Left To Die (55 page)

“It makes sense,” Caruso admitted. “I met Falda years ago, while I was married to Jillian. We had an affair and together decided I would just disappear with the money. Well, that’s long gone. I spent a lot of it hiding my identity, and investing poorly and Falda…oh, hell, she’s been jealous of my first wife for a long time. From the beginning. Even though she and I cooked up the disappearing act and pulled it off, even though I left Jillian, Falda never thought I stopped loving Jillian.” He hesitated, then added, “Maybe she’s right.”

MacGregor saw red. His jaw was clenched so hard it ached. He jetted around a slow-moving minivan and, at last, the hotel’s massive stone façade loomed two blocks ahead.

“I don’t have time for this,” MacGregor growled. Jillian’s life was in danger.

But Caruso shook his head, now totally convinced. “Just six months ago, Falda was cleaning the shop. She found pictures of Jillian in an envelope in my desk. Photos I couldn’t quite give up. I’ve had them since we were first married.”

MacGregor scowled at the man, wishing he could beat the tar out of him right here and now. This was why Jillian’s life was threatened. Because of some damned pictures?

“What happened?”

“Falda went ballistic. Out of her mind. Even though I swore that I’d forgotten I’d saved them, she cut them into tiny pieces in front of me, then threw them in my face. She was…beside herself.”

“You idiot.”

“I kept them because I wanted to remember a better time. The truth of the matter is that I’m dying. Cancer. It’s terminal. Lately I’ve been thinking it was time to put things straight.”

MacGregor still didn’t trust him. This could all be an act. But the guy did appear a bit jaundiced. “Put things straight how? By what? Coming forward? Confessing?”

Caruso didn’t answer, but MacGregor guessed the truth. “You were going to contact Jillian, weren’t you?”

Again, silence. Just the sound of the truck’s engine and slap of wipers against the snow. Caruso’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

“And do what? Ask her forgiveness, so you could go to your grave with a clear conscience?”

“Something like that.”

“Did you tell Falda what you were planning?”

Caruso shrank further into himself, but he gave a short nod. “Yeah.”

He may as well have signed Jillian’s death warrant and the fucker knew it.

“It was a mistake.” Caruso hitched his chin toward the hotel. “Falda used to work here. At the Courtland,” he said. “She still has the uniform. The name tag. And a pass key.”

MacGregor’s heart turned to stone as he sped through the entrance to the hotel, past two tall stone pillars bedecked in colored lights. The back of the truck fishtailed as he took the corner too fast and narrowly missed a taxi lurking at the end of the drive. The driver jumped out, raised a fist and yelled something.

MacGregor barely noticed. His heart was pounding, his mind blind with fear. “She couldn’t know the room number, couldn’t gain access,” he said.

“Don’t kid yourself. She has friends who work here. A cousin who runs off at the mouth. You don’t know Falda, MacGregor. If she wants inside the room, she’ll get in, even if she has to break the door down herself.”

“Then it’ll be your fault, Caruso.” They rocketed toward the portico where valets were standing, staring at the truck careening toward them. MacGregor stood on the brakes. “Whatever happens to Jillian is on your head.”

“You’ll never get him,” Falda swore, inching forward, raising her knife.

“Here’s a news flash,” Jillian tried to yell, but her voice was still the barest of whispers. If only she could get to her pistol! “I don’t want the son of a bitch.”

“Yeah, right.” Falda wasn’t buying it, and she was still blocking the damned door. If Jillian tried to run past her, she’d be caught. If she went for a window, she’d be attacked.

But she had to do something.

“I found pictures,” Falda told her. “Of you. Two of them showing you half naked.”

What? Don’t be distracted, Jillian. Go for the gun. Get the damned gun!

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Maybe she could lunge for the desk chair and send it crashing against the wall. Or kick the toppled cart and make someone outside this room come running.

“They were taken when you were married. You know, he might have been taking photographs of you, but he was already cheating on you, with me.”

But Jillian didn’t remember. Too many years had passed for her to recollect any of the snapshots of her marriage to a man she’d tried hard to forget.

“Even so, he kept those snapshots. Looked at them when I wasn’t around. Probably jacked off to them.”

