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As much as he hated to leave this house, where he’d once been happy with his parents, all of that had changed. He understood Molly’s need to have a place that was hers, where no one dead had a hold over them.
“Just for the record, I’m not having fun here,” Chris said, still trying to locate the defective light. “I hate these lights, and I hate this tree.”
“Well, take a break,” Molly said, putting on a pair of oven mitts. “I can do that later. There’s no rush. We still have two weeks until Christmas.” She opened the oven and took out a sheet of cookies.
He shook another little bulb, and suddenly, all the lights on the faulty string went on.
“Yippee!” Erin cried, a smudge of frosting on her cheek.
Chris glanced over at her and Molly. He worked up a smile.
But Molly put a hand over her mouth, and her color suddenly didn’t look so good. “Excuse me,” she muttered, rushing out of the kitchen.
He heard her footsteps racing up the stairs, and a few moments later, a door slammed. He scratched his head. “I don’t get why she always goes all the way upstairs to barf when there’s a bathroom down here.”
Erin shrugged. “I think she likes barfing upstairs.” She went back to frosting the cookies.
She didn’t seem to understand why Chris was chuckling. He’d have to share his kid sister’s little pearl of wisdom with Molly when she came downstairs again. In the meantime, he finished arranging the last of the Christmas lights. The tree was actually starting to look pretty.
He began to wonder if Molly was all right. Usually, she was back downstairs and feeling better a few minutes after praying to the porcelain god.
He went to the foot of the stairs. “Molly?” he called. “Are you okay?”
No answer.
He started up the stairs. In the second-floor hallway, he saw the stairwell door to her attic studio was open. He heard murmuring up there. It sounded like she was on the phone.
Chris knew it wasn’t any of his business, but he crept to the doorway.
“It’s all right, Mother,” she was saying. “I understand why you couldn’t come to the funeral. You didn’t even know him. But I want you to think about coming here for Christmas or New Year’s. I miss you, Mom. Most of all, I think it’s time you met my kids. Chris and Erin are really pretty great. . . .”
Smiling, Chris quietly walked toward the stairs. He would go down to the kitchen and talk to his sister. He’d get her to agree. They’d ask Molly to put up the star.
Visitors needed to be cleared in advance. He saw a note attached to the clipboard with the sign-in sheet that the patient’s sister, Elaine Lawles, would be coming by at sixthirty.
In the hospital hallway, the uniformed police guard sat outside Jenna Corson’s door. He was tired, and desperately trying to stay awake. Last night, he’d pulled an eight-hour shift working security on his second job at Westlake Mall. The thirty-four-year-old had wavy red hair, a mustache, and—at the moment—dark circles under his blue eyes.
He sat at a desk outside room 404. In front of him was a small poinsettia plant, a bottle of Evian water, a
Sports Illustrated
, the clipboard with the sign-in sheet for visitors, and a phone he wasn’t supposed to use except on official business. The ringer was turned down low.
He barely heard it ring when the call came through at 6:25. It was the front desk, telling him that they’d issued a visitor’s pass to Elaine Lawles, and she was on her way up. He thanked them, hung up the phone, and got to his feet.
The door to 404 was open. Nurses and doctors had been in and out of there all day. He peeked in on the patient. She was snoozing. She had a pasty complexion, and her limp brown hair needed washing. The hospital gown was hardly flattering. Still, she looked like she might have been kind of pretty—when not borderline comatose with a tube in her nose. They had Jenna Corson hooked up to an IV drip. Her heartbeat was monitored on a small screen at her bedside. There were no flowers or Christmas decorations in the room. Elaine Lawles was her first family visitor.
When she didn’t show up by six-forty, the guard started to wonder if Jenna’s sister had gotten lost. That was easy to do in this maze of a hospital. He sat down, and was about to call the front desk when he saw someone approaching. She wore her visitor’s badge on the lapel of her trench coat. In one hand, she carried a little Christmas evergreen plant with tiny red and gold ribbon bows on it. He gaped at her.
“I’m Elaine Lawles, and I’m here to see my sister, Jenna Corson.” she said. Then she frowned at him. “It’s impolite to stare.”
He cleared his throat. “Um, sorry,” he muttered, reaching for the clipboard. “Could you sign in, please? And I’ll need to hold on to your purse while you’re in there.”
Putting down the Christmas plant, she surrendered her bag, and then scrawled her name on the form. It was barely legible. “I’d like to talk to my sister in private. May I close the door?”
He didn’t see anything wrong with it. There was a window in the door. He wanted to warn her that it wouldn’t be much of a conversation. Jenna Corson was still very weak, and they’d pumped her full of painkillers and antidepressants. So far, he’d chalked up about fifty hours of guard duty here in the last three weeks, and he’d heard the patient mutter about twenty words—tops.
He watched the woman stroll into Jenna Corson’s room. “Hey, sis,” she said. “It’s me, Elaine. Are you awake? You don’t look so bad. . . .”
Then she closed the door behind her.
The guard could hear murmuring. He started reading his
Sports Illustrated
.
