Final Breath (32 page)

Eli shrugged uneasily. "I--I didn't want to worry you."

She gave him a wary sidelong glance. "I don't think I'm getting the whole story here, Eli. Something's going on with you that you're not telling me. What is it?"

He let out a nervous laugh. "Nothing, Mom. Nothing's going on."

She stroked his arm. "Sweetheart, this guy following you around could be very dangerous. There have been some strange, disturbing incidents with people I've worked with on my videos. I'm not sure what it's about yet, but I'll tell you once I know more. Anyway, Eli, until further notice, we need to be cautious and on our guard."

He stared at her and blinked. "What kind of
incidents
?"

"Some very serious stuff," she replied. "Like I said, I'll tell you when I know more. But the important thing is, you need to be honest with me. If someone is following you around, or someone is secretly communicating with you, you need to let me know."

Sydney studied him. "Is someone communicating with you, honey?"

He shrugged again. "Just our ghost, nobody else."

Sydney worked up a smile. "Okey-doke," she said, kissing his forehead.

Then she got to her feet and headed upstairs to get some bedding for their overnight guest.

She managed to wake him up and steer him into the downstairs powder room. While Aidan washed his face, Sydney made up the couch with sheets and a pillow. Eli had already retreated to his room.

Aidan was so tired he just nodded groggily and said, "Thanks, Sydney," when she told him that he could help himself to anything in the kitchen and sleep as late as he wanted. Aidan stripped down to his undershorts while she was still explaining that she'd be in her office for a while longer.

"And if the light bothers you, I'll..." Sydney didn't quite finish. He had a beautiful, athletic physique, and he seemed so unself-conscious about it. She watched him lie down on the sofa and pull the sheets around him.

"Thanks again, Sydney," he murmured. "Are you--going to kiss me good night?"

She gazed at him. He had a sleepy smile on his handsome face.

"Um, no," she said, crossing her arms. "Sleep well, Aidan."

Sydney retreated to the kitchen. She wasn't sure anymore just how unself-conscious that striptease had been. Maybe he'd been kidding about the good-night kiss. Or maybe he'd just needed someone to be a mother to him and tuck him in for the night. She couldn't really read him. One thing she knew, she didn't want to be like that sixty-five-year-old Rita woman with all the face-lifts in San Francisco.

She poured a glass of the merlot left over from dinner. More than anything right now, she wanted to call Joe and tell him how scared and confused she was. But he was a stranger to her now. He'd become one the minute he'd hit her that afternoon two months ago--maybe even before that.

She almost expected Aidan to show up in the kitchen doorway in just his undershorts, saying he couldn't sleep. But she heard him in the living room, snoring lightly.

Sydney took her wine into her office and called her brother. His machine picked up, and then she remembered his date tonight. She waited for the beep.

"Hi, it's me, and I'm sorry," she said into the machine. "I totally forgot about your hot date tonight until just now. I hope it's going well. As soon as you're free, can you call me? There's a lot going on here, and I really need to talk to you. It's--um, ten-twenty."

Sydney clicked off the phone. Sipping her wine, she stared at the Heimlich maneuver fax again. She wondered how Troy's killer had trapped him. Had Troy picked him up in a bar? Or had the killer set up some kind of
chance meeting
?

Her brother had just met that man on the beach today.

Grabbing the phone, Sydney clicked it on again. She speed-dialed Kyle once more. "It's me again," she said, after the beep. "Listen. Call my cell as soon as you get this. I don't care how late it is. I really need to talk to you, Kyle. I probably won't fall asleep until I hear from you. Anyway, call me right away. Thanks."

Sydney clicked off the line.

It would be a long night ahead.

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

Evanston, Illinois--Tuesday, 1:54
A.M
.

Thirty-one-year-old Chloe Finch hobbled along Evanston Beach, looking for just the right place. She was carrying her shoes, and her feet had gotten used to the cold lake water. It was too muggy and warm for a raincoat tonight, but she wore one. She would need it later. She'd been collecting good-size stones and cramming them into the raincoat's pockets. They would weigh her down when she walked into the lake to drown herself.

The police patrolled the public beach, which was closed. But that didn't stop the occasional skinny-dippers or others who wanted a midnight dip. Chloe had to find an uninhabited stretch of beach. She didn't need anyone trying to be a hero and saving her life.

