Last to Die (2 page)

“He’ll be back,” the woman said. “So hurry.”

Claire grasped the offered hand, and the woman hauled her out. Broken glass tinkled like hard rain as Claire rolled onto the pavement. Too quickly she sat up, and the night wobbled around her. She caught one dizzying glimpse of the overturned Saab and had to drop her head again.

“Can you stand?”

Slowly, Claire looked up. The woman was dressed all in black. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, the blond strands bright enough to reflect a faint glimmer from the streetlamp. “Who are you?” Claire whispered.

“My name doesn’t matter.”

“Bob—Barbara—” Claire looked at the overturned Saab. “We have to get them out of the car! Help me.” Claire crawled to the driver’s side and yanked open the door.

Bob Buckley tumbled out onto the pavement, his eyes open and sightless. Claire stared at the bullet hole punched into his temple. “Bob,” she moaned. “Bob!”

“You can’t help him now.”

“Barbara—what about Barbara?”

“It’s too late.” The woman grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a hard shake. “They’re dead, do you understand? They’re both dead.”

Claire shook her head, her gaze still on Bob. On the pool of blood now spreading like a dark halo around his head. “This can’t be happening,” she whispered. “Not again.”

“Come, Claire.” The woman grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Come with me. If you want to live.”

ON THE NIGHT
fourteen-year-old Will Yablonski should have died, he stood in a dark New Hampshire field, searching for aliens.

He had assembled all the necessary equipment for the hunt. There was his ten-inch Dobsonian mirror, which he’d ground by hand three years ago, when he was only eleven years old. It had taken him two months, starting with coarse eighty-grit sandpaper, and progressing to finer and finer grits to shape and smooth and polish the glass. With his dad’s help, he’d built his own alt-azimuth mount. The twenty-five-millimeter Plössl eyepiece was a gift from his uncle Brian, who helped Will haul all this equipment out into the field after dinner whenever the sky was clear. But Uncle Brian was a lark, not an owl, and by ten
PM
he always called it a night and went to bed.

So Will stood alone in the field behind his aunt and uncle’s farmhouse, as he did most nights when the sky was clear and the moon wasn’t shining, and searched the sky for alien fuzzyballs, otherwise known as comets. If he ever discovered a new comet, he knew exactly what he would name it:
Comet Neil Yablonski
, in honor of his dead father. New comets were spotted all the time by
amateur
astronomers; why couldn’t a fourteen-year-old kid be the next to find one? His dad once told him that all it took was dedication, a trained eye, and a lot of luck.
It’s a treasure hunt, Will. The universe is like a beach, and the stars are grains of sand, hiding what you’re looking for
.

For Will, the treasure hunt never got old. He still felt the same excitement whenever he and Uncle Brian hauled the equipment out of the house and set it up under the darkening sky, the same sense of anticipation that this could be the night he discovered Comet Neil Yablonski. And then the effort would be worth it, worth the countless nocturnal vigils fueled by hot chocolate and candy bars. Even worth the insults flung at him by his former classmates in Maryland:
Fat boy. Stay Puft Marshmallow
.

Comet hunting was not a hobby that made you tan and trim.

Tonight, as usual, he’d begun his search soon after dusk, because comets were most visible just after sunset or before sunrise. But the sun had set hours ago, and he still hadn’t spotted any fuzzyballs. He’d seen a few passing satellites and a briefly flaring meteor, but nothing else that he hadn’t seen before in this sector of the sky. He turned the telescope to a different sector, and the bottom star of Canes Venatici came into view. The hunting dogs. He remembered the night his father had told him the name of that constellation. A cold night when they’d both stayed up till dawn, sipping from a thermos and snacking on …

He suddenly jerked straight and turned to look behind him. What was that noise? An animal, or merely the wind in the trees? He stood still, listening for any sounds, but the night had turned unnaturally silent, so silent that it magnified his own breathing. Uncle Brian had assured him there was nothing dangerous in those woods, but alone here in the dark, Will could imagine all sorts of things with teeth. Black bears. Wolves. Cougars.

Uneasy, he turned back to his telescope and shifted the field of vision. A fuzzyball suddenly appeared smack in the eyepiece.
I found it! Comet Neil Yablonski!

No. No, stupid, that wasn’t a comet
. He sighed in disappointment as he realized he was looking at M3, a globular cluster. Something that any decent astronomer would recognize. Thank God he hadn’t woken up Uncle Brian to see it; that would have been embarrassing.

The snap of a twig made him spin around again. Something was moving in the woods. Something was definitely there.

The explosion threw him forward. He slammed facedown onto the turf-cushioned ground, where he lay stunned by the impact. A light flickered, brightening, and he lifted his head and saw that the stand of trees was shimmering with an orange glow. He felt heat against his neck, like a monster’s breath. He turned.

The farmhouse was ablaze, flames shooting up like fingers clawing at the sky.

“Uncle Brian!” Will screamed. “Aunt Lynn!”

He ran toward the house, but a wall of fire barred the way and the heat drove him back, a heat so intense that it seared his throat. He stumbled backward, choking, and smelled the stench of his own singed hair.

Find help! The neighbors!
He turned to the road and ran two steps before he halted.

A woman was walking toward him. A woman dressed all in black, and lean as a panther. Her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and the flickering firelight cast her face in sharp angles.

“Help me!” he screamed. “My aunt and uncle—they’re in the house!”

She looked at the farmhouse, now fully consumed by flames. “I’m sorry. But it’s too late for them.”

