Lisa Jackson - Most Likely To Die

Now the driver made another turn and the rutted back road gave way to a wooded dirt road.

“Is this it?” Leo asked her, leaning forward over the seat.

“This is it,” she replied, and he found himself trying to catch a glimpse of her face in the rearview mirror.

He couldn’t see her eyes behind those big dark glasses, but her jaw seemed to be set resolutely.

He leaned back uneasily in the seat and glanced out the window.

Nothing but trees.

This couldn’t be right.

Could it?

He looked again at the driver, who appeared to be searching for something. Maybe she thought they were lost, too.

He watched her turn her head again, and that was when he saw it.

The wisp of hair at her temple.

It was darker than the rest of her blond hair…

Oddly so.

Fixated on it, he realized, in the moment before she turned her head toward the windshield again, that the rest of her hair wasn’t hers at all.

She was wearing a wig.

Heart pounding, he stared at the blond waves beneath the back of her cap, noting that they were, indeed, synthetic. Now he recognized the unnatural uniformity of the strands; his aunt Rose had worn a wig when she was going through chemo a few months ago.

But Aunt Rose had been bald beneath her wig. She had a good reason to wear it.

This person wasn’t bald. Her own hair was right there, sticking out.

What reason would a woman have to hide her own hair? It wasn’t as though she were all dressed up for a fancy party, or Halloween, or something.

Leo realized the car was slowing.

“Where are we?” he asked, and he heard the panic that was beginning to edge into his own voice.

This time, she didn’t answer.

That was ominous.

So was the fact that the car had come to a stop in a desolate spot, with nothing in sight but deep forest on either side of the road.

“Shouldn’t he have been here by now?” Lindsay asked-again.

Wyatt looked at his watch. “Definitely.” He didn’t sound-or look-as reassuring as he had the last time she had asked.

In between wondering about Leo’s arrival, they had been talking with almost surprising ease about where their lives had taken them since high school. They’d covered everything but their romantic relationships-assuming he must have had at least a few.

But he had said he wasn’t married now and had never been divorced. She wondered why he was still single after all these years but didn’t dare ask.

She was afraid of the answer.

She wouldn’t be surprised if it was because he was still the ladies’ man he’d been back in the old days.

“What time is it?” she asked him, her thoughts still on Leo.

“About three-forty.”

“He should have been here almost an hour ago, shouldn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t think…I mean, what if there was an accident or something?”

“Right, maybe there was. That happens all the time on 95. Especially in bad weather.”

They both looked toward the window. A steady rain was now falling, and the sky hung low and gray.

“Maybe they just got stuck in some kind of rubbernecking traffic behind an accident,” Wyatt said.

Or maybe, Lindsay thought uneasily, they were actually in the accident, if there was one.

Was Leo okay?

Had he been hurt?

So this was what it felt like to be a mother.

Now she knew what the expression worried sick meant.

No, you don’t, she corrected herself. You’ve dealt with this for only an hour. His adoptive mother is the one who’s borne the brunt of the maternal worry.

She felt a twinge of guilt. She shouldn’t have agreed to keep this a secret from Leo’s mother. She deserved to know what her son was doing, even if he was almost a grown man.

That’s the first thing I’m going to tell him when he shows up, Lindsay decided. I’m going to insist that he let her know he’s made contact with us.

“I’ll go call the car service and see what’s going on,” Wyatt said, grim faced, going to the next room.

She nodded, walking to the window and staring bleakly at the falling rain, wishing the car would appear in the driveway.

But it didn’t.

And Wyatt was back, wearing a troubled expression.

“What is it?” she asked.

“They said he was waiting right out front of the building when the driver got there a little after two. They got almost all the way here, and then he suddenly jumped out of the car at an intersection and took off.”

“Took off?” she echoed incredulously. “What do you mean, took off?”

“The driver said he just ran away. He waited for a while and he drove around looking for him, but he couldn’t find him.”

“What?” Lindsay shook her head. “Why would he do that?”

“I guess he just chickened out,” Wyatt told her with a shrug. “It was probably too much for him.”

“I guess we can’t blame him.”

“No. I guess we can’t. He’s just a kid, really.”

They stared at each other.

Lindsay wondered if he was thinking the same thing she was.

What now?

“Dammit! Where are you, you brat?”

As if the kid was going to answer her.

He was probably a mile from here already. It had been fifteen minutes, at least, since Leo had jumped out of the car just as she was about to get out and deal with him.

It was almost as if he knew…

She could tell he was getting suspicious back there. She should have thought this through better, the way she had thought through the rest of the plan. She’d even had the foresight to hire that neighborhood kid to get into the other town car-the one Wyatt Goddard was sending-and pass himself off as Leo.

That way, nobody would realize right away that he was missing.

She’d told the kid to ride up to Connecticut, then get out of the car before he got to Goddard’s house. She’d given him two hundred bucks.

“But how am I supposed to get back home again?” he’d whined.

“I don’t know. Isn’t there a train you can take from there?”

“How am I supposed to get to the train?”

She’d given him another hundred, told him to take a cab, and crossed her fingers that he wouldn’t screw it up.

No, but Leo Cellamino sure had.

He had disappeared into the underbrush in a flash.

He must have realized he was in trouble.

Okay, so he was smart.

But not smarter than I am.

“Here you go.” Wyatt handed Lindsay a goblet of Pinot Grigio and settled on the couch beside her again with his Pepsi.

“Thanks, Wyatt.”

Had he ever heard her say his name before? He must have.

But not like this. Not in casual conversation, as though they did this all the time.

Intrigued, he snuck a peek at her and saw her take a cautious sip of her wine.

“I have other bottles,” he offered, “if you don’t like that one.”

“Oh, it’s fine. I’m not a wine connoisseur.” She motioned at the glass in his hand. “Why aren’t you having any?”

“I don’t drink.”

“Ever?”

He shook his head. “My parents did,” he said, as if that explained everything.

For him, in fact, it did.

“Oh, right. I knew that,” Lindsay said sympathetically-then looked as though she wished she hadn’t.

“It’s okay. I knew people talked about them back then. About me, my family…”

“They talked about me and mine, too.” She shrugged. “It might as well have been a small town in some ways, you know?”

“Yeah.” He paused, reflecting on the past. And on the present. “The funny thing is, this is a small town, and I know nothing at all about the people who live here.”

“That’s how it is in the city. It’s kind of…lonely sometimes, don’t you think?”