Stolen(51)

Over the years, she’d seen pictures on the news of other women who looked like Angelina—women who’d gone missing or turned up dead. But her mind was so jumbled, she’d been so heavily medicated, she couldn’t recall the pertinent details . . . like who and where and when. She needed a thread that would connect the dots, shore up her faulty memory. And she had a good idea about where to find that thread.

She scratched her arm and noticed a couple of red welts appear. Hopefully, it was just from the sun concentrating its fire on her skin and not an allergy to this fragrant, pokey hedge she was hiding behind. Twisting her wrist, she frowned. She needed a watch to keep time. Counting might work for a minute or two, but there was no telling how long she’d been sitting here cross-legged on the dirt, staring at the door of that brown frame house, waiting for Cayman to emerge. More than one thousand seconds for sure, since that’s when she’d given up keeping track.

Buried in her backpack was her purse. The pack in turn was lashed to her stolen bike, also hidden behind the hedgerow. But she could figure her remaining cash in her head. She’d spent forty dollars at the motel, nine ninety-nine on breakfast, twenty-one dollars for a cab from the diner to campus, seventeen-fifty on wire cutters, and fifty-three dollars on a blond wig. That left three hundred fifty-eight dollars and fifty-one cents. The youth hostel would hopefully run her around ten dollars a night.

If she could find a watch for twenty dollars, she’d buy it. She smacked herself on the forehead. Yes, she needed a watch, but more importantly she needed a burner phone in case she needed to call in an anonymous tip to the cops . . . or to Caitlin. She liked Caitlin, and she wondered if there might be some way to reach her directly—maybe an internet search would turn something up. A trip to the electronics store and to a coffee shop with Wi-Fi was definitely in order.

The thought of her strange to-do list made her smile.

Break and enter Cayman’s house.

Hit the electronics store.

Order a venti latte.

Catch a killer.



The wind shifted. The sun ducked behind a bank of clouds, taking her smile with it. She let out a long, lonely breath. It felt wrong, spying on Cayman. He’d been as much a friend to her as a bodyguard. And she’d had very few friends since Angelina died. Laura considered marching up the front steps, ringing the bell and announcing to Cayman that she was back. But then she thought about her friend’s body lying mutilated in the wilderness and about Angelina’s bright smile. The way her sweet nanny had always read Harry Potter to her before tucking her into bed with a good-night kiss.

And she thought about the monster.

No.

She wasn’t going to ring the front bell. She was going to sit here on the hard ground until her butt flattened into a pancake and her muscles atrophied. However long it took for Cayman to leave—that’s how long she’d keep watch.

It was a sad day—whatever the outcome, she wouldn’t be rejoicing. She wasn’t a killer—she knew that, finally—her soul simply wasn’t black enough, but there was still the question of her sanity.

Yet even if she was nuts, even if her theory was all wrong, someone had killed Angelina. Someone had killed her friend. And Laura was determined to do everything in her power to stop that someone from striking again.

She heard the creak of a garage door opening.

Craning her neck, she saw a black sedan pull out from the house where the blue bike was still chained up on the porch.

She held her breath.

It looked like a man driving the sedan, but the side window was tinted so she couldn’t be sure who.

The window buzzed down.

Cayman.

He was leaving. And from the way he peeled out of that drive, he was in a hurry to get wherever he was going.

This was her chance.

She crawled out from behind the bushes, heart in her throat, palms sweaty.

But what if he’d taken the one thing she needed with him? Then there would be no point breaking into his house.

Stop stalling.

As she sauntered casually across the road, she pursed her lips, attempting a carefree whistle, but her mouth was too dry.

Just act cool.

First, she approached the neighbor’s yard that contained a treasure she’d had her eye on while lurking behind the bushes. A football, lying in the grass, waiting for its quarterback to come out and play. She felt a pang of guilt, knowing that quarterback would probably have to take the blame for her sin . . . but wasn’t that the point?

Just do it.

She snagged the football and kept moving.

She reached the backyard of Cayman’s house. No screens on the windows.

Good.

She hauled her right arm back and concentrated. She’d often played touch football with Cayman, and it was he who’d taught her to throw a mean pass. When the ball smashed through the bedroom window, she did a victory dance, like she’d just hit a wide receiver fifty yards downfield.