“It’s
not
too late. We have to save them!”

She shook her head sadly. “I can’t help them, Will. But you, I can save
you
.” She held out her hand. “Come with me. If you want to live.”

SOME GIRLS LOOKED
pretty in pink. Some girls could don bows and lace, could swish around in silk taffeta and look charming and feminine.

Jane Rizzoli was not one of those girls.

She stood in her mother’s bedroom, staring at her reflection in the full-length mirror, and thought: Just shoot me. Shoot me now.

The bell-shaped dress was bubblegum pink with a neckline ruffle as wide as a clown’s collar. The skirt was puffy with row upon grotesque row of more ruffles. Wrapped around the waist was a sash tied in a huge pink bow. Even Scarlett O’Hara would be horrified.

“Oh Janie, look at you!” said Angela Rizzoli, clapping her hands in delight. “You are so beautiful, you’ll steal the show from me. Don’t you just love it?”

Jane blinked, too stunned to say a word.

“Of course, you’ll have to wear high heels to pull it all together. Satin stilettos, I’m thinking. And a bouquet with pink roses and baby’s breath. Or is that old-fashioned? Do you think I should go more modern with calla lilies or something?”

“Mom …”

“I’ll have to take this in for you at the waist. How come you’ve lost weight? Aren’t you eating enough?”

“Seriously?
This
is what you want me to wear?”

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s …
pink
.”

“And you look beautiful in it.”

“Have you
ever
seen me wear pink?”

“I’m sewing a little dress just like it for Regina. You’ll look so cute together! Mom and daughter in matching dresses!”

“Regina’s cute. I’m definitely not.”

Angela’s lip began to quiver. It was a sign as subtly ominous as the first twitch of a nuclear reactor’s warning dial. “I worked all weekend making that dress. Sewed every stitch, every ruffle, with my own hands. And you don’t want to wear it, even for my wedding?”

Jane swallowed. “I didn’t say that. Not exactly.”

“I can see it in your face. You hate it.”

“No, Mom, it’s a
great
dress.”
For a frigging Barbie, maybe
.

Angela sank onto the bed, and her sigh was worthy of a dying heroine. “You know, maybe Vince and I should just elope. That would make everyone happier, wouldn’t it? Then I won’t have to deal with Frankie. I won’t have to worry about who’s included on the guest list and who isn’t. And you won’t have to wear a dress you hate.”

Jane sat on the bed beside her, and the taffeta puffed up on her lap like a big ball of cotton candy. She punched it down. “Mom, your divorce isn’t even final yet. You can take all the time you want to plan this. That’s the fun of a wedding, don’t you think? You don’t have to rush into anything.” She glanced up at the sound of the doorbell.

“Vince is impatient. Do you know what he told me? He says he wants to claim his bride, isn’t that sweet? I feel like that Madonna song. Like a virgin again.”

Jane jumped up. “I’ll answer the door.”

“We should just get married in Miami,” Angela yelled as Jane walked from the bedroom. “It’d be a whole lot easier. Cheaper, too, ’cause I wouldn’t have to feed all the relatives!”

Jane opened the front door. Standing on the porch were the two men she least wanted to see on this Sunday morning.

Her brother Frankie laughed as he entered the house. “What’s with the ugly dress?”

Her father, Frank Senior, followed, announcing: “I’m here to speak to your mother.”

“Dad, this isn’t a good time,” said Jane.

“I’m here. It’s a good time. Where is she?” he asked, looking around the living room.

“I don’t think she wants to talk to you.”

“She has to talk to me. We need to put a stop to this insanity.”

“Insanity?” said Angela, emerging from the bedroom. “Look who’s talking about insanity.”

“Frankie says you’re going through with this,” said Jane’s father. “You’re actually going to marry that man?”

“Vince asked me. I said yes.”

“What about the fact
we’re
still married?”

“It’s only a matter of paperwork.”

“I’m not going to sign them.”

“What?”

“I said I’m not gonna sign the papers. And you’re not gonna marry that guy.”

Angela gave a disbelieving laugh. “
You’re
the one who walked out.”

“I didn’t know you’d turn around and get married!”

“What am I supposed to do, sit around pining after you left me for
her
? I’m still a young woman, Frank! Men want me. They want to sleep with me!”

Frankie groaned. “Jesus, Ma.”

“And you know what?” added Angela. “Sex has never been better!”

Jane heard her cell phone ringing in the bedroom. She ignored it and grabbed her father’s arm. “I think you’d better leave, Dad. Come on, I’ll walk you out.”

“I’m
glad
you left me, Frank,” said Angela. “Now I’ve got my life back and I know what it’s like to be appreciated.”

“You’re my wife. You still belong to me.”

Jane’s cell phone, which had gone briefly silent, was ringing again, insistent and now impossible to ignore. “Frankie,” she pleaded, “for God’s sake, help me here! Get him out of the house.”

“Come on, Dad,” Frankie said, and clapped his father on the back. “Let’s go get a beer.”

“I’m not finished here.”

“Yes, you are,” said Angela.

Jane sprinted back to the bedroom and dug the ringing cell phone out of her purse. Tried to ignore the arguing voices in the hallway as she answered: “Rizzoli.”

Detective Darren Crowe said, “We need you on this one. How soon can you get here?” No polite preamble, no
please
or
would you mind
, just Crowe being his usual charming self.

She responded with an equally brusque: “I’m not on call.”

“Marquette’s bringing in three teams. I’m lead on this. Frost just got here, but we could use a woman.”