It meant navigating a break in a fence along one private beach, and then jumping a fence that bordered another. And Chloe wasn't good at jumping fences.

"You're one in a thousand," the doctor had once told her, referring to how many babies were born with clubfoot. She was in good company: Lord Byron; David Lynch; Dallas Cowboy quarterback, Troy Aikman; Damon Wayans; and Dudley Moore. Whenever the topic came up during a date, she always rattled off the list of famous people born with
talipes equinovarus
. She always left Josef Goebbels from that list. Who in their right mind wanted to be grouped with Goebbels? Another one in a thousand--and the one who inspired Chloe the most--was Kristi Yamaguchi, who took home the gold medal in figure skating in the 1992 Winter Olympics.

Chloe became a huge fan of figure skating, but could never do it herself. They'd botched the operation on her foot when she'd been a baby. Three attempts at corrective surgery after that had failed, leaving her left foot slightly deformed. She could walk, but had a prominent limp. On bad days, she needed a cane.

Lately, there had been a lot of bad days, but that had nothing to do with her foot. Then again, maybe if she hadn't tripped over her own damn cane one day last week, she probably wouldn't have met Riley.

Chloe was thin with a long face and a prominent nose that had a little bump in it. This jerky girl in high school used to call her "horse-face," which had hurt her feelings. But oddly, it had also given Chloe a bit of hope about fitting in with everyone; at least the girl hadn't made fun of the way she walked. For the last several years, her short plain brown hair was
Honey Auburn
--that was the color name on the L'Oreal box. She'd never considered herself very pretty, but did the best with what she had.

Yet Riley had made her feel beautiful--for three whole days.

She wasn't killing herself because of Riley. The son of a bitch wasn't worth it. No, Chloe didn't have one big reason for drowning herself in that cool lake. It was a lot of things, piling up.

Piling up, like the stones in her pockets. Chloe was beginning to get tired--walking in the sand with all that extra weight. She stopped at a small, private beach with a narrow strip of sand between Lake Michigan and a hillside of trees and shrubs. The last people she'd passed had been two naked, skinny teenage boys in the water, trying to persuade this girl with them to take off her top--at least. The girl kept shrieking her refusals. Chloe had given them a wide berth. Looking over her shoulder, she could barely see them anymore; they were just specks on the moonlit beach. She couldn't even hear the girl's high-pitched squeals--only the sound of the waves on the shore.

Chloe glanced in the other direction: the beach was empty. There was an old pier with
ALDER HILL ROAD--PRIVATE BEACH
stenciled in yellow on the side, the letters worn and faded. The pier was made up of three concrete sections that seemed to be crumbling in spots. The slab farthest out was slightly askew and appeared ready to break off from the rest of the pier. Chloe figured she could take a running jump off that last slab, and she'd instantly be in over her head. If the stones in her raincoat didn't drag her down, she'd swim away from the pier and keep swimming until it was too late to turn back. Then she'd give in to the overwhelming fatigue and let the lake swallow her.

She smiled. How satisfying that image was. She'd never felt so in charge of her life until now, just moments before she would end it.

Still smiling, Chloe took one last look around to make sure she was alone. She noticed a strange, bright pinpoint of light in the dense, dark hillside jungle behind her. It seemed to be moving, coming closer to the beach. Chloe heard bushes rustling. She scoured the edge of the thicket and saw a break in the trees and shrubs. There were some stone steps and a crude path that snaked through the hillside woods.

She heard a woman giggling, then a man's whispers. A beam of light illuminated the end of that path. Chloe ducked back into the bushes to avoid being seen.

She watched a dark-haired man holding a lit flashlight to navigate the end of the trail. He wore a blazer and he'd loosened his tie. He looked handsome in the distance. He had his arm around a blonde in a pretty red cocktail dress. She was still giggling. They looked very much in love.

Assholes
, Chloe thought, frowning at them. She'd recently graduated from
lonely romantic
to out-and-out
bitter hag
. That was one more thing she didn't like about herself lately. She had no patience for people in love. They made her step aside on the sidewalk, because God help them if they broke apart for a few seconds. They just had to walk side by side. And they used their "We're a couple" status to checkout-line shop in the store.
Go ahead and get your stupid boyfriend to pick up eleven more last-minute items while you stand in line in front of me, I really don't mind.
And sure enough, she'd find herself bumped in line for some dipshit's boyfriend with a handcart full of crap. "Oh, we're together," the woman would explain when Chloe gave them a filthy look.