Jillian cringed, but Falda wasn’t finished with her rambling. “He never got over leaving you, that’s the problem. Felt guilty about it. Shit, why? And when the money ran out, his guilt really got to him. Started saying crap like, ‘I shouldn’t have done this to Jillian, I shouldn’t have done that to her. She didn’t deserve it.’ That’s what I had to live with. And then when he got sick, found out he was dying, he thought he had to see you again.”

Aaron was dying?

Jillian felt nothing.

He’d been dead to her a long, long time.

“If he did that,” Falda said, still advancing, “if he tried to, and I quote, ‘make things right,’ he might feel better, get some peace before he died. But what about me? The police, they would blame me for all that money Carl took. I’d get thrown in jail. While Carl is sucking up to you. You’re the one he wants to confess to, you’re the one he wants to forgive him.”

“Never,” Jillian whispered vehemently, though her mind was still racing, searching for a way to thwart this maniac.

One side of Falda’s mouth lifted and her eyes glittered with pure hatred. “You’re right about that. If you’re not around, he won’t feel compelled to see you again, will he? He can die in peace.”

“You’re sick.”

“Yeah? Well, you’re dead.” Quick as a cat pouncing, Falda lunged.

Jillian feinted, but her ankle buckled and Falda was on her again, the knife raised, the two of them rolling on the floor. She fought, but the stronger woman slammed the knife into her shoulder. Pain ripped through Jillian’s arm and she screamed, but the sound was only a garbled, pitiful mewl. Over it all, she thought she heard the wail of a siren.

Don’t give up!

Footsteps pounded in the hallway. Shouts. Voices yelling her room number.

She rolled toward the bed, blood flowing, as Falda yanked the knife out and jabbed again. This time Jillian was able to squirm away, wiggle enough that the blade didn’t pierce her skin, just caught on the sleeve of her robe. She grabbed Falda’s wrist with her hand, but she was weak, agony ripping down her forearm.

“It’s over,” Falda hissed, her bloodied face twisted in triumph. She raised the knife once more. Jillian noticed the rubber tip of her crutch, lying where she’d left it near the bed. She didn’t think twice but grabbed it with her good hand, fingers wrapping around the metal. Falda raised her arm to strike again, the blade glinting gold from the light of the fire.

Jillian didn’t hesitate.

She swung the crutch upward with all her strength.

Craaack!

The shaft struck hard against the side of Falda’s head. Still clutching the knife Falda fell forward, staggering, then crumpled atop Jillian.

Jillian shuddered in revulsion as she wriggled out from beneath the woman’s body, barely aware of the sounds in the hallway growing louder, sirens outside screaming closer.

Hugging herself, she glanced down at her attacker. From the glassy stare of Falda’s eyes, she knew it was over. She then saw the knife sticking from Falda’s chest.

She scrambled to her feet and limped toward the door just as a key rattled in the lock and the door burst open.

MacGregor, ashen faced, gun drawn, flew into the room. “Jillian!” His voice cracked as he wrapped his arms around her.

She fell against him, collapsing against the warm wall of his chest. She was bleeding, her body battered, her mind threatening to lose consciousness, but here in MacGregor’s arms, she was safe.

Oh God, she was finally safe.

It was all she could do not to break down. Relief flooded through her body as she clung to him. “MacGregor.”

“You’re bleeding. Let me see.”

“Falda!” A male voice called weakly, brokenly.

Jillian stiffened in MacGregor’s arms. She looked over MacGregor’s shoulder to spy Aaron Caruso fall to his knees. This broken man was the one she’d pledged her love to, the jerk who had abandoned her and faked his own death. He looked sick and pale as he cradled his second wife’s bloodied head.

“Oh God, Falda,” he whispered. “What have you done?” He held her body next to his, smearing her blood upon his jacket. “Oh Falda, why? Why, why?” He rocked with the corpse in his arms as a siren screamed in the distance.

People gathered in the hallway. A few hotel guests and staff spilled in through the doorway. An armed security guard cut through the crowd, stepped into the room and turned to hold the onlookers at bay.

“Back! Everyone, please step back!” He assessed the situation and told MacGregor, “The police are on their way up.”

“Good.”

From the floor, where he sat cradling his dead wife, Aaron looked up.

