CHAPTER 15
The house was a fortress, Lizzy thought, with never-ending hallways and a lot of unused rooms, wasted space. She had no idea where Kitally and Hayley were, but she wasn’t their mother and she wasn’t about to call and check up on them.
She was a visitor, a temporary guest, nothing more.
Lizzy left the office at the end of the house and headed for the kitchen. She wasn’t hungry, but she hadn’t eaten all day. She would force something down. Maybe some soup. She walked across the hallway, each step echoing off the polished wood floors.
She felt suddenly very alone.
A sharp creak froze her blood.
She took a step backward. Right there, where the hallway transitioned from wood to stone.
CREAK.
A loose board. That’s all it was. Nothing to worry about.
She stepped into the living room. Moonlight spilled in through high windows, shedding an eerie light over still unfamiliar terrain. Most of the furniture, in her opinion, was cold and uninviting. She’d never claimed to have any sort of flair for interior design, but the place needed a makeover—a throw rug and a few decorative pillows.
In the kitchen, she looked out the window above the sink. One of the girls usually turned on the outside lights, but since neither of them was home, the lights weren’t on. It was pitch-black out there.
A tap-tap on the window nearly brought her out of her skin. Instinct kicked in. Both hands shot up, her gun clasped unsteadily between them, her finger on the trigger.
She saw nothing but the dark expanse of the lawn and the black trees beyond.
She took a few breaths before finally pointing the gun at the floor. Hadn’t even realized she was carrying her gun around until that moment.
Her heart pounded against her chest. She’d heard a tap; she knew she had.
“Hayley, is that you?”
No answer.
She needed to calm down.
She locked her gun in her holster and concentrated on finding a damn light switch. Once she located the first switch, she flipped on every one she could find in the place. By the time she was done, the front yard was lit up like Christmas.
Better.
She could see past the front lawn all the way to the mailbox.
She unlocked the door and stepped outside, leaving the door open. A couple of acorns and a branch lay on the ground in front of the window. She looked up. A tall oak was the culprit.
Back inside, she sucked in a deep breath.
The cat circled her legs. Hannah. Where did you come from? She’d forgotten all about the cat. Never once in these past few weeks had she wondered or worried about Hannah’s fate.
Lizzy sank to the floor and scooped the cat into her arms, holding her close. Hannah purred against her chest as Lizzy ran her fingers through soft fur. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m not good at taking care of animals. I warned you right from the beginning, you know.”
More purring.
“Let’s get you something to eat.”
Lizzy stood, leaving Hannah to follow her to the kitchen. Like the outside, the entire house was lit up, giving plenty of light as she searched cupboards and finally the pantry, where she found everything she needed.
After feeding Hannah, she warmed up some vegetable soup. It had no taste, but she ate it because she’d told her therapist she was eating every day.
Her cell phone rang. She pulled it from her back pocket and hit Talk. “Hello?”
“It’s me . . . Kitally.”
“Hey, where are you guys?”
“I don’t know what Hayley’s up to, but I should be home in thirty minutes. I just thought I should let you know.”
“Are you checking up on me, Kitally?”
“No, of course not. Why would I?”
“No reason,” Lizzy said. “Thanks for taking care of Hannah. I didn’t realize she was here until two minutes ago.”
“She likes to hang out in my room. I keep dry food, water, and a cat box in my bathroom.”
“Oh.”
“How’s it going over there at the house?”
“Fine,” Lizzy answered. “Everything’s fine.”
“Well, OK, I’ll see you soon. If Hannah starts meowing, that means she’s ready to go down for the night. She sleeps in the bed with me. And she likes it if you turn on the television.”
“You sleep with the cat?”
“Yeah, why? Is that a problem?”
“No. Not a problem.”
“OK, well, see you soon.”
After Lizzy hung up the phone, she realized she didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what to think. Nothing made sense any more.
The cat wouldn’t stop meowing, something Hannah never did before. Lizzy snapped her fingers as she led Hannah down the long hallway to the room where Kitally slept. The master bedroom was bigger than an apartment. The bed could fit an entire family in it. She leaned over, picked up Hannah, then settled her gently on the middle of the down comforter.
Lizzy sat on the edge of the bed, even found herself smiling as she watched Hannah curl into a ball and settle down for the night. Lizzy picked up the remote from the nightstand and then joined Hannah on the bed. She rested her back against the soft pillows as she scratched Hannah between the eyes and pushed the Power button.
Channel 10 News came on, the images on the screen a blur as she thought about Jared lying alone in the hospital. Nighttime was always the worst. Lizzy had asked the doctors and nurses if she could stay with him, but the hospital had rules and strict visiting hours.
Jared was in coma.
At times like this, the idea of it seemed surreal.
During the first week that Jared was in the hospital, she’d left a portable radio close to his pillow, but the nurse told her he couldn’t hear anything. It wasn’t long before she’d overheard the nurses talking in private: Jared’s body was shutting down, one organ at a time. They were losing him. But before she’d had a chance to talk to Dr. Calloway and sign the necessary papers, Jared’s family showed up and chaos quickly became the norm. His dad started making threats, unable to comprehend that his only son had signed his life over to Lizzy. At least that’s how Mr. Shayne saw things. He had petitioned the court for guardianship over Jared’s health. Until the court decided what to do, it didn’t matter what Dr. Calloway had to say about Jared’s condition.
Lizzy tried to think of happier times but saw nothing—a blank slate. It wasn’t happening, and she couldn’t seem to force it. She felt nothing. All of her senses had deserted her. No taste. No memories. No emotions.
“Freak accident,” the on-site reporter said into the microphone. “Melony Reed died after slipping on her kitchen floor and landing upright on a cutlery basket.”
Lizzy sat up and turned up the volume.
A picture of Melony Reed, the same woman she’d met with flashed across the screen.
“Melony Reed managed to get to the phone and dial 911,” the reporter said from outside Melony’s home, a house Lizzy recognized because she’d sat inside the living room with her just over forty-eight hours ago, “but she died shortly after arriving at Sutter General.”
As soon as a commercial aired, Lizzy rushed to the other room to grab her laptop and the list of names Melony had given her. Back on the bed, Hannah curled up closer. Lizzy’s fingers clacked against the keyboard as she got to work. Melony Reed graduated from Parkview High School in 2002. There were over six hundred in her graduating class. Some of the school’s notable graduates included politicians, athletes, and a journalist. Lizzy scoured the Internet for anything she could find on Melony’s personal list of suspects.
She read the scribbled notes next to each name: mentally unstable, suicidal, abused by parents, et cetera, et cetera, which in Melony’s narrow-mindedness made these particular people capable of murder.
And now Melony was dead.
As much as Lizzy hated to admit it, the woman had been onto something. The coincidence of another “accident” was just too damned far-fetched. Having access to a much broader database than Melony made it easy to cross a few people off the list. If someone had moved out of state, Lizzy put a dark line through their names and jotted down their new locations just in case she’d need it down the road.
By the time she heard a car pull into the garage, half of the names had been crossed off the list.
Big deal, Lizzy thought. No matter how many names she eliminated, it didn’t change the fact that once again she had failed someone. Melony had been right when she’d said Lizzy sounded like the police. Lizzy had taken the case for all the wrong reasons. Melony was dead, and Lizzy hadn’t done a damn thing to help her.