After a while, he heard a muffled, high-pitched hum.
At that very moment in another wing on that same floor, Elaine Lawles was passed out in the last of three stalls in the women’s room. Someone had stolen her trench coat, her purse, her shoes, and her visitor’s pass. A syringe—with just a trace of propofol left in it—was on the gray-tiled floor between her and the toilet.
Anyone resourceful enough could have figured out how to get their hands on a syringe and the sleep drug if they’d been around the hospital for two weeks.
Elaine had come empty-handed to visit her sister—no flowers, magazines, or candy.
The Christmas plant now on the nightstand table in room 404 had been a gift for another patient in the hospital, a teenage girl who was in there for a series of skin grafts.
The guard outside Jenna Corson’s room got to his feet. Moving closer to the door, he heard the incessant high-pitched drone more clearly now. The guard looked in the window—at the woman standing at Jenna Corson’s bedside. She was holding a pillow over Jenna’s face.
That sound came from the cardio monitor. It accompanied the flatline on the screen.
He heard a stampede of footsteps, and a doctor hurriedly issuing instructions. A crew of doctors and nurses were racing up the hallway toward room 404. The guard counted seven of them. Two were pushing a resuscitation cart.
They would be in there working on her for the next thirty minutes—with one of them periodically yelling, “Clear!” But the line on that monitor graph would remain flat.
The woman they pulled off Jenna Corson had a hospital gown under the trench coat. For someone who was so scarred up, she was awfully strong. She would later tell the police that suffocating Jenna Corson hadn’t been too difficult.
The hard part had been giving Jenna’s sister the shot of propofol. “You try working a syringe when you don’t have all your fingers,” she told them.
Still, somehow, Courtney had managed to do it.
KEVIN O’BRIEN
THE LAST VICTIM
PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
STALKING BRIDGET
As she clicked off her cell phone, Bridget noticed something down the alley. A dark figure darted from behind a recycling bin into a doorway. Bridget held on to the cell phone and moved toward the recycling bin. Behind the bin, she saw a shadowy alcove with a door and a window—both closed.
There was no sign of anyone in the alcove. The darting figure she’d seen must have been her imagination. But then she glanced down at a puddle by the alcove stoop. There were wet footprints all around the stoop—and on the pavement by the bin.
It wasn’t her imagination. Someone was just there.
Biting her lip, Bridget reached for the door handle. Her hand was trembling. The hinges squeaked as she started to open the heavy door. She didn’t have to open it more than a few inches to see the wet footprints on the dusty cement floor inside.
Bridget froze. She realized if she didn’t get out of there right now, she could be as dead as Olivia and Fuller.
Bridget backed away from the door and watched it close. Her heart racing, she retreated toward the sidewalk at the end of the alley. As she headed back toward her car, her cell phone rang. She clicked on the Talk button. “Hello?”
“Bridget?”
She didn’t recognize the voice on the other end. “Yes?”
“Why didn’t you open the door?”
“What?” But then she suddenly realized what he meant.
“Why didn’t you step inside, Bridget?” he whispered. “I was in there, waiting for you. . . .”
Books by Kevin O’Brien
ONLY SON
THE NEXT TO DIE
MAKE THEM CRY
WATCH THEM DIE
LEFT FOR DEAD
THE LAST VICTIM
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
This book is for my editor and friend,
John Scognamiglio
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks once again to my editor, John Scognamiglio, who got this book off the ground and got me off my ass to write it. Thanks also to my other friends at Kensington Books, especially Doug Mendini, who is
a little bit of terrific,
and Robin Cook, who rocks.
Another great big thank you goes to Meg Ruley, Christina Hogrebe, and the folks at the Jane Rotrosen Agency.
I’m grateful to my Writers Group pals and fellow authors, who worked with me on this book. Thank you, Soyon Im, Dan Monda, and Garth Stein. My thanks also go to my dear friend Cate Goethals, who also put a lot of time into this book, and helped whip it into shape.
Thanks also to my neighbors at the Bellemoral, who are incredibly supportive, especially Kate Debiec, Cathy Johnson, and David Renner; the gang at Broadway Video; some wonderful customers; and my pals, Paul, Tony, Sheila, Chad, Tina, Larry, Danielle, and Tiffany. And how could I not thank my local book store? Thank you, Michael Welles and all the cool people at Bailey/Coy for always pushing my books.
For their friendship and support, I want to give another great big thank you to Lloyd Adalist, Dan (“Well, on a scale from 1 to 7, I’m about a G”) Annear, Marlys Bourm, Terry and Judine Brooks, Kara Cesare, Anna Cottle and Mary Alice Kier, Tom Goodwin, Val Hockens, Ed and Sue Kelly, Elizabeth and Kate Kinsella, Megan Leonard Fleischel, Judy O’Brien, John Saul and Michael Sack, Dan and Doug Stutesman, and George and Sheila Stydahar.
A huge thank you goes to my pal Tommy Dreiling.
Finally, thanks to my wonderful family, Adele, Mary Lou, Cathy, Bill, and Joan.

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