She came to me.
Casey unfurls the plastic wrap and drapes it over her body to keep the rain from diluting the blood and washing it away. Only the girl’s head remains exposed, waiting for the razor, still sticky with blood, to finish the job.
Quinn’s Bar and Grill on West 44th Street is busy when Rick walks through the door. Ordinarily he’d head for the bar, order a draft beer, and mingle with the regulars, hoping a stool might open up before closing.
Tonight, though, he spots an empty high--top table in the front corner, away from the crowd, and heads straight for it. Settling onto a stool facing the plate--glass window, he stares at his own reflection framed by a garland of red and green ornaments strung with white Christmas lights.
“What’ll it be tonight, love?”
Any other night, he’d flirt with his favorite waitress, a sporty blond Aussie, but tonight he doesn’t even make eye contact. “Jameson straight up.”
“Tough day, hmm?” Without waiting for a reply, she heads back to the bar, leaving him alone with his thoughts.
Tough day, indeed.
Tough night, too.
He thought he was prepared to come face to face with Rowan Mundy again after all these years, but . . .
He closes his eyes, seeing her face again. Not the face that had haunted him all these years, though. She’d changed. That shouldn’t have caught him off guard, because he knew she’d aged—-everyone ages—-but for some reason, he felt betrayed, seeing her in person.
Her face was still pretty, but her girlish freckles had faded and so had the light that used to gleam in her green eyes when she looked at him. This Rowan was more mature, laugh lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes confirming that years had passed and they’d been good to her. She’d picked up a few extra pounds on her petite frame, but the curves were flattering. Her hair, though . . .
Her hair. Her crowning glory is gone.
Of all the changes he should have anticipated, that never entered his mind. Why would it? In all of the photos on her Facebook page, that long, wavy dark red hair had been cascading over her shoulders same as always.
When he first glimpsed her this morning, a part of him wondered, perhaps irrationally, whether she’d cut it short and dyed it at the last minute just to spite him.
“I’ve always had a thing for redheads,” he’d told her once—-after they’d become friends, but long before he dared to take it further. “My first love was a redhead.”
“No way, really?”
He’d told her about Brenda. She’d actually been interested, asking questions and making comments, unlike Vanessa.
Vanessa never wanted to hear about Brenda; never wanted to acknowledge that there had been women in his life before she came along.
Ironic, since she’d actually been married before he came along. He might have benefited from hearing a little more about her ex--husband. But, being Vanessa, she compartmentalized. She was always good at that.
Unlike Rowan, who wore her heart on her sleeve. He’d fallen a little in love with her the first time they met, even though she was pregnant with her third child at the time.
The moving truck was still in the Walkers’ driveway when Rowan came walking over, juggling a plate of homemade brownies and the chubby hands of her little son and daughter. It was summer, hot and humid. She was wearing a spaghetti--strapped floral print maternity sundress that revealed a good amount of cleavage as well as her swollen legs. Her freckles were out in full force and her hair hung in loose, damp waves and clung in tendrils to her flushed cheeks.
“Welcome to the neighborhood,” she said, offering him the brownies. “I’m Rowan, and this is Braden and Katie. We live next door.”