For the first time in years, Jillian’s eyes connected with him—the first man she’d ever loved. “I’m sorry,” he said, as if he meant it. Tears welled in his eyes and he blinked to stem them. “Oh, Jilly, I am so, so sorry.”

She didn’t answer. Couldn’t lie. She wasn’t sorry for what they’d shared so long ago…or for the fact that Falda was dead.

She felt MacGregor’s arms tighten around her.

“I never meant for this to happen,” Aaron said.

Her jaw tightened.

“I’m dying. Falda’s gone. She won’t hurt you ever again.” He appeared so frail that her heart did ache a little for him, just as it would for anyone facing his own death. He’d be arrested, tried for any crimes where the statute of limitations hadn’t been exceeded, but, she suspected, he would die first. He was pathetic, and she wouldn’t wish what he was facing on her worst enemy. “I feel so bad,” Aaron said contritely. “Can you ever forgive me?”

“Forgive you?” She thought of all the pain he’d caused, of how he’d left her to fight his battles, to face the press, the bilked investors. All while he went off and married the woman with whom he’d cheated. He’d been a parasite, living off other people’s money, mindless of the pain he’d inflicted. And even as she’d stood by, mourning his disappearance, he’d taken a second wife, if Falda could be called that since technically Aaron was a bigamist. He’d attached himself to a psycho who had drugged Jillian and left her in a frozen forest to die. When that hadn’t worked, she’d tried like hell to kill her and had damned near succeeded.

“Forgive you?” she repeated, shaking her head. “Not today,” she said, “but that might change. Maybe someday. Right before hell freezes over.”

Epilogue

So they found the pretender.

Good.

Outside, the wind picks up, blowing hard through the trees. Inside the cabin, I sit naked, sweat glistening on my skin from my recent workout. I stare at the television screen and sip from my drink, the ice cubes clinking softly in my glass as I watch the police haul a handcuffed man named Carl Rousseau from a grand hotel—the Courtland in Spokane, Washington. They stuff him into the back of a cruiser, careful not to bump his head.

The police are proud of themselves.

They’ve caught one of the bad guys.

The camera pans wider to show a van from the medical examiner’s office at the scene. A half dozen police cars fan over the street, their lights flashing, strobing the snowy lawn of the grand hotel. A woman is dead, and it’s presumed that this woman is the moron who tried to copy my work.

A woman!

She had the cops fooled.

Well, that’s not so hard, is it? They are, after all, imbeciles.

My stomach roils that anyone would try to take credit for my work.

That the police would consider for a second that an imposter could copy what I’ve spent years creating. My fingers tighten over my glass and I force myself to calm down. After all, the fraud has been exposed.

Angrily I snap off the television and walk to the table where I have started work on my next notes. Perfectly penned, painstakingly created, ready to be left nailed to a tree for the cops. A way to let them know that I am still hard at work, still eluding them, still their nemesis.

Near the neatly stacked letters are photographs of the women I’ve blessed by choosing them, pictures taken when they realized their fate. Their images stare up at me and I remember them all, how they thought I would protect them, save them…how they offered themselves and begged like the whores they are.

They are just the beginning.

There are so many more to be sacrificed, and the sheriff’s department will need to be reminded that it’s not over.

The police will discover that I am still at work, and I know how to get their attention, even their respect.

The copy-cat will strike no more.

I hear a noise from the room down the hall.

She’s stirring…maybe even crying.

I finish the drink and know it’s time to play my part, to put on my clothes and my sympathetic smile, to assure her that everything will be all right once the storm passes.

That I am her savior.

Little does she know that already she’s been chosen to die.

Dear Reader,

Okay, so now that you’ve finished LEFT TO DIE, you realize that although Jillian Rivers’s and Zane MacGregor’s story is finished, there are still a few loose ends to wrap up.

CHOSEN TO DIE, my next original paperback, coming out in August 2009, takes up where LEFT TO DIE left off. All the same characters will show up, of course, even crazy Ivor Hicks and ethereal Grace Perchant and we’ll be back at the Pinewood County Sheriff’s Department in Montana.

CHOSEN TO DIE is Regan Pescoli’s story. I love this woman! The minute I started writing about Pescoli, she jumped right off the page to shout into my ear while trying to steal every scene in the book. With all the problems with her kids, job and ex-husbands, she is screaming for her own story.