And now, here was this beautiful couple out for a stroll on the moonlit beach, and she resented the hell out of them. On top of being in love, they were throwing a cog in her grand exit plan.

"I should be so mad at you," the woman was saying, bumping her hip against his. "Making me get all dressed up so we can go to a drive-thru....

Chloe ducked behind a bush and watched them walking hand in hand toward
her
pier. Maybe they would just keep walking along the shore, and then she'd have this beach to herself again. Was that too much to hope for?

Apparently so, because the twosome turned and walked down to the end of the pier. They embraced and kissed.

Chloe felt tears stinging her eyes. Why couldn't that be her? Just once?

The woman giggled again. Chloe realized her boyfriend had unzipped the back of the red dress. She started to peel down the top part of the dress while he kissed her neck. Chloe could see the woman's breasts in the moonlight. The man's mouth moved down from her neck to one breast. After a moment, he stepped back.

"Good God," Chloe whispered. She realized the man--like her--carried at least one stone in his pocket. Suddenly, he pulled the rock from his blazer pocket and bashed it over the blonde's head. The woman let out a shriek and then a strange warbled groan that was like gibberish. A hand on her forehead, she staggered back from him. Blood was already dripping through her fingers down to her elbow.

With a forceful shove, the man pushed her off the pier. She plunged into the water.

A hand over her heart, Chloe watched them from the edge of the thicket.

The man stood at the end of the pier, gazing down at the lake for only a moment. He threw the stone into the drink. Then he turned and hurried toward the path they'd taken down together.

Chloe recoiled behind the shrubs as he strode past her. She tried to keep perfectly still. He pulled the small flashlight from his other blazer pocket. She could hear him breathing hard, and then his footsteps on the stone path, and bushes rustling.

Chloe's shook horribly as she pulled out her cell phone and dialed 9-1-1. She shucked off the heavy raincoat and started to hobble toward the pier. The operator finally answered.

"Yes, hello," Chloe said, out of breath. "I'm at--at Alder Hill Road Beach. It's a private beach, and I just saw this guy hit a woman over the head and throw her into the lake. I think he might have killed her..."

"All right, ma'am," the operator said. "Could you give me your name and the address you're calling from?"

Glancing over her shoulder, Chloe saw the lone pinpoint of light moving back up the dark hillside forest. "My name is Chloe Finch, and I told you, I'm at a private beach on Alder Hill Road. Listen, the guy's getting away. You need to send someone here as soon as possible. This woman's going to need an ambulance..."

She raced to the end of the pier, and spotted the woman a few yards away, floating facedown in the silvery water. Her naked back looked so white. The wet red dress--bunched around her waist--seemed to be pulling her down. "Oh, God, I see her," Chloe gasped into the phone. "Please...please, hurry!"

Tossing aside the cell phone, she dove off the end of the pier and furiously swam out to the unconscious woman. Flipping her over, Chloe cupped her hand under her chin and started paddling toward shore. She couldn't tell if the woman was still breathing. Her eyes remained closed; her lids didn't even flutter. The lake water splashed away blood from the gash in her forehead--but only temporarily. It didn't look like the bleeding would stop.

Once she reached the shallow water, Chloe grabbed the lifeless woman under the arms and then dragged her to the sandy shore. Her wet, limp body was heavy. Frazzled, Chloe could hardly get a breath.

She rolled the woman onto her stomach, and repeatedly pushed at her lower back. "C'mon, c'mon..." Chloe whispered. "Please..."

At last, she heard a choking sound, and the woman stirred. She started to cough up water. Chloe was still shaking as she turned the woman over. Her wet blond hair was swept across her face, mingling with sand and blood. She gasped for air and coughed again.

Chloe held her head in her lap. The woman was shivering, and Chloe pulled the top of her dress up to cover her. Then she quickly unbuttoned her own wet short-sleeve shirt. She wrung it out and applied it to the gash on the woman's forehead.

Catching her breath, she could hear a siren in the distance. "It's okay," she said to the woman. "There's an ambulance on the way..."

Chloe didn't realize it then, but she'd been right about that man and this woman. Together, they'd thrown a cog in her grand exit plan.