Thursday?”

She faltered. She really didn’t want to put something on the calendar.

Then again, she was free that night, and Isaac always could smell an excuse from a mile away.

“Sure,” she told him reluctantly, and entered it into her on-line calendar before hanging up the phone.

She could certainly use all the friends she could get these days. Jillian, her longtime across-the-hall neighbor, had relocated to an uptown co-op. Terri and Amanda, her former happy-hour pals, had both married and moved to the suburbs, like most of the other friends she had known along the way.

New York was becoming a lonely place for Lindsay. Sometimes, she found it hard to believe she’d lived here longer now than she had ever lived in Portland.

For some reason, that still seemed like home.

And she suspected that perhaps this never would.

If it was this challenging to get into Lindsay’s office suite, it was going to be even more challenging to get into her apartment.

Challenging…but not impossible. And she had always liked a challenge.

She knew that New Yorkers couldn’t be counted on to hide keys outside their doors. They were much too savvy for that.

But I have a good plan. Not foolproof, but so far it’s working, she congratulated herself now, nearing the end of phase one.

Lindsay’s assistant was easily distracted by a muscular bike messenger who kept her flirtatiously occupied at the front desk. He had his price, of course-everyone did-and it was a steep one. But he didn’t ask questions.

That was the great thing about New York City, as opposed to Portland. People here might not hide their keys in plain sight, but they definitely paid less attention to others. They tended to mind their own business. Yes, they were wary about the usual urban threats-muggers, speeding cabs-but they never really looked strangers in the eye. That went with the territory.

Busy with the messenger, Kara never even noticed the intruder slipping past the front desk, making her way down the short corridor beyond.

There were three offices in the suite. In one, a young man tapped away at a computer keyboard, oblivious to anyone passing by. The next was empty. There was a light on in the third and largest office, and Lindsay’s name was on the door.

There was an office machine alcove across from it. The overhead light wasn’t on and the machines were off, as if they were rarely used.

Perfect. She ducked behind a copier and waited for Lindsay to leave her desk.

Twenty minutes later, her patience paid off.

Lindsay didn’t have her purse in hand when she walked quickly down the hall toward the ladies’ room.

Turned out she left it on a hook behind the door of her office.

I was counting on that.

She was also counting on Lindsay’s keys being inside. She reached in and felt around for them…

Bingo.

It took her less than ten minutes to slip back out of the suite, have copies made at the hardware store down the avenue, and return.

By then, the messenger was gone.

Kara looked up from the desk when she appeared.

“Hi-I just found this by the elevator on this floor,” she said, handing over the silver Tiffany key ring, which was, fortuitously, engraved. “Someone must have dropped these. The initials are LF. Are they yours?”

“No, but they’re my boss’s. Those must be hers. Thanks so much. I’ll give them to her.”

That was it. Easy-breezy.

From there, she headed over to Lindsay’s East Fifty-Fourth Street high-rise building, where she was hoping the doorman would be willing to look the other way, for a price.

Of course, he would have to be used to it. She had done her homework and was aware that the building happened to be home to J. T. Maguire, the former lead singer of a boy band, now hugely famous as a solo artist.

Groupies and paparazzi frequently staked out the place, hoping for a glimpse.

She approached the doorman, a bored-looking young man with a thin black mustache.

When she furtively told him what she wanted, he didn’t even seem suspicious that a thirtysomething woman was interested in J. T. Maguire.

Why would he be? She’d read that white-haired old ladies dropped off their panties for the twenty-year-old heartthrob.

The doorman pocketed her wad of bills and motioned her to go ahead into the deserted lobby.

“Thanks,” she called belatedly over her shoulder.

“No problem.”

Not for you, she thought gleefully. And not for J. T. Maguire, either.

But Lindsay Farrell? She was about to have a big, big problem on her hands…

Returning from a twenty-minute conference in her assistant Ray’s office next door, Lindsay stopped short in the doorway of her office.

That was strange-there were her keys, sitting right in the open on her desk.

How had they gotten there? She could have sworn she had put them back into her purse, same as always, when she unlocked her office door earlier…

But then, she’d been a little bleary-eyed this morning, thanks to yet another wee-hour phone call last night. It was the same high-pitched childlike voice that didn’t belong to a child. It kept calling her Mommy, asking her why she’d given him away.

She’d finally slammed down the phone in tears, and she hadn’t slept another wink.

“Lindsay?”

“Yes?”

She looked up to see Kara, her recent hire, standing in the doorway of her office.

Slender and attractive, she had so far proven herself to be less interested in her entry-level administrative duties than she was in taking long lunch breaks and flirting with the newlywed Ray, with the computer-repair technician, and even, just this morning, with a bike messenger.